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African warfare was a subject of intense controversy in the debate over slavery and abolition that unfolded in Great Britain and the British colonies during the eighteenth century. According to the Roman laws of war, conquerors fighting a just war had the right to enslave and sell defeated enemies to recoup losses suffered in battle. Apologists for slavery in the British colonies frequently invoked conquerors' rights, claiming that planters had purchased slaves from victorious African princes and thus enjoyed legal rights to captured slaves. Abolitionists such as Anthony Benezet, Thomas Clarkson, and Ottobah Cugoano challenged this justification for slavery by arguing that the conduct of many African wars violated the tenets of just war, thus invalidating a conqueror's right to enslave enemies. To prove African slavery wars were unjust, abolitionists documented African warfare, collecting letters from travelers, interviewing witnesses, and publishing their own experiences of capture and enslavement. Eyewitness accounts of African war had a significant effect on the debate over slavery. Many pamphlets and books delved into the details of African conflicts, and parliamentary committees investigating the slave trade devoted considerable attention to the causes and conduct of African wars.

Settlement scaling theory predicts that higher site densities lead to increased social interactions that, in turn, boost productivity. The scaling relationship between population and land area holds for several ancient societies, but as demonstrated by the sample of 48 sites in this study, it does not hold for the Northern Maya Lowlands. Removing smaller sites from the sample brings the results closer to scaling expectations. We argue that applications of scaling theory benefit by considering social interaction as a product not only of proximity but also of daily life and spatial layouts.

Scholarship has documented in detail how Spanish colonists forced California Indians to convert to Catholicism, but some Indigenous converts managed to avoid confinement in the mission system, particularly those who resided in the borderlands between Spanish and Russian settlements. This contribution to the roundtable considers the travels of one Coast Miwok family who avoided confinement and preserved local control over tribal homelands by assiduously cultivating links with Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches while holding colonial newcomers at arm's length.

The Yalahau Regional Settlement Pattern Survey (YRSPS) addresses the complex negotiations that constituted ancient Maya society through an investigation of the distribution of settlement across the Yalahau region of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico. This paper begins with a brief culture-historical background of the Yalahau region where occupation ranges from the Middle Preclassic period (700–200 b.c.) to the Postclassic period (a.d. 1100–1521). The region had its peak occupation during the Terminal Preclassic period (75 b.c./a.d. 100–a.d. 400), and this paper explores how monumental architecture, through its size and the rituals conducted in and around it, materialized an enduring sense of community identity during this time period. In so doing, this paper examines the tensions within and between communities as sociopolitical strategies are negotiated and contested in the continually messy process of constituting society.

We use ceramic and obsidian data from the ancient Maya port site of Vista Alegre to discuss long-distance exchange during the Terminal Classic (c. AD 850–1100) period. This is a time often associated with increased international trade relations and the growth of Chichen Itza as a dominant regional power in the northern Maya lowlands. Critical to the increased volume of international trade were the merchants who transported goods along the coast of Yucatan in large trading canoes. By combining a macroscopic assessment of the ceramics with visual, XRF, and INAA analyses of the obsidian artifacts, we gain insight into the various socioeconomic forces at work moving goods around the Peninsula. Given the paucity of Terminal Classic settlement in the interior Yalahau region, Vista Alegre appears to be an isolated site during this period, approximately 40 km from the nearest coastal neighbor. This allows us to focus on coastal exchange as the sole means by which goods arrived at the site. Our preliminary data contribute to the growing literature on the role market economies played in the Maya area, and the increased opportunities this afforded coastal peoples as circum-peninsular trade became more common through time. En este trabajo utilizamos información sobre la cerámica y la obsidiana del antiguo puerto Maya de Vista Alegre, Quintana Roo, México, para discutir el intercambio a larga distancia durante el periodo Clásico terminal (ca. 850–1100 dC). Dicho periodo es frecuentemente asociado con el incremento de las relaciones comerciales internacionales y el crecimiento de Chichén Itzá como centro regional dominante en las tierras bajas Mayas del norte. Los comerciantes que transportaban bienes a lo largo de la costa de Yucatán en grandes canoas comerciales fueron fundamentales para el aumento del volumen del comercio internacional. Combinando la examinación macroscópica de la cerámica con el estudio visual, por fluorescencia de rayos X y por análisis instrumental de activación neutrónica (XRF e INAA, respectivamente, por sus siglas en inglés) de los artefactos de obsidiana, se obtuvo información sobre las diversas fuerzas socio-económicas involucradas en el transporte de mercancías alrededor de la península. Dada la escasez de asentamientos del Clásico terminal en el interior de la región de Yalahau, Vista Alegre parece haber sido un sitio aislado durante este periodo, localizado a aproximadamente 40 km del asentamiento costero más cercano. Esto permite enfocarnos en el intercambio costero como el único medio por el cual las mercancías llegaron al sitio. La información preliminar aquí presentada contribuye al creciente conjunto de investigaciones sobre el papel que desempeñaron las economías de mercado en el área Maya y las mayores oportunidades que esto brindó a los pueblos costeros.

In colonial North and South America, print was only one way of communicating. Information in various forms flowed across the boundaries between indigenous groups and early imperial settlements. Natives and newcomers made speeches, exchanged gifts, invented gestures, and inscribed their intentions on paper, bark, skins, and many other kinds of surfaces. No one method of conveying meaning was privileged, and written texts often relied on nonwritten modes of communication. Colonial Mediascapesexamines how textual and nontextual literatures interacted in colonial North and South America. Extending the textual foundations of early American literary history, the editors bring a wide range of media to the attention of scholars and show how struggles over modes of communication intersected with conflicts over religion, politics, race, and gender. This collection of essays by major historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars demonstrates that the European settlement of the Americas and European interaction with Native peoples were shaped just as much by communication challenges as by traditional concerns such as religion, economics, and resources.

In September 1817 officials of the Russian colony of Ross drafted a protocol of a meeting held with the Kashaya Pomos, the Bodega Miwoks, and other Native Americans. The protocol described how the Russians had promised gifts and military protection to their Native American allies in exchange for the right to continue occupying Metini, a Kashaya Pomo-controlled territory about eighty-five miles north of San Francisco. Soon, reports of the meeting had made their way up and down the coast and across the Pacific, as Native Americans, Russian imperial ministers, and diplomats from Russia's imperial rivals debated its significance. This essay describes how the Russian-American Company used the protocol and other agreements with Native Americans to lay claim to coastal territories, and how Russia's imperial rivals disputed such claims. It argues that company officials used documentation of Native American signs of consent, such as speeches and gestures, to assert ownership of Metini, while Spain disputed the validity of agreements with Native Americans. The meaning that Russian officials assigned to Native Americans' consent enabled the Kashaya Pomos, the Bodega Miwoks, and other groups to exert some influence over Russian colonization and trade.

Around 1670 an enslaved plaintiff called James Indian sued for his freedom in Massachusetts Bay. As his case languished, he found colonists willing to help him. The result of their collaboration, “James Indians answers to his Mr Carrs reasons of appeale,” offered a powerful critique of New England slavery law.

In the northern Maya lowlands the transition from the Late Preclassic to the Early Classic is poorly understood. Despite the knowledge that ceramic traditions underwent drastic changes, the timing of these changes is difficult to place in absolute terms. Many of the chronological problems stem from an over-reliance on the dates ascribed to this transition by earlier scholars. We evaluate the cultural historical frameworks of the Preclassic and Early Classic periods in the northern lowlands, which have remained surprisingly static since their creation over 50 years ago. Using data from excavations and regional settlement surveys, we explore the possibility of how changes in settlement patterns, monumental architecture, and ceramics contribute to debates about concepts such as the Terminal Preclassic and Protoclassic and our broader understanding of the social and political transformations that occurred at this transition. We propose that five ceramic spheres emerged in the northern lowlands during the Terminal Preclassic (75 B.C.-A.D. 400). The increased ceramic heterogeneity correlates with the emergence of more hierarchical political structures. We use two research areas, Yaxuná and the Yalahau region, to explore the implications of a Preclassic Maya collapse, as well as architectural data combined with ceramic data to shed light on the variability of sociopolitical organization at the end of the Preclassic.