Beyond the Visual: Considering the Archaeology of Colonial Sounds

Many historians and archaeologists have focused on trade goods in the French colonies, yet few have examined how these items were animated in colonial contexts. Here, the issue of colonial performance as it related to trade goods (such as hawk bells, brass tinklers, glass beads) is examined and it is argued that the power of these objects was more than purely visual. Case studies from French Louisiana are presented to discuss the intersection of bodies and objects, of the exotic and the erotic towards understanding the sounds that emanated from colonial communities and households.     

DEFENSE SPENDING AND STATE ECONOMIC GROWTH*

Little evidence is currently available on the regional growth effects of federal defense spending. In this study, econometric models for state personal income and manufacturing employment between 1976 and 1985 are specified and estimated. Pooled cross-sectional time-series data are used, and the estimation procedure corrects for serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and contemporaneous cross-sectional correlation. The results indicate that aggregate defense spending has a positive effect on both growth measures. However, when defense expenditures are disaggregated, only investment-type outlays appear to consistently affect state economic growth.     

Presentation is Everything: Foodways, Tablewares, and Colonial Identity at Presidio Los Adaes

Ceramics and zooarchaeological remains are commonly used as indicators of status and wealth at colonial-period sites, yet colonial expectations with regard to cuisine were often difficult to meet within the rigors of frontier life. In this paper, we juxtapose faunal and ceramic assemblages from Presidio Los Adaes and, informed by ethnohistorical and visual data, investigate how social expectations with regard to foodways were negotiated on the Spanish colonial frontier. While ceramic evidence suggests that tableware varied among households, the zooarchaeological assemblage indicates that Los Adaes residents shared the same basic diet.     

The Earth of the Modern

One of the central questions in comparative studies of colonialism is what makes more recent variants of imperial extension so culturally distinctive, aside from the more obvious political-economic dimensions? This set of papers focuses on how European and Euro-American promulgated variants of colonialism can be viewed as embodying central tenets of modernism, such as progressivism, technocentrism, and hybridity. Moreover, the authors demonstrate how colonial practices in the era of the modern were not merely the result of policies emanating from imperial capitals, but were an outgrowth of conflict, mediation, and accommodation between colonizer and colonized. Thus, archaeological research is important for stressing that the past five centuries have seen a time of contested modernities, rather than the growth of ‘a’ modernist sensibility.     

Keeping Up Appearances: Dress, Architecture, Furniture, and Status at French Azilum

Situated in northern Pennsylvania, French Azilum was a late eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century community of elite French refugees escaping the French Revolution. Inhabitants of the isolated community expressed the need to reconstitute themselves as the privileged class of the ancien régime by attempting to dress, build their homes, and furnish them in a certain fashion to distinguish themselves as elites and to reestablish the social hierarchy of the ancien régime in a frontier outpost. In this paper, we explore how the settlers at French Azilum used architecture, furnishings, and dress in an attempt to keep up appearances.     

Sustained Organizational Influence: American Legislative Exchange Council and the Diffusion of Anti‐Sanctuary Policy

Building upon existing literature, we offer a particular model of network policy diffusion—which we call sustained organizational influence. Sustained organizational influence necessitates an institutional focus across a broad range of issues and across a long period of time. Sustaining organizations are well‐financed, and exert their influence on legislators through benefits, shared ideological interests, and time‐saving opportunities. Sustaining organizations' centralized nature makes legislators' jobs easier by providing legislators with ready‐made model legislation. We argue that sustaining organizations uniquely contribute to policy diffusion in the U.S. states. We evaluate this model with a case study of state‐level immigration sanctuary policy making and the role that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) played in disseminating model legislation. Through quantitative text analysis and several negative binomial state‐level regression models, we demonstrate that ALEC has exerted an overwhelming influence on the introduction of anti‐sanctuary legislative proposals in the U.S. states over the past 7 years consistent with our particular model of network policy diffusion. Implications are discussed.