Today Southern Research Articles

Specters of the Mythic South: How Plantation Fiction Fixed Ghost Stories to Black Americans

Abstract: The author challenges the notion of southern ghost stories as inherently subversive. Beginning with the stories in late nineteenth-century plantation fiction, this essay explores how wealthy white southerners used the genre to redeem and remake the region's past and present. White authors' claims of fraternity with largely nameless and faceless Black contacts are central to the story and reveal how these ghost stories helped to suppress reality, in favor of mythic tales. A comparison of the planation ghost stories and ghost stories accurately attributed to Black southerners shows that rather than faithfully recording the stories or making room for the oppressed to speak, white writers of planation ghost stories made a mockery of their Black neighbors and denied their post-emancipation agency. The roots of today's southern ghost stories are vastly more diverse, and significantly less empowering, than the celebrated Southern Gothic tales.

Trading Marble for Steel: Early Roman Import of Carrara Marble into the Alps—The Example of the Magdalensberg Trading Post in Noricum

The annexation of the Noricum Kingdom by the Roman Empire in 16 BC brought an increase in the trading relations between the empire and its northern neighbours. A first hub for these relations was the emporium on the Magdalensberg in Noricum Mediterraneum (today southern Carinthia/Austria). During the last decades, archaeological investigations of this settlement in a remote mountainous area revealed, inter alia, different kinds of marble decoration and architecture. Provenance analyses using a combination of different methods, including isotope analysis, trace element analysis and the analysis of inclusion fluids, show that the marbles used on the Magdalensberg are of different origins. Widely used were medium- to coarse-grained Alpine marbles from Roman quarries of the region of Gummern. Prominently used for plates, tiles, profiles, etc. were several types of fine-grained marbles of different origins. One group definitely originated from the quarries of Carrara (Carrara white and Carrara Bardiglio), testifying to the trading relations with northern Italy after the integration of Noricum into the Roman Empire. A database for the Carrara Bardiglio marble is presented and discussed. For the use of these data by further investigators, the numerical data are given as online material.

Postscript: Time Doesn't Heal All Wounds

Postscript: Time Doesn't Heal All Wounds

Land-use changes by Old Colonies Mennonites in Mexico with Sentinel 2 and Trends Earth

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate land-use changes from forest to agriculture in Ejido Salamanca in the southern state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. This transformation from forest to agriculture was caused by Mennonites -an ethnic group originally from Chortitza today southern Ukraine-, that arrived in Mexico in 1922 from Canada. This land-use demonstration is based on satellite images Sentinel 2 of the Copernicus Program and a plugin called Trends Earth. As a result, we have shown a land-use change from forest to crops could have a stable result and organic carbon soil loss. Even though, these negative changes, have gained great productivity results (ha/ton production) in corn, soy, red bean, and sorghum and contribute to agriculture productivity in Quintana Roo and the zero-hunger goal.

Lead-glazing technology from Medieval Central Asia: A case study from Aktobe, Kazakhstan

A representative group of lead-glazed ceramics excavated from the Medieval city of Aktobe, in what is today southern Kazakhstan, was analyzed to reconstruct the production technology. Fifteen sherds, which date from the 9th–12th c. CE, were previously identified by neutron activation analysis as locally produced (Klesner et al., 2019). The ceramics, which represent four common Early Islamic wares (monochrome, underglaze painted, underglaze slip-painted, and opaque) were examined by scanning electron microscopy and electron microprobe analysis to establish the variability of local artisans’ use of raw materials, glazing methods, and decorative techniques. Early Islamic ceramics are the first glazed wares produced in southern Kazakhstan, and through their technological reconstruction, we determined how this new ceramic technology was produced. We show evidence that the ceramics were introduced by skilled craftspeople who knew the production technology that was being used in Islamic centers in southwest and Central Asia. The ceramic technology differs, however, in the use of antimony as an opacifier in opaque glazes containing high-lead oxide. This research adds to the growing body of knowledge about glazing technologies in Central Asia and helps to define the technological and cultural ties present in the Early Islamic Period.

Wrapped Within: A Report on Ottoman Era Sudanese Amulets Excavated from Qasr Ibrim

The author, a volunteer at the British Museum, catalogued a number of Ottoman-period amuletic objects from the fortress site of Qsar Ibrim, Lower Nubia, on the east bank of the Nile in today's southern Egypt. This article examines several textile wrapped objects from Qasr Ibrim that appear to have an apotropaic purpose. These artefacts indicate that such traditions were in use during the Ottoman period in Sudan and illustrate a continuity of magical belief and practice over centuries.

Genomic History of Neolithic to Bronze Age Anatolia, Northern Levant, and Southern Caucasus

Here, we report genome-wide data analyses from 110 ancient Near Eastern individuals spanning the Late Neolithic to Late Bronze Age, a period characterized by intense interregional interactions for the Near East. We find that 6th millennium BCE populations of North/Central Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus shared mixed ancestry on a genetic cline that formed during the Neolithic between Western Anatolia and regions in today's Southern Caucasus/Zagros. During the Late Chalcolithic and/or the Early Bronze Age, more than half of the Northern Levantine gene pool was replaced, while in the rest of Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus, we document genetic continuity with only transient gene flow. Additionally, we reveal a genetically distinct individual within the Late Bronze Age Northern Levant. Overall, our study uncovers multiple scales of population dynamics through time, from extensive admixture during the Neolithic period to long-distance mobility within the globalized societies of the Late Bronze Age. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Ką 1219 m. įvykiai Mežuotnėje bylojo apie žemgalių visuomenės sanklodą? | What do the Events of 1219 in Mežotne Say about Žemgalian Society?

The account of the 1219 treaty between the Lithuanian dukes and Galicia-Volhynia provided by the chronicler of the Ruthenian principality lists briefly several dukes from different areas of what is treated by contemporary historians as the Lithuanian confederation. They include the dukes of Lithuania, Deltuva, Nalšia and Žemaitija, but do not mention representatives of the Curonians, Žemgalians (Semigallians) or Yotvingians. Our knowledge of one of the omitted areas, Žemgala (Semigallia, today southern Latvia and northern Lithuania), is still based on the presumption that its society should have developed according to a more or less similar path as other Baltic societies of that period. The article invites us to reconsider this presumption, focusing on one episode mentioned by Henry of Livonia in his chronicle from the early 13th century. Henry describes how, in 1219, the Žemgalians of the Mežotne (Mesoten) area approached the Bishop of Riga seeking military assistance to defend themselves against the Lithuanians, and, as it became evident during the negotiations, against other Žemgalians. In dealing with this episode, the author attempts to characterise the society of Žemgala, mainly its upper social layer, which could be described considering scarce sources. This leads him to the broader question of whether the development of Žemgalian society was similar to other non-Christian (firstly, Baltic) societies.

Communal Boundaries and Confessional Policies in Ottoman Niš

AbstractThis article focuses on communal boundaries in nineteenth-century Ottoman Niš, a city located in what is today southern Serbia. In particular, it explores the implications of Robert Hayden’s model of “antagonistic tolerance” for Ottoman urban history. In a first step, by taking into consideration the urban form of Niš from a long-term historical perspective, we consider how urban space was divided between inhabitants with different religious backgrounds. The article then turns to consider the symbolic boundaries that existed between confessional groups in nineteenth-century Niš, which can be traced by looking at the construction of churches and mosques. By examining the ways in which communal boundaries were expressed, negotiated and changed through church and mosque buildings, we can begin to render the confessional policies of the Ottoman authorities more transparent.

Late Cenozoic evolution of the East China continental margin: Insights from seismic, gravity, and magnetic analyses

Seismic reflection profiles reveal the structural characteristics beneath the East China Sea shelf margin and the Okinawa Trough, and provide new constraints on the Late Cenozoic evolution of the East China continental margin. The Frontal Shelf Basin between the Taiwan-Sinzi Uplift and the trough axis occupies the western half of the Northern-Middle Okinawa Trough. In this basin, the Middle-Late Miocene sediments are confined to grabens or half-grabens dominated by listric faults, whereas the overlying Pliocene-Quaternary sequence is characterized by a uniform thickness and dense planar-type faults, suggesting that rifting of the Northern-Middle Okinawa Trough initiated during the Middle Miocene but slowed down during the earliest Pliocene. Since that time, the opening of the Okinawa Trough has been dominated by diffuse rifting. The Southern Okinawa Trough is predominately filled by Quaternary sediments, indicating that its back-arc rifting began during the earliest Pleistocene. Contractional structures identified in the pre-Quaternary sequence beneath the continental slope, along with an erosional Pleistocene-pre-Pleistocene unconformity in the Southern Okinawa Trough, demonstrate the existence of pre-rifting compression and uplifting in this region. We use this evidence and previously published results, to propose an evolutionary model of the East China continental margin during the Late Cenozoic. The Northern-Middle Okinawa Trough began rifting during the Middle Miocene on a paleo-uplift. The Luzon Arc initially impinged upon the Eurasian continental margin during the Late Miocene near the southeastern end of the Miyako Fault Belt and activated the proto-Taiwan Orogeny in today's Southern Okinawa Trough and adjacent regions. During the Late Miocene-Pliocene, the orogeny quickly propagated southwestward along with the west-northwest-moving Philippine Sea Plate. Subsequently, the rifting of the Southern Okinawa Trough was initiated during the earliest Pleistocene and propagated southwestward following the post-collisional collapse of the proto-Taiwan Orogen. This geodynamic scenario resembles that of present-day northern Taiwan.

Reconnaissance in Sonora: Charles D. Poston’s 1854 Exploration of Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase. By C. Gilbert Storms.

Reconnaissance in Sonora: Charles D. Poston’s 1854 Exploration of Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase . By C. Gilbert Storms. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015. xi + 193 pp. Illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00.) The movement of American adventurers and explorers, intent on knowledge and gain, characterized a good part of the early history of North America. During the first half of the nineteenth century, this activity focused on the trans-Mississippi West, including the Southwest, where filibusters journeyed into Spanish, then Mexican, Texas and, after the American victory over Mexico in 1848, northern Mexico. Charles Poston was an American filibuster who sought to take advantage of the anticipated U.S. purchase or annexation of disputed territory in what is today southern Arizona and northern Sonora. … lawsonr{at}bacone.edu

Robert Lawrence France (ed): Wetlands of mass destruction. Ancient presage for contemporary ecocide in southern Iraq

Mesopotamia is well known as one of the areas where intensive irrigated agriculture provided the food for early cities to develop. As people diverted river water to the land to grow food crops, populations became denser, and politics, arts, and culture thrived. Less well known perhaps is the fact that in the downstream region of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, what is today southern Iraq, an extensive wetland provided the resources for the development of a large community near or in the marshes. This region received unfortunate attention in the early 1990s, when in an attempt to defeat opposition to his rule, Sadam Hussein ordered the marshes to be drained. Currently, a large-scale restoration project by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called ‘‘Support for Environmental Management of the Iraqi Marshland’’ is attempting to restore the wetlands and develop the necessary management procedures. From the 1990s to the present, political discourse on Iraq has linked Hussein’s Iraqi government to weapons of mass destruction. In the booklet Wetlands of mass destruction: Ancient presage for contemporary ecocide in southern Iraq, Robert Lawrence France draws upon this same language to address the marshes. The product of a 2004 workshop at Harvard University on the marshes, the booklet includes several papers describing the recent struggles of the marshland peoples and possible ways in which to support them now and in future. While preparing for the workshop, France delved into existing historical literature on the region and was ‘‘struck by the seemingly prophetic nature of much of the historic material’’ (p3). Although he acknowledges that one cannot simply use the texts of many years ago as a direct link to recent events, he includes them alongside the workshop papers. The result is rather fascinating. Texts of different times and genres, from ancient inscriptions to modern speeches, can be read in tandem. While there may not be direct links between the recent events and the ancient texts, what is clear from both is that the river and marshes are of vital importance for human survival. It is not surprising then that the water system became a source of power and a tool of power. Draining the marshes or

The North‐West Highlands memoir: a century-old legacy for understanding Earth before Pangaea

Abstract Benjamin Peach, John Horne and their co-workers recognized a century ago that the identical fauna and lithofacies of the lower Palaeozoic strata in the NW Highlands of Scotland and the North American craton could only be explained if they were: ‘part of one and the same geological and zoological province’. In this sense their work provided critical geological underpinning for the subsequent understanding of Mesozoic–Cenozoic seafloor spreading and continental drift. ‘Tectonic tracers’ such as the fragment of Laurentian craton in the NW Highlands of Scotland, provide the strongest evidence available for deciphering pre-Pangaea palaeogeography. The Laurentian craton appears to have left several such tectonic ‘calling cards’ in today's southern continents. Intriguingly, it is the presence in the Andean Precordillera of northwestern Argentina of an early Palaeozoic fauna identical to that of the NW Highlands that provides perhaps the most unequivocal geological clue to pre-Pangaea palaeogeography. Recent work in East Antarctic and Laurentian cratons has provided a positive test of the hypothesis that they were once juxtaposed prior to the Neoproterozoic opening of the Pacific Ocean basin. Geochronology and isotope geochemistry, supported by palaeomagnetic studies indicate that the Coats Land crustal block of East Antarctica at the head of the Weddell Sea is also a fragment of the Laurentian craton. These three ‘tectonic tracers’ permit tracking of the Laurentian craton in relation to the present southern continents from the Neoproterozoic break-up of the Rodinian supercontinent to the late Palaeozoic assembly of Pangaea.

NYARROH OF BANDASUMA, 1885–1914: A RE-INTERPRETATION OF FEMALE CHIEFTAINCY IN SIERRA LEONE

ABSTRACTThis study examines Nyarroh, a woman chief situated at the cusp of colonial penetration in what is today southern Sierra Leone. Nyarroh ruled a large, strategically located town and its surrounding villages from about 1880 to 1914. The documents which outline her public life have not previously been explored, yet they reveal the flexibility of gendered notions of political power and leadership in the region. Her life story allows us to look backward to precolonial Mendeland and forward to the colonial era, to consider the extent to which women's leadership and prerogatives were maintained or re-invented through colonial penetration and the nascent colonial state.

GOLD MINING AND JULA INFLUENCE IN PRECOLONIAL SOUTHERN BURKINA FASO

ABSTRACTThe ‘Lobi’ region in what is today southern Burkina Faso is frequently mentioned in historical accounts of gold mining in West Africa. However, little is known about the actual location of the gold mines or about the way gold mining and trade were organized in precolonial times. This article points out that some previous hypotheses about precolonial gold mining, trade and the sociopolitical organization of this region are flawed, partly because ‘Lobi’, as the name for both the region and its inhabitants, is misleading. In fact, the references to ‘Lobi’ merge two distinct gold-producing zones along the Mouhoun river, about 200 km from each other. The present-day populations of southern Burkina who have settled there since the eighteenth century do not know who was mining gold prior to their arrival, and many of them have not been involved in gold mining at all due to conceptions of gold as a dangerous substance.

A Giant Honey Bee from the Middle Miocene of Japan (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

A new fossil honey bee is described and figured from middle Miocene deposits of Iki Island, Japan. Apislithohermaea n.sp., is the largest fossil honey bee discovered, rivaling in size the modern giant honey bee, A. dorsata Fabricius. Apis lithohermaea is the first fossil of the dorsata species group recorded. Although the dorsata group does not occur farther north than Tibet and southern China and in the Philippines in the Pacific, this lineage occurred near what is today southern Korea and Japan during the Miocene. The geological history of the honey bees is briefly discussed in light of this new discovery. Important notes on the taxonomy of some honey bees (A. henshawi Cockerell, A. aquitaniensis de Rilly, and subspecies within A. mellifera Linnaeus and A. cerana Fabricius) are appended.

Toyin Falola, ed. Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2002. 800 pp. Maps. Figures. Tables. Illustrations. Appendixes. Bibliographies. Index. Notes. $99.95. Cloth. $39.95. Paper.

Toyin Falola, ed. Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2002. 800 pp. Maps. Figures. Tables. Illustrations. Appendixes. Bibliographies. Index. Notes. 39.95. Paper. - Volume 47 Issue 2

Dumuzi's Dream: Dream Analysis in Ancient Mesopotamia.

One of the benefits of exploring the texts of ancient dreams is that this kind of study can show quite clearly the way dream narratives are embedded within the realities of the culture in question, much in the same way that we as modern dreamers dream in a style influenced by our culture. This point is not always clearly acknowledged by psychological and neurological dream researchers, who at times describe dreams as if they belonged solely to the dreamer’s consciousness, independent of influences beyond their personal experiences, or represent that they derive from the physical structures of the brain’s architecture. The influence of cultural conditioning should not be overlooked in dream interpretation, no matter what the time and place of the dream may be. As well, through a study of dream texts we can obtain glimpses of earlier methods of dream interpretation, which were also necessarily situated within a cultural context different from our own. In some cases these are only implicit in the texts, whereas in others the methodology is laid out for us to examine in detail. And sometimes the contemplation of an ancient dream can bring a frisson of recognition across the millennia, especially when the culture in question is closely related to our own. The Sumerians were the first people in the world to create an urban civilization, economically based on a vast surplus of wheat and barley grown in the fertile floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys in what is today southern Iraq. Their population grew quickly from small towns to city-states and eventually to larger political units. As the volume of surplus goods increased, the need for inventorying them and identifying their ownership

Holocene landscape development in the marshes of the West Coast of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

The Holocene development of the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein has been governed: (a) by the morphology that existed at the beginning of the Holocene, (b) by sea-level variations, and (c) by local influences, such as compaction of sediments or diking and drainage of the marshes by man. The sediment facies in Dithmarschen in the southern part of the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein is rather uniform. Local differences can be recognized only for the last 4000 years. In contrast, in North Frisia the facies of the Holocene sediments change within short distances in the area of the present-day tidal flats. Areas affected by sediment compaction in the first millennium AD became tidal flats in the 14th century AD. In AD 1634 a storm surge flooded the southern marshes of North Frisia and turned further large areas into tidal flats. The reason for this second invasion of the sea into the cultivated land was mainly the impact of man on the landscape resulting from diking and draining of the marshes as well as from the cutting of peat. The tidal flats in today's southern North Frisia mirror more or less exactly the relief of the base of the coastal Holocene.

Archaeology. Tortoise pace for the evolution of Chinese writing?

ARCHAEOLOGYWriting did not emerge in China until 2 millennia after it appeared in what is today southern Iraq, about 5200 years ago. But a team of Chinese and U.S. researchers now proposes that writing in China went through a long, slow evolution that stretches back an astonishing 8000 years.