Recollecting bones: the remains of German-Australian colonial entanglements

This article critically engages with the different politics of memory involved in debates over the restitution of Indigenous Australian ancestral remains stolen by colonial actors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and brought to Berlin in the name of science. The debates crystallise how deeply divided German scientific discourses still are over the question of whether the historical and moral obligations of colonial injustice should be accepted or whether researchers should continue to profess scientific ‘disinterest’. The debates also reveal an almost unanimous disavowal of Indigenous Australian knowledges and mnemonic conceptions across all camps. The bitter ironies of this disavowal become evident when Indigenous Australian quests for the remains of their ancestral dead lost in the limbo of German scientific collections are juxtaposed with white Australian (fictional) quests for the remains of Ludwig Leichhardt, lost in the Australian interior.     

The Making of Tupaia’s Map: A Story of the Extent and Mastery of Polynesian Navigation,Competing Systems of Wayfinding on James Cook’s Endeavour,and the Invention of an Ingenious Cartographic System

Tupaia’s Map is one of the most famous and enigmatic artefacts to emerge from the early encounters between Europeans and Pacific Islanders. It was drawn by Tupaia, an arioi priest, chiefly advisor and master navigator from Ra‘iātea in the Leeward Society Islands in collaboration with various members of the crew of James Cook’s Endeavour, in two distinct moments of mapmaking and three draft stages between August 1769 and February 1770. To this day, the identity of many islands on the chart, and the logic of their arrangement have posed a riddle to researchers. Drawing in part on archival material hitherto overlooked, in this long essay we propose a new understanding of the chart’s cartographic logic, offer a detailed reconstruction of its genesis, and thus for the first time present a comprehensive reading of Tupaia’s Map. The chart not only underscores the extent and mastery of Polynesian navigation, it is also a remarkable feat of translation between two very different wayfinding systems and their respective representational models.     

Words and Deeds, Stasis and Change: New Directions in Florentine Devotion Around 1500

Members of Renaissance Italian confraternities spoke an official language that emphasized stability and permanence rather than change, a fact which can obscure the precise relationship between the culture of organized lay devotion and events in society as a whole. Examining four miraculous cults that achieved prominence in Florence around 1500, this essay argues that, far from their being static or conservative organizations, confraternities exemplify major changes transforming Florentine society at this time. The representations of class, wealth, gender, and age that emerge from the analysis help to problematize and complicate developments that otherwise appear as overly simplified, teleological trends.     

Review Article: Brigands,Emperors, and Anarchy

PHILIP DE SOUZA. Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 276. $59.95 (US); KURT RAAFLAUB and NATHAN ROSENSTEIN, eds. War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica. Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, 1999; dist. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press. Pp. viii, 484. $50.00 (US); B. D. HOYOS. Unplanned Wars: The Origins of the First and Second Punic Wars. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. xviii, 326. $80.00 (US). Reviewed by Arthur M. Eckstein     

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated

On Independence Day 2008, the Associated Press distributed astory about a Texas man released from prison after serving fifteenyears. He was the nineteenth Dallas County man since 2001 shownto be innocent by DNA evidence ("DNA Clears Texan," Iowa CityPress-Citizen, July 4, 2008: 7A). This was the highest numberof any county in the nation. Wrongful conviction is, however,not limited to Dallas County, TX, nor is exoneration alwaysthe result of DNA tests. Just five days earlier, The Des MoinesRegister had published a front-page story about a man spendinghis twelfth year in an Iowa prison. He had been convicted inDes Moines's Polk County of a 1996 murder, but the many redflags in the case finally warranted a hearing and a possiblereversal of     

Persia and the Greeks: Failure of an Empire

GEORGE CAWKWELL. The Greek Wars: The Failure of Persia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 316. $195.00 (CDN). Reviewed by Arthur M. Eckstein