Aberglasney: the theory,history and archaeology of a post-medieval landscape

Abstract

Printed and documentary sources, archaeological excavation, dendrochronology and geophysical survey are employed to investigate the history of Aberglasney, a small country house near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire (SN 5815 2213). Traditions about its garden layout, parapet walkway, a gatehouse and a yew ‘tunnel’ are examined. Circa 1600, Bishop Anthony Rudd (1549–1614) probably built a ‘cwrt’ enclosure aligned north-south. The gatehouse belonged to this or a later house. In 1770 or later, the Dyer family rebuilt the house, probably redesigned and rewalled the entire estate layout, when an earlier farm building was converted into the parapet walkway and stock pens, in an area later known as the ‘cloistered court’. In Victorian times this feature, originally a farmyard, became a pleasure garden, part of a typical Georgian-Victorian complex including a kitchen garden, glasshouses, orchards and fishpond. A yew grove was established, most likely c. 1805, when the Philipps family began planting in a Picturesque style. Abandoned c. 1950, house and garden became dilapidated. The site is now the object of a radical development programme, involving inter alia the stabilization of all buildings fabric, and imposing 16th-/17th-century style formal gardens over the 18th-/19th-century kitchen garden and orchard.     

Community-based Heritage Management: a case study and agenda for research

Heritage sites regarded as important are safely managed by the state, voluntary or private sectors but the majority of sites, despite statutory protection, remain unrecognised and without a role in their host communities. New schemes such as the Local Heritage Initiative in the UK aim to encourage communities to recognise their heritage assets and in managing them effectively to contribute to their preservation. With reference to the case of Nether Poppleton near York (UK), the present study explores the factors and conditions for effective community management displayed in one locality by groups who are successfully conserving and managing a diverse set of local heritage sites. Interviews and joint tasks enabled an analysis of the complex range of factors and conditions that can lead to a successful community-based initiative. Future research will determine the extent to which these factors, if applied to other sites, might produce the same results. The importance of this agenda is underscored by the increasing reliance on community-based heritage management in the UK and elsewhere.     

Cross-border mergers/acquisitions: a review and research agenda

Cross-border mergers/acquisitions account for the bulk of contemporaryforeign direct investment. Their significance, which is reinforcingthe position of transnational corporations as the dominant institutionalforce in the global economy, is related to the nexus of processesimplicated in international economic restructuring. Cross-bordermergers/acquisitions are, therefore, important influences uponthe evolution of the space economy, but this perspective onmerger/acquisition activity has been neglected in academic research.This review makes connections between disparate literaturesto identify potential lines of enquiry and attempts to situatethese lines of enquiry within current research agendas in economicgeography. On a basic level, mergers/acquisitions create newcorporate geographies which represent valid objects of researchin the geography of enterprise tradition. However, these corporategeographies are set within the institutional context of social,economic, and political relations. Many of the most interestingresearch questions derive from these contextual relations whichare addressed with reference to issues of embeddedness at variousgeographical scales and also by linking these issues to aspectsof employment and territorial development.     

Services and the New Economy: elements of a research agenda

In developing and advanced economies job creation continuesto be led by various services. A New Economy is being created,which is challenging the geography of the Old Economy. The OldEconomy has been dominated by corporations headquartered disproportionatelyin the ‘Global Cities’ and large agglomerations.The New Economy is being built around smaller enterprises distributedin a much more dispersed geography. The New Economy has jobcreation centered in services, but relies on the Old Economyfor physical capital and a portion of demand. The location ofbusiness activity in the New Economy can be much more contingenton the desires of entrepreneurs, and is far less tied to thecost-based logic that has shaped and reshaped the distributionof industrial capacity in the Old Economy. The New Economy reliesto a growing extent on telephonic-based networks for productionand delivery, but it also has leading-edge layers that requireface-to-face human contact in the production process. At thesame time the Old Economy is becoming ever more directed byproduction processes less tied to localized human skills, andin the process is shedding labor demands. The New Economy isexploding in its industrial composition, challenging researchersto define its new industries (such as establishments with only.com, .org, .gov, or .edu Internet addresses), and the extremelyrapid division of labor in unstandardized services such as managementconsulting and software engineering. The Old Economy is clearlyresponding to these developments in the New Economy, and restructuringis occurring globally. Research is needed speaking to these trends, and the primarypurpose of this paper is to issue a call for work of this type.The paper identifies priority needs from a theoretical perspective,as well as describes badly needed empirical work on the NewEconomy.     

A critical review of entrepreneurial ecosystems research: towards a future research agenda

The entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) literature has attracted much attention, especially in policy circles. However, the concept suffers from a number of shortcomings: (1) it lacks a clear analytical framework that makes explicit what is cause and what is effect in an EE; (2) while being a systemic concept, the EE has not yet fully exploited insights from network theory, and it is not always clear in what way the proposed elements are connected in an EE; (3) it remains a challenge what institutions (and at what spatial scale) impact on the structure and performance of EE; (4) studies have often focused on the EE in single regions or clusters, but lack a comparative and multi-scalar perspective and (5) the EE literature tends to provide a static framework taking a snapshot of EE without considering systematically their evolution over time. For each of these shortcomings, we make a number of suggestions to take up in future research on EE.     

The extent of farm desertion in central Sweden during the late medieval agrarian crisis: landscape as a source

The effects of medieval agrarian crisis on settlement and population were considered in a major interdisciplinary research project in Scandinavia during the 1960s and 1970s. Within this project, there were significant differences in methods used to calculate the extent of farm desertion between historians in the participating countries. The reliance on written source material within the Swedish team reflected the dominant approach amongst historians who made less use of map and landscape evidence than others. In this renewed investigation of the magnitude of farm desertion in the Late Middle Ages, focussing on the province of Jämtland in central Sweden, field survey of the physical landscape and some three thousand historical maps are used as evidence, alongside conventional written sources, such as official letters and taxation documents. The results indicate that the extent of farm desertion in medieval Sweden has been underestimated because Swedish scholars generally eschewed the use of the retrogressive method, which their Norwegian counterparts had been using since the 1940s. There is therefore good reason to reassess the desertion rates of medieval farms in other parts of Sweden as well, using traditional geographical source materials together with the documentary sources usually favoured by historians This may also hold for other parts of Europe as well. The rate of desertion is discussed in a wider context of settlement contraction and expansion in central and peripheral areas of Sweden, including the long drawn-out process of reclamation of the deserted farms (ödesbölen).     

The problem of provenancing English post-medieval slipwares: a chemical and petrographic approach

Abstract

Trailed and combed slipwares are a common component of mid 17th- and 18th-century archaeological ceramic assemblages in England. Despite their widespread manufacture, pieces produced at different centres across England appear remarkably similar in terms of fabric and decoration. Inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry and petrography are employed to determine if chemical, mineralogical or technological traits can be used to indicate manufacturing provenance. Sherds from Bristol, North Staffordshire and South Yorkshire were analysed. The results reveal that they form cohesive chemical and petrographic groups that correlate with their place of manufacture, indicating potential for future studies of slipware production and distribution.     

Wandering intellectuals: establishing a research agenda on gender,walking, and thinking

Building on a study of three women who practice walking-for-thinking as a part of their intellectual work, the analysis identifies potential themes for a future research agenda on gender, walking, and thinking. A particular focus is the subtle, daily, management of gendered expectations and ways in which walking, for these women, is a contribution to such management. We name this ‘walking away from expectations’ and identify three themes: walking away from others’ gaze, walking away from restlessness and domestic responsibility, and walking away as belonging. Walking emerges as a skilful way of creating the conditions to do one’s intellectual work and manage gendered expectations. Further, the meanings of silences about gender in the context of intellectual work and walking is discussed and questions for future research agenda are suggested.     

Israeli historical geography and the Holocaust: reconsidering the research agenda

The case of the Israeli historical geography demonstrates how nationalism affects academic research agenda. As in many other cases of nation-building, Israeli geographers have played an important role in the manipulation of landscapes and places to form a modern Jewish Israeli national identity. Their role in the construction of national consciousness expanded following the development of a territorial national conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. Despite the eighteen centuries of the pre-Zionist Diaspora, and the fact that more than a half of the Jews in the world live outside Israel, Israeli historical geographers almost totally neglect Diaspora lifestyles and spatialities and ignore the impact of the geographical imagination of Diaspora Jews on the (re)construction of Zionist territorial concepts and space. Following five decades of a Palestine/Israel-centered agenda, it is time for Israeli historical geographers to turn to the research of different spatial aspects of the Jewish Diaspora. This move should begin with the research of the spatial aspects of the concentration and annihilation of Jewish European communities during the Holocaust, and to more general spatial aspects of Nazism, as well as to the political and cultural geography of the Holocaust remembrance.     

Setting the agenda for evidence-based research on ending mass atrocities

The question of how mass atrocities end has been dominated by a normative approach regarding how they ought to end. Arguing that an evidence-based approach to terminate mass atrocities might offer profound insights into theories of mass atrocities as well as policies designed to prevent or end their occurrence, this article outlines the key questions and approaches needed for an evidence-based study of atrocity endings. It draws on theories of genocide, political violence and civil war termination, and presents initial insights from case studies, including the killing of civilians in colonial German Southwest Africa, the Soviet Union, the Nigerian civil war, the Guatemalan civil war, the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and Bosnia-Herzegovina.     

Host economy impacts of transnational retail: the research agenda

The last decade has witnessed an acceleration of retail foreigndirect investment into a range of emerging markets across EastAsia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, led by asmall cohort of food and general merchandise retailers fromWestern Europe, and to a lesser extent, North America. Whilethese investment flows have had profound developmental impactsin host economies, research in this area is still in its infancy.This article therefore maps out a detailed research agenda withrespect to the host economy impacts of transnational retailing.After setting the scene empirically and conceptually, the articleconsiders different dimensions of these impacts on retail competitiveness,supply chain dynamics, consumption practices and consumer/civilsociety, institutional and regulatory frameworks and, reciprocally,on the retail transnational corporations themselves. It concludesby calling for a concerted interdisciplinary research effortinto this important and understudied aspect of economic globalization.     

Domestic material culture and post-medieval archaeology in Greece: a case-study from the Cyclades Islands

Abstract

The Kyklades or Cycladic Islands have always been popular amongst archaeologists working on the Aegean Bronze Age and the 'glorious' Classical Greek past. In contrast, not much light has been shed upon aspects of post-Roman life on the islands. Research into the post-medieval period has been a subject mainly for historians and folklorists. This paper attempts to explore aspects of the lifestyle of the peoples who inhabited this island group throughout the more recent, yet most neglected centuries of Greek history, using archaeological, textual and other sources and methods. My aim is to reconstruct everyday rural life in Greece, by focusing on the domestic sphere and addressing questions concerning society and the domestic material culture of a littoral area that has remained traditional until very recently.

This paper examines some first results of the CY.RE.P. (Cyclades Research Project) and introduces examples concerning the domestic material culture of the late medieval and post-medieval periods (early 13th–late 19th centuries) in the Aegean Islands of the Cyclades, with particular reference to housing, furniture and internal fittings, costumes and embroideries.     

Household possessions and wealth in agrarian states: Implications for archaeology

This paper deals with the problem of measuring household wealth from domestic artifactual remains. After an archaeologically useful definition and classification of wealth is presented, quantitative anthropological, sociological, and historical analyses demonstrating a strong association between household possessions and wealth are reviewed. Then, ethnographic and historical data on different functional categories of household goods are examined in order to assess their relative ability to predict wealth. Once the nature of the relationship between household possessions and wealth in the systemic context is specified, methodological problems influencing the detection of this relationship in the archaeological context are treated. It is concluded that household possessions are quite good wealth indicators in the systemic context, and that proper attention to a number of methodological issues allows archaeologists to take advantage of this relationship to measure household wealth in past societies.     

Ester Boserup's theory of agrarian change: a critical review

As discussions of the positive effect of population growth upon agricutural change have been less common than focus on the negative effects, Ester Boserup's book, "The Conditions of Agricultural Growth," and her subsequent work in which it is argued that population growth is the prime cause of agricultural change is of great importance. The objective of this essay is to review earlier attempts to relate the intensification of agriculture to population growth, to outline Boserup's theory, and to examine the criticisms which have been made of the theory. Boserup maintains that population growth is the cause rather than the result of agricultural change and that the principal change is the intensification of land use. The theory of agricultural development posed by Boserup is more subtle and complex than that of any of her predecessors. She sees population pressure as a major cause of change in land use, agricultural technology, land tenure systems, and settlement form. Boserup argues that population growth is independent of food supply and that population increase is a cause of changes in agriculture. The principal means of increasing agricultural output is intensification. Boserup's work has had a varied response from readers; other economists have been less than enthusiastic. It might seem as if the critics of Boserup's theory have left it in tatters. Her central argument, that intensification reduces labor productivity, remains unproven. There are few who would agree that an increase in the frequency of cropping is the only possible response to population pressure; the extensive margin can be extended, higher yielding crops adopted, and methods that increase yields introduced independently of increases in the frequency of cropping. Emigration or the control of numbers may relieve population pressure. Intensification can also take place without population pressure, under the stimulus of urban growth or the development of trade. It is difficult to accept that population pressure is the only cause or agrarian change or that the increased frequency of cropping is the only response to population pressure, yet the thesis is a fruitful interpretation of agrarian change. Assuming population growth as a change mechanism can lead to important new conclusions regarding the nature of agrarian change in western European history.     

Raw materials for medieval to post-medieval Tuscan glassmaking: new insight from LA-ICP-MS analyses

LA-ICP-MS analyses were performed on a set of Tuscan (post) medieval archaeological glass finds dated to the 13–16th century in order to quantitatively determine the trace element contents. The results are used for defining and distinguishing several compositional groups. The trace element data are consistent with the distinctions obtained by considering the major element data determined via quantitative SEM-EDX, but allow to obtain new insights into the nature and quality of the silica sources employed and the presumed method of ash purification.     

关于法律与社会之间的法学研究

法社会学的形成可以说是人们整合以往法律认识的结果。社会学方法在法学田野里的耕耘导引出一种更贴近现实、更具活力的法律认识方式。在法律中认识社会以及在社会中认识法律,这种着眼于法律与社会之间的认识活动,为法学研究开辟了一个前所未有的广阔领域。法学和社会学的联姻,不仅使法学理论更具有包容性,而且还为法学研究超越传统提供了综合与多维的方法指向。     

New collaborations in old institutional spaces: setting a new research agenda to transform Indigenous-settler relations

ABSTRACT

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people navigate the social and political order of the Australian settler state in ways that seek to increase their personal freedoms and political autonomy. For some groups this means seeking a firmer place within the social, political and economic life of Australia, and for others it means navigating away, towards a more distant relationship based in the resurgence of Indigenous nationhood. This navigation is composed of multifaceted and multidirectional relations between Indigenous Australians, settler Australians, and the settler state. As a discipline, political science must move beyond the study of settler institutions and begin to engage more comprehensively in research that considers the dynamics and structures of Indigenous-settler relations as a matter of priority.