Archaeology is inherently evidence based: we find things, we interpret them, and we create narratives about the past. As mentioned in this issue's Editorial, the absence of evidence can also be meaningful. The more randomised locations of development-led archaeology can reveal genuine ‘empty’ spaces. Sometimes, however, perceived absences can be misleading, and we may miss a glimpse of something important. This NBC considers several volumes that look deeply into such apparent gaps in the evidence and find much to report. Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christophe Galipaud's volume, for example, explores the absence of evidence for sea nomadism and considers the methods needed for identifying sea nomads of the past. Invisible mobilities such as this are also part of the globalisation discussed by Chapurukha M. Kusimba, Tiequan Zhu and Purity Wakabari in their volume, which provides an alternative vocality for the history and archaeology of Sino-African exchange routes. In celebration of the hidden lives and silent voices of a range of individuals and groups, however, we start with two volumes that introduce us to the women of Pompeii and to the children of the Ice Age.
Women's lives, women's voices builds upon a framework of recent research focusing on Roman women, to deepen understanding of the lives and roles of women in Pompeii. The volume's main stated aim is to “bring to light a wide range of women's experiences, and in so doing to provide models for the ways that other scholars can use the evidence … creatively to cast women as active participants in the social circles in which they moved and the cities in which they lived” (p. 7).
With 14 chapters (including an Introduction and Epilogue) divided over three sections, the volume's themes are broadly: women's commercial and public identities; ways that women are portrayed or portray themselves; and what idealised representations of women can reveal about the lived experience of women and girls in this period. Editors Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland take the view that “Understanding ancient women's lives requires creative thinking and new ways of looking, and brings rich rewards” (p. 4).
Lauren Hackworth Petersen opens Part One with a reminder that narratives of Pompeii have tended to reinforce the experience and views of elite males; the author goes on to challenge the reader to explore better the silences in the evidence, for this may be where women are found. Lauren Caldwell (Chapter 4) brings together archaeological and literary evidence to consider how the Roman peculium—a personal fund allocated to children or enslaved people by the head of the household—may have allowed women to develop commercial skills and business acumen in weaving enterprises in Pompeii and offered the opportunity for success to enslaved women, who could build on the peculium to buy their freedom.
Part Two presents evidence in the form of Pompeiian graffiti for the lived experience of women. Even a scratched name can reveal aspects of identity, says Erika Zimmermann Damer (Chapter 8); names can reveal status within the social hierarchy, whether the individual is free born, or enslaved or freed, and perhaps hint at parental lineage or, in the case of enslaved people, ownership. This chapter aims to reveal the frequency with which women's names are mentioned in graffiti, and the location of these graffiti around the city. The onomastic study catalogues 240 women, the names of most suggesting they were not of high social status, and therefore revealing women otherwise unseen. Finding evidence that suggests that graffiti was not only about women but also inscribed by women, Zimmermann Damer sees the women of Pompeii “as autonomous individuals in their own right, and as full agents engaged in the crucial work of making and remaking their city to commemorate their own lives” (p. 163).
Alongside textual graffiti, the public spaces of Pompeii are also peppered with drawings of women, as investigated by Margaret Laird in Chapter 13. Laird distinguishes these amateur sketches from professional, commissioned portraits of women and argues that the former provide an excellent way into “the mindscape of ancient people” (p. 248). The images offer new ways to understand Pompeiian women, with drawings eschewing the classical emblemata of women in elite media, perhaps suggesting that the elite aspiration did not match the expectations held by ordinary Pompeiians of how women should look. In the Epilogue, Allison L.C. Emmerson reflects on the history of studying women in the ancient world, on how far the discipline has come and how far it still must go. Emmerson applauds the bold and imaginative approaches that the contributors have taken to maximise the potential of the limited evidence and calls for similar innovative methods to be applied to other marginal groups. This volume challenges the reader to look for women in the archaeological record—even where they are not immediately visible—and to hear them in the silences. Giving voice to a wider cross-section of Pompeiian women, this volume makes an excellent contribution not only to Roman material-culture studies of Pompeii, but also to female agency in the Roman world more broadly.
“Children were present in the past. Children were important in the past. An archaeology without children is one that is fundamentally lacking in its interpretation of the past” (p. viii). These are the key tenets of April Nowell's brilliant volume, as framed by Jane Baxter's Foreword. Growing up in the Ice Age presents a wealth of data for children in the past that not only challenges modern western conceptions of childhood, but also humanises children in the archaeological record. The opening chapter deals with the broader questions surrounding the archaeology of children and childhood, including their apparent under-representation in the archaeological record, the perceived distortion inflicted on (adult areas of) archaeological sites by the errant children of the past, the lack of agency afforded to children in previous studies, and the ways that children have been marginalised in archaeological research. Nowell goes on to probe the semantics of childhood and children with discussion of definitions of ‘children’ based on age and physical markers of biological development. This is expanded into the exploration of the differences between biological, chronological and social age, all of which map differently on to the archaeological evidence for children.
Chapter 2 is a thorough and detailed investigation into hominin life-history strategies and the complex social networks that developed around them. This is followed by consideration of the archaeological evidence for sub-adults and what can be understood about Palaeolithic children from material culture. Nowell looks at ways of studying children through toys, tools and arts (often considered intangible culture) over three chapters that analyse the evidence for children in the Palaeolithic; the results clearly show that children are more visible than often assumed. These chapters also demonstrate that children's involvement in craft production, such as ceramics, textiles and stone tools, was a major contributor to the wellbeing of the wider community, both economically and socially.
In Chapter 6, Nowell discusses the markers of adolescence—both physical and cognitive—together with archaeological evidence that suggests adolescence was an important life stage in the Upper Palaeolithic. In the concluding chapter, Nowell goes on to argue that children were a driving force of human evolution, making a clear case for the importance of studying children in the archaeological record, and calling for recognition of the agency of children and a move from the ‘excavation of children’ to ‘an archaeology of children’. The volume has a broad appeal, bringing together a large quantity of data for specialists, but also presenting the archaeological evidence empathetically so that it speaks to anyone interested in the lives of children in the past. In Nowell's own words “there is something about them that is unexpectedly familiar, and in that familiarity we rediscover our shared humanity” (p. 20).
Oceans apart
As well as women and children, particular professions or communities may also be less visible parts of societies. The next two volumes under review explore mobilities of seafarers, investigating not only the archaeology and heritage of the sea nomads of Southeast Asia, but also the long-distance networks facilitated by proficiency in seamanship, such as the Sino-Africa connections, forged in prehistory, that are still relevant today.
This volume challenges scholars to re-evaluate dominant perceptions of sea nomads as people without a discernible history or archaeology of their own. The authors highlight the evidence for sea nomadism and sea mobility to suggest an alternative view of sea nomads as people who retain ties to land but who experience seascapes as ‘home’. Editors Bellina, Blench and Galipaud open the volume with a wide-ranging introduction presenting sea nomadism as a diverse and fluid phenomenon that defies simple definition. The chapter briefly reviews previous research in order to outline the perceived problems of studying sea nomads, including the invisibility of these communities and the diversity of ways in which they can be defined.
The nicely balanced content includes chapters dealing with a range of different approaches. Beginning with technologies and exchange, Sue O'Connor and colleagues examine shell and obsidian technologies to understand maritime networks in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Wallacea, Southeast Asia, over the last 12 000 years; the authors employ geochemical fingerprinting of obsidian artefacts, tracing the material's distribution from a single source to multiple islands, to demonstrate that islands were linked into networks of movement. Meanwhile, David Bulbeck (Chapter 3) also maps exchange networks in Southeast Asia, considering, alongside obsidian, evidence for worked bone, shell beads, cave painting and mortuary practices. Bulbeck's chapter speculates on the growth and increase in network connections over the Holocene period. Roger Blench (Chapter 6) takes a linguistic approach to sea nomadism, investigating whether languages may provide a clue to the origins of sea nomad populations. Blench's review of the main sea nomad languages (Samalic, Orang Laut and Andaman) suggests that all the traceable sea nomad languages belong to the Austronesian, Malayic or Greater Barito language families, probably meaning that the evolution of sea nomad society is relatively recent—within the last 2000 years. Although this is difficult to reconcile with the archaeological evidence for exchange networks dating back to the Late Pleistocene, Blench proposes that old networks were replaced by newer ones driven by technological and mercantile innovation, and that the earlier groups of sea nomads assimilated with newcomers.
Chapters by Jaques Ivanoff and by Ayesha Pamela Rogers & Richard Engelhardt consider ethnoarchaeological evidence to understand what it can tell us about the history of human activity in Southeast Asia and about resilience, respectively. Ivanoff concludes that “nomads are landmarks of local history who have created and left behind identity markers that can be found from the coast of Dawei in Myanmar to the Riau Archipelago south of Singapore” (p. 251). Rogers and Engelhardt use ethnoarchaeology to map archaeological visibility of sea nomads, in this case, Chaw Lay ‘sea gypsies’ on the west coast of Thailand. This chapter also considers ‘adaptive capacity’, which is defined as the ability of a system to cope with ecological, environmental or social changes.
This engaging volume brings together the range of methods that can be used to reveal and understand sea nomadism in the past. The contributors show “for the first time that multi-disciplinary research provides a means to detect sea nomads’ input into major (pre)historic processes” (p. 21).
There are many studies that focus on the trade links between Europe and Africa, but far fewer that consider the long-standing exchange routes between Africa and China. The volume China and East Africa: ancient ties, contemporary flows is therefore important not only because it adds a welcome contribution to this area of study, but also because the contributors consciously seek an alternative to approaches that privilege an Occidental perspective on globalisation. The volume aims to understand a range of aspects of globalisation and its impact, from the extent to which local communities participated in international exchange in the past, to the shifting power dynamics evident in globalised social, economic and political networks. Using archaeological evidence to understand globalisation over the longue durée, the volume also reflects on issues apparent in the global connectivity of the modern world, including the likelihood of a global monoculture, environmental sustainability and the challenges posed to Western ideologies of power by globalisation.
Editors Kusima, Zhu and Kiura bring together 16 chapters written by academics, conservators, heritage specialists, and students from the Republic of Kenya, the People's Republic of China and the USA, who explore Sino-Africa connections in the context of globalism through material remains and historical records. The volume is divided into two parts: Ancient Ties, encompassing 10 chapters, and Contemporary Flows, which includes five chapters dealing with contemporary Sino-Africa networks; a final summary chapter reflects on the volume as a whole. The opening chapters set the scene, with Louis De Weyer presenting a comparison between Lower Palaeolithic African and Asian lithic assemblages to understand differences between two of the major regions for hominin evolution. This is followed by an introduction to prehistoric trade links between East Africa and East Asia by Emmanuel K. Ndiema. Ndiema argues that to understand fully the relationship between Africa and East Asia, it is necessary to look beyond the coastal sites and employ more regional approaches, in particular considering inland networks. While concluding that “prehistoric societies in East Africa have been engaged in long-distance exchange for several millennia” (p. 30), Ndiema calls for more research into down-the-line exchange to enhance understanding of these inland networks. Chapurukha Kusimba (Chapter 3) charts the fortunes of Africa's role in the Indian Ocean trade networks, from the interaction of diverse groups of hunters, herders and farmers, through the rise of Islam, to the European colonisation of Africa. The second part of the chapter focuses on the role of Islam in linking Africa and China and the evidence for Chinese trade ceramics in East Africa—a theme to which Kusimba returns in Chapter 8 with co-author Tiequan Zhu.
Part Two of the volume focuses entirely on modern trade and political relations between China and Africa. These relate only tangentially to the archaeological heritage of Sino-Africa networks but offer a window on perceptions of the political and economic relationship between Africa and China from the perspective of authors from both regions, although with more African representation. Chapters in this section deal with the sometimes controversial and challenging effects of globalisation. The volume closes with a critical appraisal by Augustin F. C. Holl, who concludes that the volume “offers a great opportunity to correct profound distortions of world economic history” (p. 265).
Mounds of data
In a move away from invisible communities and ephemeral evidence, the next two volumes shift our focus to the altogether more abundant evidence for Mississippian communities in North America between the ninth and seventeenth centuries AD. While Eric S. Nelson analyses the materiality of architecture and community at a single Mississippian site—the Parchman Place site, in the northern Yazoo Basin, Mississippi—the contributors to David H. Dye's edited volume consider the ritual aspects of life across Mississippian communities more generally. While the evidence is more abundant than that available to the authors of the previous volumes, the aspects of Mississippian society investigated in the present volumes are often harder for archaeologists to access: the nature of society and the spiritual life of communities.
Nelson's book aims to provide a framework for investigating how Mississippian communities negotiated authority and autonomy. The volume begins from the premise that “community building by Mississippian people was a process of placemaking that involved repeated re-creations of a distinct worldview in a particular place (or places)” (p. 2). This worldview, says Nelson, is reflected in the materiality of sites, which express Mississippian understandings of how humans and ‘other-than-humans’ coexisted in the world. Sometimes assemblages of particular objects were curated to produce an effect. The phenomenon known as ‘bundling’, for example, achieved “a form of agency that exceeds its constitutive parts” (p. 7; for more on bundling, see below).
Parchman Place consists of one large mound and four smaller platform mounds. The radiocarbon sequence reveals activity between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries AD. The six chapters in the volume consider various aspects of the archaeological evidence, including ceramics, foodways, mound building, spatial practice and community interactions. The ceramic assemblage analysed in Chapter 2 reveals that although pottery manufacture shows consistent trends in terms of materials, methods and decoration across the occupation of the site, there is some evidence for experimentation with decorative techniques. This is seen most commonly in finewares that would be used for eating and ceremonial purposes, which may hint at an increase in social negotiation in the fifteenth century that is mirrored in other aspects of the site. Nelson identifies two distinct trends in ceramics and foodways at Parchman Place: the community used regular, everyday domestic pottery in residential contexts but when gathered as a community—perhaps for feasting—it used specialised serving assemblages. More than simply keeping their ‘best china’ for special occasions, Nelson believes that this reflects a social relationship with other Mississippian communities. Deposits of food in the hearth and the careful disposal of ash in specific places recall annual renewal ceremonies practised by the descendants of Mississippian communities.
Chapters 4 and 5 investigate the creation of the mounds at Parchman Place in the fourteenth century AD and the off-mound activity, including the neighbourhoods surrounding the plaza during the fifteenth century, before the concluding chapter offers an interpretation of the site as a whole. Residential use of the site was contemporaneous with the building of the main mound in the fourteenth century; the ceramic assemblage associated with this initial period reveals ceremonial activities associated with initiation of the site, such as feasting. Furthermore, the diversity of the assemblage suggests the participation of a broad social range of community members, and non-local ceramics point to connections with Mississippian groups in the southern Yazoo Basin, or Natchez Bluffs. These may reflect kinship or exchange/trade links.
Nelson concludes that Mississippian people made and remade their communities as a reflection of the world and strove to maintain the balance they saw in that world. Consequently, it is possible to see the social structure of the settlement reflected in the archaeology and therefore to understand these societies not as only hierarchical, but also as “mediating and subverting hierarchy … guided by an ethos of autonomy inherent in the structure of Mississippian towns” (p. 162).
The final volume under review is Mississippian culture heroes, ritual regalia, and sacred bundles, edited by David H. Dye. Comprising 11 chapters, and an introduction by the editor, the book is divided into three parts that deal with Sacred Bundles; Other-than-human persons and ritual caches; and Elite Regalia. Dye's introduction frames the volume within the context of ceremonial and ritual archaeology and its theoretical underpinning. The key themes that contributors speak to are also identified: the ‘culture heroes’, ‘ritual regalia’ and ‘sacred bundles’ of the title.
Part One addresses sacred bundles, which Dye describes as “focal points for communicating with guardians, other-than-human persons, and objects” (p. 11). Bundles vary in their form and presentation—the details of what these should be were often imparted to individuals in dreams—but serve the same purpose, which is to embody cosmological knowledge and to offer a home to non-human beings, alongside ritual regalia. One of the best-known examples of ritual regalia, Mound 1 at the Castalian Springs site in Tennessee, is considered by Kevin E. Smith (Chapter 5). This chapter revisits the unpublished work of William Edward Myer, who investigated the Castalian Springs site in 1891, but died before publishing his results. Smith presents and interprets Myer's data alongside data from a modern archaeological project, focusing in particular on Mound 1, a burial site containing the remains of more than 100 individuals. At the heart of the mound was the grave of an individual described by Myer as elderly, who was buried in a cedar-log-lined pit along with five marine-shell gorgets (pendants designed to be worn about the body). Other burials were placed in ‘stone boxes’, and other artefacts deposited in the mound included shell necklaces, ceramics, pearls, bone artefacts and traces of fabric garments or wrapping. Smith reflects on whether it is possible to identify ‘bundles’ in Mound 1 or whether, indeed, we should consider Mound 1 as a bundle in its own right.
Shell gorgets are also the subject of Lynne P. Sullivan's Chapter 8, which speaks to the second theme—other-than-human persons. Noting that these gorgets are usually found in funerary contexts, Sullivan considers the nature of their agency. Sampling shows that while most shell gorgets were interred with infants, they were also included in sub-adult burials, and their frequency in male or female burials varied according to age range. Adults in their prime were least likely to be afforded these grave goods. Sullivan's research suggests that gorgets may have been amulets that offered supernatural power to the deceased, enabling them to navigate successfully the Path of Souls and to reach the Realm of the Dead. This was particularly important in a society that believed that souls who failed to move on to the Realm of the Dead might stay among the living and make a nuisance of themselves. Shell gorgets can therefore be seen as powerful objects providing protection to the living and smoothing the transition for the dead.
The last section of the volume—Part Three—considers elite regalia, with Duncan and Diaz-Granados (Chapter 9) investigating symbolic Mississippian head-ware and supernatural beings through the evidence portrayed in rock art in Picture Cave, Missouri. The authors compare depictions of bandeaus (a decorated wraparound headband), mitres (in the style worn by bishops), occipital hair buns (coiled or knotted buns of hair designed to be pinned and worn with feathers) and forehead plaques, with their modern successors in the Osage ritual. Picture Cave helps to fill in the gaps between the archaeological record and oral traditions to reveal the Mississippian view of the supernatural culture-heroes shaping their world. Both volumes are filled with data that provide a rich resource for scholars interested in Mississippian Culture.
All of the volumes in this NBC demonstrate how archaeologists are increasingly confident to explore less visible parts of the past and to forefront overlooked communities, relationships, people and societies. This development of archaeology will only enhance our understanding of the contemporary world and of archaeology's relevance to it.
This list includes all books received between 1 March 2022 and 30 April 2022. Those featuring in the New Book Chronicle, however, have not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book in this chronicle does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
