Greetings! The December 2006 Newsletter is now available online at: http://www.diaspora.uiuc.edu/newsletter.html In December's newsletter, we feature articles and essays by Jerome Handler, Marsha Robinson, Madia Thomson, Daniel McNeil, Sarah Croucher, Stephanie Wynne-Jones, Lisette Roura Alvarez, Alicia B. Valentino, and Jillian E. Galle, an excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston, news reports, conference announcements, calls for papers, and book reviews. A table of contents is set out below. Please contact me if you have essays, articles, analysis papers, book reviews, project reports, announcements, or news updates that you'd like to contribute to the African Diaspora Archaeology Network and Newsletter. The newsletter is published quarterly, in March, June, September, and December, and has an expanding readership of over 2000 per issue. Cheers, Chris December Newsletter ** Articles, Essays, and Reports ** On the Transportation of Material Goods by Enslaved Africans During the Middle Passage: Preliminary Findings from Documentary Sources, by Jerome S. Handler From Microscope to the Marriage Contract of Castile's Trastamara Dynasts Isabel and Fernando: Evidence of African Berber and Germanic Cultural Fusion, by Marsha Robinson Tikettin yat familia/Once upon a Family: Family Origins and Slave Histories in Southern Morocco, by Madia Thomson American Demands, African Treasures, Mixed Possibilities, by Daniel McNeil Slave Routes in Western Tanzania: A Preliminary Report on Survey in Tabora and Ujiji, by Sarah Croucher and Stephanie Wynne-Jones From Huts to Barracons in Nineteenth-Century Cuba Plantations, by Lisette Roura Alvarez Dissertation Abstract: The Dynamics of Industry as Seen from Van Winkle's Mill, Arkansas, by Alicia B. Valentino Dissertation Abstract: Archaeological Evidence for Costly Signaling in the 18th-Century Chesapeake, by Jillian E. Galle Seventy Years Ago in Jamaica, excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston ** News and Announcements ** International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, by U.N. Secretary-General Caribbean Grave Site Illuminates Slavery, by Mat Probasco Libraries in the Sand Reveal Africa's Academic Past, by Nick Tattersall In Search of Skeletons, by Elizabeth Redden Museum Developments in 2006 Archaeological Field School at Elmina, Ghana Field School in Historical Archaeology at Falmouth, Jamaica New Journal of African and Black Diaspora Studies New Books: Cloth in West African History; Women and Religion in the African Diaspora; Archaeology, Language, and the African Past; Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds ** Conferences and Calls for Papers ** Society for Historical Archaeology 2007 Conference ASWAD Fourth Conference, 2007 Journal of Pan African Studies Special Issue Revisiting the Olaudah Equiano Legacy Caribbean Studies Association 32nd Annual Conference Commemorating Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade ** Book Reviews ** Editor's Note on Book Reviews Review of Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora, by Ty M. Reese Review of Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia, by Gloria Chuku Review of Africa and the Americas: Interconnections during the Slave Trade, by Jelmer Vos ****************** Christopher C. Fennell Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology 109 Davenport Hall, MC-148, 607 S. Mathews Ave. University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801 phone: (217) 244-7309 fax: (217) 244-3490 http://www.anthro.uiuc.edu/faculty/cfennell