Tying the Silken Threads

This chapter considers the five insects highlighted in this book and a common thread they all share, linked by the Silk Roads of Asia. All have had immeasurable impacts on human history, both positive and negative, though numerous other insect species also have stories to tell. As this chapter shows, the stories of all five insects in this book converge in their influence on the life and legacy of Napoleon, who wore silk clothes, was impacted by the diseases vectored by fleas and mosquitoes, and took honey bees as his emblem. The vectors of diseases were particularly impactful, and three species feature in decisive battles lost by Napoleon: fleas carrying plague defeated his expeditionary force in Egypt and Syria; mosquitos carrying yellow fever forced the withdrawal of French forces in Haiti; and human lice carrying typhus defeated the Grand Armée in Russia. Following their defeat and withdrawal from Haiti, the French sold their American land to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. As this chapter shows: never doubt for a moment that insects have shaped history in ways that are usually not seen.

Divide and Conquer

This chapter examines the process of field formation on the western frontier, focusing in particular on the process through which the physical environment was transformed into territories and states, which served as arenas for political competition. It begins by situating the case of South Dakota within the context of western settlement more generally, documenting the steps through which the land that would eventually become South Dakota came to be organized by the federal government, starting with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The remainder of the chapter traces the process through public land was continually divided into states and territories, eventually leading to the creation of South Dakota in 1889. Boundary disputes played a critical role in shaping patterns of political contention as rival factions of elites fought to secure control over the location of scarce spatial resources such as the capital.

Las “Reliquias Calchaquíes” de metal de la Colección Zavaleta en el Field Museum of Natural History de Chicago. Un análisis integral.

El Field Museum of Natural History de Chicago (Illinois, Estados Unidos) posee una gran cantidad de piezas arqueológicas procedentes de tres provincias del Noroeste argentino (Salta, Tucumán y Catamarca) que fueron adquiridas en 1904 durante la Louisiana Purchase Exposition, feria universal llevada a cabo en Saint Louis (Missouri, Estados Unidos) donde Manuel Zavaleta, su colector, llevó parte de su compilación de objetos con fines de obtención de un rédito económico. Este artículo propone abordar un universo específico de éstos, las piezas elaboradas en diversos tipos de metal, desde un análisis integral no solo contemplando sus características, sino también haciendo una revisión desde la estadía de los objetos en Saint Louis hasta su actual resguardo en el museo de Chicago. Hoy día la muestra de objetos metálicos de la institución es de 185 ítems. Análisis morfológicos, funcionales y tecnológicos fueron efectuados así como un seguimiento de los mismos en el registro archivístico y fotográfico del museo. Los artefactos arqueológicos fueron también sometidos a evaluación composicional mediante un analizador portátil por fluorescencia de rayos X provisto por la institución. Sus resultados en términos semi-cuantitativos, y junto a una evaluación de los alcances y limitaciones de este tipo de acercamiento analítico, son presentados.