Scottish Historical Archaeology: International Agendas and Local Politics

Historical archaeology as practiced in Scotland is divergent from the mainstream tradition of historical archaeology/post-medieval archaeology that dominates North America and the English-speaking world. Cultural and historical forces have shaped an historical archaeology with a deeper time depth, which extends back into the Middle Ages. It also focuses on different subjects reflecting the political concerns associated with Scottish national identity. Examples drawn from Glasgow’s history are used to illustrate the distinctiveness of the Scottish tradition and how it is evolving. I argue that one of its strengths of Scottish historical archaeology is that it provides a corrective contrast to the subjects and approaches which dominate historical archaeology in the English-speaking world.     

Identifying Domination and Resistance Through the Spatial Organization of Poonindie Mission,South Australia

One of the spaces where the interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups during the period of contact and cross-cultural interaction took place around the world, was at missions. In Australia, missions were founded, rearranged and closed down over a period of time in which the attitudes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups and official Government policy towards contact relationships were continually changing. By analyzing the use of these contested spaces at Australian Missions by both groups, archaeologists can begin to understand how the new relationships between these groups were negotiated, contested and played out over time. This paper analyses the use of space, using the theoretical frameworks of the archaeologies of capitalism, at Poonindie Mission in South Australia, which was established by the Anglican Church with support from the colonial government and operated between 1850 and 1896.     

A Possible Witness to the Sixth Century Slavic Invasion of Greece from the Stadium Tunnel at Ancient Nemea

Human remains recovered from the stadium tunnel at Ancient Nemea offer a window into one life in the time of the sixth-century CE Slavic invasion of the Greek Peloponessos. The remains likely represent a middle-aged male and show a cranial injury similar to conflict-related wounds seen in some medieval skeletal populations. The wound is well-healed and was inflicted some time before death. Lesions elsewhere on the skeleton reflect an active life involving hard physical work. This man’s injury and the unique find context of his remains may reflect the unsettled conditions of late sixthcentury Greece.     

Landscapes of Redemption: Tracing the Path of a Convict Miner in Western Australia

This paper presents alternative readings of the archaeology of a series of nineteenth-century industrial and convict sites in the midwest region of Western Australia. In particular it employs the biography of Joseph Horrocks a former convict turned mine manager, to reinterpret the relationship between these places, considering the agency of the individual and suggesting how his experiences at some sites may have influenced him to attempt to create an idealised industrial settlement aimed at assisting with the reform of convicts.     

Regional Survey and the Boom-and-bust Countryside: Re-reading the Archaeological Evidence for Episodic Abandonment in the Late Roman Corinthia

This paper reexamines the archaeological evidence for three episodes of rural abandonment and resettlement in the countrysides of Late Roman Greece (200–700 CE): an abandoned Late Hellenistic-Early Roman countryside (second century BCE to third century CE), a decline in the third to early fourth centuries CE, and the Dark Age beginning in the seventh century CE. The first and third episodes of abandonment, especially, have sharply defined Late Antiquity (250–700 CE) as a healthy period of new rural settlement and economic resurgence, and the entire pattern has been described in the terms of “boom-and-bust” demographic and economic cycles. Closer readings of the archaeological data can contribute to more sensitive pictures of continuity and change in settlement and connectivity in the late antique Corinthian countryside and other regions in Greece.     

Archaeologies of Cultural Interaction: Wybalenna Settlement and Killalpaninna Mission

This paper compares two contrasting Australian case studies in the archaeology of Indigenous-European interaction: one mission-like in its intent, the Aboriginal Settlement for Tasmanian Aborigines at Wybalenna on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait (1833–47), the other the Lutheran mission at Lake Killalpaninna (1867–1928) investigated by the Central Australia Archaeology Project (CAAP). Each of the two case studies adopted different strategies of investigation. Wybalenna was a small excavation while Killalpaninna was an extensive surface survey. Both studies reveal diversity in the range of responses to a missionizing program, providing evidence of agency in the formation of the archaeological record. They demonstrate the value of the material evidence and the significance of archaeology in contributing to a more sensitive understanding of the interaction process by providing an alternative to textual sources.     

Domains and the Intercultural: Understanding Aboriginal and Missionary Engagement at the Mornington Island Mission,Gulf of Carpentaria,Australia from 1914 to 1942

The Mornington Island Mission in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, was a site of historical engagement between Aboriginal people and missionaries. In this paper, we apply the theoretical concepts of “domains” and the “intercultural” to the investigation of this engagement between 1914 and 1942, when the mission was overseen by the Reverend Robert Wilson. Through the examination of the removal of Aboriginal children, the establishment of a mission compound and Aboriginal camp and the inclusion of Aboriginal adults into the mission compound through production and economy, we show how mutually constituted domains operated. At the same time, the interaction between Aboriginal adults and children with missionaries within these domains was increasingly intercultural in nature. Thus, both “domains” and the “intercultural” are shown to have relevance to the historical case study.     

Lining the Path: A Seascape Perspective of Two Torres Strait Missions,Northeast Australia

This paper compares the socio-spatial characteristics of two missions dating from different periods in Torres Strait, northeastern Australia. It builds upon previous archaeological research which correlates settlement-subsistence systems with the seascape cosmologies of marine specialists. Against the backdrop of profound changes in colonial governance and religious commitment (from mission to church) from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries, we map the changing structure of two Torres Strait missions, and reflect upon these changes relative to lived sea-space. We use this approach in the belief that “local” histories provide meaningful context to broader colonial narratives.     

A Niche Construction Perspective on the Middle–Upper Paleolithic Transition in Italy

This paper presents an overview of the Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition in Italy in light of recent research on the Uluzzian technocomplex and on the paleoecological context of the transition. Drawing on the realization that human niche construction can be documented in the pre-agricultural archaeological record, niche construction theory is used as a conceptual framework to tie together facets of the behavioral, biological, and ecological dimensions of the transition interval into formal models of their interaction over time and in diverse contexts. Ultimately, this effort shows how foragers of the transitional interval in the Italian peninsula were active agents in shaping their evolutionary history, with consequences of some adaptive systems being felt only much later and directing the forces responsible for the ultimate disappearance of the Mousterian and Uluzzian technocomplexes in favor of the proto-Aurignacian industry, the exact nature of which clearly appears to vary on a regional level.     

Of Other Scapes: Archaeology,Landscape, and Heterotopia in Fascist Sicily

Foucault’s concept of the “heterotopia” has been applied broadly throughout the humanities and social sciences. Archaeologies of the recent past are well-suited to examine these “other spaces”: blurring the line between past and present while juxtaposing archaeological, archival, and ethnographic data, they can draw attention to the gaps, contradictions, and alternate orderings that make up the world around us. Using the extensive agricultural land reforms and building programs undertaken by Italy’s Fascist government in Sicily in the 1940s as an example, I extend the heterotopia concept to an analysis of archaeological landscapes, critically exploring the benefits and limitations of a heterotopic perspective in archaeological contexts.