Reviews

Books Reviewed: David S.G. Thomas and Andrew Goudie (eds), The Dictionary of Physical Geography 3rd ed Ross A. Bradstock, Jann E. Williams and Malcolm A. Gill (eds), Flammable Australia: the Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent A. Carr, Grass Roots and Green Tape. Principles and Practices of Environmental Stewardship Felix Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire G. Waitt, P. McGuirk, K. Dunn, K. Hartig and I. Burnley, Introducing Human Geography: Globalisation, Difference and Inequality I. Hay (ed.), Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography A.J. Brown, Ill–starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin     

Finding Mid-19th Century Native Settlements: Cartographic and Archaeological Evidence from Central California

Historical maps have the potential to aid archaeological investigations into the persistence of Native American settlements during the mid-19th century, a time when many Native communities disappear from archaeological view. Focusing on Tomales Bay in central California, we evaluate the usefulness of historical maps as a way to discover and interpret archaeological deposits dating to the period, with the aim of better understanding indigenous patterns of residence at the transition from missionary to settler colonialism. In particular, we focus on diseños and plats created to document Mexican-era land grants as well as early maps produced by the General Land Office and United States Coast Survey. Although we note inconsistencies regarding the inclusion of indigenous settlements on historical maps, our case study offers an example of how archaeologists can employ historical maps and targeted archaeological ground-truthing to discover sites that are poorly represented in the historical and archaeological records.     

Miniature dissonance and the museum space: reconsidering communication through miniaturisation

Miniature objects from non-European contexts have ideological elements which are often overlooked in the museum space because their small size and iconic relations make them difficult to accurately interpret and disrupt curatorial efforts to impose meaning upon them; a situation I term miniature dissonance. This article will examine this phenomenon using three related case studies featuring miniatures from the Northwest Coast of North America. It will consider what might have been misunderstood in these objects and what they might originally have been intended to achieve, followed by an example from a recent Ancient Egyptian exhibition which demonstrates that this problem is both more widespread and problematic than is often recognised. These miniatures disrupt curatorial intentionality in the museum space, and it is only by carefully considering their origins and affordances that they can be adequately and accurately interpreted and displayed.     

Prehistoric Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus) Mother Lode Near Prince Rupert,British Columbia and Implications for the Manufacture of High-Status Ceremonial Goods

Abundant mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) remains were recovered from two archaeological sites on Kaien Island near Prince Rupert Harbour, British Columbia. No other archaeological sites in North America have anywhere near the abundance of mountain goat remains as were recovered from GbTo 54 (NISP 410, 7.1% of identified mammals) and GbTo 13 (NISP 27, 5.4% of identified mammals). In contrast, at the impressive Boardwalk site on nearby Digby Island (GbTo 31), only 1% of identified mammals were identified as mountain goat, although goat remains from Grassy Bay (GbTn 1), also on Kaien Island, comprised 1.7% of identified mammals. With one exception, other western North American sites, including those in Alaska, recovered only a few pieces of mountain goat each (<0.5% of identified mammals). The dates for GbTo 54 and GbTo 13 span AD 200–AD 1300, with all four directly dated goat bones falling within that period. Most goat bones appeared to come from adult or subadult males and element abundance analysis of GbTo 54 remains indicate that whole animals may have been selectively butchered into transportable units. Other evidence suggests the occupants may have specialized in the procurement of a variety of raw materials (not only mountain goat) used in the manufacture of high-status ceremonial goods.     

‘Not a Position for a Gentleman’: Sir Matthew Nathan as Colonial Administrator: From Cape Coast Castle to Dublin Castle via Natal

This article examines the role of Sir Matthew Nathan, British permanent under secretary for Ireland at the time of the Easter Rising in April 1916, and how critical events in his career as soldier, colonial governor and civil servant shaped his conduct and reaction to events in Ireland as the Rising unfolded around him. The article raises issues of identities: namely Nathan's own identity as an English gentleman, when, given his Jewish background, he was an outsider to that caste. Nathan's brief military career and lengthier career as a colonial governor earned him high praise as a model bureaucrat. In this paper Nathan's track from the War Office through government houses situated in West Africa, Hong Kong and Natal to Dublin Castle is traced to illustrate the changes in his character from decisiveness to indecision. While Nathan clearly misread the volatile situation in Ireland over the 1916 Easter weekend, his actions demonstrated both indecision and bureaucratic delaying tactics. It is argued that his experiences with obdurate settler ministers in Natal played a role in shaping his hesitancy at the time of crisis in Dublin and that this hesitancy provided an opportunity for the direct action of the Irish Volunteers. The conclusion is that, at the time of the Irish crisis, Nathan failed to exercise the ‘power of the personal influence’ expected of an experienced governor.     

Exploring a Bayesian method for examining the regional ceramic sequence along the Georgia Coast

This report presents an exploratory Bayesian modeling program of a recently compiled radiocarbon database for the Georgia Coast. Through use of the region’s well-established ceramic sequence as the a priori modeling framework, a refined temporal sequence for the region is presented. The model demonstrates gaps in the radiocarbon record between the Late Archaic and Refuge periods, the Deptford and Wilmington periods, and the Wilmington and St. Catherines periods. The model also suggests that the Savannah period wholly subsumes the St. Catherines period. Although biases exist based on the nature of the radiocarbon database utilized, the model demonstrates the utility of reinvestigating regional chronological sequences as well as the use of legacy radiocarbon data.     

Long-term developments in complex hunter-gatherer societies: Recent perspectives from the pacific coast of North America

The Pacific coast of North America is ideally suited to the study of long-term developments in complex hunter-gatherer societies. This paper synthesizes current research in California and the Northwest Coast on three related research problems. The first concerns the timing, spatial distribution, and economies of the earliest coastal peoples in the region. The second problem involves the growth and florescence of complex Pacific hunter-gatherer societies. What constitutes archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherer complexity, when and where it occurs, and the interpretations proposed to account for it are reviewed. The final problem addresses how complex hunter-gatherer peoples responded to European exploration and colonization, and how these early encounters affected the Pacific coast societies recorded in early ethnohistoric accounts and later studied by ethnographers.     

An archaeological test of the “Exchange Expansion Model” of contact era change on the Northwest Coast

Recent anthropological studies show that traditional views of indigenous communities in the wake of European colonialism are constrained by Eurocentric biases. These biases can be overcome, in part, by greater reliance on archaeological data as an independent line of evidence and increased attention to indigenous internal sociocultural processes. This study uses these strategies to examine colonial era shifts in indigenous exchange systems on the Northwest Coast of North America. Obsidian artifact data from late precontact and early postcontact deposits are used to test what I call the “Exchange Expansion Model” (EEM) of colonial period shifts in Northwest Coast exchange systems. According to the EEM, both the volume and geographic scope of supralocal exchange among indigenous communities increased as a result of European influences. This study tests the model using obsidian artifact data from three Lower Columbia River sites – Cathlapotle (45CL1), Clahclellah (45SA11), and Meier (35C05). The results support the hypothesized increase in volume, but not the hypothesized increase in geographic scope, of indigenous supralocal exchange. To explain the departure from expectations, I propose a revised version of the EEM which considers more fully how Native demography and internal sociocultural dynamics developed in the context of introduced diseases, horses, and the fur trade. I suggest these variables facilitated increases in the flow of prestige goods, but declines in the flow of less valued goods such as obsidian, from interior sources to the Lower Columbia River. Exchange alliances between Lower Columbia Chinookans and nearby Willamette Valley inhabitants were more resistant to disruption, so obsidian importation from the Willamette Valley to the Lower Columbia stabilized, and perhaps intensified, during the postcontact era. These findings illustrate the power of archaeology for empirically testing ethnohistorical models of colonialism and for illuminating the significance of indigenous internal sociocultural processes in colonial entanglements.     

‘Mightier Than Marx’: Hassoldt Davis and American Cold War Politics in Postwar Ivory Coast

ABSTRACT

Using the travels of Hassoldt Davis in Ivory Coast to explore the global Cold War in French West Africa in the 1950s, this article argues that the main line of confrontation in the postwar era did not always pit Americans against Russians. In many instances, the struggle for the mind and soul of Africans was between the Americans and the French. The study highlights the role of everyday technology in the expansion of the American informal empire. By focusing on Davis and the significance of low-tech artifacts, the article suggests that in our scrutiny of Cold War science/technology, we need to supplement the study of the various production regimes of consumer goods with a comparable research on consumption and how they mediated the daily battles of the era. Such approach not only underscores the historical reality of the ‘social life of things’, but also gives agency to non-state actors as both users of Cold War technoscience and as participants in the politics that informed its mobilization on the world stage. Besides bringing Francophone Africa in the historiography of US–Africa relations, the article demonstrates a convergence of vision among American consular agents, US transnational corporations and an idiosyncratic travel writer.