Shifts in Neandertal mobility,technology and subsistence strategies in western France

We propose a reassessment of Neandertal mobility strategies by crossing technological and zooarchaeological data. A broad comparative approach to the Middle Paleolithic series from western France shows that the Levallois and laminar flaking systems, the Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA) shaping system and the Quina and discoidal-denticulate flaking systems, vary significantly in terms of duration of reduction sequences, blank versatility and tool maintenance. These technological systems, which prevail in this context over different time periods, reflect distinct mobility strategies as a response to differing hunting practices. This new approach to Middle Paleolithic technologies and related mobility patterns gives new insights into Mousterian diversity. It also highlights the determinant role played by large game hunting strategies in the organization of late Neandertal societies.     

Transdisciplinary Archaeology and the Future of Archaeological Practice: Citizen Science,Portable Science,Ethical Science

This paper presents a vision and a pathway for the future of archaeological practice, in which several fields that are currently considered distinct, including community-based collaborative archaeology, indigenous archaeology, and applied archaeology, could become the norm. Inspired by personal encounters with some exceptionally open and collaborative archaeology projects, as well as by recent advances in archaeological science, which are starting to make it more portable, this paper sets out an agenda for a more open approach to archaeological practice. It advocates a method of producing knowledge about the past that does not privilege one investigator over another, but gives everyone who is interested and wants to participate an opportunity to do. Specific methodological challenges that are discussed include the need to ‘flip’ the public outreach element of research designs, to embed open participation from the outset by nurturing relationships of mutual respect and trust, and to take advantage of, and improve, the portability of archaeological science, so that it can be done in and by local communities. It is argued here that the opening of archaeological research, including the archaeological sciences, to a wider range of participants, is the most ethical approach to archaeological practice in a pan-disciplinary research environment.     

Minding the gaps: exploring the intersection of political economy,colonial ideologies and cultural practice in early modern Ireland

SUMMARY: Examinations of the imposition of colonial ideologies actualized through the mechanism of plantation, or enforced settlement, in Ireland often highlight plantation as a stark process that was founded upon, and thus fully accommodated to, a fully-fledged version of mercantile capitalism. Yet on the ground, engagements between peoples reveal that ideologies were incompletely applied, plantation plans seldom realized and new economic formulations incompletely rendered. On close examination, seemingly incompatible economic structures (Gaelic, Old English and incoming plantation) emerge as capable of mutation and accommodation, thus forcing a reconsideration of the rigid interpretations of the rise of capitalism in the early modern Atlantic that has typified scholarship in historical archaeology. The gaps between rhetoric and reality are considered, and a case made for how a more nuanced consideration of the intersections of culturally disparate political economies can yield a deeper understanding of colonial encounters and colonial settings.     

Capitalism,internal colonialism,and patterns of dominance

William Barclay, Krishna Kumar, and Ruth P. Simms, eds. Racial Conflict, Discrimination, and Power: Historical and Contemporary Studies. New York: AMS Press, 1976. 437 pp. Tables, figures, chapter notes, and bibliography. $15 cloth, $5.95 paper.     

Clubs,Spades, Diamonds and Disadvantage: the Geography of Electronic Gaming Machines in Melbourne

Opportunities to gamble, particularly on electronic gaming machines (EGMs) have been rapidly increasing in Australia during the 1990s. The increase in expenditure on gambling and the related problems have subsequently become a growing concern, particularly in relation to disadvantaged sectors of the population. Given this, the development of a geography of gambling is an important step in understanding the implications of this rapidly expanding industry. This paper addresses this issue at two distinct geographical scales in metropolitan Melbourne and considers the distribution of EGMs in relation to levels of economic well‐being. Findings suggest that patterns evident at the wider Melbourne scale of greater concentration of EGMs in less advantaged regions are also reflected at a local level. These findings are related to the wider issues of accessibility to gambling facilities and problem gambling.     

Science as culture and leisure: cultural policy,industry and scientific culture in the Canadian context

Government ministries of industry have long been promoters, co‐producers and even sometimes producers of cultural policy – from local and regional development strategies to initiatives that fund cultural organizations to support emerging fields such as the technological arts. This article explores the relationship between cultural policy‐making, science museums and industry ministries in Canada. More specifically, this article investigates the emergence and institutionalization of scientific culture policy as a result of advocacy by science centres in the 1980s. Beyond the delineation of scientific culture as a field and of the contribution of industry ministries to cultural policy, this article highlights the entrepreneurial strategies of cultural organizations and their impact on policy and facilities, thus suggesting that cultural organizations are not just passive instruments of social regulation and reform.     

Deaths,disappearances, borders: Migrant disappearability as a technology of deterrence

This paper analyses migrant disappearances in connection to EU bordering practices and techniques. Drawing on fieldwork in various localities at Greek borderlands, I argue that death or disappearance, due to drowning, hypothermia, exhaustion, violence, deprivation of medical care, and road accidents, to name but a few examples, has become an integral part of border enforcement in the Global North. To engage analytically with such an instantiation of border violence, I propose to utilise the notion of migrant disappearability. This disappearability is a produced condition (as opposed to accidently or randomly appearing) of everyday existence that does not necessarily lead to death or disappearance but, nevertheless, exerts pressure towards certain kind of precarities and threats by limiting the horizon of possibilities racialised migrants from the Global South have ahead of them. Furthermore, the state of being disappearable is a social space one constantly enters, leaves, re-enters and leaves again; rather than being at the forefront at all times, it looms above like a ghost.     

Mission boys, civilized men, and marriage: educated African men in the Missions of Southern Rhodesia, 1920-1945

This paper examines what marriage may have meant to African men within the Christian elite of Southern Rhodesia. Using mission and government sources, it argues that domestic, Christian marriage was important to elite African men as a way of allowing them to achieve adulthood while remaining in good standing with mission sponsors who generally objected to or feared indigenous ideas of patriarchal male adulthood. Tracing life histories of two American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ministers, one who succeeded in remaining within the mission system and one who left, blacklisted, it explores how domestic, Christian marriage defused many of the missions' suspicions of elite African men, while providing a way to acquire the economic, social and political power associated with full adulthood within the local context.     

Montpellier and Genoa: The dilemma of dominance

During the high and late middle ages, Genoa was a dominant force in Mediterranean commerce. This study examines the relationship between Genoa and the Southern French town of Montpellier in three historical eras: the twelfth century to about 1180; from the 1180s to about 1270; and from 1270 through the mid-fourteenth century. In the first era Genoa, along with Pisa, exercised economic hegemony over the coast of Southern France. In the second period, Montpellier gradually emancipated itself from Genoese commercial control. In the third era interaction between Montpellier and Genoa became increasingly complex because of the growth of French influence in Languedoc. The French monarchy sought to control southern French commerce with a requirement in 1278 that Italian merchants reside in Nimes and trade through Aigues-Mortes, and later in the 1330s with the offer of a transport monopoly over goods from southern France to Genoese admirals Doria and Grimaldi. Montpellier resisted these French efforts, invoking its commercial independence and political allegiance to the Majorcan king. By the mid-fourteenth century Genoese pretensions to commercial dominance over Montpellier were hollow reminders of the past, but the Genoese legacy of business technology remained strong.     

Science,geography, and nation: the global creation of Thumba

Abstract

The origins of the Indian space program are typically traced back to the founding of a rocket launch base in Thumba in the state of Kerala in India in the 1960s. In creating infrastructure at Thumba, Indian scientific elites used geography as an instrument to create a vast international network of scientific and political actors committed to the science that was possible within India, particularly cosmic ray studies. They were drawing on a long tradition of linking geography to science redolent of the colonial era but were inspired by their newly constituted political imaginary of independent India as a place where science, geography, and nation were perfectly mapped on to each other. NASA’s help was crucial in this regard, enabled as a tool in Cold War high politics, as American technocrats sought to steer India towards the West, while India itself was keenly aware of a more proximate phenomenon, Pakistan’s own burgeoning efforts to do the same. Concerned about domestic opprobrium to large Indian investments in space technology, Indian and American actors shielded the Thumba project from critique by installing it under the umbrella of the international order, in this case the United Nations. This internationalism was complemented by a deep and firm belief in the universalism of modern science as a portable instrument, capable of improving the social order anywhere, regardless of political or social context.