The Jewish diaspora and Israel: belonging at distance?

The involvement of diasporas in the advent of modern nationalism is not a new phenomenon: already in the 19th century some diasporas wanted to ‘normalise’ their national existence by building a state of their own. However, with the growing globalisation trend in the 199'0s , especially in the areas of transportation and communication, Benedict Anderson put forward the idea of long‐distance nationalism (LDN), as a new way of linking diasporas and the national project and thus creating a more intense sense of belonging. LDN has been characterised by him as having two main features: its unaccountability which allows for intense political radicalism, and its instrumental function for strengthening ethnic identity in the diaspora and thus a sense of belonging. I will test those hypotheses in the case of the archetypal Jewish diaspora.     

Emergence of an integrated city-system in France (XVIIth–XIXth centuries): Evidence from toolset in graph theory

In this article, the authors discuss the emergence of an integrated city-system in France one century before the Industrial Revolution, starting from two different databases, the postal roads relays and the cities and towns populations, between 1632 and 1833. They first model historical distances, weighted by elevation and connectivity (measured as a conductance). A major transformation of inter-urban exchange space is then enlightened, with new roads systematically privileged in the northern part of France and the largest cities, but avoiding mountains. They then study territorial integration processes on two different scales: the national, with the diffusion of hubs (characterized by a high betweenness centrality) all over French territory, and the regional, with the emergence of regional city-systems (modeled by a Reilly equation) in the northern part of France. The role of medium-sized cities as necessary links for connecting local and national scales is emphasized in most results.     

Radiocarbon dates for the late Middle Palaeolithic at Pech de l'Azé IV,France

This paper reports a series of radiocarbon dates on bone samples coming from the Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA) Layer 3 at the top of the Pech de l'Azé IV (Pech IV, France) Middle Palaeolithic sequence. All of these samples showed evidence of human impact, and they were prepared using current pre-treatment techniques to remove or identify contamination. The results indicate that the MTA at Pech IV started prior to the current limit of radiocarbon calibration (circa 50 ka BP) and ended by 45 ka cal. BP. These dates are supported by additional TL and ESR dates from the sequence, confirm previously suggested correlations between Pech I and IV, and generally fit within the known age range for the MTA. The oldest dates reported here may also lend support to still older TL dates for the MTA that taken together suggest that the MTA extended from late MIS 4 or early OIS 3 through to the end of the Middle Palaeolithic in southwest France.     

The way we wear makes the difference: residue analysis applied to Mesolithic personal ornaments from Hohlenstein-Stadel (Germany)

Research conducted by Newell et al. (1990) has lead to propose that during the Mesolithic, the Upper Danube region was inhabited by a “Fish Teeth Band”, characterized by the use of carp fish teeth and exogenous fossil shells as ornaments. However, technological data on these personal ornaments drastically lacked and especially for the fish teeth associated to the Mesolithic burial of Hohlenstein-Stadel that remained completely undescribed until now. The aim of this paper is to establish how the carp teeth from Hohlenstein-Stadel were modified and worn before being deposited in the burial. High-resolution microscopic analysis identifies use-wear traces and a red compound adhering to the surface of the teeth. Structural and elemental analysis of the residue combining light and scanning electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, and Raman analysis identify a suspension technique that uses an adhesive composed of an organic binder mixed with charcoal and minerals including hematite, dolomite, and quartz. Ethnological inquiry reveals that this system of suspension, commonly used in traditional societies, is for the first time documented, at Hohlenstein-Stadel, in an archaeological context.     

The use of stereoscopic images taken from a microdrone for the documentation of heritage – An example from the Tuekta burial mounds in the Russian Altay

To analyse, interpret and manage our cultural heritage it is important to have an accurate and realistic representation of it. Documenting this heritage involves geographic techniques such as photogrammetry, for which a lot of rather expensive and extensive platforms are already in use. However, a microdrone, a recently developed unmanned aerial vehicle platform is a cheaper and easy to handle tool. To test the very limits of the microdrone and its accompanying data-acquisition and data-processing software, we collected data from a remote area in Tuekta, in the Russian Altay Mountains. This paper presents the challenges faced during the whole photogrammetric procedure from planning the flights to producing the final deliverables.     

Seduction and gesture in ancient imagery

For the Greeks, the body, and especially the body of youths, is one of the principal themes in visual representation. By studying the system of attitudes towards seduction as shown on a number of Attic vases, I intend to show how red‐figure representations reveal an aesthetic view of homosexuality different from the black‐figure one. Corporal expression is the key in the opposition between these two systems of representation where a dynamic gesture gradually replaces a static gesture through the creation of a “conversational art”; which was unknown in the earlier genre.     

Shepherds,cowherds and site function on middle Neolithic sites of the Rhône valley: An archaeozoological approach to the organization of territories and societies

Our understanding of the organization of the territories and the Neolithic societies of the north-western Mediterranean region remains incomplete because of the preference long accorded to caves and rock shelters in archaeological research, and because these sites are closely linked to one taxon, the sheep and goats. In the middle valley of the Rhône, comparison of the pastoral practices specific to cattle and to sheep and goats, in relation to cave as well as open-air occupations, enables definition of the relations that existed between the sites during the late phase of the Chassean culture. It is demonstrated that the different stages of the annual pastoral cycle were distributed among several sites, whether for sheep and goats or for cattle, and that the large open-air sites had distinct functions according to the species exploited. The discovery of a specialization of places and of practices (general for the caves, partial for the large open-air sites) then leads us to propose the existence of a specialization of individuals or at least small groups (shepherds and cattle herdsmen) as of the beginning of the fourth millennium BC in this region. These elements suggest that population movements of different kinds occurred in the Chassean period in the middle Rhône Valley.