Study of interactions between polyethylene glycol and archaeological wood components by C high-resolution solid-state CP-MAS NMR

While use of polyethylene glycols, PEG, polymers for archaeological wood conservation has been well established, there is almost no study of such composite materials with carbon thirteen high-resolution solid-sate NMR. We demonstrate that NMR is an useful analytical tool to characterize rapidly samples of conserved wooden objects. By choosing an appropriate value of the contact time (from 3 to 5 ms) for which the PEG component gives only a small residual NMR signal in the CP-MAS experiment, it is possible to edit selectively the spectra of the wood components. It allows one to visualize the degradation extent of the archaeological wood even when the conservation processes have been already applied. Moreover, by studying the kinetics of CP-MAS experiments, the time constants, T_1ρH and T_CH values for PEG moiety were computed. From these data, it is shown that either in the crude commercial product or in incorporated in archaeological woods, two components are present and they are the signatures of crystalline (or ordered) and amorphous (or disordered) molecular domains. Moreover, it was shown in the archaeological woods that almost 30% of PEG was in close molecular interactions with lignins. This study is the first evidence that the PEG in conserved wood can interact at a molecular level with wood components. It also demonstrates that the PEG diffuses inside the residual cell walls of archaeological wood. This data are important for scientists in charge of process development for the conservation of wooden artifacts.     

Age estimation of children from prehistoric Southeast Asia: are the dental formation methods used appropriate?

Inter-population differences in skeletal and dental growth and maturation are acknowledged frequently in the biological anthropological literature. These growth differences have implications for the reliability of standards for the estimation of age at death of archaeological subadults. The number of archaeological projects that are recovering human burials from non-European contexts, including Southeast Asia, and the increasing interest in subadult bioarchaeological studies provides the impetus for investigating this issue of ageing subadult individuals from these populations. This paper aims to address some of the problems of the representativeness of ageing standards for non-European children in bioarchaeology. This is achieved through a literature review of the issue of growth variability and age estimation, and a basic comparison of the commonly applied age estimation method based on North American children with a dental formation study of modern Thai children. Although these studies do not employ similar methods the Thai study is the only comparable data available and therefore serves as a starting point to address these issues. The results raise an important question for bioarchaeologists of the appropriateness of available ageing methods. In addition this paper emphasises the need for the use of appropriate methodologies in the collection and presentation of dental formation data.     

Of mice and sparrows: Commensal faunas from the Iberian iron age in the duero valley (central spain)

This paper aims to emphasize the importance of imported commensal faunas in archaeological contexts by reporting on the earliest known house sparrows and house mice from the Iberian peninsula. The finds, which date to the Iron Age of a hinterland area of the peninsula, have been identified on the basis of osteomorphological and osteometrical criteria, which are specified in the text in order to demonstrate the reliability of the identification. The temporal and geographical coincidence of these remains in the two sites analysed with those of donkey and, secondarily, chicken remains and faunal remains of littoral origin, lends support to the hypothesis that these animals arrived with the earliest trans-Mediterranean colonizers to the southern shores of the Iberian peninsula and spread involuntarily thereafter as ‘side-products’ of the Phoenician commercial routes throughout the Iberian hinterland.     

Protest Cycle,Political Violence and Social Movements in the Basque Country

A close look at the groups, organisations and social movements among which a terrorist organisation seeks refuge and support, will provide a fundamental and strategic view of its evolution. By means of the concept of a protest cycle, I analyse the relationship between political violence and social movements in the Basque Country. With the help of Tarrow's fundamental variables in the political structure, to which I have added the degree of consciousness‐raising and mobilisation in civil society, I aim to study the protest cycle of ETA's violence from its social origins at the start of the 1960s, through its consolidation in the 1970s, to its decline from the mid‐1980s onwards. The idea I will defend is that political violence should be seen as a form of collective action directed towards a mobilisation of society, and that its vicissitudes depend on the structure of interactions set up between the armed organisation, social movements and civil society.     

Sexual dimorphism in limb bones of ibex (Capra ibex L.): mixture analysis applied to modern and fossil data

Estimating sex ratios of fossil bone assemblages is an important step in the determination of demographic profiles, which are essential for understanding the palaeobiology and palaeoethology of any particular species, as well as its exploitation patterns by humans. This is especially true for ibex (Capra ibex), which was a main source of food for hominids during Pleistocene times. Classical methods for determining sexual dimorphism and sex ratio, such as analyses using uni‐ and bivariate plots, are based on an arbitrary fixing of limits between sexes. Here we use a more robust statistical method termed mixture analysis (MA) to determine the sex of postcranial remains (long bones, metapodials and tarsals) from ibex. For the first time, we apply MA to both a modern and a fossil sample of one species, by using metric data taken from (i) a collection of present‐day ibex skeletons and (ii) a Palaeolithic sample of the same species. Our results clearly show that the forelimb (humerus and radius) is more dimorphic than the hindlimb (femur and tibia) and is therefore better suited for sexing ibex. It also appears that metapodials should be used carefully for estimating sex ratios. On the basis of these results, we propose a classification of bone measurements that are more or less reliable for sexing ibex. The results of MA applied to the ibex fossil bones from the Upper Palaeolithic site of the Observatoire (Monaco) lead us to the conclusion that this assemblage consists of a majority of males. The quantitative estimations calculated by the MA make it possible to compare the size of Pleistocene and modern ibex for the whole set of variables used in this study. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identifying artificially deformed crania

In this paper we report on a new discriminant function for the identification of artificially deformed crania. Development of the function, based on a sample of deformed and undeformed crania from the Philippines, required visual classification of the sample into deformed and undeformed groups. Working from the observation that deformed crania display flattened frontal and occipital regions, the sample was seriated based on degree of flattening; classification was based on the results of this seriation. The discriminant function, calculated using curvature indices, required only six simple measurements: arc and chord measurements for the frontal (glabella to bregma), parietals (bregma to lambda) and occipital (lambda to opisthion). The function was designed to be conservative, in that a deformed cranium may be classified as undeformed, but the opposite should not occur. Our function classified the undeformed crania with 100% accuracy and deformed crania with 76.9% accuracy, for a total of 91.9% agreement with visual classification. In order to evaluate whether the function is applicable for samples from outside the Philippines, a double blind test was conducted with a large sample of deformed and undeformed crania from a broad geographical and temporal range. For this sample, the function agreed with visual classification in 89.7% of cases; 98.8% of undeformed crania were correctly classified, while deformed crania were identified with 73.7% accuracy. These results demonstrate the utility of the new discriminant function for the classification of artificially deformed crania from diverse contexts. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book reviews

Efectos regionales del presupuesto europeo en España [Regional Effects of the European Budget in Spain]. M.D. Correa García and S. Maluquer i Amorós. Inistitut d'Estudis Autonòmics, Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona 1998, 216 pp., 4500 ptas, ISBN 84 393 4544 5

Urban Environmental Planning: Policies, Instruments and Methods in an International Perspective. Donald Miller and Gert de Roo (Eds). Avebury, Aldershot 1997, 336 pp., £52.00, ISBN 1 859 72593 7

Worlds of Production: the Action Frameworks of the Economy. Michael Storper and Robert Salais. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA/London, 1997, 370 pp., £29.95 (hb), ISBN 0–67496–203–6