Archaeological Tree-Ring Dating at the Millennium

Tree-ring analysis provides chronological, environmental, and behavioral data to a wide variety of disciplines related to archaeology including architectural analysis, climatology, ecology, history, hydrology, resource economics, volcanology, and others. The pace of worldwide archaeological tree-ring research has accelerated in the last two decades, and significant contributions have recently been made in archaeological chronology and chronometry, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and the study of human behavior in both the Old and New Worlds. This paper reviews a sample of recent contributions to tree-ring method, theory, and data, and makes some suggestions for future lines of research.     

Neoliberalizing Border Management in Finland and Schengen

Abstract: This paper provides a critical examination of the development of border management in Finland and the Schengen Area, the point of departure being that contemporary performances of border enforcement and security cannot be understood as distinct from the process of neoliberalization. The particular case which is examined is that of the Finnish Border Guard (FBG) service. Border management in Finland provides an interesting case not only because Finland is responsible for controlling the Schengen, European Union–Russian border but also because since Finnish state reforms in the early 1990s, neoliberal rationales have increasingly provided the guidelines for how to calculate and optimize border security. This paper emphasizes that the rationales of border management should be made transparent and opened for public debate. The analysis is structured around the themes of internationalization, competitiveness, risk prevention and the functioning of society, all of which are regarded as the key rationales of neoliberalized border governance.     

Parchment Production in the First Millennium BC at Seglamen, Northern Ethiopia

Traditional Ethiopian and European processes of parchment manufacture and their associated tools are described and compared with artefacts recovered from an important pre-Aksumite site at Seglamen, in the highlands of northern Ethiopia. Many close similarities of tools used at Seglamen in both the earlier and later phases of the pre-Aksumite, from about 800 BC, to implements used by present-day Ethiopian scribes attest to the systematic production of parchment at Seglamen and to cultural continuity over a period of almost three millennia.     

Stone Tool Research at the End of the Millennium: Procurement and Technology

The literature of stone tool procurement and technology published in the past decade is reviewed in this article. The presentation attempts to be geographically comprehensive but, because of where it was written, it provides fuller coverage of New World publications, particularly those from North America, than of literature from the rest of the world. Topics covered include raw materials and procurement, flake experimentation, technology, and specific tool types. An article in a subsequent issue of this journal will discuss issues of function, behavior, and classification in lithic analysis.     

Corruption at the Border: Intersections between US Labour Demands,Border Control,and Human Smuggling Economies

Based on a qualitative methodology that includes in‐depth interviews conducted between 2008 and 2017 with 180 migrant smugglers from Mexico, the objective of this paper is to analyse the way US employers' interest in having access to cheap labour feeds migrant smuggling, and is connected to corruption in US border enforcement. We conclude that corruption on the US side of the border could be systematic and not a matter of a few bad apples. Corruption is manifested in selective enforcement, which is a pragmatic practice that justifies enhanced immigration enforcement, and benefits US immigration agents, US employers and Mexican smugglers, while undocumented border crossers suffer the monstrous effects of militarised border enforcement.     

Stone Tool Research at the End of the Millennium: Classification, Function, and Behavior

This is the second of the two papers that review the literature of archaeological lithic analysis over the last decade. This paper concentrates on aspects of stone tool research that are not directly related to the production or procurement of the tools themselves. It is divided into classification, functional analyses, behavioral processes, and approaches to the subject currently popular among analysts. As with the previous paper, an attempt has been made to be as comprehensive as is reasonable, though availability of sources has resulted in an emphasis on North American literature.     

试论陕甘宁边区的通货膨胀与反通货膨胀措施

抗日战争时期,陕甘宁边区经济曾遇到了巨大困难,发生了严重的通货膨胀。其原因是与边区的特殊自然社会、环境,国民党的封锁,和边区在金融方面的一些措施的缺陷有关。1942年后,在中共中央的领导和关怀下,边区政府和人民共同努力,采取了一系列切实可行的措施,大大的缓和了通货膨胀对边区经济的冲击,较成功地保障了边区的供给,为中国人民的反法西斯斗争做出了巨大贡献。     

New Excavations at Border Cave,KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds, rhizomes, and charcoal, provide a profile of palaeo-vegetation through time. A bushveld vegetation community is implied before 100,000 years ago. The density of lithics varies considerably through time, with high frequencies occurring before 100,000 years ago where a putative MSA 1/Pietersburg Industry was recovered. The highest percentage frequencies of blades and blade fragments were found here. In Members 1 BS and 1 WA, called Early Later Stone Age by Beaumont, we recovered large flakes from multifacial cores. Local rhyolite was the most common rock used for making stone tools, but siliceous minerals were popular in the upper members.     

Disjointed knowledges,obfuscated visibility. Border controls at the French-Italian Alpine border

This article deals with border controls at the French-Italian Alpine frontier which have been implemented to govern and contain the migrants in transit. It analyses border controls by focusing on the circulation of knowledge and the economy of visibility which are enacted at that frontier. The article illustrates how the French-Italian Alpine area has become a border-zone for migrants, showing that modes of knowledge and forms of visibility are constitutive of bordering processes. It moves on with a section on the production and circulation of knowledge at the border, introducing the notion of “disjointed knowledges” to account for the asymmetries and fragmentariness at play in border control activities. It argues that we need to start from the partial non-circulation of data and local frictions in order to understand bordering practices. Then, it engages with the obfuscated visibility produced on migrant crossing, drawing attention to how migrants’ presence at the border is alternatively visible and concealed by the authorities.     

浅析中国政府在中印边界争端中的危机处理

1962年前后,印度政府在中印边境地区推行的“前进政策”,不仅挑战了新中国外交政策的根本原则,而且严重威胁了中国西南边境的安全与稳定,使得中印两国围绕边界问题的争端发展成为一场国家关系危机。中国政府应对这场危机的决策过程,既体现了危机处理的一般规律,又反映了中国领导人进行危机决策的一些独特的原则和方式。     

Solidarity as Spiritual Exercise: Accompanying Migrants at the US/Mexico Border

Abstract

This essay seeks to articulate a practical understanding of Christian solidarity as spiritual exercise that is based on Jon Sobrino's theological insights, uniquely grounded in his formation in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his particular witness to the martyrs of El Salvador. We then turn to an exploration of the Kino Border Initiative, a binational ministry of sociopastoral accompaniment, educational outreach, research and advocacy as an institutional attempt to pursue a praxis of solidarity.     

Holding the wild in the seed: Place,escape and liminality at the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP), which conserves the seeds of wild plants, is the world's largest ex situ plant conservation project. Recourse to ex situ conservation, however, presents something of a paradox for the conservation of plants. Plant ecology often defies delineation into distinct units and is intricately rooted in place. ‘Plant-being’, therefore, has elicited attention within the ‘more-than-human’ turn for its entangled and relational nature. Yet, as the author considers here through reference to her research within the MSBP, in the context of seed conservation, survival for plant species is pursued precisely through escaping place and entanglement. By ‘thinking-with’ seed ecology, she proposes that a dialectic between plant and seed – and thus between entanglement and disentanglement – emerges, suggesting that rather than presenting a paradox, the practice of seed conservation might potentially foster a liminal, generative and experimental space within which new formations of human-plant relationships might be nurtured.     

Attempting to Identify Activities in the Past: Preliminary Investigations of the Third Millennium BC Population at Tell Abraq

This paper reviews attempts by osteologists to identify activities in the past through examination of particular alterations to skeletal remains. Following an outline of the history of interest in occupational pathology, the physiology of bone is briefly summarised in order better to understand the potential of investigating occupation in the past. A history of archaeological research and interpretations in this field is then provided, followed by a discussion of a particular case study in which the human skeletal remains and material culture from the site of Tell Abraq were examined by the author in an attempt to identify bone alterations which may be attributed to certain activities.     

Millennium Celebrations of King Gesar

King Gesar has been circulating among Tibetans for some 1,000 years or more.The longest epic in the world, passed down through the ages in the oral form, has even drawn the concern of the international community. UNESCO has approved activities in honor of the millennium of the epic. Public opinion hails this as a major event important for the protection of traditional Tibetan culture and the promotion of various ethnic groups in the world.The epic is a concentration of ancient tales, legends, sayings, and various kinds of folk arts. Thus far, 150 volumes have been located; they contain some 1.5 milion lines.     

Middle Holocene Taphonomy and Paleozoology at the Prairie-Forest Border,the Itasca Bison Site,MN

The Itasca Bison site near the prairie-forest border in central Minnesota is important to understanding the cultural and ecological role of bison in the upper Midwest during the middle Holocene. Recent reanalyses of this assemblage support the original interpretation of a taphonomically complex, fluvially modified site. Despite this taphonmic complexity, the role of humans in the butchering and possible accumulation of some of the bison fauna is also supported, although not as the only mechanism of accumulation. The bison assemblage is slightly biased toward males, and seasonality estimates are spread throughout the year. New direct accelerator mass spectrometry dates indicate a minimum of two highly mixed depositional events: one at 7970–7790 cal B.P. and an earlier event between 8520 and 8180 cal B.P.