The US military base network and contemporary colonialism: Power projection, resistance and the quest for operational unilateralism

This article explores the contemporary global network of US military bases. This paper examines how the geography of this network is shaped not only by military objectives but also by resistance from allied governments and communities adjacent to bases. Using examples from Guam, Puerto Rico, Okinawa and other locales this paper examines how local resistances to US bases have caused the Department of Defense to increasingly rely on non-sovereign islands as sites for bases. These sites, military strategists believe, will enable the military to train without hindrance and to operate without the need for consultation with allies. These colonies, however, are also sites were military activities are actively resisted. The resulting base network is thus shaped not only by global military priorities, but also by an increasingly globalized network of local social movements resisting militarization.     

Living with the fence: militarization and military spaces on Guahan/Guam

The landscape of Guahan/Guam, an organized unincorporated territory of the USA and the largest and southernmost island of the Mariana Islands archipelago, is visibly marked by chain link fences that enclose land taken for use by the US military. This US military presence on Guam is evidence of a long military colonial history that has stressed, particularly under US rule, the importance of the island's strategic location. The ‘fence,’ a frequently used but rarely defined expression, refers to a multiplicity of lines, most of which recreate a dichotomous view of military/local relations, and help to make invisible the complex web of identities that go through, over, and beyond its real and imagined spaces. Working from an understanding that theory must be grounded in experience, this article draws on interviews to explore the multiple meanings of the fence. It focuses on the ways the colonized, militarized, and gendered spaces of the fence promote US values, interests, and security concerns but also mark points of resistance to militarization and colonization. Exploring the ways colonization and militarization are played out on the bodies of those who live and work on the island, the article concludes that tearing down the ‘fence’ must include both demilitarization and decolonization, but in ways that transcend, rather than reproduce its present gendered and dichotomous spaces.     

Palaeohabitat of first settlement sites 1500–1000 B.C. in Guam,Mariana islands,western Pacific

Based on computer-aided models and geoarchaeological excavations, palaeohabitat renderings can account for ancient site locations and contexts much different from today in terms of sea level, coastal dynamics, slope erosion, nearshore ecosystems, native forests, and other factors. A case study illustrates this research in Guam of the Mariana Islands of the western Pacific, with specific reference to the 1500–1000 B.C. time interval. This time interval includes the oldest known archaeological sites in the Mariana Islands, directly relevant for understanding the context of ancient Austronesian population dispersals in the larger western Pacific region. The results also help toward larger understanding of coastal adaptations in dynamic settings.     

The Need for a Multivocal Approach to Researching and Managing Guam's World War II Underwater Cultural Heritage

Since 2006, four maritime archaeology field schools, desktop and field surveys have been carried out in Guam. In 2012 a site associated with the United States Navy's Construction Battalion (US Seabees) was investigated. This paper summarizes the historical background of Guam and the known sites of maritime archaeological interest, particularly those dating to World War II. The problems of public interpretation of the cultural material of colonial powers are considered, and, using the Seabee site as an example, ways in which Guam's indigenous Chamorro people can be included in this history are presented.     

Household economy and gendered labor in the 17th centurya.d. on Guam

Abstract

The gendered division of labor in household economies is well known in documentary accounts of many societies, although archaeological evidence for it is often elusive. Our study compares ethnohistorical accounts of household organization with archaeological patterns at a 17th-century village on the island of Guam in the Marianas archipelago to determine if these different sources of evidence provide similar insights. We investigated archaeological assemblages from two latte (megalithic) buildings to document their economic activities. Unexpected differences in their assemblages revealed that economic activities varied between the two latte buildings. They were domiciles of a single economically integrated household, but their disparate functions likely signaled a gendered division of labor. This study reveals aspects of gendered labor that documentary accounts do not fully describe. Our findings suggest that the assumption that domestic buildings were functionally redundant in traditional societies must be tested on a case-by-case basis.     

On the antiquity of leprosy in western Micronesia

The presence of leprosy in China is documented to 190 BC , and possibly earlier.; It is believed to have spread from China to Japan. Its presence in Oceania has heretofore been documented only since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries AD, and has been attributed to migration of people from China into the Pacific subsequent to western contact and trans-Pacific trade. In the osteological analysis of 700 skeletons from pre-Spanish archaeological contexts on the islands of Guam and Saipan in western Micronesia, at least six cases of leprosy have been discovered. Radiocarbon dating places two of these in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries AD, one in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and one in the seventh to eleventh centuries. This clearly indicates that the introduction of leprosy pre-dates western contact and suggests possible contact with, or immigration from, China or Japan.     

Treponematosis in Pre-Spanish Western Micronesia

There is no longer any doubt that treponemal infections existed in the pre-Columbian New World. In Europe, a few reported pre-Columbian cases seem to be rather firm both in diagnosis and dating. The possibility of treponema having been brought from the New World by Norsemen has been suggested. A New World origin hypothesis ignores the extremely high prevalence of yaws in pre-Spanish western Micronesia. On a sample of 486 individuals, we found 17–27 per cent of adults and 10 per cent of children to have skeletal yaws. It was present at least as early as the ninth centuryAD . Speculation on the origin of treponema must be global in scope, not just Euro-American.