• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

bs_bs_banner Reviews Archaeology and material regard to the sufficient parameters that link them. Although Reeves is the most explicit culture regarding methodology, all of the chapters recognize cultural, spatial, and temporal scales as reticulate and hierarchical units of analysis. Delle, James A., Mark W. Hauser & Moreover, they all adopt a perspective in which Douglas V. Armstrong (eds). Out of many, one people: the historical archaeology of material remains are given equal footing to historical documents. The chapters embody the colonial Jamaica.x,332 pp., maps, figs, synergism of archaeology and history. tables, illus., bibliogr. Tuscaloosa: Univ. Introductory and concluding chapters (chap. Alabama Press, 2011.$27.50 (paper) 1 and epilogue) situate Jamaican history and archaeological research. Three chapters examine This outstanding collection of papers documents the early colonial period. Spanish influences on the quality and quantity of historical archaeology Jamaica and other British colonies have often research conducted on the island of Jamaica over been neglected. A detailed account of the early the past thirty years. Jamaica offers a significant sixteenth-century Spanish sugar industry offers a location for the investigation of the colonial counterpoint that employs very specific enterprise in the Americas. Beginning with archaeological observations to illuminate the Spanish explorations and conquest in the tension between feudalism and agrarian sixteenth century, followed by British accession capitalism (chap. 2). Jamaica was the proving in 1655, the island provides the opportunity to ground for underwater archaeology during investigate the different strategies of European excavations of Port Royal undertaken by Donny metropoles and the majority population who Hamilton and his students at Texas A&M arrived there against their will. Moreover, between 1981 and 1990. (Known as ‘the because Jamaica remained a British colony until wickedest city on Earth’, Port Royal collapsed it achieved independence in 1948, it reflects very into the sea during a catastrophic earthquake in different experiences from its North American 1692.) Chapter 3 targets wrought-iron tools and many Caribbean counterparts that were recovered during underwater excavations to transformed by European expansionism. From a evaluate local practices in the city; practices that comparative perspective, Jamaican history is are recorded in probate records, but are comprised of multivalent landscapes. disconnected from the lived experience. The All of the chapters recognize that historical archaeology of interactions and communication investigations must proceed at multiple in a public setting among the British colonial ‘effective’ scales. Matthew Reeves (chap. 10) merchant class is the focus of investigations at provides the most specific discussion of this the New Street Tavern in a drier context of Port scalar perspective in which he identifies global, Royal (chap. 4). regional, community, and household levels of The majority of historical research has analysis. It is refreshing to read a chapter that focused on the British plantation system in discusses the integration of different scales with Jamaica. Douglas Armstrong (chap. 5) introduces Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 887 this subject by reflecting on investigations at inhabit the banks of the Nile from Aswan in Seville Plantation and highlighting efforts to Egypt up to al-Dabbah in the Sudan. Most of illuminate ‘both the complexity of social them spoke one or other of several Nubian interaction and the contexts of dynamic languages, though some of the Egyptian creativity embodied in Jamaica’s cultural Nubians had adopted Arabic. They lived in landscape’ (p. 77). A significant aspect of social hundreds of small hamlets, cultivating the interaction is the maritime movement of goods generally narrow margins of the river. The and people. Underwater archaeology again poverty of the area was such that many of the offers a unique perspective, this time in the men were migrant workers who spent long context of a shipwreck (chap. 6). The movement periods in Lower Egypt. Their reputation for of goods into and across the island is the subject reliability and honesty helped them find work as of chapters on the production and exchange of servants, door-keepers, and the like. locally produced ceramics (chap. 9); household At the beginning of the last century, the first marketing activities by enslaved peoples in two Aswan Dam was completed, and it was distinct plantation settings (coffee and sugar subsequently twice raised (1907-12 and 1929-33). plantations; chap. 10); and the essential role of As the lake behind the dam grew deeper, a consumer goods in communicating status and number of Nubian villages were flooded and social identities (chap. 11). Combined, these their inhabitants moved. Relocation on a much chapters provide a harmonic resonance to the larger scale came with the second Aswan Dam diversity of lived experiences, and demonstrate (the High Dam), construction of which took the substantial contributions that historical place between 1960 and 1970. All the Nubians in archaeology has to offer from a focus on Egypt (over 50,000), and most of those in the materiality. Sudan, were resettled as their homes vanished The complex layering of Jamaica’s colonial under the waters of Lake Nasser. history is exposed and scrutinized in all of the Archaeologists were deeply concerned at the chapters, from the initial Spanish conquest, to submersion of the numerous ancient sites the trading entrepôt of Port Royal, the habitus upstream of the High Dam, and many people of hegemonic British plantation landscapes know of the great international effort that led to (chap. 7), the agency of enslaved peoples, the the removal of the Abu Simbel temples from the ‘consumer revolution’ (chap. 11), Maroon area that was to be flooded. Few, however, are ‘freedom fighters’ (chap. 8), and aware of the attempts made by anthropologists post-emancipation politics and realities, to deal with the effects of the great dam. The including the importation of indentured most important of these, the one that is the labourers from South Asia (chap. 12). This subject of the present work, was initiated by volume also highlights how the people of Robert Fernea, who was at that time teaching at Jamaica have actively engaged in revealing and the American University in Cairo (AUC). He protecting their cultural heritage. Not only does enlisted the support of a more senior this collection speak to the history of Jamaica’s anthropologist, Laila el-Hamamsy, director of the peoples (‘Out of many, one people’); it situates Social Research Center (SRC) at AUC, and the Jamaica’s colonial history within broader world two of them turned for funding to the Ford systems. This book is a significant contribution Foundation, which responded generously. Field towards understanding the patterns, processes, research for the project – the Nubian Ethnological and motives of the colonial revolution that Survey (NES) – was carried out in the Egyptian began in the Americas in 1492, and whose part of Nubia in the years 1961-4, under the repercussions continue today. leadership of Fernea and el-Hamamsy. They William F. Keegan Florida Museum of recruited a senior staff of about half-a-dozen Natural History Americans, most of whom (like Fernea himself) had recently received doctorates in anthropology, Hopkins, Nicholas & Sohair Mehanna and a junior staff made up mainly of Egyptian (eds). Nubian encounters: the story of the graduate students (among them Sohair Mehanna, Nubian Ethnological Survey 1961-1964. xxiii, the co-editor of this volume). 328 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Cairo: The NES carried out two broad surveys, one American Univ. Cairo Press, 2010.£22.95 of the Nubian economy, the other of the Nubian (cloth) migrant workers, and four community studies, three of them among the old Nubian The Nubians – in the relevant sense of that settlements and one in a more northern ambiguous word – are a people who used to settlement that had been established in 1934 as a Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 888 Reviews result of the second raising of the old Aswan understanding of the dynamic connectedness dam. The intention was to co-ordinate the work that spans the entirety of human history. The of all these investigations at the SRC, and an contributors deliver the compelling case that ‘enormous amount of material’ (fieldnotes and history must penetrate beyond shallow time, the like) was collected there. But the NES staff thereby severing the binds between history and quickly dispersed, some materials never reached text, in order to engage the deep past and the the SRC, and in the event the researchers indivisibility of human and world. The calibre of published their results as individuals rather than contributors is exceptional and Andrew Shryock as members of a team. and Daniel Lord Smail should be congratulated The opening section of this book (by Hopkins for assembling the line-up whilst also fostering and Mehanna) is a detailed account of the NES the volume’s collaborative character. Ten and of some related research. At the end of the thematic chapters are divided into four sections: book there is a list of the publications that ‘Problems and orientations’; ‘Frames for history resulted from the NES, a guide to some of the in

Load more

  35

Copy Link