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Abstract: Hundreds of state and local laws and resolutions have been adopted recently to restrict how teachers teach the history of race in America. As a result, American teachers face undue scrutiny, critique, and punishment for how they approach Black history. In this volatile climate, John Brown Lives!, a human rights organization centered on the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, New York, sought to expand outreach to teachers and students through its innovative Hands-on History project. In this paper, we introduce this initiative, which brings together educators, historians, artists, and archaeologists to develop and implement curriculum illuminating the region’s freedom history. In addition to describing its goals and the steps taken to support and listen to teachers and other stakeholders during this precarious political moment, we situate the collaboration in the history of archaeology and activism, and we offer lessons learned during its implementation. PubDate: 2025-06-10
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Recent archaeological research at the early medieval site complex in Ciepłe, Pomerania, has uncovered unexpected evidence of events from the 1620s. Although the area has long been known for its three strongholds, the discovery of seventeenth-century fortification remains came as a surprise. Historical accounts and previous studies had documented the presence of human remains and medieval artifacts, but the recent excavation in 2023–24 provided new insights. The identification of musket balls, a bullet mold, and archival Swedish maps confirmed the existence of a Schweden Schanze – earthworks – on the remnants of an early medieval stronghold. Additionally, human remains belonging to six individuals, along with several loose bones were uncovered in the context of earthworks. Initially assumed to be early medieval, radiocarbon dating disproved this hypothesis, linking them instead to the early seventeenth century. Given the historical context, the most plausible interpretation associates these burials with the Battle of Gniew (1626), a key conflict between Polish and Swedish forces. These findings offer new perspectives on the historical use of the site and the broader military history of the region. PubDate: 2025-05-28
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Abstract: This paper addresses the overlooked spatial dimensions of civil defense infrastructure during the Cold War, focusing on Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city. While Cold War military facilities have received considerable attention, urban-scale civil defense systems have been largely neglected in archaeological research. This study bridges that gap by exploring the development and distribution of civilian shelters in Aarhus, managed by the local Civil Defense Commission (CDC) from 1950 to 1989. Using data digitized by the MELICA project from the Aarhus City Archive, extracted from Danish official building datasets, and verified during pedestrian urban survey, the paper analyzes shelter distribution and urban preparedness. Preliminary findings suggest that Aarhus had an equitable shelter network, although gaps in certain areas remain. The spatiotemporal visualizations link civil defense infrastructure to urban development patterns, providing a nuanced understanding of Cold War-era urban resilience strategies. The paper highlights the importance of integrating historical data with modern digital tools, such as geospatial analysis and digitised archives, to advance research on civil defense and inform future urban planning. PubDate: 2025-05-24
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Abstract: Since 2008, with the launch of the Mauritian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (MACH) project, Mauritius became the subject of a systematic program of archaeological research that has helped to shape important new, and still developing, insights on the island’s past. This Special Issue of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology on Mauritius brings together colleagues who work as part of the MACH project, with other archaeological, historical, and heritage specialists, to focus on the environmental context of this distinctive Small Island Developing State (SIDS) nation. While authors bring their own disciplinary expertise, they are all universally and deeply cognizant of the strengths that lie in other fields of enquiry for research on environmental change, and longer-term implications for the contemporary population. Unsurprisingly, “island” and “environmental” archaeologies motive this special issue. In addition to these two main drivers are tangible historical links to colonialism and the legacies thereof. PubDate: 2025-05-21
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Abstract: The paper presents the results of an archaeological survey conducted at the Lugalo battlefield. The fight between the invading German colonial forces (Schutztruppe), heavily armed with relatively superior weaponry, and the Hehe warriors in 1891 was costly in human life and blood for both sides. The recovery of a relatively large assemblage of battle-related artifacts serves to augment, validate, and reconcile the historiography of the battle. The artifacts confirm the hasty and chaotic nature of the military engagement, as reported in historical sources. This could potentially trigger recollections of past traumatic experiences for the Hehe and German communities. Forensic firearms identification procedures show that the German punitive military expedition under the command of Captain Emil von Zelewski used Models M71 and M71/84 Mauser rifles during the battle. The recovery of a Maxim.45-caliber cartridge case confirms historical accounts that the German expedition carried Maxim guns but unfortunately were not deployed given the unpreparedness and prevailing unfavorable conditions during the battle. Despite the overwhelming odds, the Hehe warriors, led by Chief Mkwawa and mostly armed with spears and shields, almost completely annihilated the German expedition. The Hehe used the rugged mountainous terrain and natural features, including the narrow and deep Mgera river valley, large rocks, dense vegetation, and tall grasses, as part of their military tactical strategy to encircle the von Zelewski expedition while on the march in a long column and to effectively execute the ambush. Spatial distribution of artifacts on the battlefield indicates the possible positions of the Hehe warriors and German troops during the battle. PubDate: 2025-04-09
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Abstract: Archaeological works at St. Mark’s Church, Surbiton, revealed careful cemetery management with brick-built graves designed for inhumation burials. However, seven burials (7/200, 3.5%) excavated under an archaeological watching brief were cremation burials. These early modern remains provide an important insight into local ecclesiastical acceptance of a newly reformed manner of disposal of the dead within a suburban churchyard. Ad-hoc brick extensions enabled the secondary interment of two cremation urns into existing inhumation graves while one further cremation urn was interred directly next to a wooden coffin. Two further cremation burials were buried adjacently but directly overlying an inhumation grave. Stratigraphic sequences and surviving documentation demonstrate the importance of family burial traditions despite differing modes of interment. Six ceramic urns were found matching those advertised by the Cremation Society of England and two were sealed with lead stamped tags showing direct evidence of Society involvement in provisioning cremations. Unusually, one English multifunctional stoneware vessel was found and fragments of wooden surrounds and a small metal grip plate indicate some urns were buried in wooden cremation coffins. Three cremation burials dated to 1918, 1920, and 1933. While the practice was deemed legal in 1884, early modern cremation was not widely utilized; only 1,796 cremations took place in 1920. As archaeological investigations of the late Victorian/Edwardian and interwar assemblages are rare, this study makes an important addition to the corpus of burial data from post-medieval Britain during periods of social change, industrialization and world conflict. PubDate: 2025-03-31
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Abstract: In recent decades, Contact Rock Art has emerged as a critical area of study within global rock art research, offering unique insights into cross-cultural encounters. These artworks serve as a lens through which we can examine the historical dynamics of encounters between Aboriginal people and newcomers to their shores. Traditionally, research in this field has emphasized cultural-historical perspectives and formal analyses of these artworks. While we share this interest, we propose an alternative approach that transcends conventional interpretations by adopting a biographical perspective. This article investigates the lives and artistic expressions of known rock art artists from western Arnhem Land, aiming to highlight how their lives inform and enrich our understanding of Contact Rock Art. By addressing questions about the identities of these artists, the themes they explored in their paintings, the relation to where these paintings are emplaced, and the contexts—temporal and spatial—in which they created their work, we seek to deepen the dialogue surrounding Aboriginal cultural responses to colonialism. PubDate: 2025-03-25
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Abstract: Unidentified, commingled remains from mass grave contexts make human skeletal identification difficult, particularly in regions where there have been multiple, distinct conflicts, the excavation and retrieval of remains has been delayed, and/or graves contain both combatants and civilians. Identification is further complicated when information about the excavation and recovery of human remains is unavailable. In mass grave contexts, artifacts associated with the burials of unknown individuals can link them to a particular conflict, indicate whether they were civilians or soldiers, provide information about their specific military unit, and may also include personal effects that can be used for individual identification. This analysis examines artifacts associated with the remains of individuals recovered from Herzegovina, Bosnia to suggest they are Axis-affiliated World War II soldiers. During the war, modern Herzegovina, Bosnia was partitioned into distinct German and Italian zones as well as the Nazi-controlled, Ustaše-led, Independent State of Croatia, complicating repatriation efforts. Artifact analysis of certain objects associated with these unidentified individuals indicates these men were members of the German rather than the Italian army. PubDate: 2025-03-21
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Abstract: The Strangways Springs artesian mound spring complex in South Australia reveals a layered history in which resources, technology, labor, and culture are significant and changing variables. The site exists in Arabana country, and for thousands of years provided a location for human shelter, artesian waters, and life sustaining resources. The arrival of sheep stations in the “Far North” of South Australia represented a significant rupture and the creation of a new kind of economy based on wool. The establishment of an overland telegraph repeater station brought the latest technological developments to this remote frontier, which had the information of the world available instantly. Other developments such as the railway and wool scouring further secured the importance of locations like Strangways Springs in the continent's colonial infrastructure. This microhistory uses archaeology, archival research, and photography to explore these technological transitions and their impacts at Strangways Springs in the nineteenth century, providing important insights into the sociotechnical nexus that characterized emerging colonial worlds and new forms of modernity in settler Australia. PubDate: 2025-03-13
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Abstract: Landscape approaches utilizing line-of-sight profiles and viewsheds to compute intervisibility are far from new techniques in archaeological research. Various well-known works have described the methods and theory used to map visibility on plantationscapes. However, due to a lack of technological capabilities, most have been forced to utilize incomplete datasets, applying analysis to “barren” landscapes lacking buildings, vegetation, or any temporal and/or cyclical fluctuations, particularly concerning local ecologies. However, as computers and geographic information systems (GIS) technologies expand, more advanced visualizations and analyses have become feasible. One area of GIS technology experiencing rapid advancement is the expansion of geographically accurate 3D data, which allows the development of interactive perspective models. This research uses a “fertile” landscape model to test how a 3D perspective that factors in buildings and sugarcane can alter our understanding of colonial control methodologies and consider whether the Panoptic Plantation model is the most effective to discuss imperial logic and domination on Caribbean sugar estates. PubDate: 2025-03-12
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Abstract: Recent calls to the discipline of archaeology in North America to be more inclusive and accountable through the lenses of decolonization, social justice, political action, and environmental justice are ongoing. The need to create tangible benefits and make lives better for Indigenous peoples while respecting Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination is critical. This directly ties to Western perceptions of Indigenous knowledge and the ongoing frustrations of Indigenous communities who have to constantly re-explain or make parallels of their own realities and understandings of the universe to Western concepts that even still are not respected as empirical and as truth. However, in reference to archaeologies of such concepts as protest and activism, is the archaeological toolkit limited in its capacity to truly bring about real-time change for Indigenous communities' What might an “Indigenous Activist Archaeology” look like' Do the terms activism, protest, and occupation effectively reach the core of on-the-ground Indigenous experiences and goals of Indigenous resistance and protection more than concepts of respect, responsibility, and heartfelt thinking' Such questions are crucial in the continued evolution of the discipline of archaeology to be more responsive to Indigenous wants, needs, and goals, particularly in the realms of contemporary issues such as open pit mining, extraction, and overall heritage preservation. PubDate: 2025-03-01
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Abstract: In 1870, former captive Ervin James (1815–72) purchased 105 ac (42 ha) from two white landowners to establish his family farm. By 1891, his sons had bought an additional 140 ac (57 ha) where they grew crops, raised livestock, and hunted wildlife in the swamp. At the community’s peak in the 1920s, over 250 people called Jamestown home, and the community included a cemetery, a Methodist church, and a school. In the 1940s, the community started to decline, as residents increasingly had to seek employment farther away. Archaeological and historical evidence, including oral histories, underscore the complexity of everyday life at Jamestown. While residents were economically marginalized, they still owned and worked their own land, something that was–and still is—denied to many African Americans. This article focuses on the confluence of historical struggle, perseverance, and protection manifest in the landscapes of Jamestown. PubDate: 2025-02-21
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Abstract: This paper studies the ceramics recovered during archaeological missions carried out between 2000 and 2004 at the Santo Domingo convent in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. We explore the morphotypological and chronological characteristics of the ceramics used during the Early Modern era, shedding light on their typological evolution over time. We analyzed the city's supply patterns within the context of the intensive interactions between Europe and the Americas. Finally, we examine the socio economic and cultural dynamics of the city, focusing on the relationship between the Native American population, European settlers, and enslaved Africans. PubDate: 2025-02-19
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Abstract: Wawase was a small town on the eastern bank of the Pra River in southwestern Ghana that prospered in the later colonial period (ca. 1900 1957). The relic settlement is between Shama and Supomu Dunkwa on the modern-day Cape Coast-Takoradi Highway. A preliminary archaeological survey produced a significantly high proportion of glass bottles. Because of the long-term historical development of the settlement, political-economic indications of Ghana (then the Gold Coast), and the settlement’s sequestered location, the number of glass bottles collected from the site during this archaeological survey suggests that the settlement was actively involved in the illegal trade in imported gin and probably locally produced liquor called akpeteshie. This paper demonstrates how colonial liquor regulation through taxation and outright prohibition afforded opportunities for people on the margins of the colonial state. PubDate: 2025-02-17
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Abstract: The Jamestown Rediscovery collection contains over 100 lapidary beads, including quartz, carnelian, agate, amber, and jet. Historically produced in regions where raw materials, craftsmen, and infrastructure intersected, lapidary beads were transported across vast trade networks. India exported stone beads to Europe and elsewhere for millennia, and lapidaries operated in European cities during the medieval and early modern periods as well. Valued by Europeans and Indigenous peoples, beads followed complex paths of exchange in the Americas as trade items, personal possessions, and heirlooms. Differences in material and craftsmanship hold clues to artifacts’ origins and Jamestown’s connections to seventeenth-century global networks. PubDate: 2025-02-04
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Abstract: Enbridge crude oil pipelines have been operational on Anishinaabe treaty lands in northern Minnesota, for over 70 years, carrying crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to refineries in Wisconsin. It was not until the replacement of Line 3 with the Line 93 pipeline in 2015 that large-scale social unrest was sparked. Indigenous and non-Indigenous Water Protectors joined together in civil disobedience to halt the construction of Line 93 due to its violations of Indigenous sovereignty and its potential for environmental impacts. On October 1, 2021, the replacement construction was finished; Line 3 was deactivated; the replacement Line 93 began transporting oil; and the resistance mostly subsided. In this paper, I explore the role of archaeology within this conflict as both a methodology for engaging with the materiality of oil infrastructure and as a stakeholder and ally of decolonial social movements through collected archaeological and ethnographic data along the pipeline route. PubDate: 2025-01-25
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Abstract: Archaeologies of activism, including contributions to this diverse volume, offer unique approaches to justice efforts, ranging from contemporary archaeologies of protests and activist events to archaeological projects that are -in and of themselves- acts of activism and protest. Some find themselves facilitating and negotiating communications between diverse groups and making decisions that maximize benefits for multiple groups. Some wrestle with questions of authority and decision-making and seek paths to decenter archaeologists in community efforts while still contributing to communities’ overall goals. Many find themselves, like ethnographers, inextricably embedded in their research with surprising consequences. They share stories of trial and error, challenges and successes, and sometimes painful progress. As there is no one-size-fits-all approach to doing archaeology about or of activism, this concluding chapter traces the origins of activism in archaeology and looks to future applications of archaeology in justice efforts for readers seeking opportunities for praxis. PubDate: 2025-01-24
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Abstract: Research that purposefully redistributes authority can have more ethical and innovative results than standard hierarchical research models. This paper summarizes the results of two projects “with, by, and for” (sensu Atalay 2012) Native American communities who had more authority in decision-making than standard projects typically do. First, the Stewart Indian School project studied the forced assimilation of Native American children into mainstream society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project distributed authority among settler academics and tribal members in heritage negotiations. Some of the same participants later initiated the “Our Ancestors’ Walk of Sorrow” project to study the forced removal of Indigenous POWs from their homelands in the nineteenth century. The later project represents a shift from shared authority to primarily tribal authorities. This paper explores the primary author’s increasing efforts to relinquish control from the academic ivory tower, including challenges, consequences, and benefits for different groups. PubDate: 2025-01-21
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Abstract: In the last 20 years, Mississippi Street in Greenville, Liberia—once a thriving neighborhood—has been completely submerged in the Atlantic. At the current rate, by the end of the United Nations Ocean Decade in 2030, sea level will have risen over 30 mm. The world’s wealthiest nations are responsible for more than 70% of per capita and national contributions to past and present sea level rise, but the effects of sea level rise are felt most by the Global Majority. This paper provides firsthand data from Liberia that document the drastic impacts of sea level rise, coastal erosion, and climate change (writ large) on tangible and intangible coastal heritage, and the role that heritage professionals play in increasing climate and environmental justice. It is an urgent call to action for climate justice and action including coastal archaeology and heritage. PubDate: 2025-01-17
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
