Towards an understanding of local protest: hospital closure and community resistance

The aim of this paper is to suggest an analytical framework through which the complex question of hospital closure and local protest can be further explored. The significance of this area of study lies with the extraordinary events that surrounded a campaign to save the Kidderminster General Hospital from downsizing. Whilst the hospital was not saved, the local campaign committee organizing the protest took their fight into the political arena and were successful in gaining a parliamentary voice in the 2001 general elections. Such an achievement has had considerable political implications, however, the question asked here is how might we begin to interpret the events that took place. To this end, the paper draws on current geographical literature in an attempt to construct a framework that accounts for both national policy debates and the local context within which such campaigns emerge.     

Towards an Archaeology of Disentanglement

The impact of connectivity in past societies has long been a focus of archaeological studies. Well-established approaches have been developed over the years to understand emergent connections and entanglement between distant communities, including world system, culture contact, post-colonial theories and network analyses. Our understanding of connectivity remains partial, however, because researchers have focussed on the establishment and consequences of contact and largely ignored the dynamics that often led to its interruption. Yet these processes of ‘disentanglement’ are just as complex and far-reaching as their converse and need to be understood in their own right. This paper shows that a thorough analysis of disentanglement processes can contribute to our understanding of the very nature of the interrupted contacts, as well as shed light on the social dynamics that engender long-term changes in contact patterns. The concept of disentanglement is discussed in the light of current theories of connectivity and explored through regional case studies in Late Bronze Age Italy (Salento) and Greece (Achaea).     

Swidden agriculture,village longevity,and social relations in Formative central Tlaxcala: Towards an understanding of macroregional structure

Understanding social change within early village societies requires analysis at multiple scales. In this paper, we focus on macroregional structure in the Formative era of Central Mexico, based on excavations at village sites in Tlaxcala. A macroregional scale is particularly important for contextualizing developments in the study region. Rapid political evolution after 900 BC built on a legacy of organizational innovations in settled communities to the south. The earliest farmers in central Tlaxcala practiced a system of swidden agriculture developed at lower-lying elevations. Practiced on the erodible slopes of central Tlaxcala, that system led to the widespread degradation of farmland. Consequences at the village scale involved chronic instability of settlement and recurring localized stress on faunal resources.     

The significance of pockmarks to understanding fluid flow processes and geohazards

Underwater gas and liquid escape from the seafloor has long been treated as a mere curiosity. It was only after the advent of the side‐scan sonar and the subsequent discovery of pockmarks that the scale of fluid escape and the moon‐like terrain on parts of the ocean floor became generally known. Today, pockmarks ranging in size from the ‘unit pockmark’ (1–10 m wide, < 0.6 m deep) to the normal pockmark (10–700 m wide, up to 45 m deep) are known to occur in most seas, oceans, lakes and in many diverse geological settings. In addition to indicating areas of the seabed that are ‘hydraulically active’, pockmarks are known to occur on continental slopes with gas hydrates and in association with slides and slumps. However, possibly their potentially greatest significance is as an indicator of deep fluid pressure build‐up prior to earthquakes. Whereas only a few locations containing active (bubbling) pockmarks are known, those that become active a few days prior to major earthquakes may be important precursors that have been overlooked. Pockmark fields and individual pockmarks need to be instrumented with temperature and pressure sensors, and monitoring should continue over years. The scale of such research calls for a multinational project in several pockmark fields in various geological settings.     

Towards a nuanced understanding of health‐supportive place using composite research methods

Chronic non‐communicable diseases comprise a major challenge for health in contemporary Australia and across the globe and, while various factors are at play, personal choices in behaviour and lifestyle are significant. The physical make‐up and ongoing management of the places where we live positively and negatively influences these lifestyle choices and subsequent health outcomes. However, responses—in research, policy, built environment design, construction, and management—frequently fail to recognise the intricacies of this people‐place‐behaviour nexus largely because those responses are highly focused and empirical. Rather, the health‐supportive environments needed to address the current chronic disease epidemic also require additional—networked, nuanced, and intuitive—understandings. Responding to that need, the study described in this paper took a comprehensive view of what constitutes a health‐supportive built environment. We detail the composite methods employed—built environment audits, interviews, and focus groups—all of which are available for use by others in similar situations. Then, using two case study examples, we reflect upon how our methodology revealed otherwise hidden aspects of the extent to which the study sites supported or hindered health‐supportive behaviours and responses. These results suggest intervention actions for policy makers and practitioners that will help them respond to the complex needs of communities in creating a health‐supportive environment.     

Shifting Sands: Towards an Anthropological Praxis

This paper reflects on some of the dilemmas within my shifting roles over the last twenty years as helper/friend/member of the Katherine Indigenous community in the Northern Territory of Australia and then, as anthropologist. During this period, indigenous calls for land rights have been increasingly interpreted in the terms of ‘bourgeois law’ (Collier et al. 1995). Indigenous identities have become the focus of intense public scrutiny as they define eligibility for scarce resources. Fighting over the scraps of what was once a wholistic indigenous landscape, some of Australia's indigenous peoples have begun to turn upon each other, in the struggle for recognition. Anthropologists as the scribes of indigenous identities are placed in invidious positions, and are easily accused of participating in (neo)colonial endeavours. This paper takes some small steps towards locating an anthropological praxis in this land rights/native title arena of power.     

Archaeo-Ornithology: Towards an Archaeology of Human-Bird Interfaces

ABSTRACT

This editorial introduces Archaeo-Ornithology as a distinct field of inquiry and discusses its multidisciplinary background and potential contribution to a more nuanced characterisation of changing human-animal interfaces through time and space. We propose a new conceptual model – grounded in the analysis of ‘triangles of interaction’ – to elucidate the interactional dynamics which underpin varying human-animal relationships. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by exploring the example of anthropogenic space as a key context of human-bird figurations. Each contributing paper of the special issue, which will be introduced in more detail below, foregrounds different aspects and emphasises varying dimensions of the triangle, thus contributing in different ways to archaeo-ornithological research. As highlighted throughout the introduction, however, archaeo-ornithological approaches are not only capable of shedding new light on old questions about the past, they also have the potential of addressing some pressing contemporary quandaries, including continuing debates on the Anthropocene.     

Two decades of progress towards understanding fossilization processes and isotopic signals in calcified tissue minerals

Techniques for dietary and palaeoclimate reconstruction based on stable isotope ratios in the mineral phase of calcified tissues show great promise, but their pathways of development have not been smooth. Two separate trajectories, based on the phosphate and carbonate compartments respectively, have been pursued,usually by different protagonists. There are parallels in the development of these two ‘fields’, however. A fundamental commonality lies in the constraints imposed by the nature of calcified tissue minerals and by diagenesis, although realization of their significance has perhaps been slower amongst phosphate practitioners. In this paper I show how incomplete understanding of the nature of biological apatites, coupled with our often limited understanding of natural variability in carbon and oxygen isotopes in animals, has impeded progress in both areas. Nevertheless, enormous strides have been taken over the past two or so decades. Some of the important milestones in the development of these two techniques are chronicled. With emerging understanding of oxygen isotope variation in mammalian biological apatites and their consequences for behavioural and palaeoclimate interpretations, the two fields are drawing closer together.     

Bone diagenesis: an overview of processes

This overview is a summary of the state of understanding of processes and states in bone diagenesis, as seen from a chemical perspective. It deals with the significance and usefulness of the measurements of ‘diagenetic parameters’—that is, of measures of diagenetic alteration—and of the theories of physico–chemical processes which are considered to underlie the measured changes. In many ways these two aspects are seen to come together quite well, and some progress has been made in relating different burial environments to the observations of alteration. Such a framework also allows us to ask more penetrating questions, such as how characteristic differences in diagenetic alteration might arise, and how the pre–burial environment might influence the eventual course of diagenesis.     

Social Exclusion: Towards an Analytical and Operational Framework

This article attempts to analyse the economic, social and political dimensions of social exclusion. After comparing the concept with the conventional notions of poverty and marginalization, we argue that social exclusion overlaps with poverty broadly defined, but goes beyond it by explicitly embracing the relational as well as distributional aspects of poverty. It is shown that the concept has universal validity although it has not gained much attention in developing countries. Indicators to measure different aspects of social exclusion are discussed; in this context, the article considers how appropriate it might be to use precariousness of employment as a measure. Finally, methodological problems involved in operationalizing the concept as a tool of policy formulation to fight exclusion are underlined.     

The early city in West Africa: towards an understanding

The dominating paradigm of urbanism in West Africa is steadily shifting from the city-centric to the dynamic consideration of the city's function within a wider settlement hierarchy. The authors appraise these theoretical positions and discuss the methodologies appropriate to each. Following the thematic framework developed in the theory and method sections, we then consider what research at the major early town sites has to date revealed about the chronology, course, and circumstances of urbanism in West Africa. Data available from the several sites considered is highly uneven. Analysis, even when quality data are available, has in some cases been hindered by a limiting theoretical approach. Although urban investigations in West Africa are only in their infancy, it is clear that cities are but one of several institutions indicating the early, indigenous emergence of hierarchically-ordered societies. With the recent demonstration that at least some West African towns represent indigenous processes of urbanization, the comparative study of factors contributing to urban growth and alternative urban paths becomes imperative.

---

Résumé Le paradigme dominant de l'urbanisme en Afrique de l'ouest change progressivement de l'aspect cité-centrique à la considération dynamique de la ville au sein d'une hiérarchie d'établissement plus vaste. Les auteurs évaluent ces positions théoriques et discutent des méthodologies appropriées à chacune. Suivant le cadre thématique élaboré dans les sections sur la théorie et la méthode, ils considèrent ensuite ce que la recherche dans les sites urbains primitifs principaux a révélé jusqu'à présent quant à la chronologie, le développement et les circonstances de l'urbanisme dans l'Afrique de l'ouest. Les données provenant des nombreux sites considérés sont très inégales. Même lorsque des données de qualité furent disponibles, l'analyse fut dans certains cas entravée par les limites imposées par l'approche théorique. Bien que les investigations urbaines en Afrique de l'ouest n'en sont qu'à leurs débuts, il est évident que les villes ne sont que l'une des nombreuses institutions signalant l'apparition indigène précoce de sociétés à ordre hiérarchique. Sachant maintenant qu'au moins certaines villes de l'Afrique de l'ouest représentent des processus indigènes d'urbanisation, il est maintenant impératif que soit effectuée l'étude comparative des facteurs contribuant à la croissance urbaine et aux diverses voies conduisant à l'urbanisation.

     

Towards an Archaeology of Recent Conflict in Western Great Lakes Africa

Abstract

This paper proposes an archaeology of recent conflict in western Great Lakes Africa as a means to give volume to subaltern voices marginalized within and since the conflicts, to produce alternative historical narratives and thus create a more nuanced understanding of war and its aftermath in this region. In addition, by drawing upon emerging theoretical and methodological frameworks in contemporary archaeology, this paper proposes that a politically and socially engaged participatory approach to the material remains of the past may also contribute toward cathartic post-conflict local resident healing and academic understandings regarding the contemporary construction of post-conflict identities. In so doing, the paper presents a survey of prominent conflict remains and discusses their suitability for archaeological approaches, focusing upon one site, Pabbo, an Internally Displaced Person camp in Northern Uganda.     

Securing Modernity: Towards an Ethnography of Power in Contemporary Melanesia

ABSTRACT Contemporary public discourses, which depict Melanesian nation states as weak or as having failed, serve to legitimize the imposition of external, neo‐paternal, regulatory structures on former colonies. Such discourses problematise the numerous local experiments that combine custom, state structures and religion so as to create modern Melanesian ways of governing. Starting with the colonial policy of indirect rule, Melanesia has had a long history of experiments that have sought to tie together different regimes of power in relays, which are meant to remediate, supplement and strengthen state structures. Today, those relays are pathologised as dysfunctional precisely because they can be used to subvert, contest and divert state programs. Current political problems arising from growing ethnic and economic divisions are producing new conflicts, new moral languages for figuring evil, and new tactics and technologies of power. Many of these new experiments seek to reconnect the nation state with the moral authority, pastoral regimes, and individualizing practices of Christianity.     

Anomalies in Red and Blue II: Towards an understanding of the roles of setting, values, and demography in the 2004 and 2008 U.S. presidential elections

Counties identified as anomalous in the 2004 US presidential election - large metropolitan counties and majority-minority counties that voted Republican and non and small-metropolitan counties that voted Democratic, are the subject of a qualitative analysis to assess why they were exceptions to the conventional wisdom of a Red and Blue America polarized along metropolitan-non-metropolitan and modern versus traditional dimensions. Contacts with professional colleagues, and with media and partisan representatives, and visits to selected counties provided valuable insights and helped us to assess the extent to which the county votes in 2008 reinforced or changed the broad Red and Blue dimensions derived from 2000 to 2004.     

Towards an ecology of mesolithic man in the uplands of great britain

Some of the recent archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence about Mesolithic man in the uplands is reviewed. The role of large mammals in the economy is reviewed and suggestions made about the need for seasonal movement by hunting societies in the context of the probable biological productivity of red deer. The manipulation of habitat to enhance deer production and herding is also proposed, but the overall ecological effect of pre-agricultural groups is thought to be low.