Approaching the archaeology of value: a view from the modern world

SUMMARY: The abundance of goods in the modern world has a tendency to prejudice interpretation of their value, but the way people value their goods is complex, relative and changeable — scarcity is just one factor. There is a long history of value theorization across the social sciences, but archaeological considerations of value remain uncommon and focused on prestige goods. In this paper, I review alternative conceptions of value through the lens of the modern world, with an example of Spode creamware used by a governor in the early decades of colonial Sydney. I argue that the process of devaluation, through discard and waste, offers a unique archaeological understanding of the shifting values people of the modern world placed on commodities.     

The early Ottomanization of urban Cyprus

SUMMARY: In 1571, the Ottomans completed the conquest of Cyprus. In order to consolidate their new territory, the Ottomans introduced a policy of imperial control that was centred on local accommodation and negotiation to facilitate stable governance. This study examines the process of the conquest and the extent to which the conquest changed the character of the urban landscapes of Cyprus. Architecture and urban reshaping represented a central facet of this process of colonial change and introduced a new visual language of control and Islamic presence. Nicosia was established as an administrative provincial capital and underwent redevelopment that followed an urbanscape replicating core features of an Ottoman town. This pattern of redevelopment was replicated elsewhere across the island as its economic infrastructure was strengthened. However, this period remains contested within the context of contemporary conflict on the divided island.     

Struggling with child domestic work: what can a postcolonial perspective offer?

Majority World working children's voices have attained some prominence in debates over their well-being. Many have defended their right to work, challenging Minority World understandings of children's ‘best’ interests. Yet employers' voices remain sidelined, raising questions over the extent to which the discursive and material spaces of children's work have been decolonised. A postcolonial perspective on children's work challenges suggestions that Majority World adults (and societies) need western guidance on how children ought to be raised. It also creates opportunities to look beyond western discourses of economic exploitation, to the potential for more-than-economic relationships between working children and their employers.     

THE LOGIC OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF RURAL POLITICS: POLITICAL DISCOURSES ON RURALITY IN NORWAY

Two competing discourses emerge from a careful reading of parliamentary debates in Norway on rural development. One regards rural values as intrinsic, while the other regards the rural as an actor in a play about economic growth. The 'growth' discourse has economic growth as its nodal point and fo-cuses on the freedom of an individual to establish a business wherever he or she wishes, and to migrate to any preferred destination. The 'intrinsic value' discourse places the value of rural settlements and cultures as its nodal point and focuses on allegedly forced migration, a nature-based economy, and local freedom of action. During the neoliberal period, starting about 1980 the strength of the intrinsic value discourse has been increasingly displaced by the growth discourse. The latter seems to match general social changes such as neoliberalism and globalization more than the former. However, analysing the fight between these two discourses is not exhaustive. A broader analytic perspective is needed if we want to understand the logic of how the meaning of rurality comes about. The meaning of rurality in Norwegian politics is made through the way the competing discourses link up to 'nondiscursive' topics that originate and evolve outside the discourses on Norwegian rural politics. We claim that topics which include economic safety and national identity/nation-state are more or less fundamental to understanding the logic of the production of the concrete discourses of rurality in Norwegian politics. We provide evidence that rural change is contingent not only on the meaning-making process in parliamentary debates, but on the way truth claims made by politicians are linked to general national and global issues.     

Death in the sun: the bioarchaeology of an early post-medieval hospital in Gibraltar

SUMMARY: In 2014, during construction work at the ex-Civil Hospital in Gibraltar, excavations led by the Gibraltar Museum revealed a major, previously unknown burial ground containing more than 200 skeletons. We present the historical, archaeological and radiometric dating evidence from the site alongside the results of initial osteological analyses. The data indicate that the burials pertain to an earlier 16th-century Spanish hospice, and therefore stand to offer new insights into the functioning of this early modern hospital and the health and movements of people at a time of incipient globalization.     

再说贵州麻江高枧夏家入黔史及夏同龢状元

高枧夏家入黔距今有620年;夏同钚的祖父是五岁丧父由母教养的独儿;夏同样出生官宦之家,随父异地为官,生在云南、长在四川,由广东起步,前往北京参加顺天府乡试中举。1898年中状元后,即授修撰。1899年与丘逢甲成立纪念文天祥的寿忠社。1904年前往日本法政大学入法政速成科学习法政,同学有胡汉民、汪精卫、沈钧儒等。传世的著作主要是编辑《行政法》。回国后1906年出任广东法政学堂监督（校长）,学生有陈炯明、邹鲁等,教员有松山丰造、朱执信、陈融等。民国后为众议院议员,宪法起草委员会委员。     

Social meaning in the English lesser gentry house: a West Yorkshire study

This paper analyses the archaeological and documentary evidence from three West Yorkshire houses—Calverley Old Hall, Shibden Hall and Oakwell Hall—to re-evaluate narratives of gentry emulation in 16th- and 17th-century English housebuilding. Gentry houses have long been absorbed into the literature of elite country houses, with homes of the lesser gentry serving primarily as emulative examples of national architectural and social trends. This paper suggests a more nuanced interpretation of these homes as sites of multi-faceted household relationships, where the inhabitants consciously incorporated and resisted elite trends and used space to establish and maintain control.