Relative frequency of butchering cutmarks produced by obsidian and flint: an experimental approach

An experimental approach was used to determine how stone tool materials affect the frequency of observed cutmarks. Five whitetail deer were butchered by an expert butcher using flint and obsidian tools and the skeletons were prepared and analyzed. The authors found that the deer butchered with obsidian tools generally displayed fewer incidents of cutmarks than their flint-butchered counterparts. Consideration of this variable may prove to be important to archaeologists attempting to answer questions of specialization or when making comparisons of cutmark data between sites.     

Elites and masses: the prevalence of economics and culture in nineteenth-century American party platforms

Scholarship on political party development in nineteenth-century America has focused on the relationship between elites and voters on the influence of policy proposals. The question is how elite perception of voter demands influenced parties’ ideological development. This study addresses this question by assessing the dynamic between cultural and socioeconomic concerns in party ideological formation and policy articulation. A content analysis of national and state party platforms from 1840 through 1896 sheds light on this dynamic. Ultimately, party leaders set the political agenda by referencing economic concerns to a greater degree than cultural concerns in their platforms.     

Orme Sargent,Ernest Bevin and British Policy Towards Europe, 1946–1949

Upon his appointment as Foreign Secretary in July 1945, it was widely expected that Ernest Bevin would make a clean sweep of the permanent officials in the Foreign Office. However, Bevin decided against staffing changes and eventually came to trust and even like these officials. This paper explores the relationship between Bevin and his Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office between 1946 and 1949, Sir Orme Sargent. Despite their initial concerns about one another in 1945, this relationship turned into one of mutual friendship by the time of Sargent's retirement in 1949. Both were driven by similar motivations in their conception of British foreign policy. They both believed that Britain was a Great Power and had a place in Europe. The congruence of views between them is clear in the examination of Anglo-French relations (culminating in the Anglo-French Treaty of 1947) and in the signature of the Brussels Treaty. This paper will show that while Bevin had a policy, so did his most senior advisor, and that the Foreign Secretary was not adverse to taking advice either. Beyond high policy, a close working and personal relationship developed between the two men.     

Free and Happy Bonds: Loving v. Virginia's Nineteenth-Century Precedent on Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness

Loving v. Virginia declares that marriage contributes to the pursuit of happiness. It supports this claim by citing 19^th century precedent, precedent which itself drew upon a longstanding view of marriage and happiness's pursuit. This article examines that view in state and federal opinions from the decades surrounding 14^th Amendment ratification. The courts saw marriage as fulfilling the human need for community, thereby aiding in the private happiness of those marrying and the public happiness of the political society. Marriage supported private happiness by forming a bond that provided for physical, material, and emotional needs. Courts sought to aid these goals while also protecting spouses' rights. Marriage supported public happiness through creating and educating future citizens as well as cultivating virtuous habits among those married—goals which the courts also sought to protect. The article concludes by discussing the continuity and discontinuity between these 19^th century cases, Loving, and Obergefell.     

Coordinated Strategic Voting in the 2008 Federal Election

Citizenship and Immigration Canada's new citizenship guide, Discover Canada, received significant coverage in the national media and among popular bloggers when it was released in late 2009. Among the more controversial responses were allegations that the guide served a partisan political purpose. It was “an incremental step in the rebranding of Canada into a conservative country, full of people more inclined to vote Conservative.” This paper investigates the veracity of this claim by documenting the historical evolution of Canada's citizenship guides. It finds that while Discover Canada departs notably from its immediate, Liberal-sponsored, predecessors, it is not so different from the initial documentation produced under the Liberal governments of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. To suggest that the new guide has fundamentally altered the national image is therefore a profound exaggeration.