Characterising the potential of sheep wool for ancient DNA analyses

The use of wool derived from sheep (Ovis aries) hair shafts is widespread in ancient and historic textiles. Given that hair can represent a valuable source of ancient DNA, wool may represent a valuable genetic archive for studies on the domestication of the sheep. However, both the quality and content of DNA in hair shafts are known to vary, and it is possible that common treatments of wool such as dyeing may negatively impact the DNA. Using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we demonstrate that in general, short fragments of both mitochondrial and single-copy nuclear DNA can be PCR-amplified from wool derived from a variety of breeds, regardless of the body location or natural pigmentation. Furthermore, although DNA can be PCR-amplified from wool dyed with one of four common plant dyes (tansy, woad, madder, weld), the use of mordants such as alum or iron leads to considerable DNA degradation. Lastly, we demonstrate that mtDNA at least can be PCR-amplified, cloned and sequenced from a range of archaeological and historic Danish, Flemmish and Greenlandic wool textile samples. In summary, our data suggest that wool offers a promising source for future ancient mitochondrial DNA studies.     

Precarious Conditions: A Note on Counter‐Insurgency in Africa after 1945

This paper looks at the politics of surfaces, and the practices of veiling (and unveiling) and of white men wearing blackface in counter‐insurgency efforts in post‐war Africa. The sten gun beneath the veil, the unveiled woman with a bomb in her handbag and the counter‐gangs masquerading as African guerillas all embody specific kinds of violence; they also embody a political imaginary in which racial and cultural lines are more fluid than previous studies of these periods suggest; indeed, they raise questions about what makes a race, a gender or a regiment: are racial and national categories learned, mimicked, or are they literally skin deep? My question, however, is not why do people dress up as guerillas or as Western women to wreak havoc on their enemies, but how historians of post‐war Africa might understand such actions. To this end I want to read accounts of counter‐insurgency, Fanon's famous essay, the memoirs of British soldiers in Kenya and Rhodesian soldiers in Rhodesia and some of the volumes of Rhodesian wartime fiction through the lens of transgender literature, looking at how various crossings, and the multiple markers thereof, shed light on broader issues of hierarchy, race and gender at the time of decolonisation.     

Telling More: Lies,Secrets, and History

This essay argues that secrets and lies are not forms of withholding information but forms by which information is valorized. Lies are constructed: what is to be lied about, what a lie is to consist of, how it is to be told, and whom it is to be told to, all reveal a social imaginary about who thinks what and what constitutes credibility. Secrets are negotiated: continual decisions about whom to tell, how much to tell, and whom not to tell describe social worlds, and the shape and weight of interactions therein. All of this makes lies and secrets extraordinarily rich historical sources. We might not see the truth distorted by a lie or the truth hidden by a secret, but we see the ideas andimaginings by which people disclose what should not be made public, and how they should carry out concealing one narrative with another. Such insights involve a step back from the project of social history, in which an inclusive social narrative is based on experience and individuals' ability to report it with some reliability, and suggests that historians need to look at social imaginings as ways to understand the ideas and concerns about which people lie and with which people construct new narratives that are not true. The study of secrets, however, links the study of social imaginings with the project of social history, as the valorization of information that results in the continual negotiation and renegotiation of secrets shows individuals and publics imagining the experiences labeled as secret because of the imagined power of a specific version of events.     

Everything you always wanted to know about agrarian reform but were afraid to ask!

Robert J. Alexander. Agrarian Reform in Latin America. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974. xiii +118 pp. Author's preface and index. $5.95.