LA–ICP–MS,SEM–EDS AND EPMA ANALYSIS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICAN COPPER‐BASED ARTEFACTS: IMPACT OF CORROSION AND HETEROGENEITY ON THE RELIABILITY OF THE LA–ICP–MS COMPOSITIONAL RESULTS*

This study discusses the relevance of compositions obtained using laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS) for the purpose of identifying the provenance of copper‐based artefacts found in Virginia at Native American sites dated from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Ten artefacts were investigated by scanning electron microscopy – energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM–EDS) to visualize the corrosion and characterize the heterogeneities in the metal and electron probe micro‐analysis (EPMA) to determine separately the compositions of the intact metal and of the corrosion product. It is shown that the corroded surfaces are highly depleted in zinc but that representative concentrations can be determined by sampling the deeper, uncorroded metal. In contrast, lead values are highly variable because of the heterogeneous distribution of this metal within the bulk copper. Despite these problems, brass is easily identifiable and American native copper and European smelted copper can be unambiguously distinguished with LA–ICP–MS on unprepared artefacts using As, Ag, Ni and Sb trace elements.     

FLUORINE IN FOSSILIZED BONE AND TOOTH: DISTRIBUTION AMONG SKELETAL TISSUES

Because of differences in their physical properties, bone, tooth dentine and tooth enamel react very differently during the course of fossilization. This relationship is shown clearly in the case of diagenetic introduction of fluorine wherein bone and dentine with high permeability and small apatite crystallite size contain 2–3 times the amount of fluorine as coexisting enamel with its low permeability and large crystallites. Smaller differences in the same sense are found within bone types from the same species, and care must be used in applying fluorine content methods even among bones from the same deposit.     

Global social justice at the WTO? The role of NGOs in constructing global social contracts

Over the past decade, international non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) have been contesting the neo‐liberal economic order in international politics by campaigning for normative conditions to bring about what Richard Falk calls ‘humane governance’. However, the degree to which NGOs have contributed to the formation of global social contracts remains controversial. While NGO activists and various scholars advocate the establishment of such contracts, empirical testing of this normative argument is underdeveloped. Drawing upon this lack of empirical support, critics dismiss the global social contract concept and question the roles played by NGOs in international politics. This article addresses the controversy through a review, refinement and application of global social contract theory and an empirical study of two prominent international NGO campaigns directed at the World Trade Organization (WTO), an institution that represents a ‘hard test case’. It explores the ways in which NGOs and their networks are challenging the neo‐liberal basis of WTO agreements and contributing to the emergence of global social contracts. The article concludes that in some circumstances, NGOs have the capacity to inject social justice into international economic contracts and there is some basis for optimism regarding the formation of global social contracts involving NGOs, nation‐states and international organizations.     

HISTORY IN THE SIKH PAST1

This article offers a reading of an early eighteenth‐century Punjabi text—Gur Sobha or “The Splendor of the Guru”—as a form of historical representation, suggesting reasons for the importance of the representation of the past as history within Sikh discursive contexts. The text in question provides an account of the life, death, and teachings of the last of the ten living Sikh Gurus or teachers, Guru Gobind Singh. The article argues that the construction of history in this text is linked to the transition of the Sikh community at the death of the last living Guru whereby authority was invested in the canonical text (granth) and community (panth). As such a particular rationale for history was produced within Sikh religious thought and intellectual production around the discursive construction of the community in relation to the past and as a continuing presence. As such, the text provides an alternative to modern European forms of historical representation, while sharing some features of the “historical” as defined in that context. The essay relates this phenomenon to a broader exploration of history in South Asian contexts, to notions of historicality that are plural, and to issues particular to the intersection of history and religion. Later texts, through the middle of the nineteenth century, are briefly considered, to provide a sense of the significance of Gur Sobha within a broader, historically and religiously constituted Sikh imagination of the past.     

Gender and Mahalle (Neighborhood) Space in Istanbul

Studies of gender have an important place in studies of Turkey because the discourses of Islamism and secularism, and modernity and tradition, make the bodies and practices of Turkish women the site of debate. However, few studies have used a spatial analysis to examine the production of gender in daily life. This article is simultaneously a study of how gender is produced through space and of the creation of various kinds of spaces in an Istanbul mahalle (neighborhood). The mahalle is the space of intimate daily life in the Turkish urban context, and narratives of and ways of life in the mahalle articulate competing notions of what it means to be a woman in Turkey. This study of gender and mahalle space reveals the linkages between space and gender to be multiple and shifting and the boundaries between private and public spaces to be fluid. Furthermore, this reading of gender and urban space, when brought back to the Turkish context, also contributes to research which interrogates the idea of modernity at the core of national identity in Turkey, of which gender is a central and constitutive element.