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Development and everyday life of cities, villages, house and home as well as building techniques and building processes

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Convenor: Gunilla Malm

The symposium presents studies on villages, towns, cities, built environments, single buildings, artefacts as well as architectural forms, building techniques and building materials. Changes and development of these “hard structures” will be put forward as evidence (mirrors) of political, social, economic and ideological organisations and developments of societies – societies from different geographical areas and from different periods. Documentation and analyses are based on archaeological, ethnoarchaeological, architectural and historical methods. New results and ideas of theory and practical work will be presented, discussed and exchanged. Discussions will concern the broad spectrum of the studies presented as well as some scarlet threads. For instance, what does urbanization and building processes from different geographical areas and from different periods have in common? Is it possible to discuss these matters in general terms? Finally, discussions also will concern cultural heritage managment and conservation.

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Allsworth-Jones Gray Excavations at the Neveh Shalom synagogue site in Spanish Town, Jamaica
Boeyens Miller Schoemansdal, 1848-1867: The historical archaeology of a Dutch/Afrikaner frontier town in the South African interior
Christopherson Countryman, townsman, citizen. Developing urban identity in Norwegian towns AD1000 – 1700 S054chr1
Malm Giving face to medieval Swedish workers.
Nydolf Changes of material and technique in medieval buildings in Visby, Sweden
Santillo Frizell Monumental building at Mycenae
Walicka Zeh Traditional Malian architecture: an ethnoarchaeological study of building technology and cultural form amongst the Senufo, Bambara and Bozo ethnic groups.

House and Home. The everyday life of historic objects in Domestic Space

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Duncan Brown and Christopher Gerrard

Few excavated archaeological contexts reveal objects in situ, in the very place they were in use inside the home. It is rare to be able to say that a particular collection of historic artefacts was assembled in a certain suite of rooms unless some catastrophic event has engulfed the inhabitants or the site has been abandoned suddenly. This problem is particularly acute for the later periods when the activities which took place on the upper floors of buildings can rarely be commented upon by excavators. In most cases, particularly for urban sites, the best that can be hoped for is a convincing spatial association between a particular tenement with a documented history of occupancy and an excavated assemblage, though even here the excavator must reluctantly admit that many artefacts, even the broken ones, have been removed and re-cycled.

Archaeologists of the historic periods are fortunate in being able to look elsewhere for their clues and paintings and documents provide some useful pointers. Written sources such as probate inventories, for example, provide unrivalled detail for the use of household artefacts in the domestic environment, particularly for the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and North America. Theoretical stances too have an important bearing on the way a particular study might unfold. While traditional studies often include long and valuable catalogues of artefacts they tend to treat artefacts classes as isolated bodies of evidence quite removed from their social and cultural context. Processual approaches, on the other hand, while they brought a heightened awareness of quantification and methodologies, rarely considered household artefacts in their setting.

Much of the most profitable work in this field has been inspired by later post-processual theories, in particular structuralism, neo-Marxism and phenomenology and it is hoped that this symposium will draw upon this recent work. Particular attention will be paid to the interpretation of artefacts common on archaeological sites, such as pottery. Key questions to be addressed include: the relationship between status, ethnicity, gender and artefacts; the role of exotic and imported goods; the changing meaning of goods between their site of production, purchase and consumption; practices of home decoration; the positioning of items within houses; the extent to which consumption is intended to shape self-image rather than create an impression for others and; the interpretative challenges of the documentary, pictorial and archaeological record.

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Behrens Foiling the 19th Century: Making sense of Johannesburg’s historical archaeology
Bickford What did people use in their houses in early Colonial Sydney? The archaeological evidence from the First Government House site and some convict huts.
Brown Pottery Illuminated
Gerrard House and Home. An introduction to the everyday life of historic objects in domestic space
Gutierrez Imported Mediterranean ceramics in English households
Swanepoel Building identity: gabled architecture and the rise of the Cape gentry, in context.

Contested Landscapes & Landscapes of Movement & Exile

Barbara Bender and Margot Winer

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Balzani Pilgrimage, tourism and politics in the desrt of Rajasthan (India)
Bartu no title
Basu Highland homecomings. Heritage tourism, identity and the local-global nexus in the Scottish Diaspora s024bsx1
Bender Winer Introduction
Bohlin Contested Memories: Place, belonging and dispossession in Kalk Bay
Butler Experiences of writing the Egyptian landscape: Dynamics of exile in myth, novels and poetry
Dawson Johnson Exiled places and the archaeology of the imagination
Deacon Landscapes of Punishment and Health: Robben Island
Dubow `Land at last!’: Travel And Materiality of vision at the Cape of Good Hope. s024dbw1
Edmonds Flemming Consensus, cooperation and conflict in an island community
Galanidou Living on the margins: use of space and social differentiation in the gypsy camp at Nea Alikarnassos, Geece
Garner Touring the natural world – on being in and out of place S024grn1
Haney “In a fit state to receive”: A architectural analysis of Government House, Cape Coast, Ghana
Harvey Landscape and Commerce: Creating Contexts for the Exercise of Power in the Southern Peruvian Andes s024hrv1
Kamau The deception of tombstones: (Mis)Representations in an Indiana Cemetery s024kmx1
Kuruppu Cityscapes and ethno-spatial processes in the coastal towns in Colonial Sri Lanka
Lucas ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold’: The domestic landscape of a single mother in Britain
O’Sullivan Crannogs and the contested landscapes of early modern Ireland
Penn The Roggeveld Rebellion: Khoisan resistance to colonial enroachment in the 18th Century Cape interior
Ronayne We’re giving out because they have used our townland’: People-land relations in a heritage landscape in Ireland
Selwyn Jerusalem as sactuary, Jerusalem as fortress
Shelev The Biblical Legacy of Avraham
Soudien Memory and Landscape: District Six, Cape Town
Strang Negotiating the river: cultural tributaries in far north Queensland
Widgren Conflicting landscape histories: Investigations into land use around the abandoned capital, Phalatswe, Botswana
Winfield (Re)Establishing Identity: The Bayview Hunters Point Arts Center s024wnd1

LANDSCAPES AND LINKAGES: LINEAGES OF TRADE AND CONTACT IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

Kerry Ward

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

In concert with the aims of WAC4 and invoking the spirit of Pliny’s maxim that “there is always something new out of Africa”, this symposium brings together diverse scholarship on Africa in the Indian Ocean world. It seeks to generate debates around the geneology of trading networks in the Indian Ocean. New scholarship reinforces the dynamic interation between African societies on the Indian Ocean coast with traders from Europe, India and Asia. With scholars whose interests range from Graeco-Roman trade with East Africa, to the export of live ostriches from the Cape of Good Hope to Edo Japan, this symposium underlines the variety and longevity of trading networks in the Indian Ocean. Participants will be encouraged to consider a number of general issues as applicable to their own research sites:

How does one account for the waxing and waning of these trade routes?
What different theoretical and methodological approaches illuminate specific trading communities?
What is their material and historical legacy?
Is the concept of an “Indian Ocean trading world” valid?

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Cox Eighteenth century Capetonians, immigrants and slaves: isotopic analysis of skeletons from the Cobern Street Cemetery, Cape Town, South Africa
Fawcett Uneven development, colonialism, and African states: Views from smaller Swahili towns in coastal Tanzania.
LaViolette The Archaeology of Pujini, Pemba Island, Tanzania in a 15th-16th Century Swahili context
Saitowitz Early Indian Ocean Trade Between Southern Africa, Egypt and Southeast Asia

A rock and a hard place: perspectives on the archaeology of St. Kilda, Scotland

Convenors

Tony Pollard
Alex Morrison

The archipelago of islands known as St. Kilda is located in the open Atlantic some 64 kilometres to the west of the Outer Hebrides group, off the west coast of Scotland. The archipelago has been designated a World (Natural) Heritage Site by the United Nations and is in the ownership of the National Trust for Scotland, a charitable body which as part of its archaeological management plan financed the work reported here. Hirta, which although the largest of the half dozen or so islands and stacs measures just 4km x 2km, was evacuated of its indigenous human population in 1930, an event which left in its wake an exceptionally well preserved and unique cultural landscape. It is hoped that the islands will eventually qualify for World (Cultural) Heritage status.

For the last seven years the Universities of Glasgow and Durham have been engaged in a programme of survey and excavation, augmented by environmental analysis, which has provided a valuable insight into the history of human occupation. Despite the exposed character and isolated position of these small islands evidence for human activity stretches back several thousand years. The papers presented here will summarise the work of the St. Kilda Archaeological Project, and in addition to providing an introduction to environmental history, material culture, settlement and economy, will place the archipelago’s archaeology within its wider Scottish context and consider themes such as isolation, maritimism and ritual practice.

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Huntley Life at the edge of the world: evidence for crop and medicinal plants from St. Kilda, Outer Hebrides
Huntley Palynological aspects of diet and economy on St Kilda
Johnson Hovels, hidey holes or houses for the dead? s025jhn1
Morrison An introduction of the settlement History of St. Kildar s025mrr2
Pollard New Horizons: St Kilda and the prehistoric colonisation of the Scottish Islands S025pll1

Catastrophism, Natural Disasters and Cultural Change

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Convenors

John Grattan Institute of Earth Studies
Llandinam Building
University of Wales
Penglais
Aberystwyth
Dyfed SY23 3DB Wales
United Kingdom

Robin Torrence
Division of Anthropology
Australian Museum
6 College Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Australia

The aim of this session is to examine both the short and long-term consequences of extreme natural events on patterns of cultural change. Due to modern communication systems we are increasingly aware of the wide range and large number of severe climatic events that wreck havoc, destroy homes and livelihoods, and inflict high mortality in many parts of the world each year: e.g. storms, cyclones, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes. Natural disasters such as these must also have existed in the past and made their marks on both local and regional cultural histories. Recovery from extreme events is usually reasonably quick in modern societies because of worldwide links between communities, specialised programs of disaster assistance, etc. Nevertheless, long after the world press has moved on, such local catastrophes usually have profound long-term effects on the lives of the people involved and these can permeate and alter aspects of society as a whole. It therefore seems likely that natural disasters played an important role in human history, one that has been generally ignored by archaeology except on a case by case basis.

Archaeological theory about the pace and character of cultural change generally focuses on processes which are internally generated and which unfold slowly through time. Since environmental determinism has fallen out of favour, theories about social evolution pay very little attention to external, nonhuman factors nor to random factors. Little or no consideration has been given to the effects of one-off natural disasters. In contrast, a number of theoretical perspectives involving catastrophism, chaos, punctuated evolution, etc. provide a range of alternative views that focus on the effects of random events. One of the goals of the symposium is to assess the value of these theories for explaining the impacts of natural disasters on cultural change.

Through extended discussions following short presentations of case studies representing a very broad coverage in spatial, chronological and cultural terms, the participants will consider a range of general questions. How and in what ways do natural hazards affect human societies? Have natural disasters played an important role in human evolution? Do natural disasters have only short-term, limited effects or should they play an important role within general theories about cultural change and human evolution? How does the level of severity of disasters affect the nature of cultural response in various kinds of societies? What is the relationship between societal complexity and cultural responses to natural disasters? i.e. are simpler societies more resilient in the face of catastrophes than complex societies? In what ways do the short and long-term effects of natural disasters differ? Have societies adapted to hazardous environments and if so how?

By bringing together a broad range of case studies from around the world and by taking in the widest possible range of time periods and disciplines (e.g. physical anthropology, archaeology, oral history, and modern hazards research), we expect a varied and lively set of responses to these important questions from both the participants and the general audience.

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Allison The AD 79 eruption of MT Versuvius: Who has been affected?
Driessen The Eruption of the Santorini Volcano and Its Effects on Minoan Crete
Galipaud Catastrophism and Natural Disaster in Oceania
Grattan Volcanism, environmental forcing and the archaeological record. S017grt1
Lewis Johnson Natural disasters and cultural change in the Shumagin Islands
Machida Volcanic impact of explosive eruptions on natural environment and human societies in Japan, with specific reference to the great Kikai eruption
Manning Volcanoes and History: a significant relationship
Menotti Lake Constance transgressions as the cause of abandonment of the Arbon-Bleiche 2 Early Bronze Age lacustrine village S017mnt1
Neuman Narrating a disaster
Nur Haigan Armageddon’s Earthquakes
Nur The end of the Bronze Age by large earthquakes
Pavlides When the sky turns black and the rain turns to ash: cultural responses to volcanic disasters in the lowland tropical forests of Papua New Guinea
Rampino Ambrose Volcanic winter in the Garden of Eden: The Toba super-eruption and the Late Pleistocene human population crash
Shimoyama A case Study on the Development of the Disaster Archaeology Especially, on problems of adaptation against disaster
Stiros On the historical role of earthquakes and other natural phenomena in the eastern Mediterranean
Torrence Do disasters really matter? A long term view of volcanic eruptions and human responses in Papua New Guinea
Zeidler Isaacson Volcanic disasters and historical contingency: the prehistoric record of differential response to volcanic eruptions in Western Equador

Agriculture in Arid Environments: Archaeological Perspectives Perspectives

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Graeme Barker (University of Leicester, UK) and David Gilbertson (University of Wales Aberystwyth, UK)

Despite the frequency of speculation by archaeologists, historians and geographers about the long-term role of people in desertification, there have been remarkably few modern scientific studies of the problem. Many areas of the world that are now arid or semi-arid have remains of ancient farming systems. How did ancient farmers and herders exploit such environments and what impact did they have on them? Archaeology, particularly inter-disciplinary landscape archaeology combining the techniques of archaeology and geography, has the potential to address such questions. The seminar will bring together specialists working in different parts of the world, investigating a wide variety of past solutions to farming deserts. By understanding the variability in past farming strategies, their successes and failures, and their short- and long-term environmental impacts, can archaeology contribute to modern debates about desertification and sustainability?

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Barker Coping with desertification: 5000 years of farming and mining in the Wadi Faynan, southern Jordan S011brk1
Barker Gilbertson Agriculture in arid environments: archaeology and desertification
D’andrea Ethnobotanical investigations of subsistence strategies in Highland Ethiopia
Gilbertson Territoriality, situation and environment: floodwater farming in the ancient Libyan desert
Kajale Archaeobotanical approaches to subsistence agriculture in South Asia and Africa: a comparative perspective
Kinehan The archaeology of pastoral impact in African savannah environments
Minnis Prehistoric anthropogenic ecology of the Mexican Northwest/American Southwest s011mnn1
Newson Successes and failures in farming the Syrian Black Desert
Rosen The decline of desert argriculture: a view from the classical period Negev s011rsn1
Soper African agricultural systems and the terraced landscape of Nyanga, Zimbabwe s011spr1
Sutton Engaruka: farming an Oasis in Maasailand 300-500 years ago
Widgren Islands of agricultural intensification in East Africa: the social, ecological and historical contexts s011wdg1

Maritime Interactions in Prehistory

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Convenor: Antoinete Jerardino

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Attenbrow et al Interpreting temporal changes in the shell component of shell middens in Port Jackson, New South Wales, Australia
Dixon Late Pleistocene maritime adaptations and colonisation in the Americas
Figuti Zooarchaeology and Brazilian shell-mounds, first steps
Mackie Location-allocation modelling of maritime hunter-gatherer mobility in a fjordland archipeligo
Vostretsov Prehistoric maritime adaptation at the Sea of Japan: Ecology and subsistence
White Coastal vs. Interior Adaptations in Late Prehistoric Northwest Florida, Southeastern U.S.

Human responses and contributions to environmental change

Dr. Gilbert Pwiti

Dept. of History, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Papers will use archaeological data to discuss the manner in which people in the past adapted to changing environmental situations given that human behaviour is not a passive response to a given set of environmental conditions. Papers will also examine the manner in which humans have impacted on the environment in an effort to bound it all to their will. Papers will also look at issues such as environmental degradation resulting from different human activities in the past.

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Chami Colonisation of the Indian Ocean Islands by the EIW People
Eze-Uzomaka Archaeology and human adaptation to environmental changes in Igboland
Hughes Old Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
Mapunda Metallurgy in Tanzania
Ndoro Pwiti Environmental constrains and human occupation in Southern part of Zimbabwe.
Pikirayi Environment, culture and society: the landscape and dynamics of the Zimbabwe state, 1200 – 1900.
Tsheboeng Reconnaissance survey of the Shashi-Limpopo area, North Eastern Botswana

Emergence of social complexity and its evidence in archaeological records

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Dr. Arkadiusz Marciniak and Dr. Andrzej Pydyn

The aim of the session is to examine various categories of archaeological data from the point of view of their usefulness for the study of emergence of social complexity. This will engage with the critiques of definitions of social complexity in archaeological theories. It will also examine dialectical relations between these important social issues and archaeological data which supposedly reflect, represent or mask them. A significant focus will be on ethnoarchaeology and its usefulness for understanding relationships between material evidence and interpretation social complexity.

The second part will explore the practice of using archaeological data for studying social complexity and its constitution by examining various categories of archaeological evidence. This will include also faunal and botanical data, in the light of the increasing awareness of their importance for social studies in archaeology.

The papers to be presented in the session covers a wide range of geographical regions from Japan Papua New Guinea, Hawaii through Egypt and Near East to Central and Northern Europe. The case studies discussed come from different chronological periods from the Late Palaeolithic to the Iron Age.

Analysis of botanical and faunal data is becoming an important element in studies of social complexity as well as in its construction. The introduction of new plant and animal species has considerably influenced and modified existing social patternings. The similar consequences has had a differential access to various kinds of plant and animal species as well as to anatomical parts of animals. This was due to cultural categorisation of food which have had an important social and political consequences excercised both between different societies as well as within a given society.

An important element of the study of emergence of social complexity is organisation of space both within and between settlements. The changes in spatial arrangements of settlements and domestic architecture as well as distribution of material culture are both results and causes of social organisation and its transformations over time. The papers give an overview of the dynamic interplay between material sphere and social complexity.

Furthermore, the session will engage a discussion on the origin of complex societies in different parts of the world. The development of these societies could take place only as a result of a simple social and economic evolution, but could be strongly effected by other factors, for example establishment of long-distance network of exchange which united different regions in the Old World or development of the European colonialism in other parts of the world. The papers will discuss a material data which reflect and change these kinds of transformations.

papers:
Author 1 Author 1 Title
Baines Defining social complexity in early Egypt: levels of patterning in the evidence s010bns1
Banning Emerging from the Labyrinth: Spatial Organisation as Evidence for Ancient Social Networks
Beron Pampean hunter gatherers: increasing complexity features
Boquian The formation mould of Ancient Chinese Civilisation
Gosden Bigmen, chiefs and colonialism.
Holl The formation of Houlouf Chiefdom: A settlement pattern analysis
Hosoya Food of Power or Power of Food?-Introduction of rice and Japanese state formation
Marciniak Faunal remains and social change. Beyond subsistence studies.
na Pomberja Problems of Srivijaya and exchange networks and social organisation of Peninsular Southeast Asia.
Neves Complexity (or not?) in Amazonian Archaeology
Pydyn Lets go complex!
Roosevelt Ancient Complex Societies of the Tropical Forest: Great Art, Subsistence, Settlement, and Society