Late Holocene Historical Ecology: The Timing of Vertebrate Extirpation on Crooked Island,Commonwealth of The Bahamas

We report eight new accelerator-mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates performed directly on individual bones of extirpated species from Crooked Island, The Bahamas. Three dates from the hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami), recovered from a culturally derived bone assemblage in McKay's Bluff Cave (site CR-5), all broadly overlap from AD 1450 to 1620, which encompasses the time of first European contact with the Lucayan on Crooked Island (AD 1492). Marine fish and hutia dominate the bone assemblage at McKay's Bluff Cave, shedding light on vertebrate consumption by the Lucayans just before their demise. A fourth AMS ¹⁴C date on a hutia bone, from a non-cultural surface context in Crossbed Cave (site CR-25), is similar (AD 1465 to 1645) to those from McKay's Bluff Cave. From Pittstown Landing (site CR-14), an open coastal archaeological site, a femur of the Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) yielded an AMS ¹⁴C date of AD ～1050–1250, which is early in the Lucayan cultural sequence. From a humerus in a non-cultural surface context in 1702 Cave (site CR-26), we document survival of the Cuban crocodile on Crooked Island until AD ～1300–1400, which is several hundred years later than the well-documented extinction of Cuban crocodiles on Abaco in the northern Bahamas. We lack a clear explanation of why Cuban crocodiles likely survived longer on Crooked Island than on a larger Bahamian island such as Abaco. One AMS ¹⁴C date on Crooked Island's extinct, undescribed species of tortoise (Chelonoidis sp.) from 1702 Cave is BC 790 to 540 (2740 to 2490 cal BP), which is ～1500–1700 years prior to human arrival. A second AMS ¹⁴C date, on a fibula of this tortoise from McKay's Bluff Cave, is AD 1025 to 1165, thereby demonstrating survival of this extinct species into the period of human occupation.     

Spaces of the street: Socio-spatial mobility and exclusion of youth in Recife

The ‘street’ and ‘youth’ have long been issues of social concern and the subject of research both in Brazil and elsewhere. The perception and experiences of youth in relation to the street, however, and the corresponding gender and class relations which permeate these, remain an under-researched topic. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in low- and middle-income neighbourhoods in Recife, this paper shows how the street consists of different spaces and how the youth experience corresponding layers of socio-spatial exclusions and inclusions which vary over time.     

Surviving through movement: the mobility of urban youth in Ghana

In Africa, young people are engaging with a globalised world of flows and movements but are coming of age in environments characterised by uncertainty, economic hardship and unemployment. Drawing upon research conducted in Madina, a suburb of Accra, a social navigation perspective is adopted to explore young people's everyday mobility and their aspirations for future mobility. By drawing attention to the meanings young people ascribe to movement, and by analysing their movements as tactics of social navigation, the importance of spatial mobility to young people's everyday well-being and their processes of social becoming are illustrated. Young people find that their mobility is bounded by a range of factors including labour market characteristics, gender and generational relations, and their spatial location on the outskirts of the city and the margins of the world. However, neither their daily mobility nor their spatial imagination is restricted to Madina; real or imagined travel takes them to other parts of the city, into rural areas and across the nation's borders. Through illustrating how significant mobility can be for everyday survival, this paper contributes to ‘the mobility turn’ in the social sciences which has overlooked the importance of mobility for livelihoods in the global South.     

Folklore from Ireland

THE NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA By A. W. HOWITT, D.Sc Macmillan &; Co. 1904. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

WEST AFRICAN BELIEFS. Reviewed by A. Lang.

ZWEI JAHRE UNTER DEN KANNIBALEN DER SALOMO-INSELN : Reiseerlebnisse und Schilderunge von Land und Leuten. By CARL RIBBE. 352 pp. 86 figures in the text. 14 plates. 10 diagrams and 3 maps. Dresden-Blasewitz, Elbgau-Buchdruckerei, H. Beyer, 1903. Reviewed by A. C. Haddon.

TRADITIONS OF THE SKIDI PAWNEE. BY GEORGE A. DORSEY (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, vol. viii.). Boston, 1904, pp. xxvi, 366, with 15 Plates. Reviewed by N. W. Thomas.

A PHONETICAL STUDY OF THE ESKIMO LANGUAGE, BASED ON OBSERVATIONS MADE ON A JOURNEY IN NORTH GREENLAND, 1900–1901. By WILLIAM THALBITZER. Reprint from Meddelelser om Gronland, vol. xxxi. Copenhagen, 1904. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

SOCIOLOGICAL PAPERS: 1904. With an INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS by JAMES BRYCE. Published for the Sociological Society. Macmillan. 1905. Reviewed by Charlotte S. Burne.

STUDIES IN ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. By H. M. CHADWICK. Cambridge University Press. Reviewed by F. M. Stenton.

JOURNAL OF THE FOLK-SONG SOCIETY, Vol. I., Pt. 5. Spottiswoode &; Co., 1904. Reviewed by L. M. Eyre.