Making sense of remembrance

In recent years the annual cycle of war remembrance in Britain has been punctuated by major anniversaries and the inauguration of new war memorials. This paper explores whether time and forgetfulness are gradually eroding the power of twentieth century war memorials as traces of memory in the everyday landscape. It finds that at least some war memorials are retaining their significance and even evolving new significance as time passes. The paper considers how the sensuous and spectacular nature of war remembrance has contributed to this process and draws attention to the centrality of sight, sound and touch to remembrance activities. Case studies are then used to explore how war memorials in specific localities provide a locus for making sense of remembrance in the twenty‐first century.     

Placing blame: Making sense of Beslan

The aftermaths of terrorist spectacles are intensely consequential moments in the making of geopolitical meaning. This paper develops a critical geopolitical account of the ways in which key actors involved in the terrorist incident at School Number 1 in Beslan North Ossetia constructed its meaning and justified their actions. The event is examined from three perspectives: the terrorist's Beslan, the Kremlin's Beslan and the contested meaning of Beslan among Ossetians and others in the North Caucasus. Multiple sources are utilized in the construction of the account: an English language archive of Russian reporting on the event, accounts of the siege, statements by key protagonists, elite interviews in North Ossetia, and the results of a survey question in North Ossetia and the North Caucasus on Beslan. The paper examines the construction of blame by the various actors and relates it to indiscriminate geographies, sweeping acts of abstraction whose homogenizing effects make (counter)terrorist violence possible.     

Making sense out of cents: compositional variations in European coins as a control model for archaeometallurgy

Archaeometallurgy frequently seeks to correlate between the temporal and spatial distribution of ancient metal objects and their chemical composition. In this study, we examined whether and to what extent local or temporal deviations in the content of modern artifacts can be identified as a proxy for archaeological material that is typically less controlled and therefore more difficult to cluster. For this purpose, Euro coins of 10, 20 and 50 cents from Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium, which are made of copper (Cu) with 5% aluminum (Al), 5% zinc (Zn) and 1% tin (Sn), were analyzed using a simple XRF analyzer. The mass ratios Sn/Cu and Zn/Cu were measured with a relative precision c.a. of 5%. The mean content of the coins from each country was then determined for 20–39 of them. The difference of the mass ratio Sn/Cu observed – from 0.0101 to 0.0111. One coin from Luxemburg shows differences in various areas of its surface of up to a factor of 1.5. Thus, the results of this small pilot research show that even in modern metal artifacts we can detect differences in metal content, which can be correlated to their production and utilization places. Therefore, this study can serve as a model for evaluating compositional variations noted in archaeometallurgical studies where the standard deviations are greater and the differences can be linked more readily to spatial and temporal differences.     

An alternative approach to zoning in France: Typology,historical character and development control

The paper describes an approach to development control taken in France, bringing together the zoning system of planning and geographical and architectural studies of urban form. The approach addresses a number of issues, in particular the maintenance of the historical and regional character of towns, often eroded under systems of land‐use zoning. The principles and methods of the approach are set out and its application is illustrated by an example, illuminating both the approach and the context in which it was realized.     

The causes and consequences of Beslan: A commentary on Gerard Toal's placing blame: Making sense of Beslan

Gerard Toal has written a very important work placing the terrorist attack in Beslan into a geopolitical context. Toal's analysis emphasizes two themes, the need to place Beslan in a political context and the parallels between the Russian government's reaction to the attack and the Bush administration's reaction to the September 11 attacks. In this response, I seek to make these two themes more explicit and also to focus on one area that is somewhat neglected in Toal's analysis: namely, the factors that made the terrorist attack in Beslan possible. In doing so, I turn away from focusing exclusively on geopolitics by bringing in some of the socio-economic and ideological factors that made the North Caucasus ripe for the explosion of terrorist attacks that occurred in the first half of this decade. I also show how changes in government policies eventually brought about the decline of large-scale terrorist attacks in the region. In doing so, I hope to make the point that any analysis of a spectacular terrorist attack such as Beslan has to take into account not just geopolitics, but also the socio-economic conditions that made it possible and the government policies that allowed it to happen.     

The Landes de Gascogne (southwest France): periglacial desert and cultural frontier during the Palaeolithic

During the last glacial period, a large part of the Aquitaine basin (southwest France) was a periglacial desert comprising coversands with low-relief dune fields surrounded by loess accumulations. OSL and radiocarbon dates show that the phase of maximum sand deposition coincides with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2. Peats and gleyic palaeosoils intercalated within the sands at some sites indicate that vegetation cover was able to develop locally during short events, possibly D–O interstadials, due to raised groundwater levels in interdunal depressions. Few Palaeolithic sites have been discovered in the coversand area in contrast to the peripheral loess region. Systematic survey along a future highway corridor demonstrates that this paucity of sites is not the result of insufficient survey nor deep site burial, but rather reflects an archaeological reality. This strongly suggests that the sand area was not attractive for hunter–gatherer populations due to its reduced levels of water resources, and available vegetation and animal biomass. The distribution of cultural markers such as art items and projectile points also shows that the coversand area probably acted as a barrier separating two different cultural sub-areas, one in the Pyrenees and Cantabria, the other in the Périgord. As a consequence, the commonly accepted view that southwest France, as a whole, served as a refugia during the cold and arid phases of the Pleistocene should be replaced by a more complex one that reflects the fact that a large part of the territory was almost unoccupied and that human populations were concentrated along alluvial valleys.     

战后法国第三产业的发展和妇女就业

自工业社会形成以来,发达国家的产业结构在本世纪,尤其是二战后经历了重大调整,第三产业异军突起,其产值在国民经济中所占比重以及就业人数大大超出第一和第二产业,并对经济发展和社会生活形成强大冲击力,也使劳动力市场发生结构性的变化。本文以发达国家之一的法国...     

满族文化传播产业化发展探析

满族文化经过漫长的历史变迁发展到今天,人们对它还有多少认识取决于对满族文化的宣传力度.满族文化的传播,不仅对大众了解这一民族意义重大,对整个中华民族的文化发掘也有着巨大的现实意义.在当今时代,满族文化传播产业化,不仅对弘扬满族文化可以收到良好效果,同时也会促进其他相关产业的发展.本文探讨了满族文化传播产业化发展的意义,分析了目前的现状,并对今后满族文化传播产业化发展提出了可行性对策和意见.     

The Neronian and the historical structure of cultural shifts from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic in Mediterranean France

The end of the Middle Palaeolithic period can be considered a key moment in the history of humanity, characterized by profound changes in traditional Palaeolithic societies. Whatever the reasons for this historical change, it seems well established that it took place within a particularly dynamic phase of these societies, when Upper Palaeolithic technical processes were already emerging. The analysis of recent Mousterian industries in Mediterranean France highlights certain points of inflection, which presage new ways of life. The analysis of key sites demonstrates important transformations within the last Neanderthal societies, with a gradual rearticulation of Mousterian technical systems around the production of blades and points and with profound changes in the relationship of the craftsman with his tools. Even if they are typical of the late Mousterian more generally, these technically distinctive industries have such distinct chronological, territorial and cultural characteristics that they can be referred to by a specific name, the “Néronien” (Neronian). Stratigraphically speaking, this group of assemblages – at the crossroads of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic – appears in some important regional sequences just before the appearance of the first “true” Upper Palaeolithic industries (the Protoaurignacian). However, this Neronian doesn't represent the end of the Middle Palaeolithic period in the Rhône valley. The final Moustérien of this region is actually marked by deep breakdowns of the traditional balances in the human groups. This second point of inflection could characterize a true destabilization of Mousterian societies. There is an interesting parallelism between the historical paths of the Castelperronian in the arch of the Massif Central and the Neronian in the Rhône valley. It also highlights the mosaic nature of the profound cultural changes that occurred at the end of the Middle Palaeolithic.