Modelling the heritage world: Economic,legal and political considerations

Abstract

The economic literature on heritage has primarily analysed the impact of building preservation on real‐estate values and community redevelopment. Recently, economists have expanded their study on heritage to include everything from historic buildings and antiques to museums and monuments. However, this research ignores the political and legal characteristics of heritage and is used primarily to justify government expenditures on heritage. The economic study of heritage should include a conceptual framework to explain the process through which certain artefacts acquire historic significance and value. This framework would provide guidance to establish which economic agents form part of the heritage world and what incentives guide them to join it. With this framework in place., we can evaluate how the tools used by these agents to obtain their own goals affect the provision of historic resources.     

Regulating Scientific Diving and Underwater Archaeology: legal and historical considerations

The regulation of scientific and archaeological diving is complex but it is essential that underwater archaeologists are familiar with the requirements placed on them by legal systems. This paper outlines the history and development of current legal systems in four jurisdictions: the UK, USA, EU and Australia. This historical and legal approach informs key discussions facing maritime archaeologists; reference is made to training requirements, safety records and the question of who should be allowed to participate and who should be excluded from archaeological diving.     

Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae: some material considerations

Abstract

Issues about the manufacture of Byzantine mosaics and the implications of these in wider terms relating to social and economic questions about the art form have been little discussed. This paper brings together evidence about Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae gathered from archaeology, glass technology and glass analysis, and synthesizes these into a discussion of three aspects: distribution; manufacture; trade and price. It looks to examine how these different elements can be used to form a more detailed composite picture about the production and distribution of Byzantine mosaics. It also proposes ways in which glass analysis can be used in a more coherent way to extend our understanding of mosaic glass production.     

Notse's ancient kingship: some archaeological and art-historical considerations

This essay discusses the relevance of archaeology and art in the contemporary politics of an African community. It focuses primarily on Notse, a town in the Republic of Togo, whose centuries-old walls have now become the object of a major festival, theAgbogboza. Successors to a relatively young chiefship, invented by the German administration a century ago, have in the last 30 years championed a new ideology aimed at reinventing a lost kingdom. Ironically, it was the harsh measures imposed by the town's ancient monarchy that led to its demise. Notse's sacral kingship still retains its distinctive validating emblems. Yet the most visible testimony to its past misrule, the wall monument, now provides the unifying symbol for disparate Ewe people who see the town as their cradle.

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Résumé Cet article discute de l'importance de l'archéologie et de l'art dans la politique contemporaine d'une communauté africaine. Il se concentre avant tout sur Notse, ville de la république du Togo, dont les murailles centenaires sont maintenant devenues l'objet d'un festival important, l'Agbogboza. Les successeurs d'une chefferie relativement récente, inventée par l'administration allemande il y a un siècle, ont au cours de ces 30 dernière années été les champions d'une nouvelle idéologie ayant pour object de réinventer un royaume perdu. Par ironie, ce sont les mesures sévères imposées par l'ancienne monarchie de la ville qui ont mené à sa disparition. Le royaume sacral de Notse conserve encore ses emblèmes distinctifs. Et pourtant, le témoignage le plus visible de son mauvais gouvernement passé, le monument mural, constitue maintenant le symbole unifiant des peuples éwés disparates, qui considèrent la ville comme leur berceau.

     

对当今中国电视媒体“双重身份”的思考

电视媒体既要服从市场规律,又要服从政府意志,政府控制与市场动力之间的复杂关系成为中国电视业的显著特征。当今中国社会发展变革的新环境,使中国电视媒体不可避免地具有了意识形态宣传机构和市场盈利机构的＂双重身份＂。如何正确处理两者的关系,是中国电视业未来发展的关键。     

Gendered Contributions to Parliamentary Debates: The Case of Euthanasia

This paper seeks to extend our understanding of the contribution women parliamentarians make to the Commonwealth parliament. The euthanasia debate, precipitated by the 1996 Andrews Bill, provided a rare opportunity to compare male and female parliamentarians' contributions without the constraint of formal party discipline. This unusual set of circumstances allowed us to focus on whether women make a distinctive contribution to parliamentary debate, without the complicating influence of party. We have been able to show that under certain circumstances, women do bring a different focus to parliamentary debate, and in so doing, may, in sufficient numbers, alter the status quo.     

The king,the church and the Jews: some considerations on the expulsions from England and France

Contemporary sources shorn a clear awareness of the political and economic motives behind the expulsion of Jews in 1290 and 1306, an awareness which actually prevented any wide approval for the anti-Jewish policy of the kings. Furthermore, from the point of view of the clergy at least, the expulsion of Jews appeared as another stage in the centralizing policy of monarchs, one which lowered the clergy's own status and restricted its freedom of action. Thus, the lack of support for the expulsion of Jews in the late middle ages hints at a new awareness of the ways in which the monarchy manipulated the Jews for its own political and f nancial ends.     

The king,the church and the Jews: some considerations on the expulsions from England and France

Contemporary sources shorn a clear awareness of the political and economic motives behind the expulsion of Jews in 1290 and 1306, an awareness which actually prevented any wide approval for the anti-Jewish policy of the kings. Furthermore, from the point of view of the clergy at least, the expulsion of Jews appeared as another stage in the centralizing policy of monarchs, one which lowered the clergy's own status and restricted its freedom of action. Thus, the lack of support for the expulsion of Jews in the late middle ages hints at a new awareness of the ways in which the monarchy manipulated the Jews for its own political and f nancial ends.     

评析美国安乐死合法化的进程

二战后的美国安乐死运动是民主权利运动与医疗技术革命的产物,经历了"死亡权利"运动与"尊严死亡"运动两个阶段。"死亡权利"运动推动各州制定《自然死亡法》,确认病人有拒绝治疗的死亡权利。"尊严死亡"运动以创制公民投票法案方式在俄勒冈和华盛顿州成功制定《尊严死亡法》,实现医生协助晚期病人自杀合法化。文章还分析了安乐死的道德及权利之争,同时也探讨了联邦最高法院认可俄勒冈等州依法进行的协助自杀合法化实验。     

Microdebitage analysis: Initial considerations

Microdebitage is defined as all stone flaking residue less than 1 mm in maximum dimension. Experimental replication indicates that it is produced in great quantities by stone tool manufacture and can permeate site matrices as a permanent signature of past cultural activity. Initial sampling studies suggest that microdebitage analysis may have considerable utility as a means of lithic site surveying.     

Geographies of asylum, legal knowledge and legal practices

Law and legal discourses are an integral part of social life, a central means of producing social identities and exercising social power in day to day life. Critically informed geographical perspectives on law have illustrated in a number of ways how the legal and social (and therefore the spatial) are mutually constitutive. This paper argues that perspectives from critical legal geography can offer insights into the operation of asylum and immigration law in the UK in the late 1990s. This paper argues that legal practices and relations are organised in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ways in different places and institutional contexts in London. In addition law and legal practices comprise a particularly important way in which ‘community’ can be constructed simultaneously across a variety of different scales in ways that can marginalise and exclude relatively powerless groups like asylum seekers. Thus refugee identities offer a particularly clear example of how social realities are constituted by law and legal practice.     

Oldowan reduction sequences: methodological considerations

Transport of resources is a major feature of Oldowan hominin technological adaptations. Comparisons between different Oldowan localities often employ measures of transport that are based on artefact attributes as proxies for the intensity of raw material utilization. The Technological Flake Category system [Toth, N., 1985. Oldowan reassessed: a close look at early stone artifacts, Journal of Archaeological Science 12, pp. 101–120] has been used extensively to infer the relative intensity of lithic reduction within Oldowan assemblages. Here we use a large experimental sample to test the relationship between a flake's stage in a reduction sequence and various quantitative attributes. We demonstrate how many previously described attributes are affected by initial core size. We then develop a multiple linear regression model that incorporates several variables to predict the placement of a flake within a generalized reduction sequence. The model is then applied to Oldowan assemblages in the Koobi Fora Formation which explores the strengths and weaknesses of different methods of investigating reduction intensity on an assemblage level.     

Seventeenth-century legal fictions: the case of John Perry

This essay discusses the role of narrative in the transmission of legal “truth” in the early modern period, taking as its focus the John Perry murder case of 1660. Perry, a servant, confessed to and was convicted of the murder of his missing master, William Harrison, in the village of Campden in Gloucestershire. Two years after Perry’s execution, however, Harrison reappeared, offering in explanation of his absence a lurid and incredible account of his kidnap and transport to the slave markets of Turkey. In the Perry case complex and unstable narratives, with debts to a range of literary genres, served to obscure the central question of a missing body. This narrativisation of circumstance gained further momentum once the affair began to circulate in textual form, when, I will contend, it became not only a legal story but a way of telling stories about the law. In particular, the case raises questions of methodology: where can we, as scholars, locate truth within the ambiguities of law in this period, and is that truth really of value in our consideration of early modern legal and literary texts?