Welcome to the return of the FIRE, ‘Archipelago’ Newsletter. Similar to the previous newsletter, this will be a monthly review and update of events, conferences, opportunities and general news relevant to members of the section and any involved or interested in island research. We welcome all contributions and feedback on the newsletter!
We would like to take the opportunity to thank Dr. Helen Dawson and Dr. Jago Cooper, who initially started FIRE similarly during their PhDs. It would have been much more difficult to start up an island-based research network if it weren’t for the groundwork and good name they laboured over during their time as FIRE coordinators.
We hope to build off what they achieved and use that foundation to take FIRE to similar heights, and further.
News
On March 11th, FIRE held their first event, where a number of staff and students came to welcome the restart of the Network, with few kind words and anecdotes by Dr. Jago Cooper. The event was intended to outline the intent and future goals of FIRE for the next few years, and to also offer the opportunity for people with similar island interests to begin network and communication. The event was a success, with several suggestions made on potential future talks, seminar series and funding opportunities to allow for further FIRE events. The next FIRE evening lecture is currently being planned by the two PhD coordinators.
Upcoming Talks/Events
Exhibits
Europe
Reimagining Captain Cook: Pacific perspectives
29 November 2018 – 4 August 2019
British Museum
250 years ago James Cook left England on the first of three expeditions to the Pacific Ocean. A skilful navigator, he visited many places new to Europeans and his voyage accounts were widely read and celebrated. Today, his legacy is sometimes debated. In the Pacific, Islanders continue to remember the encounters that occurred, reimagining them in artworks which reflect on their impact. This exhibition explores these Pacific perspectives and displays the work of contemporary Pacific artists, alongside objects collected on the voyages themselves
For more information go to: https://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/reimagining_captain_cook.aspx
Oceania
12 March 2019 – 7 July 2019
Musée du quai Branly, Paris
A must see for those who missed it in London.
Organised by Royal Academy in collaboration with the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris, and with the participation of the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology of Cambridge, this exhibit Oceania pays tribute, two hundred and fifty years after James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific, to the continent's artistic creations of 25,000 islands. Gathering 170 pieces from public and private collections, including several masterpieces unknown to the general public, the exhibition brushes, from Antiquity to the contemporary period, the story of an art guardian of traditions and traditions. identities repeatedly jostled by trade, colonisation or forced evangelism.
For more information go to: http://www.quaibranly.fr/fr/expositions-evenements/au-musee/expositions/details-de-levenement/e/oceanie-38063/
International
Exhibition
Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean / Taíno: herencia e identidad indígena en el Caribe.
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York.
Exhibition that showcases images of the rural roots and legacy of the Native Taíno peoples through the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Furthermore, bringing to the forefront imagery that challenges the belief that Native Caribbean peoples became extinct shortly after European colonisation.
For more information go to: https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item/?id=966
Call for Papers and Submissions/ Conferences
Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage
“The Maritime Cultural Landscape of the Austronesian Diaspora”
The Asia-Pacific Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage (APConf) aims to address management and protection strategies of underwater cultural heritage in Asia and the countries of the Indian and Pacific Oceans in the 21st Century, facilitate regional cooperation through the development of academic, non-governmental organisations (NGO) and governmental networks in the Asia-Pacific region, and provide a forum for discussion of technical and ethical issues related to underwater cultural heritage and underwater archaeology
Session abstract submission deadline: May 1st, 2019
28th Congress, International Association for Caribbean Archaeology (I.A.C.A.)
Bridgetown, Barbados July 21-27, 2019
Books
Region: South Pacific
Dousset, L. and Nayral, M. eds., 2018. Pacific Realities: Changing Perspectives on Resilience and Resistance (Vol. 6). Berghahn Books.
Throughout the Pacific region, people are faced with dramatic changes, often described as processes of “glocalisation”; individuals and groups espouse multilayered forms of identity, in which global modes of thinking and doing are embedded in renewed perceptions of local or regional specificities. Consequently, new forms of resistance and resilience – the processes by which communities attempt to regain their original social, political, and economic status and structure after disruption or displacement – emerge. Through case studies from across the Pacific which transcend the conventional “local-global” dichotomy, this volume aims to explore these complex and interwoven phenomena from a new perspective.
You can buy the book here: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/DoussetPacific
Region: Caribbean
Siegel, Peter E. (2018) ISLAND HISTORICAL ECOLOGY Socio-natural Landscapes of Eastern and Southern Caribbean. Berghahn books: New York and Oxford.
The first book-length treatise on historical ecology of the West Indies, Island Historical Ecology addresses Caribbean island ecologies from the perspective of social and cultural interventions over approximately eight millennia of human occupations. Environmental coring carried out in carefully selected wetlands allowed for the reconstruction of pre-colonial and colonial landscapes on islands between Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Comparisons with well-documented patterns in the Mediterranean and Pacific islands place this case study into a larger context of island historical ecology.
You can buy the book here: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/SiegelIsland
Reid, Basil A. (2018) The Archaeology of the Caribbean and Circum-Caribbean Farmers (6000 BC – AD 1500). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group: London and New York.
Comprising of 17 chapters and with a wide geographic reach stretching from the Florida Keys in the north to the Guianas in the south, this volume places a well-needed academic spotlight on what is generally considered an integral topic in Caribbean and circum-Caribbean archaeology. The book explores a variety of issues, including the introduction and dispersal of early cultivars, plant manipulation, animal domestication, dietary profiles, and landscape modifications. Tried-and-true and novel analytical techniques are used to tease out aspects of the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean database that inform the complex and often-subtle processes of domestication under varying socio-environmental conditions. Contributors discuss their findings within multiple constructs such as neolithisation, social interaction, trade, mobility, social complexity, migration, colonisation, and historical ecology. Multiple data sources are used which include but are not restricted to rock art, cooking pits and pots, stable isotopes, dental calculus and pathologies, starch grains, and proxies for past environmental conditions.
You can buy the book here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Archaeology-of-Caribbean-and-Circum-Caribbean-Farmers-6000-BC---AD/Reid/p/book/9780815347408
Ulloa-Hung, Jorge and Valcárcel-Rojas, R. (2018) Indígenas e indios en el Caribe: Presencia, legado y estudio (Los indígenas más allá de Colón). Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC): Dominican Republic.
The book “Indígenas e indios en el Caribe; Presencia, legado y estudio” pretends to rethink the vision of inferiority of the indigenous projected by traditional colonial history and revitalize the role of indigenous people in the current societies of the region. These texts, signed by nine relevant Caribbean researchers, employs archaeological, ethnographic, and historical information to propose a new view about the indigeneity theme focused primarily in Cuba, Puerto Rico and La Española.
You can buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Indigenas-indios-Caribe-Presencia-indigenas/dp/9945472674
General
Nelson, M. K. and Shilling, D. (eds) (2018) Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
This book examines the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and how it can provide models for a time-tested form of sustainability needed in the world today. The essays, written by a team of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, explore TEK through compelling cases of environmental sustainability from multiple tribal and geographic locations in North America and beyond. Addressing the philosophical issues concerning indigenous and ecological knowledge production and maintenance, they focus on how environmental values and ethics are applied to the uses of land. Grounded in an understanding of the profound relationship between biological and cultural diversity, this book defines, interrogates, and problematizes, the many definitions of traditional ecological knowledge and sustainability. It includes a holistic and broad disciplinary approach to sustainability, including language, art, and ceremony, as critical ways to maintain healthy human-environment relations.
You can buy the book here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/traditional-ecological-knowledge/85A275CF02E0631B7DD59EC8D4561734#fndtn-information
King, T.J. and Robinson, G. eds., 2019. At Home on the Waves: Human Habitation of the Sea from the Mesolithic to Today (Vol. 24). Berghahn Books.
Contemporary public discourses about the ocean are routinely characterised by scientific and environmentalist narratives that imagine and idealise marine spaces in which humans are absent. In contrast, this collection explores the variety of ways in which people have long made themselves at home at sea, and continue to live intimately with it. In doing so, it brings together both ethnographic and archaeological research – much of it with an explicit Ingoldian approach – on a wide range of geographical areas and historical period.
You can buy the book here: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/KingAt