‘Handle with care’: literature,archaeology, slavery

This article examines the relationship between literary and bioarchaeological approaches to slavery, and investigates how the methods and priorities of each discipline might inform each other in understanding what it was like to be enslaved. Both bioarchaeologists and creative writers have attempted to access the inner lives of enslaved people, yet there has been little interaction between them. This paper offers an account of a research project which brought together a literary scholar, two archaeological scientists and seven creative writers to explore how writing might not only communicate a history understood through archaeological evidence, but could itself inform approaches to that evidence. We discuss two key themes which emerged from the project: Conversation and Caring. These themes were crucial to the interdisciplinary process, as it was only through attention to our relationships with each other that we could begin to reassess the nature of material in each of our disciplines.     

Cultural rights and their contribution to sustainable development: implications for cultural policy

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the meaning and implications of cultural rights for cultural policies concerned with sustainable development. Although references to both cultural rights and sustainable development have become widespread within cultural policy documents in recent decades, the actual conceptual and operational implications often remain vague, as an ambitious discourse that may conceal a poverty of resources and capacities. As a result, the ideal horizon suggested by cultural rights and sustainable development may not always be achieved in practice, nor are the mechanisms to achieve it always well known. In this respect, the article aims to dissect the actual requirements posed by cultural rights and sustainable development, including their different notions and areas of synergy and intersections, in order to shed light on relevant cultural policy approaches. To this end, a range of examples taken from a variety of contexts will also be examined as areas of expressed needs or areas of possible solutions.     

Variability in the lithic and faunal record through 10 reoccupations of a XIX century Yamana Hut

The excavation of Tunel VII, a Yamana site dating to the indigenous/European contact period was part of a long term research project based on the north coast of the Beagle channel (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina). The aim was to evaluate the theory and methodologies and devise an archaeological method that would enable a complete picture of subsistence strategies to be constructed. At Tunel VII (a site with shell middens), we were able to analyse these strategies through 10 successive occupation events on a single location. Archaeozoological analysis of the faunal remains and use-wear analysis of lithic material were used to examine the management of resources. Production and consumption are two very useful concepts, and together they have been used to create a methodology, which, together with spatial analysis using significant variables, has enabled identification of recurrent or significant tendencies in relation to alteration or continuity in subsistence strategies. In the case of Tunel VII, we know that the people who continually occupied the hut were all from the same group.     

Multiple osteochondromas in the archaeological record: a global review

Multiple osteochondromas is an inherited autosomal dominant condition of enchondral bone growth. The paper undertakes the first synthesis study of the 16 known cases of the condition that have been identified in the international palaeopathological record. It also includes information derived from two newly discovered cases of the disease in two adult male individuals recovered from the Medieval cemetery at Ballyhanna, Co. Donegal, Ireland. The formation of multiple osteochondromas is the best known characteristic of the disease but it also involves the development of a suite of orthopaedic deformities. These deformities, which include disproportionate short stature, inequality of bone length, forearm deformities, tibiofibular diastasis, coxa valga of the hip and valgus deformity of the knee and ankle, are discussed in relation to the archaeological cases. Numerous synonyms for the disease have been used within the various publications produced by palaeopathologists, and this can generate confusion among readers. As such, the paper recommends that in future palaeopathologists should follow the guidance of the World Health Organization and use the term multiple osteochondromas when discussing the disease.     

Micromorphological perspectives on the stratigraphical excavation of shell middens: a first approximation from the ethnohistorical site Tunel VII,Tierra del Fuego (Argentina)

Due to their problematic stratigraphy, shell middens have traditionally been excavated by artificial stratigraphical cuts. This approach has often led to the obliteration of the original depositional sequence, removing important information regarding depositional and post-depositional processes, and human frequentation. Since the 1970s, an Argentinian team has been excavating archaeological shell middens in the Beagle Channel with a detailed stratigraphical approach, based on the excavation of actual depositional units (peeling), rather than artificial cuts. In the 1980s, Spanish archaeologists joined the Argentinean team and launched a series of new projects involving the excavation of ethnohistorical Yamana fisher-hunter-gatherer sites. The first excavated midden site was Tunel VII, from which two monolith columns of about 50 cm each (C11 and C12) that spanned the whole stratigraphy were extracted. The two columns were consolidated with resin, and two series of thin sections produced to corroborate stratigraphical observations made in the field, and to verify hypotheses related to the formation of archaeological shell midden sites. We present here the first results obtained from the microscopical observation of seven thin sections from column 11 (West column), extracted from a portion of the profile originally described as corresponding to the hut entrance and associated floor. The observation of microscopical features invisible in the field has provided supplemental information about the depositional and post-depositional processes affecting shell midden sites. We have also preliminarily defined a number of micromorphological characteristics identifying human activities such as discrete shell deposition events, phases of preparation of the hut floor, and compression by repeated trampling. Finally, we have explored the possibility of establishing some guidelines to characterise the length and character of frequentation phases of the site previous to its final abandonment at the beginning of the 20th century.     

Evolving ecosystems: ecological data from an Iron Age small mammal accumulation at Alorda Park (Catalonia,Spain)

Small mammals are considered to be good indicators of ancient environments. One particular layer in a fortification tower of a Mediterranean Iberian village, Alorda Park (4th century BC), provided a large amount of well-preserved small mammal bones (about 19,200 remains) probably accumulated by barn owls (Tyto alba). Such an accumulation is rarely available from the Iron Age. It provides not only palaeoenvironmental data, but also further information about other studies such as morphometrics, ancient DNA and zoogeography. This article focuses on the ecological data, and attempts to develop an accurate taphonomic study to assess the reliability and statistical significance of this archaeological sample.     

The Power of International Positioning: The National Woman's Party,International Law and Diplomacy, 1928–34

Between 1928 and 1934, Doris Stevens and Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party (NWP) embarked on a strategy to use international law to gain domestic rights for women in the United States. They sought to pass the equivalent of the 1923 Equal Rights Amendment by treaty at international conferences in Europe and the Americas. The pre‐eminence of the United States in the Americas granted them diplomatic access through the Inter‐American Commission of Women (IACW) that, paradoxically, strengthened the NWP's position when the US administration opposed its proposed reforms. When the US signed the Nationality Rights Treaty in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1934, the NWP won a significant nationality reform, namely the right of US women to transmit citizenship to children born abroad. In exchange for its support, the Roosevelt administration required them to shelve their proposed Equal Rights Treaty. The article also demonstrates a nascent presence of American women in unofficial diplomatic circles. In this, as in other stories, women's history has taught us to search for the influence of women that institutional histories miss.     

Experimental micromorphology in Tierra del Fuego (Argentina): building a reference collection for the study of shell middens in cold climates

Commonly used in archaeological contexts, micromorphology did not see a parallel advance in the field of experimental archaeology. Drawing from early work conducted in the 1990’s on ethnohistoric sites in the Beagle Channel, we analyze a set of 25 thin sections taken from control features and experimental tests. The control features include animal pathways and environmental contexts (beach samples, forest litter, soils from the proximities of archaeological sites), while the experimental samples comprise anthropic structures, such as hearths, and valves of Mytilus edulis (the most important component of shell middens in the region) heated from 200 °C to 800 °C. Their micromorphological study constitutes a modern analogue to assist archaeologists studying site formation and ethnographical settings in cold climates, with particular emphasis on shell midden contexts.     

Railways as a Factor of Change in the Distribution of Population in Spain, 1900–1970

Abstract

The central focus of this work is to test a new methodology to measure the impact of the railway on the distribution of population, in this case in Spain. To achieve this, it was necessary to previously integrate data relating to population and railway lines into a geographical information system. The result was a spatial database that includes population data from homogeneous census series obtained for the municipal scale and the evolution of the railway network in service at corresponding points in time. This allowed the authors to apply spatial-temporal analysis. By so doing, this work constitutes an analysis of a new methodology, as they used exploratory spatial data analysis and geographically weighted regression to detect spatial patterns and estimate the influence of the railway and distance from the coast on population change. The results obtained show that the influence of the railway was very pronounced in some areas, while in others it was just one of the factors that could explain major changes in population distribution.