Forging Manhood and Nationhood Together: American Sailors’ Accounts of their Exploits,Sufferings, and Resistance in the Antebellum United States

This essay will focus on sailor narratives, published between 1815 and 1860, to explore how the authors remembered their seafaring experiences during the first half of the nineteenth century. I am particularly interested in discussing how notions of national identity, patriotism, and manliness shaped these memoirists’ interpretation of their experiences during the War of 1812. I pay particular attention to how sailor authors dealt with the following topics: their impressment and incarceration as prisoners of war, their participation in naval battles, and their experiences with punishment, especially flogging, on the high seas. The essay views antebellum sailor narratives as part of a democratization of literature that popularized the stories of ordinary men and women in antebellum America (slaves, soldiers, artisans, and other working‐class people). It also explores how works of seafaring adventure by such popular writers as James Fenimore Cooper provided a market for memoirs by career sailors. The essay utilizes various kinds of sources to document the stories sailors told in their antebellum narratives. These include: pension, impressment, and prisoner‐of‐war records, ships’ muster books, and other institutional sources. It also builds on the historiography of antebellum seafaring life, especially works by Paul Gilje, Marcus Rediker, Margaret Creighton, and other scholars. The essay also utilizes works by both literary and historical scholars as well as cognitive psychologists to examine the legitimacy of using autobiographies as historical documents.     

Engagement and Management: Developing a Monitoring System for Open-air Rock Art in the UK and Ireland

ABSTRACT

Neolithic and Early Bronze Age rock carvings in the United Kingdom and Ireland represent an internationally unique rock art tradition as it is, to the best of our knowledge, the only wholly abstract global rock art tradition. This heritage resource is, however, under threat from an array of factors, such as increasing population densities and agricultural intensity. In this paper, we report on the Condition Assessment Risk Evaluation (CARE) project that had as one of its primary objectives the co-production of a user-friendly, non-invasive condition assessment risk evaluation Toolkit for gathering and organising information essential for the long-term conservation of open-air rock art. We describe the public involvement CARE process through co-experience participatory focus groups, which evaluated the Toolkit, concluding that we can have confidence in the results obtained from the public. Furthermore, the variables that form part of the Toolkit and related management recommendations are presented.     

Tourism and the management of cultural resources in the Pays Dogon,Mali

Abstract

The Pays Dogon, designated a joint Natural/Cultural World Heritage Site in 1989, is Mali's leading tourist attraction receiving 6,000 visitors per year with an annual growth of 10% which may increase when a new access road is constructed. Tourism is the major source of income for the Dogon who have lived in picturesque villages clinging to the sides of the 600m cliffs of the Bandiagara escarpment since the 15th century. The Dogon are best known to Europeans for their masked dances and powerful woodcarvings, much prized by collectors. Loss of cultural property by illicit trading combined with alteration of the traditional masked dances for visitor preference is contributing to cultural change within Dogon communities. The harmony and cohesion which enabled the Dogon to resist the colonial power is being threatened by a new set of historical constructs and priorities indicating that Dogon culture is more fragile when confronted with the 20th century.     

A golden calf in sacred space?: The future of St Katherine's monastery,Mount Sinai (Egypt)

Abstract

The spectacular fortified monastery of St Katherine, continuously inhabited since the 4th century and with a library second only in historical significance to that of the Vatican, forms the epicentre of a sacred landscape surrounding Mount Sinai, in the southern Sinai desert (Egypt). This site, with religious significance for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, is currently threatened by very rapid growth in visitation Jrom Egypt's new tourist resorts on the Red Sea coast, less than three hours drive away. Currently, 97,000 visitors per year arrive at St Katherine, 80% of whom are day‐trip visitors and many of whom stay less than half an hour. This represents a 300% increase in the last decade, projected to increase by a further 500% by 2017. Tourism pressure is having a serious effect on the sustainability of monastic life, despite efforts to limit visiting hours and access. This fieldwork‐based case study summarises the current impact of tourism in the Mount Sinai area suggesting that although high visitation levels have imperilled its spirit of place they have also, conversely, provided some measure of protection for both site and landscape in the current political climate.     

Gas chromatographic identification of a resinous deposit from a 6th century storage jar and its possible identification

A deposit representing the original contents of a Byzantine storage jar from the castellum of En Boqeq (Israel) was analysed using gas chromatography and identified as a highly oxidized pine resin. This oleoresin may have been intended for caulking, waterproofing, or for blending with fats and oils to produce an unguent, and the limitations of inference dictated by the use of this technique are discussed.