Western Contact Research Articles

The Introduction and Contemporary Practice of Academical Dress in Japan

The history of the introduction, evolution and contemporary—albeit limited—practice of academical dress in Japan is a story that parallels the revolutionary changes which swept across the once feudal nation as it emerged into the twentieth century. In the clash of East and West that characterized the rise of modern Japan, the parallel story of academic dress is one which debunks the model notion that conventions of Westernization and the process of modernization are inextricably linked. Set apart from the conventions of popular fashion, academic dress in the West represents the highest scholastic achievement. However, prior to Western contact, the wearing of robes called the kimono (着物) was already the standard practice amongst the people of Japan. To this day, the wearing of the kimono is widely accepted as a common practice both in academia and on almost any formal occasion. In Japan the introduction and assimilation of the practices of Western courts and popular fashion has had a greater impact upon the Westernization of Japanese culture than have had the robes of Western academia. Nevertheless, the robes of academic achievement are inexorably linked to the Westernizing standards of scholasticism and the general rejection of that standard is of genuine interest when considering Westernization as a concurrent prerequisite in the modernization of Japan. [Excerpt].

STRUCTURAL AND SUBSURFACE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE FORT RIXON-SHANGANI GREENSTONE BELT AND THE NALATALE PLUTON, ZIMBABWE CRATON, AS DERIVED FROM GRAVITY AND AEROMAGNETIC DATA

The geology, structure and subsurface mass distribution in the Fort Rixon-Shangani (FRSh) granite-greenstone terrain, Zimbabwe craton, has been investigated using regional aeromagnetic and gravity data, as well as density-constrained gravity modelling along four traverses/profiles. Processed aeromagnetic data reveal sets of north-northwest-trending dykes and faults, west-northwest-trending faults and a major north-northeast-trending shear zone bounding the FRSh greenstone belt in the southeast. The distribution of dykes is more widespread and continuous than previously recognised, while concealed mafic and ultramafic horizons or extensions are revealed. Cross-cutting relationships and magnetic anomaly displacements provide relative age constraints for the various dykes and associated faults in the area, with the north-northwest-trending dyke set being the youngest and the north-northeast-trending set the oldest. There has been repeated movement along the faults over time. The regional Bouguer gravity anomaly map shows that the Fort Rixon (FR) greenstone belt is marked by a 30 mGal positive anomaly, relative to a background of −120 mGal over the surrounding tonalitic gneisses. Both the Bouguer anomaly and first vertical gravity gradient maps suggest a smaller body than the current known outcrop, and this is confirmed by gravity modelling which shows a reduced extent of the greenstone belt lithologies with depth. The maximum anomaly appears to be significantly offset to the southwest, suggesting continuation of greenstone belt lithologies beyond surface exposures in to the southwest. The porphyritic Nalatale granite intrudes and bisects the FRSh greenstone belt, and is associated with a gravity low (~7 mGal amplitude), which appreciably reduces the FR greenstone belt positive anomaly in the northeast. The regional setting suggests a western granite-greenstone contact that may be explained by doming, an eastern contact that is marked by the Irisvale-Lancaster strike-slip shear zone, and a northern contact with an intrusive and post-tectonic granite. Interpretation of the gravity data by 2½D modelling along three profiles shows that the FR greenstone belt has a boat or v shape and a depth extent of 3.0 to 4.0 km. The thinnest part of the greenstone belt occurs in the northeast near the Nalatale granite, suggesting that the pluton underlies much of the greenstone belt in the area. The Nalatale pluton is on average 2.5 km thick under the greenstone belt but includes a root up to 4.5 km thick, and a steep contact with the tonalitic gneisses to the east. It is probably a wedge-shaped pluton that was emplaced along steeply oriented fractures in the brittle crust. The models show that the Nalatale pluton has a shallow outward dip with steep contacts at depth. These results, together with the surface and subsurface disposition of the various geological units, suggest that the greenstone belt underwent deformation by granite intrusion through diapiric-type geotectonic processes.

Customary Marine Resource Knowledge and use in Contemporary Hawai‘i

The Hawaiians of old depended on the sea for survival and, as a result, developed a sophisticated understanding of the natural processes regulating resource abundance and effective strategies to manage those resources. After Western contact, sociopolitical upheaval led to the breakdown of the traditional Hawaiian fisheries management system, though practice and knowledge continued. Even today, subsistence fishing is culturally and economically important to many communities throughout Hawai‘i, but declining resources over the past century have raised concerns about their sustainability. To confront this issue, a number of communities are currently strengthening local influence and accountability for local marine resources through revitalization of local traditions and resource knowledge. This renaissance of traditional community-based management and rediscovery of traditional techniques offers great promise for improving the condition of Hawai‘i's coastal marine environment and the management of its fisheries.

Starch analysis reveals prehistoric plant translocations and shell tool use, Marquesas Islands, Polynesia

Starch analysis is proving particularly useful in tropical regions like the central Pacific where crop inventories are often dominated by starchy fruits and tubers and recovery of macrobotanical remains is rare. Analysis of 23 shell tools from the Marquesas Islands provides direct evidence for translocation of five traditional crop plants. Four taxa derive from the western Pacific, including Artocarpus altilis (breadfruit), Piper methysticum (kava), Colocasia esculenta (taro), and one or more species of Dioscorea (yam). The fifth taxon, the South American Ipomoea batatas (sweet potato), dates from the 14th century AD onward and constitutes the earliest record of this cultigen in the archipelago. The occurrence of sweet potato starch suggests that this crop plant may have been more important than usually is assumed, while the limited recovery of breadfruit starch, the main Marquesan food plant at western contact, requires further investigation. The starch residues also inform on tool use, demonstrating that shell tools ethnographically associated with specific crops (e.g., “breadfruit peelers”) had more generalised functions. This study is a further demonstration of the potential of starch analysis to provide important information on the history of crop introductions, on-site activities, and artefact use.

New geochronological results and structural evolution of the Pataz gold mining district: Implications for the timing and origin of the batholith-hosted veins

The Paleozoic Pataz–Parcoy gold mining area is located in a right-stepping jog on the regional Cordillera Blanca fault, in northern Peru. Most of the 8million ounces of gold production from this area has come from quartz–carbonate–sulfide veins hosted by the Pataz batholith. Despite a subduction zone setting since at least the Cambrian, the area records several periods of extension and its present structure is that of a rift and graben terrain. The Pataz district (the northern part of the Pataz–Parcoy area) is dominated structurally by northwest to north northwest-striking (NW–NNW) faults and northeast to east northeast-striking (NE–ENE) lineaments, both of which have been active periodically since at least the Mississippian (Early Carboniferous). NW–NNW faults control the margins of a central horst that exposes basement schist and the Pataz batholith, and step across NE–ENE lineaments. The Lavasen graben, to the east of the central horst, contains the Lavasen Volcanics, and the Chagual graben, to the west, contains an allochthonous sedimentary sequence derived from the Western Andean Cordillera.New SHRIMP zircon geochronological data indicate emplacement of the Pataz batholith during the Middle Mississippian, at around 338–336Ma, approximately 10Ma earlier than previous estimates based on 40Ar/39Ar geochronology. The calc-alkaline, I-type batholith comprises diorite and granodiorite, the latter being the major component of the batholith, and was emplaced as a sill complex within the moderately NE-dipping sequence of the Eastern Andean Cordillera. Moderate- to high-temperature ductile deformation took place on the batholith contacts during or shortly after emplacement. Following emplacement of the batholith, differential uplift occurred along NW–NNW faults forming the Lavasen graben, into which the Lavasen Volcanics were deposited. SHRIMP U–Pb in zircon ages for the Lavasen Volcanics and the Esperanza subvolcanic complex, which was intruded into the western margin of the graben, are within error of one another at ca 334Ma. The ductile batholith contacts were cut by renewed movement on NW–NNW faults such that the margins of the batholith are now controlled by these steep brittle-ductile faults. The NW–NNW faults were oriented normal to the principal axis of regional shortening (ENE–WSW) during formation of the batholith-hosted, gold-bearing quartz–carbonate–sulfide veins. The misoriented faults were unable to accommodate significant displacement, leading to high fluid pressures, vertical extension in the competent batholith and formation of gold-bearing veins. Brittle failure of the batholith was most extensive in the northern Pataz district where the fault-controlled western contact of the batholith is offset by a swarm of NE–ENE lineaments.The timing of vein formation is not established, despite published 40Ar/39Ar ages of 312 to 314Ma for metasomatic white mica, which are interpreted as minimum ages of formation. Gold-bearing veins formed during or shortly after uplift of the Pataz batholith and formation of the Lavasen graben; they were therefore broadly coeval with deposition of the Lavasen Volcanics and emplacement of the Esperanza subvolcanic complex. These K-rich, weakly alkalic, ferroan (A-type) magmas may provide a viable source for the ore fluid that deposited gold in the Pataz batholith.

Formation of pluton roofs, floors, and walls by crack opening at Split Mountain, Sierra Nevada, California

Spectacularly exposed contact relations of the Split Mountain interpluton screen, Sierra Nevada batholith, indicate that its bounding plutons grew by injection of dikes. The screen is composed of Cambrian metasedimentary rocks and ranges from a few tens of meters to ∼500 m thick. On Split Mountain, the screen is bounded by gently dipping intrusive contacts with two Jurassic plutons, the overlying Tinemaha Granodiorite and underlying leucogranite of Red Mountain Creek. Field relations indicate that both plutons grew mainly by opening of subhorizontal crack systems and that stoping was at most a minor process. The intrusive contacts are sharp and cut across wall-rock structures that reflect pre–165 Ma tectonic shortening. Wall-rock xenoliths are extremely rare in both plutons. Contrary to previous descriptions, neither pluton has an exposed steep wall, but later tectonic deformation locally produced steep contacts. Westward, the Split Mountain screen enters the subvertical Sawmill Lake mylonitic shear zone, which sheared it downward to a subvertical dip. On the north side of the Red Mountain Creek pluton, the primary intrusive contact dips gently, but a zone of high-angle faults steps the contact incrementally downward toward the north and east from near the range crest to the eastern range front. These faults were not previously recognized and the resulting map pattern has been misconstrued to reflect northward steepening of the contact. The Cretaceous Lamarck Granodiorite intrudes the western contact of the vertical section of the screen along a locally concordant contact. However, elsewhere the intrusive contact dips more gently and sharply cuts across the screen and the shear zone. Concordant segments of the intrusive contact reflect opening of fractures that were guided by the shear zone fabric. The Split Mountain interpluton screen thus owes its shape and its location between several plutons to the opening of fractures that admitted the bounding intrusions. The screen originally formed in the Jurassic as a subhorizontal body between the vertically stacked, broadly laccolithic Tinemaha and Red Mountain Creek plutons. After part of the screen was tectonically sheared into a subvertical orientation, the Lamarck Granodiorite invaded steep fractures concordant with the shear zone.

Ecosublimity in Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip

Literature is the ideal medium for understanding the creative flow of energy that occurs through reading and the way in which it may provide interpretations of culture, language and the creative imagination. This paper analyses Lloyd Jones’s novel, Mister Pip (2006), from an ecosublime perspective of the crucial link between place, literature, and the creativeimagination in mediating transformations of culture and identity. In Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones explores subtle ways in which literature mediates personal and cultural transformations through the unspoken and invisible and through voices of places and habitus. The setting is Bougainville in 1990 at the height of Papua New Guinea’s blockade of the beautiful, but copper -mine dependant, island. The physical setting of the novel plays a major role in the plot, with the jungle environment and military metaphors of conquest used to narrate the chaos and terror following the blockade. The awe and terror of the physical destruction of the environment is offset by the power of the creative imagination to provide an escape from the nightmare world of the physical and psychological destruction wrought by the blockade. Told through the eyes of a young native girl, Matilda, Mister Pip is a stunning portrayal of an island at the mercy of outside forces. With all western contact withdrawn, the one remaining white man, Mr Watts, re-opens the school to restore hope to the villagers. Unqualified andarmed with only a copy of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, he begins to narrate the story of Pip to the children, and through this narration Matilda finds a friend in Pip. This paper will discuss how Lloyd Jones uses the creative space of literature to explore the personal and cultural transformations of a society besieged by a repressive political regime.

Contact Group Diplomacy: The Strategies of the Western Contact Group in Mediating Namibian Conflict

The United States and four other major Western states pursued “Contact Group” diplomacy in trying to resolve the conflict in Namibia from 1977 to 1982–1983. This analysis examines their joint mediation, paying particular attention to the efficacy and constraints of the four principal mediating strategies. First, to mediate collectively helped the Western states in terms of credibility and influence as well as burden sharing and innovation, but it posed the problems of intragroup co-ordination and division. Second, working through the United Nations made the Contact Group a legitimate and credible mediator, whilst the organisation's decolonisation agenda called the mediator's neutrality into question. Third, the Western states managed to enhance their leverage by compounding within the group or borrowing from outside although the extent of such enhancement was limited. Lastly, the Group's record on the carrot-and-stick strategy towards South Africa was also mixed, with a great impact on its performance.

Genetic Differentiation of the Western Capercaillie Highlights the Importance of South-Eastern Europe for Understanding the Species Phylogeography

The Western Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus L.) is a grouse species of open boreal or high altitude forests of Eurasia. It is endangered throughout most mountain range habitat areas in Europe. Two major genetically identifiable lineages of Western Capercaillie have been described to date: the southern lineage at the species' southernmost range of distribution in Europe, and the boreal lineage. We address the question of genetic differentiation of capercaillie populations from the Rhodope and Rila Mountains in Bulgaria, across the Dinaric Mountains to the Slovenian Alps. The two lineages' contact zone and resulting conservation strategies in this so-far understudied area of distribution have not been previously determined. The results of analysis of mitochondrial DNA control region sequences of 319 samples from the studied populations show that Alpine populations were composed exclusively of boreal lineage; Dinaric populations of both, but predominantly (96%) of boreal lineage; and Rhodope-Rila populations predominantly (>90%) of southern lineage individuals. The Bulgarian mountains were identified as the core area of the southern lineage, and the Dinaric Mountains as the western contact zone between both lineages in the Balkans. Bulgarian populations appeared genetically distinct from Alpine and Dinaric populations and exhibited characteristics of a long-term stationary population, suggesting that they should be considered as a glacial relict and probably a distinct subspecies. Although all of the studied populations suffered a decline in the past, the significantly lower level of genetic diversity when compared with the neighbouring Alpine and Bulgarian populations suggests that the isolated Dinaric capercaillie is particularly vulnerable to continuing population decline. The results are discussed in the context of conservation of the species in the Balkans, its principal threats and legal protection status. Potential conservation strategies should consider the existence of the two lineages and their vulnerable Dinaric contact zone and support the specificities of the populations.

To Strengthen the Teeth and Harden the Gums - Teeth blackening as medical practice in Asia, Micronesia and Melanesia

Teeth blackening with agents of plant and mineral origin used to be the most wide-spread form of bodily inscription in parts of Asia, Micronesia and Melanesia, and I argue here that it can be productively studied as a medical practice. Ethnographic evidence supports that teeth blackeners became integrated into indigenous systems of medicine in which they fulfilled different purposes. They aided the recovery from the physically challenging teeth filing procedure, provided a primary form of preventive oral care and treated acute oral afflictions. Frequently used teeth blackening agents were derived from plants (e.g., Paederia foetida L. or Punica granatum L.) which were traditionally considered of high medical value and, from a biomedical perspective, had a high content of bioactive constituents. Biomedical data also validate the usefulness of many blackening plant extracts for improving oral health and suggest efficacy against other diseases prevalent in tropical climates, e.g., diarrheal or intestinal parasitic diseases. An assessment of the risk-benefit balance of teeth blackening suggests that, despite concomitant carcinogenic and other toxic risks, especially from chronic application, the practice could have made a positive contribution to health status in many societies before Western contact. The unique dynamic of medical utility embedded in diverse symbolic ascriptions might have provided the basis for its adoption in so many cultures of Asia, Micronesia and Melanesia.

Zoning and sectoriality of monazite-(Ce) from granite pegmatites of the central and South Urals

Zonal and sectorial monazite-(Ce) crystals from ceramic granite pegmatites of the Adui pluton are enriched in Ce and La, whereas monazite from the miarolitic gemstone pegmatites at the western contact of the pluton are enriched in Nd, Sm, Gd, and Y. This difference is caused by earlier crystallization of ceramic pegmatites and higher temperatures of their formation (650–600°C for ceramic pegmatites and 550–300°C for miarolitic pegmatites). Monazites from ceramic and miarolitic pegmatites of the Adui pluton differ in La and Nd contents, but their compositional trend in La-Nd coordinates is similar to the variation in monazite composition from the early to late granite pegmatites in the Ilmeny Mountains. It is suggested that decrease in temperature is a factor controlling REE contents in monazite. Heterovalent P ↔ Si and REE ↔ Th, Ca isomorphism in the consecutive zones of growth pyramids in monazite is both unidirectional and wave-like. Monazite from granite pegmatites of the Adui pluton and Ilmeny Mountains crystallized mainly under slightly alkaline conditions.

So great a proffit: how the East Indies trade transformed Anglo-American capitalism

In a work of sweep and ambition, James Fichter explores how American trade proved pivotal to the evolution of capitalism in the United States and helped to shape the course of the British Empire. Before the American Revolution, colonial merchants were part of a trading network that spanned the globe. After 1783, U.S. merchants began trading in the East Indies independently, creating a new class of investor-capitalists and the first generation of American millionaires. Such wealth was startling in a country where, a generation earlier, the most prosperous Americans had been Southern planters. This mercantile elite brought its experience and affluence to other sectors of the economy, helping to concentrate capital and create wealth, and paving the way for the modern business corporation. Conducted on free trade principles, American trade in Asia was so extensive that it undermined the monopoly of the British East India Company and forced Britain to open its own free trade to Asia. The United States and the British Empire thus converged around shared, Anglo-American free-trade ideals and financial capitalism in Asia. American traders also provided a vital link to the Atlantic world for Dutch Java and French Mauritius, and were at the vanguard of Western contact with Polynesia and the Pacific Northwest. Based on an impressive array of sources from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United States, this pathbreaking book revolutionizes our understanding of the early American economy in a global context and the relationship between the young nation and its former colonial master.

Pu'aka Tonga

Pu'aka Tonga

Forbidden sea turtles: Traditional laws pertaining to sea turtle consumption in Polynesia (Including the Polynesian Outliers)

Throughout the Pacific regions of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, sea turtles are recognised as culturally significant species. The specifics of human-sea turtle interactions in these regions, however, are not well known, in part because ethnographic and historic reports documenting these interactions are scattered, requiring extensive archival research. Ethnographic and environmental data collected over a ten-year period are analysed to assess patterns of human-sea turtle interactions prior to (and sometimes beyond) Western contact. From the ethnographic data for Polynesia, a region-wide pattern emerges where sea turtle consumption was restricted to special ceremonies when the elites such as chiefs and priests but no one else ate turtle. Only in two countries did this pattern differ. Environmental data does little to elucidate explanations for this region-wide treatment of sea turtles as restricted food sources, as there is no correlation between environmental variability and the presence or absence of these restrictions. Instead the results of this research suggest such practices may have been part of an ancestral Polynesian society, developing well before human settlement into this region of the Pacific.

10.1007/s11476-008-2003-9

Fine-grained garnet amphibolites, amphibole plagioschists, biotite-amphibole, and amphibole-biotite, epidote-biotite and biotite plagiogneisses were identified during geological mapping in the Ulita River basin in the central part of the Kola Peninsula. These rocks bear evidence of volcanogenic origin and were combined into a single lithostratigraphic unit named the Ulitarechka Sequence. On the basis of the composition of rock-forming minerals, the metamorphism of amphibolites of the Ulitarechka Formation was determined as transitional between the amphibolite and granulite facies. In terms of petrography, chemistry, and mineralogy, the rocks of the Ulitarechka Formation are well correlated with the amphibolites of the upper Archean Voche-Lambina Sequence composing the base of the Lopian Tersk-Allarechensk greenstone belt. The REE distribution patterns of the Ulitarechka Sequence are similar to those of amphibolites of the Purnach and Kuksha formations of the lower part of the Paleoproterozoic Imandra-Varzuga rift structure, suggesting their derivation from a similar magmatic source. Since the boundary between the Kola and Belomorian blocks is marked by the Lopian rocks of the Tersk-Allarechensk belt, it can be shifted to the western contact of the recognized stratified rocks of the Ulitarechka Sequence.

'Byron, Pushkin and Russia' 1–5 July 2009 Maxim Gorky Institute, Moscow, and Pushkin Conference Centre, Mikhailovskoye

This conference was at least eighteen years overdue. It had first been proposed by our Russian colleagues in 1991, but they had been rebuffed. In 2007 they approached us again, and Western contacts were arranged for them. The Gorky Institute is in a leafy enclave in central Moscow, with a comfortable, friendly atmosphere. The first plenary session of the conference, on 1 July, consisted of four speeches of welcome in English and a talk by me on the principles of my internet Byron edition. I thanked Professor Anne Barton and Mr Geoffrey Bond for their funding, without which I could not have been there, and gave the Institute library five books. After an afternoon of papers in Russian, the conference moved, via an overnight train to Pskov, to Mikhailovskoye. We arrived at Pskov at 7.30 am on Thursday 2 July, and were at our Mikhailovoskoye hotel by 11.00 am. That afternoon we had our first and most important excursion - to the family estate where Pushkin was exiled, and where he wrote much of Eugene Onegin. The contrast with Newstead Abbey was striking: at Mikhailovskoye, everything is either authentic or in authentic copy; at Newstead, eighty per cent is the work not of Byron at all, but of Colonel Wildman and Nottingham City Council. One thing Newstead lacks, however, is mosquitoes. Mikhailovskoye has plenty of them. Nevertheless it was quickly evident that Byron does not have the same significance for English culture that Pushkin has for Russia. At dinner Professor N. A. Solovyova (Moscow State University) explained the ambition to found a Russian Byron Society. She said that the Russian State Scientific Foundation would back such a move. Many Western dignitaries would, she was assured, be happy to write in support if it was thought helpful. The Friday schedule had an English-language-only session in the morning, and a 'production' of The Vision of Judgement in the afternoon. It all took place at Mikhailovskoye's Pushkin Conference Centre, a new building with state-of-theart facilities. The eight English-language papers (two given by Russians) were very lucid. The afternoon 'production' of The Vision of Judgement took place at one end of the library, and featured witty performances by English, American, Italian, Irish and Russian colleagues. I started with an introduction about George III, Southey and why Byron hated the latter. There was an illuminating debate afterwards about the poem's dramatic qualities. There were then two parallel Russian-language sessions. After dinner that night the delegates adjourned to a cafe for convivial activity, with much recitation and singing - neither of them common in Western Byron conferences. A little impatient with the non-stop repertoire of lachrymose Russian love-songs, I insisted on finishing the day with 'It was a Lover and his Lass'. The next morning began with a four-session, Russian-language panel. Dr Svetlana Klimova, from Nizhni Novgorod, opened the event by singing a Pushkin setting. Next occurred the inaugural meeting of the Russian Byron Society. Professor Solovyova was elected Chairman/President, with Dr Klimova as her second-in-command, and me as Patron. Two afternoon excursions followed, to the estates of Petrovskoye and Trigorskoye, after which the delegates returned on the overnight train to Moscow and dispersed. …

The prehistory and biogeography of terrestrial vertebrates on Guam, Mariana Islands

AbstractAim By establishing a prehistoric fossil record for the vertebrate fauna of Guam, we can document the composition of the island’s fauna prior to Western contact. It will also complement the extensive prehistoric fossil data already known from the nearby islands of Rota, Tinian and Aguiguan, and improve our understanding of natural distributional patterns through a chronologically deeper view of the biogeography of the Mariana Islands.Location Northern Guam, Mariana Islands, Micronesia.Methods Fossil‐bearing sediment was removed from karst features with vertically and horizontally controlled excavation methods. Age determinations of the fossils were estimated by radiocarbon dating associated wood charcoal samples.Results The 3314 bones (fossils) of terrestrial vertebrates date to the past two millennia and represent 34 species. Among 12 species of squamate reptiles, one is extinct (a gekkonid lizard) and another, the monitor lizard, Varanus indicus, was introduced to Guam no later than about 1600 years ago. The 17 species of birds feature five that are extinct. Two others not recorded previously on Guam are extirpated. Eight others were lost on Guam in historic times. We also recovered bones of two species of indigenous bats, (Pteropus sp., extirpated; Emballonura semicaudata, probably extirpated), and non‐native rodents, (Rattus spp.).Main conclusions Guam’s contemporary faunal losses have been well documented since invasion of the Brown Treesnake (Boiga irregularis) during or shortly after WWII. Other exotics, as well as habitat deterioration, have abetted this snake’s deleterious presence. Our data further show that human impact led to declines or losses of vertebrate populations by late prehistoric times. Numerous anthropogenic extirpations would not be evident without studying fossils. Our chrono‐stratigraphic evidence argues for the arrival of non‐native rats (Rattus sp.) only about 1000 years ago, which helps to explain why a flightless rail survived on Guam into modern times, unlike on most other islands in Oceania.

Morphological Variability and Temporal Patterning in Marquesan Domestic Architecture: Anaho Valley in Regional Context

Marquesan domestic architecture, including stone pavements, platforms, and terraces, potentially provides a useful case study into how varied social and natural processes might influence structure morphology. However, despite the prominent role that domestic architecture has played in the archipelago's traditional cultural historical sequence, only a few isolated examples have been directly dated. This analysis provides the first absolute chronology of Marquesan house foundations, along with an alternative classification scheme of formal morphology, and a protocol for dating these relatively simple architectural features. A suite of 33 radiometric and AMS determinations from Anaho Valley, Nuku Hiva Island, place the appearance of raised house foundations in the post-1640 A.D. period, considerably later than expected on conventional archaeological wisdom. The newly established absolute chronology allows linkages with other social and natural processes to be explored. The appearance of raised domestic foundations correlates with regional evidence for the onset of wetter conditions, while further elaboration (e.g., increases in size, height, façade stones, and use of exotic materials) of a smaller subset of structures is suggested to be a secondary development related to changing sociopolitical conditions. Western contact may have had further influences, with introduced diseases limiting manpower for megalithic constructions, and other processes affecting elite residences.

Safeguarding Hawaiian Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Heritage: Supporting the Right to Self-Determination and Preventing the Commodification of Culture

Too long Western society has viewed its global interactions with others from its own narrative or point of view. The Western world-view has played a key role in the social, economic, and political development of many societies and cultures, including those of Native Hawaiians. But Native Hawaiians, as with other Indigenous Peoples, had a society and a culture before Western contact. From ancient traditions to modern developments, Native Hawaiians have preserved, protected, and passed down their traditional knowledge and cultural heritage in spite of Western interests seeking to harness that knowledge and culture and the valuable information that flows from them. Such action by Western interests demonstrates the importance of knowledge and information to both Westerners and Native Hawaiians. This shared interest in information and knowledge has fueled tensions between Western interests and Indigenous Peoples. More specifically, the desire for knowledge and information has created a proprietary question that is not easily resolved. Another layer of complexity is added to the question by the existence of Western-centric intellectual property laws meant to protect proprietary interests in knowledge and information. In this age of information, intellectual property ownership shapes America's regional, domestic, and foreign policies related to knowledge and information acquisition and use. Western intellectual property laws dominate the global landscape in this proprietary era and thereby threaten to dominate Native Hawaiian traditional knowledge and cultural heritage. In a normative sense, the Western-centric intellectual property laws, which promote exclusivity and result in the commodification of Native Hawaiian traditional knowledge and cultural heritage, is neither appropriate nor optimal for all involved.

Christianity in Iran: A Brief Survey

This article reviews the long and varied history of Christianity in the country now known as Iran. The historical emphasis is on the Assyrian Church of the East, although other churches are also mentioned. The relationship, successively, with Zoroastrianism and with Islam, as the dominant religious traditions, is discussed, as are its implications for the wider Islamic world. Western contacts with Iran, and, in particular, those of western churches, are also examined. In the light of this historical analysis, and from discussion of the situation since the Islamic Revolution, some conclusions are advanced about the prospects for Christianity in the new contemporary context.