Beyond Hawaiʻi: Native Labor in the Pacific World, Gregory Rosenthal (2018)

Review of: Beyond Hawaiʻi: Native Labor in the Pacific World, Gregory Rosenthal (2018) Oakland: University of California Press, 320 pp., ISBN 978 0 52029 507 0 (pbk), £28

Ancient DNA Identification of Giant Snakehead (Channa micropeltes) Remains from the Market Street Chinatown and Some Implications for the Nineteenth-Century Pacific World Fish Trade

This study presents the results of ancient DNA analyses of eight snakehead (Channa sp.) bones from the Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese diaspora archaeological site in San Jose, California. The sequences of a short stretch of the mitochondrial DNA identify the Market Street Chinatown snakeheads as Giant Snakehead (Channa micropeltes), a species native to Southeast Asia. These results provide the first archaeological evidence of the nineteenth-century trade of Asian freshwater fishes to North America, and they reveal that preserved fish products from throughout the Pacific World were readily distributed across the Chinese diaspora. We place our findings within the broader context of nineteenth-century Chinese migration to show how the common Chinese small shareholding business model and access to trade connections facilitated by Chinese-operated import/export firms known as jinshanzhuang allowed Chinese fishers to be successful across the Pacific World. Finally, we suggest avenues for future study by comparing Chinese migration-based, flexible fishing strategies using generalist methods with the highly specialized collection and trade of species like Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) in the North Atlantic.

First Peoples of the Atomic Age

In this article, I explore the history of biological materials that scientists and physicians collected from those who survived the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Originally acquired beginning in 1946 to track the genetic effects of radiation in the offspring of atomic bomb survivors, these materials gradually became relevant to other kinds of biological and biomedical research. Many of the samples still held at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation are from individuals (approximately 65 percent) who are no longer alive. To scientists and others engaged with their management and use, these samples are uniquely valuable, timeless, a legacy for “all mankind.” Like materials taken from isolated populations around the world, the atomic bomb samples are both unique and universalized. They join other forms of Big Data in their seamless transition from dramatic specificity to general relevance. My paper explores what such legacies mean, and what they might teach us about the history of biology, the practices of biobanking, and the post-1945 Pacific world. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.