"An account of Louise Erdrich's trip through the lakes and islands of southern Ontario with her 18-month old baby and the baby's father, an Ojibwe spiritual leader and guide"--

Description and preliminary paleoecologic interpretations of fossil mollusks from seven island groups.

The early-modern Venezuelan Caribbean did not lure seafarers with the saccharine delights of cane sugar but with the preserving qualities of solar sea salt. In this book, the historical archaeological study of this salty commodity offers a unique entryway into the hitherto unknown maritime mobilities and daily lives of the seafarers who camped at the saltpans of Venezuelan islands from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, cultivating and harvesting the white crystal of the sea.For the first time, this study offers a comprehensive documentary history of the saltpans of La Tortuga Island and Cayo Sal in the Los Roques Archipelago, uncovering the surprising importance of their salt. Long-term archaeological excavations at the campsites by these saltpans have brought to light the plethora of material remains left behind by seafarers during their seasonal and temporary salt forays. The exhaustive analysis of the thousands of recovered things - pipes, punch bowls, plates, teapots, buttons, bones - contrasted with documentary evidence, not only enables us to understand where these things came from but also by whom they were used. By engaging the evidence through my theoretical framework of assemblages of practice, I demonstrate how seafarers and things were vibrantly entangled in the everyday assemblages of practice of salt cultivation, dining and drinking.This multisited approach spanning 256 years, reveals that seafarers were fervent buyers of fashionable products, drinking hot tea from porcelain tea bowls, using colorful ceramic chamber pots for their hygienic needs and imbibing exotic rum punch by the scorching saltpans of the uninhabited Venezuelan islands. Intended for scholars, students and the interested public alike, this historical archaeological study positions humble seafarers in the limelight, not as the anonymous movers of international trade and facilitators of imperial interests, but as avid trans-imperial and extra-imperial consumers of the fruits of those very empires.

Vanuatu. The Cook Islands. Fiji. The names evoke white-sand beaches, swaying palms and lazy holidays. But in reality, these idyllic places are tropical maelstroms of global realpolitik, caught between the world’s superpowers, former colonial masters and tin-pot despots. Collectively the Pacific nations, which form one third of the globe’s surface area, are one of the most strategically important regions in the world – for military might, for energy security and geopolitical borders. Even more importantly, these nations are at the frontline of climate change, as rising sea levels, salinity, cyclones and pollution put their very existence at stake.

Using his extensive personal experience in the Pacific, Tom Bamforth shows us the people of the islands, their cultures and how they live in these remote and increasingly challenging places. From uprisings in New Caledonia to tsunamis in Tonga, this is a book about interaction, race, colonisation, climate change, nuclear testing, resistance, cultural preservation, urban life, the tastiness of well roasted pig, and the pleasures of canoeing at dusk. It is sometimes said that the Pacific is to the contemporary world what the Mediterranean was to the ancients and what the Atlantic was to the twentieth century. The Rising Tide, then, is a journey into the ocean of the future. 

With humour and insight, Tom Bamforth presents both an insider's and an outsider's view of life in the Pacific, rendered in vivid detail and colour. Gripping and beautifully written, The Rising Tide masterfully weaves the stories of people at the forefront of global change around a broader narrative of political mismanagement, culture, diplomacy and identity.