The Hacienda El Progreso functioned as an important Ecuadorian agro-industrial enterprise in the late nineteenth century. Operating out of San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos archipelago, the plantation exported refined sugar, coffee, cattle products, and other goods to national and international markets. From its beginnings in the 1860s, the plantation established the first permanent human settlement on the island, and long after its demise in the 1930s, it continues to exert an important influence in local culture. Contemporary communities of San Cristóbal are shaping their identities based on the historical importance of the hacienda. The summer of 2018 was our last field season. From its start, the Historical Ecology of the Galápagos Islands project involved close participation with communal authorities and town leaders to investigate the island's human past. In this article, we discuss legacy and services of our project in the contemporary setting of Galápagos. We examine the relevance and contributions of our project to education, heritage policies, and the local economy. We discuss lessons learned from interactions and collaborations between archaeologists and the local community, and we evaluate the consequences of implementing an archaeological project on a remote environmental sanctuary where interest in human history can collide with the agendas of nature conservation and a lucrative ecotourism industry.

Ice-sheet models (ISMs) developed to simulate the behaviour of continental-scale ice sheets under past, present or future climate scenarios are subject to a number of uncertainties from various sources. These sources include the conceptualization of the ISM and the degree of abstraction and parameterizations of processes such as ice dynamics and mass balance. The assumption of spatially or temporally constant parameters (such as degree-day factor, atmospheric lapse rate or geothermal heat flux) is one example. Additionally, uncertainties in ISM input data such as topography or precipitation propagate to the model results. In order to assess and compare the impact of uncertainties from model parameters and climate on the GLIMMER ice-sheet model, a parametric uncertainty analysis (PUA) was conducted. Parameter variation was deduced from a suite of sensitivity tests, and accuracy information was deduced from input data and the literature. Recorded variation of modelled ice extent across the PUA runs was 65% for equilibrium ice sheets. Additionally, the susceptibility of ISM results to modelled uncertainty in input topography was assessed. Resulting variations in modelled ice extent in the range of 0.8–6.6% are comparable to that of ISM parameters such as flow enhancement, basal traction and geothermal heat flux.

The propagation saw test (PST) is a recently developed snowpack test that enables assessment of the fracture propagation propensity of selected persistent weak-layer and slab combinations, which are known to release dry-slab avalanches. In this paper, we assess the slope- scale accuracy of the standard PST method at validated sites of observed weak-layer fracture initiation, with or without propagation. We also report on experiments with alternative test methods and varying saw thicknesses. Results show the standard PST method is comparably accurate to other common snowpack tests in predictive skill when predicting propagation propensity on the slope scale. Although a slight but significant dependence on saw thickness was found, it did not affect the interpretation in our validation study. Alternative methods such as scaling the test column length with weak-layer depth or leaving the upslope end of the column attached to the surrounding snowpack did not improve slope- scale accuracy and these tests were often more difficult to interpret.

In 1976, David Sugden and Brian John developed a classification for Antarctic landscapes of glacial erosion based upon exposed and eroded coastal topography, providing insight into the past glacial dynamics of the Antarctic ice sheets. We extend this classification to cover the continental interior of Antarctica by analysing the hypsometry of the subglacial landscape using a recently released dataset of bed topography (BEDMAP2). We used the existing classification as a basis for first developing a low-resolution description of landscape evolution under the ice sheet before building a more detailed classification of patterns of glacial erosion. Our key finding is that a more widespread distribution of ancient, preserved alpine landscapes may survive beneath the Antarctic ice sheets than has been previously recognized. Furthermore, the findings suggest that landscapes of selective erosion exist further inland than might be expected, and may reflect the presence of thinner, less extensive ice in the past. Much of the selective nature of erosion may be controlled by pre-glacial topography, and especially by the large-scale tectonic structure and fluvial valley network. The hypotheses of landscape evolution presented here can be tested by future surveys of the Antarctic ice sheet bed.

People use domestic material culture to create an image of themselves that they project to others who live in, or visit, their homes. This was as true in the Spanish colonial city as it is in any city today. If, therefore, we wish to investigate status and ethnicity in the Spanish colonies, domestic material culture is an excellent source of information on how people imagined their own place, and that of others, in society. The first step toward this is the reconstruction of the material culture of urban colonial houses. There are two main bodies of evidence available to accomplish this. The first is descriptions of household goods in the notarial archives of the colonies, and the second is the physical remains of household refuse found in archaeological contexts in cities. Each body of evidence can make unique contributions to our understanding of social relations in the colonial city, but each also has unique limitations. I use the interplay between colonial notarial documents and archaeological remains to help define the role of material culture in the study of caste relations in Cuenca, Ecuador. The Spanish colonial régimen de castas was a system that categorized people by caste, using a complex mixture of legal status, ethnicity, racial (or physical) categorization, and economic roles.

As one of the most common artifact categories found on Spanish colonial sites, the wheel-made, tin-glazed pottery known as majolica is an important chronological and social indicator for archaeologists. Initially imported from Europe, several manufacturing centers for majolica were set up in the New World by the late sixteenth century. The study of colonial majolica in the Viceroyalty of Peru, which encompassed much of South America, has received less attention than ceramic production and trade in the colonial Caribbean and Mesoamerica. Prior to 1650 the Viceroyalty of Peru was supplied with majolica largely produced in the city of Panama Vieja, on the Pacific. Panama Vieja majolica has been recovered from throughout the Andes, as far south as Argentina. Majolica made in Panama Vieja provides an important chronological indicator of early colonial archaeological contexts in the region. The reproduction of Iberian-style majolica for use on elite tables was symbolically important to the imposition of Spanish rule, and thus Panamanian majolicas also provide an important indicator of elite status on Andean colonial sites.