For a ‘normal government’ of the colony: Antonio Gandolfi and the first administration of Eritrea (1890–1892)

The colony of Eritrea was officially born in 1890, after a period marked by scandals in which the government of the Italian territories of the Horn of Africa revealed themselves to be weak and contradictory. After the brief rule of Baldassarre Orero, Antonio Gandolfi became the first colonial governor of Eritrea. Gandolfi was highly dissatisfied with the men who administered the colony, especially as they ignored the native societies and sought to reform the government apparatus. In particular, he wanted to promote the participation of indigenous notables in the colonial government, as he felt it was necessary to share responsibility with the local population, ‘to make them responsible for the good conduct of public affairs’. The period of his administration was marked by ongoing controversies with other personalities operating in Eritrea, in particular with the deputy Leopoldo Franchetti, responsible for the colonization, and with General Oreste Baratieri, commander of the Keren zone, whom Gandolfi criticized for his hard military methods. Gandolfi was soon forced to resign and his successor Baratieri set up a real military dictatorship.     

‘From motives of generosity,as well as self‐preservation’: Thomas Branagan,Colonization, and the Gradual Emancipation Movement

The idea of colonizing free blacks in areas distant from white settlement has had a long history in the American antislavery movement. A decade before the American Colonization Society formed in 1817, an Irish immigrant in Philadelphia, Thomas Branagan, argued that creating a black settlement in the newly‐acquired Louisiana Purchase territories would encourage slaveholders to emancipate their bondspersons while also saving white society from a number of ills he associated with a biracial society, most notably racial mixing, poverty and violence. Branagan’s plan never gained acceptance, but the idea of sending free blacks to the American West to encourage emancipation did catch the attention of gradual emancipationists associated with the American Convention of Abolitionists. This group considered a similar scheme as the lesser of two evils once the Colonization Society began its campaign to send America’s blacks “back” to Africa. Neither plan met with success, but their existence reveals an important link between colonization and the early antislavery movement.     

Technological responses to risk in Holocene Australia

It has long been recognized that the Australian archaeological record documents alterations in settlement and technological strategies in the middle of the Holocene. Discussion of the cause of those changes has been restricted largely to suggestions of the arrival of new technologies, presumably from southeast Asia, without exploring their advantages for humans occupying the continent. The model outlined here proposes that during the mid-Holocene exploitation of the landscape involved significant risks, and at that time new forms of stoneworking were adopted as an aid in reducing risk. Risk was associated with environmental change, high mobility, and colonization of previously unoccupied landscapes. Archaeological evidence reveals these processes to be associated with the adoption of toolkits that minimize risk.     

Patterning and Its Causation in the Pre-Neolithic Colonization of the Mediterranean Islands (Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene)

In 1981 one of us (Cherry) first attempted to identify spatial and temporal patterning in the human colonization of the Mediterranean islands. Since the 1980s, slowly accumulating evidence has suggested that the Mediterranean islands were sporadically inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Here we seek to establish whether or not these data exhibit regularity. We suggest that evidence for Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic activity, tending to cluster on larger or less remote islands, indicates that while humans were clearly capable of reaching the Mediterranean islands prior to the Neolithic, their general reluctance to do so can be explained in terms of the variable environmental attractiveness of the insular Mediterranean. Tending to be relatively small, dry, and biologically depauperate, the Mediterranean islands were largely inhospitable to mobile groups preferring extensive territories with diverse and robust biotas. Sedentism only became a widely viable strategy in the insular Mediterranean with the development in the Neolithic of what we might regard as “terraforming”—that is, the introduction of cereals, pulses, and ovicaprids, all tolerant of xeric environments.     

The Kvarnbo Hall: Reconsidering the Importance of the Late Iron Age Åland Islands

This article accounts for and contextualizes a newly discovered monumental longhouse, a potential hall from the Late Iron Age, on the Åland Islands, Finland. The 45 m long building and its location are discussed in regional and historical context, in comparison to the full data set of coeval houses on Åland, and are argued to signal a social stratification, manifesting a higher level of achievement in this Late Iron Age society. This is further examined in the context of Iron Age settlement development. A rapid and large-scale colonization to Åland, evident in the middle of the first millennium AD, is for the first time explanatorily discussed, addressing the question of why this process occurred. Sudden population growth is linked in part to large-scale climatic disturbances, with fatal consequences in those areas of heavy agricultural dependency, forcing population movement to Åland driven by the presence of maritime resources, particularly seals, and available land.     

Forty-Two Degrees South: The Archaeology of Late Pleistocene Tasmania

Over the past 18 years the results of archaeological field research in many parts of Australia have challenged the view of late Pleistocene archaeological unity and homogeneity. Debates are increasingly focused on issues of identifying regional behavioral variability and away from a normalization of Australia's prehistory. Prior notions of cultural transformations from simple (late Pleistocene) to complex (late Holocene) social behaviors, technological homogeneity, and the timing of colonization are being increasingly scrutinized. One such area that has become a spearhead of this challenge is Tasmania, which continues to demonstrate its ability to confront preconceptions about the nature of past human behaviors.     

Lincoln and Chiriquí Colonization Revisited

Abstract

This article looks at Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of colonization in the Chiriquí region of Colombia (now Panamá), conventionally known as one of just two places that he seriously considered with respect to his policy of relocating African Americans. Challenging the standard account of the scheme's demise around October 1862 due to vehement Central American protest, this piece questions whether such a development really took the president by surprise. The two weak threads running through the Chiriquí proposal were its scope for diplomatic upset and the embarrassment that might arise from its corrupt proponents’ links to the administration. The author argues that Lincoln was aware of both issues from an early date – even if they each became more complicated than he had initially realized – but that he made persistent attempts to address them. The administration was also more concerned about the ramifications of divisions within Colombia than the widespread isthmian outcry at colonization. Lincoln accordingly tried to place colonization policy on a sounder diplomatic and legislative footing as it became apparent that his contract with a domestic businessman also carried international implications. Yet ultimately, it was the Chiriquí venture's corruption that killed it when the president discovered that it went all the way to the cabinet.     

The Early Settlement of South Norway after the Last Deglaciation: A Diasporic Perspective

Based on a theoretical approach of diaspora theory and the use of ethnographical comparative analysis, it is argued that the early settlement of South Norway probably brought about diasporic conditions. Archaeological and natural science records are applied to discuss the migrations of mobile hunter-gatherers with a shamanistic reindeer culture from the Continent, after deglaciation of the Weichselian ice cap. This paper discusses the diasporic people's identity, their survival as a group, their adaptation to the new environment and the development of an independent reindeer culture characterized by relics and meeting places, after the break in the regular contact between people in the area of origin and South Norway.     

The Peopling of Iceland

In recent years intensive archaeological research on the Viking Age in Iceland has produced much new evidence supporting a late 9th century colonization of the country. It can now be stated not only that people had arrived in Iceland before AD 870 but also that comprehensive occupation only took place after that date. The increased temporal resolution of the new archaeological data not only allows the characterization of different phases of the colonization but also supports assessments of the scale and rate of the immigration. In this paper we report the results of fieldwork in Mývatnssveit, NE-Iceland, where more than 30 sites have been investigated, ranging from small test trenches to large-scale open area excavations. We argue, based on the Mývatnssveit data, that a minimum of 24,000 people must have been transported to Iceland in less than 20 years to account for the dates and density of the Mývatn sites. In the absence, so far, of comparable data from other parts of the country these conclusions must remain hypothetical but if supported by further work they will have significant implications for our understanding of first peopling of Holocene farming populations in general and of Viking Age migrations in particular.     

Settlements and Seafaring: Reflections on the Integration of Boats and Settlements Among Marine Foragers in Early Mesolithic Norway and the Yámana of Tierra del Fuego

The abundant Early Mesolithic (11,500–10,000 cal. BP) settlements at the raised shorelines in Norway and Sweden represent the earliest documented marine foragers in northern Europe. In the Scandinavian seascapes, both traveling and subsistence depended on seaworthy vessels. However, this highly mobile lifestyle was likewise dependent on settlements on firm ground. Departing from actor-network theory and symmetrical archaeology, I explore the structural relations between extensive use of boats, basic co-residing units, and activity patterns at settlements. The empiric basis for my study is the excavated Early Mesolithic coastal sites in the Ormen Lange project in Central Norway, dated to ca. 11,000–10,800 cal. BP. I suggest that the structural uniformity that is observed in the settlements may be related to the dependency on boats for subsistence activities as well as transport and settlements, creating human-thing dynamics that interlocked co-residents and boat crews, logistics, and activity patterns. This dynamic regime is also explored with ethnohistorical and archaeological references to the Yámana in the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.