WEST AFRICAN METALS AND THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

Summary. Contact between the Mediterranean in Roman or earlier times and the Sahara and lands beyond has commonly been examined from the northern angle with rather negative results (as for instance in Mortimer Wheeler's Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers, 1954). Although West African archaeology is still at an infant stage, it is now becoming possible to examine the issue from a southern, inner African, angle. (The multi-volume Cambridge History of Africa, 1975-, and the less consistent UNESCO General History of Africa, 1981-, document some of the progress made in reconstructing the African side of the story.) And, while substantial trans-Saharan communications did not develop till late in the first millennium A. D. with camel-caravans, stimulated especially by the gold of Far-West Africa, evidence is emerging of earlier exploitation of other metals, perhaps connected with horse (and cart?) transport. At two localities on the southern Saharan edge there was copper mining and smelting around the mid-first millennium B.C., with likely trade of the product to the Mediterranean. The case for Nigerian tin at the same period—raised by Taylor in the previous volume of this Journal (1, 317–24)—is less clear, but would make sense in this context. That the same period saw the spread of iron technology in these sub-Saharan regions is doubtless more than coincidence.     

THERMOLUMINESCENCE DATING: RADIOACTIVITY IN QUARTZ

Alpha activities measured for four quartz extracts indicate that, in some samples, the alpha dose-rate to the quartz due to radioactivity within the quartz can be significant. Uranium mapping of the quartz by neutroninduced fission tracks shows that the radioactivity is not homogeneously distributed.     

CHARACTERIZATION OF NATURAL PRODUCTS ON NATIVE AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS FROM THE GREAT BASIN REGION,U.S.A.: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

Although documentary evidence provided by ethnographers makes reference to the source of adhesives, sealants, dyestuffs and medicines used by the communities of the Great Basin, much of it is sporadic and unspecified. However, observations of amorphous deposits surviving on stone tools, ceramics, basketry and wooden artefacts have prompted an investigation of their identity, procurement and use. The aim initially is to study samples from a number of archaeological and ethnographic contexts from the region. Comparative material includes higher plant and insect resins. The study provides a unique opportunity to document use patterns in plant and animal resources in the Great Basin region.     

Digital harm and addiction: An anthropological view

A broad trend of anti-tech rhetoric has raised fears about the dangers of digital overuse and reliance and suggests that technology is addictive, unnatural or harmful. Some people have limited their hours of ‘screen time’ or resorted to the practice of ‘digital detoxing’ – a catch-all term to describe temporarily ‘leaving’ the digital world. Using her ethnographic work in a North American digital detox retreat, the author considers an anthropological approach to digital harm and addiction that emphasizes their socially constructed nature. Following Horst and Miller (2012) and the view that digital harms are socially constructed, she argues that digital technology will be removed in different places for different reasons, and that geographically bound cultural values are vital to understanding how digital harms come to be imagined and counteracted. Whether or not digital use will ever be proven to be clinically harmful, digital harm is best viewed as a ‘social fact’.