Recent developments in Irish industrial policy

This paper reviews recent developments in Irish policy and the debates and controversies that have surrounded these developments. While Irish industrialization has been dependent since the 1950s on the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI), since the beginning of the 1980s analyses and policies have tended to emphasize the importance of promoting the indigenous sector. While there is some evidence that this shift in emphasis was associated with an improvement in Irish industrial performance, the most recent review of industrial policy called for a further shift in the direction of support for indigenous enterprise. Some implications of these recommendations are discussed, especially as they pertain to debates surrounding the achievement of cohesion in the European Union.     

European developments in strategic spatial planning

Strategic spatial planning which takes an integrated approach to the development of a territory seemed to go out of fashion, but now there are signs that it is being re‐established. This paper explores these developments using case studies from 10 European countries. The analysis uses an ‘institutionalist’ approach, which examines how the ‘agency’ of spatial planning practices responds to the ‘structure’ of contextual forces, at the same time influencing that structure. The ‘driving forces’ which are influencing strategic spatial planning are investigated, as are two aspects of the changes in spatial planning: institutional relations and policy agendas. The conclusions are that—at least in the case studies—there is a movement in the institutional relations towards horizontal articulation, territorial logic, and negotiative forms. Policy agendas too are changing, becoming more selective and using new conceptions of space and place. Those institutional developments, however, are not necessarily being translated into territorially‐integrated policy (as distinct from functional/sectoral policy). That translation appears to require simultaneous re‐framing of relational resources (trust, social capital), knowledge resources (intellectual capital), linked to strong mobilization efforts (political capital). The cases considered varied significantly in how far that had been done. Where it had, strategic spatial plan‐making practices were playing a key role in developing institutional territorial integration and re‐invigorating territorial identities.     

Recent developments in the analysis of lithic artifacts

A review of recent research on lithic technology and functional analysis is presented. Our perception of the state of the art is based on a review of the literature published during the past three years and on the topics that were covered at conferences and workshops on lithic analysis. While the goals have essentially remained the same since the turn of the century, concerns with chronology and the classification of lithic artifacts have given way to studies that treat stone implements as products of a dynamic system of human behavior. In order to understand stone artifacts and the people that made and used them, archaeologists must understand theprocesses involved in the acquisition, production, exchange, and consumption of lithic artifacts. In the past ten years, experimental studies involving the manufacturing and use of stone tools have been integrated with studies of refitted or conjoined lithic artifacts and microwear analysis. The result is a much more dynamic view of the variability in assemblages of lithic artifacts. In this review, we focus on replication and technological analysis of chipped stone artifacts and microwear analysis, and consider the implications of this research.     

Comments on some developments in North European prehistory

The burials of the Nubian A‐Group recorded between the First and the Second Cataracts of the Nile and dated ca. 3200–2900 BC have yielded an important source material of rich and varied funerary offerings. This paper presents a case study aiming to establish a qualitative and quantitative ranking of the burials and to investigate relationships and patterns as regards age, gender and social organization, and also to study chronological implications. The results show that the A‐Group culture displayed a rather elaborate and mature social structure, perhaps organized around a female core with strong matrilineal traditions, and where the men occupied a different social sphere with their own symbolic expressions. One finds a shift from an earlier, uniformly stratified society towards a more complex structure with clear social inequality developed in Lower Nubia simultaneously‐with the emergence of the Firs t Dynasty in Egypt ca. 3000 BC.     

Recent developments in social and cultural geography in Spain

Controversy has erupted in Selma, Alabama, over recent efforts to commemorate the career of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate cavalry officer and founding member of the original Ku Klux Klan. More generally, the controversy in Selma is emblematic of an enduring regional pattern in which contests over the future are couched in terms of the past. Relative to other media, monuments appear to be trustworthy and lasting. Despite this appearance of historical consensus and stability, the city's public spaces are the product of and conduit for ongoing politics. The current conflict pits memorial activists associated with the Civil Rights Movement against neo‐Confederates. Interpreted in the context of Selma's increasing promotion of Civil Rights heritage and the recent election of the city's first African American mayor, the Forrest affair highlights the utility of the concept of symbolic accretion for understanding the complexities of commemorating antagonistic histories in the same place. Symbolic accretion describes the appending of commemorative elements onto already existing memorials. The situation in Selma suggests two different types of symbolic accretion, allied and antithetical. More generally, the act of commemoration itself may be understood as a process of accretion in that heretofore anonymous spaces are formally recognized via the grafting of memorial elements.     

D/developments after the Meltdown

Abstract: Part of what makes the current conjuncture so extraordinary is the coincidence of the massive economic meltdown with the implosion of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, and the reappearance of US liberal internationalism in the guise of “smart power” defined in terms of Diplomacy, Development, and Defence. This essay engages these challenges through a framework that distinguishes between “Development” as a post‐war international project that emerged in the context of decolonization and the Cold War, and capitalist development as a dynamic and highly uneven process of creation and destruction. Closely attentive to what Gramsci calls “the relations of force at various levels”, my task in this essay is to suggest how the instabilities and constant redefinitions of official discourses and practices of Development since the 1940s shed light on the conditions in which we now find ourselves.     

Ivory Coast Prehistory: recent developments

Ten years after Raymond Mauny's overview of Ivory Coast archaeology, Robert Chenorkian summarizes and illustrates recent developments in Ivoirian prehistory: palaeolithic industries discovered in stratigraphy, epipalaeolithic artefacts with¹⁴C dating, neolithic industries, and new data on shell middens. A table of radiocarbon dates resulting from the last ten years of research is included.     

馆藏文物保存环境研究的发展与现状

随着对预防性保护理念的深入理解,馆藏文物保存环境研究已成为国内外文物保护科技工作中不可或缺的重点领域.为此聚焦国际博物馆环境研究的最新动向,重点介绍近年来我国在馆藏文物保存环境监测、检测、评估、调控等方面取得的研究成果,并对“十二五”期间馆藏文物保存环境研究的发展方向进行了展望.     

Protection of underwater cultural heritage in China: new developments

As a crucial part of the Maritime Silk Road, underwater cultural heritage plays a role in promoting development of One Belt and One Road in China due to its historical, archaeological and cultural value. The Chinese government has taken effective and reasonable measures to safeguard underwater cultural heritage, with numerous achievements. This paper addresses recent developments in the preservation of underwater cultural heritage with regard to legislation and policy.     

Ancient Greece: Recent developments in Aegean archaeology and regional studies

This review begins by defining the diverse field of Greek archaeology. Based on our own expertise, we focus on recent advances in the study of ancient Greece, especially the prehistoric Aegean, and on regional approaches, primarily those associated with archaeological surface survey. General developments in method and theory are addressed as they relate to several major topics: social complexity, Aegean chronology, writing systems, exchange, and regional studies.