Identity Formation at a French Colonial Outpost in the North American Interior

Identity formation is a central issue in colonial and post-colonial studies. The ways in which people defined and expressed their identities along multiple dimensions have material implications that are archaeologically accessible. For social archaeologists, material variation is actively constituted and the archaeological record is the residue of a system of signs that individuals used in the construction of class, status, gender, race, and ethnic relations. In the context of French and Native interactions, social identities were fluid, situational, and malleable. The interactions engendered by the fur trade and colonialism in New France had material consequences for identity formation that are being investigated at Fort St. Joseph, an 18th-century frontier outpost in the western Great Lakes.     

我国传统镁质石灰初步研究

对我国从明代到民国的建筑灰浆的化学成分、矿物成分等分析发现,部分砌筑及抹灰灰浆为镁质石灰,MgO含量达到5%~26%。特别是取自河北、北京等地长城的传统石灰样品全部为镁质石灰。镁质石灰与钙质石灰比较,具有强度高、吸水率低的特点,从而具有更佳的抗冻融性能。此外,镁质石灰收缩低、易于施工。镁质石灰煅烧需要的温度低于钙质石灰,能耗低。鉴于传统镁质石灰在中国的研究尚为空白,建议系统地开展镁质石灰研究,研究内容包括原材料类型及分布、煅烧温度、消解方式、配比优化等。同时宜研究镁质石灰在严重大气污染下的耐久性及镁质石灰相关建筑遗产的保护修复技术等。     

陕北明长城夯土密度与雨蚀破坏的量化研究

为量化研究夯土性质对陕北明长城遗址雨蚀破坏模式的影响作用,采用室内模拟降雨试验的方法对夯土密度和雨蚀量间的关系进行定量化分析。研究结果显示,大到暴雨条件下,干湿作用产生的破坏是低强度夯土(密度1.5 g·cm^-3、1.6 g·cm^-3)最主要的雨蚀破坏模式,冲刷破坏造成的雨蚀量较小;水力侵蚀产生的冲刷破坏和重力侵蚀引起的小范围掉块是高强度夯土(密度1.7~1.9 g·cm^-3)最主要的破坏模式,冲刷破坏造成的雨蚀量较大;当土体含水率在3%~7%区间时,夯土的雨蚀量和密度呈指数函数关系,二者呈现正相关性。研究结果为探索多因素作用下夯土雨蚀的破坏机制提供方法借鉴,是土遗址病害研究的重要组成部分。     

降雨对陕西省榆林市榆阳区明长城破坏的初步分析

降雨是陕西省榆林市榆阳区明长城的主要破坏因素之一。调查中发现,降雨对遗址破坏严重。为了研究降雨对遗址的破坏,在对遗址详细调查的基础上,结合遗址特征与遗址区降雨特点,并参考土壤侵蚀学等方面理论,分析了降雨对遗址的破坏形式及影响因素。结果表明,降雨对遗址的破坏形式可分为直接破坏和间接破坏两大类。其中,主要破坏形式为冲沟侵蚀、片流面蚀和雨蚀剥离。影响因素包括降雨特点、遗址形态、土的性质、植物生长状况和地幔层等,不同破坏形式的主要影响因素各有不同。本结果不仅丰富了降雨对土遗址破坏方面的研究,还为后续陕西榆阳区明长城保护加固措施的选择提供了依据。     

Propagating Afrikaner nationalism: The Voortrekker stamps as icons of an ideology,c.1933–1949

This paper posits the importance of visual representations in cultivating a national consciousness among white Afrikaners in South Africa. It provides a case study of stamps issued to commemorate the centenary of the Great Trek in 1938 that sought to raise awareness of and funds for the Voortrekker Monument project. Although stamps are, ordinarily, symbols of banal nationalism, the Voortrekker stamps resonated strongly with the sentiments the Afrikaner volk (people). They reified an iconography of the Voortrekkers and the narrative of the Great Trek already embedded in a canon of texts, images and rituals. The paper provides a semiotic reading of the designs of the stamps and shows how they shaped the cultural imaginary of Afrikaners. Although the Voortrekker stamps were issued with the approval of the postal authorities, they were actually commissioned by the Sentrale Volksmonumentekomitee [Central People's Monuments Committee (SVK)], which had close ties to the National Party (NP) opposition. Although the project was largely state sponsored, the SVK insisted upon its autonomy. Thus the government sanctioned a project over which it exercised no jurisdiction. The United Party paid a price for accommodating sectional Afrikaner interests when it lost control of the state in 1948.     

THE ECOSYSTEM HEALTH METAPHOR IN SCIENCE AND POLICY

Ecosystem health' is an increasingly common metaphor in the langauge of science and policy. Given the prominence of both the ecosystem and health concepts within geography, this paper examines the meanings generated by the adoption of the metaphor for scientific research and for environmental policy on the North American Great Lakes. 'Ecosystem' can be characterized as an entity, an abstract concept, or a perspective. As perspective, ecosystem shares many features of postmodern science, emphasizing complexity and holism and calling for the inclusion of human beings in our considerations of nature. The ecosystem health metaphor is politically powerful in its ability to evoke action and concern for the environment with an appeal to the universal experiences of human ill-health. The organismic ecosystem health metaphor provides a new, relevant way of thinking about the natural world. In policy discourse, however, metaphor can be problematic in that there is potential for the author or speaker to hide behind the nonliteral language. Moreover, the acceptance of the ecosystem health metaphor which can draw upon widely held beliefs and norms implies that other ways of knowing the world are necessarily omitted. We highlight some of these issues in a case study of a policy document prepared by the Ecological Committee of the Great Lakes International Joint Commission. To continue to know how to study nature in new ways, metaphors must be encouraged, but their meanings must also be widely explored     

The Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene archaeology of the Great Basin

The archaeological record of the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in the Great Basin consists largely of surface lithic artifacts, and consequently research has concentrated on typological and technological studies. The small suite of radiocarbon dates available suggests human presence in the Great Basin by at least 11,500 B.P., but evidence of subsistence is scanty. Technological analyses as well as artifact distributions suggest that the earliest occupants of this region subsisted primarily by hunting, possibly large terrestrial game. As elsewhere in North America, the earliest occupants of the Great Basin faced a rapidly changing environment, with the drying of shallow pluvial lake remnants and the creation of new habitats. Paralleling these changes, significant subsistence resource diversification coupled with expansion into new environments is evident by the close of the Pleistocene.     

The Suez Crisis of 1956 as a moment of transnational humanitarian engagement

Abstract

The Suez Crisis of 1956 is generally seen in historical research as a moment both of Great Britain’s imperial decline and of Egyptian and Arab political self-determination in the Middle East. Yet the humanitarian aspect of this crisis is still neglected, even though it provoked important humanitarian engagements from different sides, Arab as well as Western. By focusing on the Red Cross and the Red Crescent Movement, this article investigates not only motives, forms and structures of humanitarian relief, but also analyses the successes and difficulties of transnational co-operation between Western and non-Western agencies with a special focus on the application of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Finally, the article addresses the political dimension beyond concrete forms of help by arguing that the Suez Crisis attested to both the persistence of post-colonial structures and the institutionalisation of new, transnational patterns of co-operation.     

The Great War,the child’s body and the American Red Cross

Abstract

This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations.     

Enrique Díaz Retg and El Diluvio: reportage from the Italian frontline (1916)

In the year 1916 Enrique Díaz Retg, a staff journalist working for the Spanish newspaper El Diluvio, extremely popular among Barcelona’s working class readers, was assigned to report from the Italian front. Following an invitation from the Italian Foreign Office, he was granted permission to visit war zones under the control of the Italian army. During this journey, which began on 5 September and concluded in Rome on the 22nd, he traveled with two other famous Spanish reporters, Ramón Pérez de Ayala and Eduardo Gómez de Baquero. Comparing the articles produced by the three journalists allows us to perceive the main distinctive features of Enrique Díaz Retg’s work. From an ideological point of view, his articles reveal a bias in favor of the Latin race and in them he calls for Mediterranean nations to unite, openly inviting the Spanish authorities to enter into war against the barbaric German enemy. In doing so, he contributed to widening the social gap that in the years to come would increasingly alienate the working class from the institution of monarchy and the Catalan elites.