Palynological and temporal inference in the context of prehistory,with special reference to the evidence from lake and peat deposits

There is an increasing use of palynological data to infer prehistoric agricultural activity. The uncritical acceptance of the technique of pollen analysis by archaeologists and palynologists is questioned. Attention is focussed upon the nature of clearance activity and problems of its inference from pollen spectra; the spatial distribution of palaeoenvironmental sites; and the proximity of such sites to those of prehistoric activity. The resolution apparent in peat and lake sediment pollen profiles together with problems of dating and temporal inference, are examined. In response to a perceived lack of formalization in palynological research, some simple models of clearance activity are presented. The complexity involved in environmental reconstruction is emphasized by reference to the use of supplementary data to augment the orthodox pollen record.     

On the accuracy of estimating living stature from skeletal length in the grave and by linear regression

This study evaluates a method for obtaining stature estimates for populations represented by skeletal material, with individuals buried in a supine position. During the excavation of a Danish mediaeval cemetery, in situ skeletal length in the grave was measured from a point above the cranial point farthest from the body to the most distal point of the talus. The measurement was made with a folding rule placed on the sagittal midline of the skeleton, allowed to follow any curvature of the skeleton in situ. In the laboratory, stature was reconstructed anatomically, and this stature was regarded as an accurate estimate of living stature. Stature was also reconstructed from femur length by two linear regression procedures: 1) by sample and sex specific formulae, employing a leave‐one‐out approach, and 2) by sex wise formulae for Euro‐Americans from Trotter & Gleser (1952, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 10 : 463–514). Skeletal length in the grave and the two stature estimates based on linear regression were compared to anatomically reconstructed stature. Skeletal length in the grave estimated anatomically reconstructed stature with practically no bias (95% CI: −1.3–1.5 cm). Sample specific regression formulae estimated anatomically reconstructed stature also with no bias (95% CI: −1.2–1.1 cm). In contrast, statures calculated from Trotter & Gleser's regression formulae estimated anatomically reconstructed stature with a bias of about 4 cm (95% CI: 3.3–5.0 cm). Estimates of stature variance were biased for all three estimation procedures. However, for samples of adults, an adjusted variance estimate can be obtained by subtracting 8.7 cm² from the variance obtained from skeletal lengths in the grave. It is recommended to measure skeletal length in the grave whenever possible, and use this measurement for estimating statures for prehistoric and early historic populations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why context matters: the role of campaign context in the relationship between digital media use and political participation

Many questions remain about the effects of digital media use on citizens’ political engagement. This article argues that this is because such effects depend on the context in which digital media are used. Its findings are based on two cross-sectional sets from the 2010 and 2013 Australian Election Study and show that (1) political resources played different moderating roles in the association between digital media and offline participation, and (2) such a moderating role depended on different campaign contexts in the two elections, with context affecting political efficacy. The findings confirm that campaign context can function as leverage in motivating online news consumption and political participation, thereby emphasising the importance of political contexts in media use and political behaviour.     

Commentary: feeding Teotihuacan in the context of commodities research

This commentary on the Feeding Teotihuacan collection of papers provides an “outsider” perspective on the contributions, by an archeologist who conducts research on agriculture and plant use by the ancient Maya.     

Providing counter-narratives: the positive role of hostels in the Israeli-Palestinian context

Abstract

Previous research suggests that tourism has a role to play in challenging the destructive dominant narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian context – discourses that traditionally have, and still do, revolve around sectarianism, Othering and violence. Our case study focuses on a hostel in the Palestinian city of Ramallah that boldly attempts to challenge the way tourists view the Israeli-Palestinian context and Palestine as a tourism destination. We examine how the hostel attempts to achieve this and the ways in which being a hostel (as opposed to a hotel) helps its guests with this reframing through in-depth qualitative interviews conducted on-site with members of the hostel management and staff, and through participant observation conducted by the researchers in Ramallah. Findings shed light on the hostel’s ability to enable Israelis and Palestinians to cooperate within tourism, and how Palestine has much more to offer tourists than conflict-related tourism, thus challenging the master narratives of the region which have suggested quite the contrary. A key finding is the hostel's on-going attempt to remove ignorance about the situation in the region and promote fact-based learning. The results also suggest that the very characteristics of a hostel assist in achieving this mission through the intimate interactions that are inherent in a hostel setting. Hostels can, therefore, be part of a wider approach to ensuring tourism is used to promote alternative, positive narratives of contested space, as opposed to promoting division and externalising the conflict, as is so often the case.

摘要

之前的研究表明, 旅游业在挑战以色列-巴勒斯坦背景下的破坏性主导叙事方面可以发挥作用——这些话语传统上想来围绕宗派主义、异己和暴力展开, 现在依然如此。我们的案例研究集中在巴勒斯坦城市拉马拉的一家青年旅社, 它大胆地尝试挑战游客看待巴以关系和巴勒斯坦作为旅游目的地的方式。我们通过在现场深入访谈青年旅社管理人员与员工,以及通过由拉马拉研究人员的参与观察, 研究了该旅社试图实现这一目标的方式, 以及在这一新框架下该旅社是如何帮助客人的。调查结果有助于了解该青年旅社有能力使以色列和巴勒斯坦人在旅游业内进行合作, 以及巴勒斯坦向游客提供的服务如何远远超过与冲突有关的旅游, 从而挑战了该地区的主流叙述, 而这些叙述的观点恰恰与实际相反。一个关键的发现是, 青年旅社正在努力消除对该地区情况的无知, 并促进基于事实的学习。研究结果亦显示, 青年旅舍的特色有助于透过旅舍环境所固有的亲密互动来达成这一使命。因此, 青年旅舍可以成为一种更广泛的方法的一部分, 以确保旅游业被用来促进对有争议的空间的替代的、积极的叙述, 而不是像通常情况那样促进分裂和将冲突外部化。     

Hereditary emblems: Material culture in the context of social change

Emblematic artifacts, which signify personal or social identity, are potentially valuable sources of information about social organization. To date, however, there has been little comparative study of the social contexts that give rise to use of different kinds of emblems, nor of the ways in which the social significance of emblematic artifacts may change over time. This paper is specifically concerned with the emergence and changing use of hereditary emblems in stratified societies. The histories of lineage devices in western Europe and Japan exhibit a number of similarities which suggest that, in complex societies, hereditary emblems are likely to appear in the presence of unstable systems of social rank. Once introduced, such emblems may acquire additional, nonhereditary, significance without undergoing noticeable iconographic change. The cases examined here suggest a series of general propositions about evolutionary relationships between hereditary emblem use and socioeconomic factors. Although we currently lack a well-developed methodology for identifying hereditary emblems archaeologically, it is clear that the key to their identification lies not in stylistic analysis, but rather in their contexts of use and patterns of association with other items of material culture. Hypotheses derived from consideration of the evolution of lineage emblems in western Europe and Japan are applied to the interpretation of shield decorations of the Archaic and Classical periods in Attic Greece.     

Terrorism and the banlieues: the Charlie Hebdo attacks in context

In January 2015, French society was shocked by a sequence of fatal attacks at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris. In the wake of these tragic events, many social and political commentators interpreted the killings as an assault on freedom of expression and core French values of liberty, equality and laïcité. Prime Minister Manuel Valls described the perpetrators as disciples of Islamofascism. More than this, the terrorists were represented as the extreme manifestation of a deviant and nihilistic ‘other’—largely concentrated in France’s infamous banlieues—that rejected the Republic and embraced a form of ideological extremism that originated beyond France’s borders. Yet this interpretation fails to adequately consider the complexity of the situation. Drawing on the work on radicalisation by Wiktorowicz, and illustrated with lessons learned from research into the causes of the 2005 French riots, this article has two objectives: to highlight the importance of everyday exclusion in the web of causal factors that frames the path to violent extremism in France; and to offer an alternative view of the role and influence of the banlieues in this context.     

The context of migration: the example of Ireland in the nineteenth century

"A classic case where out-migration interacted with many other geographical phenomena is provided by rural Ireland in the nineteenth century. The apparent turning point was the Great Famine of the 1840s, but the areas with the greatest suffering from starvation did not necessarily show the greatest population decline, suggesting that other forces were active. Considerable economic and social changes were already taking place before the Famine: fertility was being reduced, later marriage was becoming established and considerable emigration was already taking place. Immediately after the Famine those areas which had been hardest hit often reverted to pre-Famine conditions and did not show strong population decline until the 1870s. The Famine was a most serious event, but the modernization of Irish rural life, which linked emigration with changes in family structure, agriculture and population numbers, was more important in bringing about geographical change."     

The role of the museum in interpretation: The problem of context

The key questions in interpreting objects in museums are: What are they doing there? and Where did they come from? National and local importance are not mutually exclusive: the critical difference is between intrinsic value, and value through context or association. Context is an integral part of interpretation. Experts can visualise an original location or environment; ordinary museum visitors need the context of people, or place, or familiar activities, to be able to relate to unfamiliar objects. Is seeing a good replica as good as seeing the original?     

Contesting scale: A space of the political in a post-disaster context

Disasters create spaces for the political to unfold. This paper contributes to the recurring debates on space and the political in geography by providing a novel empirical focus: following a fire in Lærdal, Norway in 2014, contesting discourses on how emergency services should be spatially organized revealed themselves. A scalar discourse of the local, situated in discourses on periphery and rurality in Norway, emerged to contest a neoliberal discourse promoted by the government. I illustrate the scalar discourse of the local through four identified narratives in Norwegian newspapers that emphasize different aspects of the local. This demonstrates how scalar categories are meshed with everyday vocabulary, and hence are important to study. Although a space of the political was realized following the fire, in the last part of the paper I reflect on why the scalar discourse of the local has not gained recognition as legitimate contestation, as reforms aiming to centralize and/or merge continue to be rolled out in Norway.     

Marital instability in the context of dramatic societal change: the case of Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT

How do marriages fare during times of dramatic social, political and economic transition? Transitional societies offer a unique context for studying marital instability as they are often buffeted by countervailing forces of modernisation and re-traditionalisation, in addition to socio-economic and political changes. Using detailed and rich data from Kyrgyzstan, the study investigates trends over time in marital instability in response to societal upheavals and gradual secular transformations; ethnic group-specific responses in marital instability; and the role of changing gender regimes in marital instability. The findings reveal an increase in the rate of marital dissolution over time. However, ethnic group-specific differentials remained significant, mirroring the historically shaped relative positioning of the groups in the process of demographic change. The results also highlight gender differentials in the influence of education and employment on marital instability. The findings are discussed within the broader framework of demographic and social changes in transitional Central Asia.     

Reburial in the context of development: Approaches to reburial in the English planning process

Abstract

Rescue archaeology in England is now firmly embedded in the planning process, following the introduction by the UK government of Planning Policy Guidance Note 16 in 1990 (PPG 16; Departmentof the Environment. Planning Policy Guidance Note 16 — Archaeology and Planning. HMSO, London (1990)). The basic premise of PPG 16 is a strong preference for in situ preservation of nationally important archaeological remains. This often includes reburial of archaeology prior to construction activity, once it has been exposed in test-pitting (‘evaluations’) or full excavation. Reburial strategies are often prepared by civil engineers and there appears to be an overemphasis on consideration of the potential physical impacts on the archaeology. These strategies usually include the use of geotextiles and sand, or other graded material, chosen for its particular particle size/shape characteristics. A greater awareness of the chemical and physical characteristics of a burial environment is now required to ensure that reburial is effective. Archaeologists and conservators are beginning to consider both the natural and, increasingly, the ‘man-made’ (industrial, domestic and agricultural) changes to the soil chemistry of an archaeological site. More use needs to be made of the potential information ‘locked up’ in the artefactual material retrieved from evaluations and excavation nearby. An assessment of the degree of preservation of material should be an integral component for the design of a reburial strategy.     

Tourism in a nature-based destination: the human versus the ecological perspectives

In the tourism studies literature, wilderness has been addressed from two perspectives. From the first, human, perspective wilderness is a social, subjective construction that exists only in the mind of its users. From the second, ecological, perspective it is a material, objective reality. Here, we compare these two perspectives based on data collected in one of Poland's most popular nature-based destinations, The Great Masurian Lakes region, and develop a methodological framework which would operationalise this comparison and make it measurable. The research approach combined a survey of tourists and mapping of natural features. The data was analysed, first, to verify whether stated preferences regarding nature and the natural features surrounding tourist accommodation were coherent; this resulted in the construction of a Coherence Index (CI). Second, we analysed how stated preferences with respect to nature were linked to outdoor recreational activities; this was measured by a Nature Cruciality Index (NCI). Finally, both indexes were mapped and their spatial distributions were analysed. The findings showed that the subjective, social construction of wilderness does not always correspond to objective reality. Although tourists declared natural environment to be very important to them, in some cases the analysis found a lack of consistency between expressed preferences and the natural features found around accommodation. The phenomenon was mainly found in towns, where tourists were most nature-indifferent. Moreover, they were not interested in activities with high NCI. In some cases, however, the two perspectives were coherent, especially among nature-oriented tourists who stayed near lakes and those who stayed in villages (who were most conscious of their choices). Tourists who stayed near lakes undertook the most nature-crucial activities. These findings can be used to enhance local planning, management and marketing strategies for nature tourism.