Two Indigenous Evangelists: Moses Tjalkabota and Arthur Wellington Clah

Arthur Wellington Clah was a Tsimshian man on the Pacific north-west coast of Canada, who encountered the missionary, William Duncan, as a young adult at the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Simpson in the 1850s. Moses Tjalkabota was an Arrernte man in central Australia. He was a young boy when he first came into contact with Lutheran missionaries at Hermannsburg mission in the 1880s, and was baptized in 1890. Both these men became Christian evangelists, both preached to their own people, and further afield among neighbouring groups. But here the similarities between them seem to stop. Clah was never part of a mission settlement, maintaining his independence from any established church; while Moses, who became blind as a young man, spent most of his life at Hermannsburg.
  This article examines these two evangelists' understandings of Christianity and how they communicated these understandings to their own and neighbouring peoples. Clah encouraged good behaviour, which conformed with his understanding of Christian precepts; Moses tried to communicate a more abstract form of belief through which happiness and eternal life could be attained.     

Investigating the likelihood of a reservoir offset in the radiocarbon record for ancient Egypt

Some radiocarbon dates for ancient Egypt have been significantly offset from the established historical chronology (see Bonani et al., 2001). In this paper, short-lived plant species collected in Egypt between 1700 and 1900 AD were used to investigate the possibility that the radiocarbon record had been influenced by reservoir effects. AMS radiocarbon measurements were made on 66 known-age samples, resulting in an average offset from expected values of 19 years. The implications of this minor discrepancy on the likelihood of a reservoir process are discussed, and the agreement of the data with recent models of radiocarbon seasonality is also considered.     

Birdmen, cemís and duhos: material studies and AMS C dating of Pre-Hispanic Caribbean wood sculptures in the British Museum

This paper presents 19 AMS radiocarbon dates from nine pre-Hispanic Caribbean (Taíno/Lucayan) wooden sculptures in the British Museum collections, provenanced to Jamaica, Hispaniola and the Bahamas. Together with strontium isotope results and wood and resin identifications, these data build a material and chronological context for some of the most recognised examples of Taíno art – from duhos (ceremonial seats) and cemís (free standing depictions of deities, ancestors and spirits) to canopied stands used to hold hallucinogenic drugs during the cohoba ceremony. Each sculpture widens our understanding of Caribbean carving traditions, stylistic variation, chronologies and material resource utilisation. A group of three sculptures recovered from Carpenters Mountains, Jamaica, carved by AD 1300 and brought together as a ceremonial ‘set’, each appear to have had their inlays renewed over a century later, suggesting long-term use. Three key examples of the main Caribbean duho categories (high-back, low-back and extended), provide insights into the diversity of styles present in the region post-AD 1100. The British Museum's corpus enables an exploration of regional styles, and potentially the work of individual artists.     

Mission Encounters in the Colonial World: British Columbia and South-West Australia

This paper considers various aspects of the interactions of missions and indigenous peoples in regions of Canada and Australia. An analysis of first encounters indicates that the introduction of Christianity was dependent on both evangelist and client population agreeing to a modus operandi for the mission. The structure and operation of the mission were determined by the pre-existing indigenous society and the financial and personnel resources of the mission organizations. Attitudes towards, and acceptance of, Christianity were not static, they depended on changing material and political circumstances both within and outside indigenous communities. This comparative analysis indicates that religious change was not only negotiated between missionary and "convert," but among indigenous peoples themselves. The decision to profess Christianity was not a one-off decision made by individuals or communities. Rather it was a long process of change which was contingent on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of the mission world and countervailingpressures from within indigenous and colonial societies.     

Pre-screening techniques for identification of samples suitable for radiocarbon dating of poorly preserved bones

Under certain environmental conditions, post-depositional diagenetic loss of bone collagen can severely reduce the number of bones from a particular archaeological site that are suitable for stable isotopic analysis or radiocarbon dating. This study examined nearly 300 bones from 12 archaeological sites across southern England known to yield poor or variable preservation to try to identify one, or more, pre-screening technique(s) that would indicate suitable collagen preservation for radiocarbon dating. The most reliable method was shown to be the percent nitrogen (%N) of whole bone powder, which has an 84% chance of successfully predicting whether or not a bone will yield sufficient (i.e. >1% weight) collagen for dating.     

LA-ICP-MS analysis of Late Bronze Age blue glass beads from Gurob,Egypt

Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) analysis was undertaken on 37 blue glass beads excavated from a tomb in the southern Faiyum region of northern Egypt. The tomb was undisturbed, contained the remains of seven females and two children, and dated between the reigns of Amenhotep I (1525–1504 bce ) and Tuthmosis III (1479–1425 bce ). The glass beads were coloured by copper and the trace element concentrations were compositionally consistent with glasses from Mesopotamia rather than from Egypt. Therefore, these glass beads represent a rare example of Mesopotamian glass to be discovered in Egypt, in addition to being some of the earliest glass found. Gurob is known to have been the site of a ‘harem palace' established in the reign of Tuthmosis III, the implication being that these beads represent luxury items transported to Egypt by high-ranking foreign women, possibly in connection with the harem palace.     

Art and the meaning of things

Bronner, Simon J. Grasping Things: Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America. Louisville: The University of Kentucky Press, 1986. xv + 247 pp. including photographs, chapter references, and index. $24.00 cloth.

Ewers, John C. Plains Indian Sculpture: A Traditional Art from America's Heartland. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986. 239 pp. including photographs, appendix, and bibliography. $39.95, cloth.

Shadbolt, Doris. Bill Reid. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986.192 pp. including photographs, select bibliography, and chronological list of illustrations. $39.95 cloth.