Exploitation of wild mammals in South-west Ethiopia during the Holocene (4000 BC–500 AD): the finds from Moche Borago shelter (Wolayta)

Abstract

The rock shelter of Moche Borago in Wolayta Province, South-west Ethiopia, has provided evidence of human occupation during part of the Holocene. Recovery of more than 30,000 animal bones has allowed reconstruction of the exploitation of animals by humans from the 4th millennium BC until the first half of the 1st millennium AD. It could be demonstrated that humans exploited (mainly for food) a great diversity of mammals, especially bovids, and that there were very few diachronic changes observed in the fauna during the occupation. Remains of domestic animals have not been found, even in the most recent part of this period, suggesting that animal husbandry was a late introduction into this mountainous and isolated part of Ethiopia. The human inhabitants of the shelter appear to have exploited the surrounding environment, using its favourable position at the end of a stepped valley for mass killing of African buffaloes (Syncerus caffer). The rich and diverse environments of Wolayta favoured the development of a specialised society that mastered the exploitation of wild animals throughout much of the Holocene.     

The dyer and the cook: finds from 8 Pilestræde,Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

Excavation by the Museum of Copenhagen in Pilestræde, Copenhagen, in 2004 revealed a 17th-century dyer's workshop, in which the first example of a dyeing vat known from excavations in Denmark was examined. Evidence is presented to show that this would have been used in dyeing indigo. A well-preserved latrine dating from the beginning of the 18th century was also found. Multidisciplinary study showed that both the vat and the latrine contained well-preserved remains of plant foodstuffs that were exotic for their time. The finds are exceptional, not only because post-medieval archaeology is a new discipline in Denmark, but because opportunities for excavation rarely arise in the city.     

Fighting the Risorgimento: foreign volunteers in southern Italy (1860–63)

Abstract

Between 1860 and 1863 hundreds of men from all over Europe volunteered for service in the wars of southern ‘brigands’ on behalf of the exiled King Francis II of Naples. In an attempt to correct the often biased interpretation of this involvement (that was attributed simply to a thirst for adventure, romanticism or even psychological disorder) that coloured the accounts by Italian patriots, this essay suggests the need for fresh consideration. It develops three lines of inquiry that focus respectively on the strong impact of Italian Unification on conservative and Catholic opinion and the ways in which these sources portrayed the struggles of the southern insurgents, the clumsy efforts made by the Neapolitan government-in-exile to recruit volunteers and organize armed expeditions against the former kingdom, and the so-called ‘white international’ in which the warriors of the counter-revolution were depicted as combatants in conflicts that were both civil wars and at the same time episodes in a much longer international ideological struggle. In this context, the significance of foreign involvement in defence of the Neapolitan Bourbons takes on a significance that goes far beyond its poor military outcome.     

The Location of the Boundary Between the Tropical and Subtropical Landscapes in Eastern Asia (Based on material from a field study of yünnan)

The author, another opponent of large reservoirs in Western Siberia, analyzes the effect of such large inland water areas on the moisture and heat supply of the region. He predicts that the construction of a reservoir would result in a southward shift of the optimal moisture and heat conditions for agriculture and would have an adverse cooling effect on climate, especially In summer.     

Studying the International,Serving the Nation: The Origins of International Relations (IR) Scholarship in Germany, 1912–33

This paper examines the dynamics of internationalist and nationalist political thought in the formation of International Relations (IR) scholarship in Germany during the early twentieth century. It argues that while liberal internationalism played a significant role in shaping the discipline, IR scholars were often devout nationalists and worked for their government rather than for international peace. German institutions for the study of IR, like their Anglo-American counterparts, were founded in the aftermath of the First World War. Celebrated during the 1920s as ‘bulwarks of democracy’, they were nationalised by the Nazi government, lost their academic profile and since then have been largely forgotten. This paper explains the origins of IR research at the Institut für Auswärtige Politik, based in Hamburg and directed by Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, as well as at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, led by Ernst Jäckh in Berlin. Formally inaugurated in 1923 and 1920 respectively, both institutions drew on pre-war intellectual traditions as well as wartime networks. In light of recent re-appraisals of inter-war IR scholarship in other countries, the German case offers new and important insights into the complex intellectual traditions of what has traditionally been oversimplified as a first ‘great debate’ between ‘idealists’ and ‘realists’.     

The existence of open areas during the Mesolithic: evidence from aeolian sediments in the Elbe–Jeetzel area,northern Germany

Traditionally Mesolithic hunter–gatherer cultures are supposed to have lived in a primeval forest environment with a closed vegetation cover during the Early and Mid-Holocene. It is not until the onset of subsequent Neolithic agricultural societies that the development of more expansive open areas is assumed. Therefore our perception of the Mesolithic economy in the European lowlands is highly affected by the idaea of adaptation to dense forest environments and a very stable system of resource exploitation. However, recent palaeoenvironmental studies provide evidence that areas of open landscapes must have existed at least temporarily during the Mesolithic and evoke the question whether human impact may be accountable for this.     

Stable isotope analysis on human remains from the final Early Holocene in the southern Puna of Argentina: The case of Peñas de las Trampas 1.1

In this work are presented the results of isotopic analyses made on bone remains of human individuals (n?=?6) from the southern Puna of Argentina dated to the final Early Holocene (ca. 8230–8000 BP). They were found in structures located in Peñas de las Trampas 1.1, a rockshelter at 3582 m.a.s.l. in Antofagasta de la Sierra, in the southern Argentinian Puna. They contain multiple secondary burials. Bone fragments were recovered from at least six individuals, three in each structure. Stable isotopes of Carbon (δ¹³C) and Nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) analysis were aimed at defining aspects related to the palaeodiet of the six individuals within the palaeo-economic subsistence spectrum typical of hunter–gatherers. It is worth noting that these human remains are among the earliest from North-Western Argentina, where funeral practices are related with the transportation of certain anatomical parts. The palaeodietary inference considers, on the one hand, the extreme aridity of this geographical area and its impact on the isotopic ecology. And, on the other, it takes into account the fact that four of the six individuals under study were breastfed infants. The results are in agreement with the expected values of the period, which has been characterized as the beginning of the arid Altithermal.     

Life Narratives of the Past: Herta Müller on Communist Romania

Narratives of the past are created and, in some cases, recreated, through literary works by revealing fragments from past traumas, reinterpreting past events, or focusing on historical events held in the collective memory. In a text dedicated to excavation and memory, Walter Benjamin notes that when approaching one’s personal past, one must proceed like a person digging in the ground, and not be afraid of returning repeatedly to the same matter. This essay argues that Herta Müller uses this method to address the personal and collective Romanian past, creating through her novels a literary remembrance of the past that deeply resonates with the memories of those affected by totalitarian regimes. Never presenting a linear or whole narrative of the past but rather the pieces of a life-narrative puzzle, Müller’s literary world becomes a medium through which the victims of totalitarian regimes can regain control over the narratives of their past.     

The invisible war on nature: the Abyssinian war (1935–1936) in newsreels and documentaries in Fascist Italy

This contribution to the special issue focuses on newsreels and documentaries that were produced concerning the Second Italo–Ethiopian War (1935–1936), commonly known as the Abyssinian War. It aims to contextualise LUCE's filmic production on the war, so as to create a framework in which the institute can be understood not only as being part of a wider politics of propaganda in Fascist Italy, but as an example of a modern socio-technical organisation that enabled the discursive construction of East African nature as ‘Other’ and therefore helped to justify colonial war as a process of sanitised creative destruction aimed at replacing a previous, negative ‘first nature’ with a positive, Fascist and Italian ‘second nature’. The article draws on archival documents from Mussolini's government cabinet, and on LUCE documentaries and newsreels; these sources are used to create a background against which LUCE's concern with the Second Italo–Ethiopian War can be understood.     

A neglected chapter in Italy's transition from Fascism to the Republic: The Kingdom of the South (1943–1944)

Gallerano's paper examines the reasons why Italian historians have paid little attention to the political events that followed the liberation of the Italian Mezzogiorno and the brief life of the government established under the auspices of the monarchy during the period of what was termed the Kingdom of the South. He argues that this neglect derives in part from the brevity of the period of civil government in the south, but mainly from the fact that historians have been attracted above all by the history of the Resistance which has led them to consider events in the south to be of secondary importance. Gallerano argues that such a view is quite unjustified and shows how some historians ‐ from Chabod in the early 1950s ‐ have understood that events in the south bore very directly on the broader transition from Fascism to the Republic. Challenging Renzo De Felice's recent claims that Italy's defeat on 8 September 1943 marked the beginning of a crisis of national identity, Gallerano argues that the circumstances that obtained in the months that followed made the south an exceptionally rich terrain for exploring the very contradictory feelings and expectations that were aroused in Italy by the experience of military defeat and political reconstruction.     

Risky business: historical archaeology of the Dutch salt enterprise on La Tortuga Island,Venezuela (1624–38)

SUMMARY: In the decades of the 1620s and 1630s the Dutch engaged in salt extraction on the island of La Tortuga, Venezuela, erecting a wooden fort, portable cannon emplacements, jetties and semi-industrial solar saltpan production facilities. The relative paucity of the archaeological record juxtaposed with the wealth of detailed documentary data and fieldwork experiences led to the operationalization of the heuristic tool of ‘scapes’. A critical construction of these socially alive portions of the island landscape and seascape demonstrates 1) how north-western European conceptions of the cultural control of nature were embodied in Dutch orderliness and industriousness; 2) how the strategy of maximization of extractive practices and minimization of risk was evidenced in the overall ephemerality of structures; and 3) how these structural imperatives were imbricated in the prose of human life and death that was unfolding from one small-scale event to another on this desolate island.     

The haircutting movement in modern China (1903–1927): Analysis from the view of “body”

Modern China was an intense period of “body rebuilding.” Within the field of body history in China, the modern Chinese history has been rediscovered and reinterpreted from the view of “body.” In this paper, the author attempts to explore the movement of women’s haircutting in modern China and analyzes its social and political meaning from the view of body organ, gender, politics and culture. The conclusion is that the women’s haircutting movement in modern China was involved in the pursuit of state power, women’s rights, and political power in different levels.