Australindia: the geography of imperial desire

A tradition of imperial geographical fantasy fuses India and Australia. This paper discusses the strategic role these utopian proposals played in imperial erotics, in aiding the foundational ambition of empire, which is to connect. The proponents of these geographical hybrids (T.J. Maslen, W. Pickering and Thomas Livingston Mitchell) occupied very different positions in Greater Britain's colonial administration and the minority knowledges represented by their speculative overlays of India onto Australia circulated in very different cultural circles. The insider/outsider status of these ex-army, turned surveyors suggests a more complex ecology of alternative discourses circulating in the imperial imaginary: as proposals for future places, the schemes discussed in this article were fictions that aestheticized invasion, making it a metaphor for ultimate unity.     

The exploitation of marine resources at Saruq al‐Hadid: Insights into the movement of people and resources in Bronze and Iron Age south‐eastern Arabia

Marine resources were an integral and consistent component of subsistence strategies employed in south‐eastern Arabia throughout late prehistory. Of particular interest is the movement of these resources from the coast to interior sites and the implications of this movement for transhumance and trade in the region during this period. Marine species were frequently identified in the faunal assemblage from the inland site of Saruq al‐Hadid, dating from the Bronze Age to Early Iron Age (c.2000–c.800 BCE). This included marine fish species, along with two cormorant species (Phalacrocorax sp.) and several fragments of dugong (Dugong dugon). Twenty‐seven families of marine shell were also identified in the remains recovered from the site. The presence of these remains at this inland site demonstrates that resources were frequently moved from the coast to the interior throughout Saruq al‐Hadid’s occupation, indicative of their enduring significance in subsistence strategies employed at the site. This paper presents the results of zooarchaeological analysis of these remains and discusses the significance of their presence at Saruq al‐Hadid, with reference to subsistence, craft production and intra‐regional exchange during the Bronze and Iron Ages.     

Predicting Regional Self‐Identification from Spatial Network Models

Social scientists characterize social life as a hierarchy of environments, from the microlevel of an individual's knowledge and perceptions to the macrolevel of large‐scale social networks. In accordance with this typology, individuals are typically thought to reside in micro‐ and macrolevel structures, composed of multifaceted relations (e.g., acquaintanceship, friendship, and kinship). This article analyzes the effects of social structure on micro outcomes through the case of regional identification. Self‐identification occurs in many different domains, one of which is regional; that is, the identification of oneself with a locationally associated group (e.g., a “New Yorker” or “Parisian”). Here, regional self‐identification is posited to result from an influence process based on the location of an individual's alters (e.g., friends, kin, or coworkers), such that one tends to identify with regions in which many of his or her alters reside. The structure of this article is laid out as follows: initially, we begin with a discussion of the relevant social science literature for both social networks and identification. This discussion is followed with one about competing mechanisms for regional identification that are motivated first from the social network literature, and second by the social psychological and cognitive literature of decision making and heuristics. Next, the article covers the data and methods employed to test the proposed mechanisms. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of its findings and further implications for the larger social science literature.     

Teaching Indigenous geography in a neo-colonial world

Australian universities are increasingly embedding Indigenous content and perspectives within curriculum to promote Indigenous cultural competency. We present teaching challenges in an Indigenous geography course designed to present an engaged, intercultural learning experience. We critically reflect on student evaluations, informal discussions and observations to complement scholarly debates. Course design and delivery was seen as stimulating and illuminating in terms of course content. While diversity of student cohorts, backgrounds and learning styles remain challenging, the romanticism of some students can override critical engagement with the geographical context of the course material and their positionality. There remains a tendency in both student constructions and the geographical literature to create an Indigenous/non-Indigenous binary that not only essentializes both, but can be culturally unsafe for Indigenous students. Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students may share a sense of pessimism in confronting apparently unstoppable development and environmental destruction. We argue for scholarship around the fundamentally intercultural nature of coexistence to contextualize the spatial diversity of Indigenous lives in landscapes, currently obscured by dominant constructions of Indigeneity. Critical reflection on settler educators’ and learners’ positionalities with respect to neocolonial structures will help to transcend both essentialism and pessimism.     

1500 Years of Pottery: Neutron Activation Analysis of Northern Chilean Domestic Ceramics from Caleta Vitor and Clay Samples from Nearby Valley,Coast and Highland Contexts

This paper presents the findings arising from neutron activation analysis (NAA) of northern Chilean domestic ceramic samples from Caleta Vitor (n = 38) and clay samples (n = 15) from nearby valley, coast and highland contexts. This study presents the first NAA data set of ceramics spanning a temporal period of 1500 years (c.2000 to c.476 bp ) from the Vitor Valley as well as the first attempt to use NAA to characterize potential clay sources in the region. On the basis of this study, we argue that the majority of domestic ceramics from Caleta Vitor share compositional similarities with clay samples collected from nearby valleys, allowing us to infer that the Caleta Vitor populations primarily procured their clay for domestic ceramics from local sources throughout a 1500‐year period. Thus, despite the fact that there were inter‐regional interactions during this period that included the influence of powerful Andean polities, it would appear that domestic ceramics continued to be produced locally, and by implication it can be argued that such interactions did not substantially affect this sphere of material culture production. Further, the apparent continuities in domestic ceramic production allow us to reflect on local decision‐making processes throughout the cultural phases considered in this research.     

Rehydroxylation of Fired‐Clay Ceramics: Factors Affecting Early‐Stage Mass Gain in Dating Experiments

To obtain accurate results in the RHX dating of ceramics, it is essential that the RHX measurements are continued until the rate of mass gain is constant with (time)^1/4. In this paper, we discuss how the initial stages of mass gain are affected by the specific surface area (SSA) of the ceramic material. The paper provides guidance on experimental protocols to avoid dating results being distorted by relatively early‐time mass gain data.