Exploring the vertical: science and sociality in the field among cavers in Venezuela

Recent scholarship on vertical geographies has lead to a critical reexamination of the relationship between space and power. In this paper, I develop a vertical geographies approach in an unexplored context and with a less tested method: that of cave explorers and scientists in the field in Venezuela, from an ethnographic perspective. Ethnographic analysis of exploration in practice, viewed in relation to a multi-dimensional environment and the social dynamics, bodies, and technologies involved in traversing it, illustrates the ways vertical geographies are constructed and experienced. For the Venezuelan Speleological Society, a group dedicated to cave exploration and science since 1967, examining these geographies highlights culturally specific ways the tension between sports and science in speleology play out and how new members are socialized in the field. Specifically, attention to verticality highlights the role that age, masculinist heroics, and other embodied dimensions play in the construction of speleological geographies. More broadly, an ethnographic focus on exploration, with humans probing the earth's sinuous contours, guards against thinking of verticality abstractly—doing so risks simplifying and even misrepresenting multi-dimensional and processual engagements among humans, their technologies, and the environment.     

A shipwreck cargo of Sevillian pottery from the Studland Bay wreck, Dorset, UK

This article is an account of the pottery found at the Studland Bay wreck, Poole. The assemblage includes an important group of Spanish pottery made at Seville at the beginning of the 16th century, including the largest group of lustreware and blue-and-purple wares ever found in an archaeological context. These wares were probably carried as cargo and collected at a stopping-off point along the itinerary of the ship, probably to be sold in northern Europe.     

Milling Cereals/Legumes and Stamping Bread in Mauretanian Tamuda (Morocco): An Interdisciplinary Study

African Archaeological Review - Recent archaeological excavations (2016–2019) in the city of Tamuda (northern Morocco) yielded evidence of commercial milling and bread-making facilities dated...     

Morphometric analysis and detection of invisible archaeological elements by spectral treatment of digital images

The aim of this paper is to describe the creation of a method to apply digital image treatment, consisting of a combination of filters and algorhythms, to prehistoric rock carvings, to enhance the information obtained from them. In the experimental phase a study was made of a laboratory piece and two highly valuable pieces of cave art from the Tamanart Valley in Morocco and the Casares Cave in Guadalajara, Spain. The results clearly demonstrate the potential of the proposed digital methodas information was obtained that could not have been achieved by the traditional techniques.     

First report of theropods from the Tacuarembó Formation (Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous), Uruguay

Dinosaur remains from the lower part of the Tacuarembó Formation, Uruguay, consist of the isolated theropod teeth described here. This is the first record of this group in the Tacuarembó Formation and represents the oldest dinosaur remains from Uruguay.     

Making Markets Out of Thin Air: A Case of Capital Involution1

Abstract: This article traces the creation of a market for carbon sequestration by trees under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, describing the problems encountered by UN negotiators as they attempted to abstract, isolate, quantify and commodify a process akin to breathing, which takes place naturally everywhere, anyway. It starts with an overview of the history of the negotiations that defined the commodity and the rules to govern its trade, creating the scarcity conditions for the market to work. It then goes over the key problems encountered and how they were solved. The analysis draws attention to time and risk as critical elements in reproducing uneven development, and suggests that this new market can be understood as an instance of capital involution—that is, an instance where a narrow pattern persistently repeated leads to ever increasing complexity but, instead of evolving into something new, it generates further entrapment.     

The mortgage crisis and evictions in Barcelona: identifying the determinants of the spatial clustering of foreclosures

The article identifies the determinants of the uneven spatial distribution of housing accumulated by banks via foreclosures in the city of Barcelona. Working with a new data source, we geolocalised foreclosed housing and analysed its tendency to spatially cluster. Using the bivariate version of the Local Moran Indicator, we confirmed the spatial correlation between the concentration of foreclosed housing and indicators of the socio-economic vulnerability of the neighbourhoods containing it. We also applied an OLS model to identify and weight the determinants of this clustering at the neighbourhood level. Our findings revealed that the growth of unemployment, the concentration of (non-EU) immigrant population and a greater presence of residents with low levels of studies were the key variables that explain the uneven geography of foreclosures in Barcelona. The results obtained also allowed us to characterize the spatial distribution of the housing accumulated by the banks during the mortgage crisis. As a result of the massive wave of evictions, banks have emerged as large-scale property owners in Spain and key agents for present and future housing policies.     

Measuring Regional Cohesion Effects of Large-scale Transport Infrastructure Investments: An Accessibility Approach

Transport infrastructure is considered one of the main policy instruments to achieve the cohesion goal, although the inclusion of cohesion effects in assessment methodologies is scarce and uneven. Although most cohesion studies are constrained to the analysis of regional disparities in economic indicators, this approach can be broadened to include other regional performance indicators. One of these indicators could be accessibility measures, from the point of view that accessibility, representing a competitive advantage of locations, constitutes a “desirable good” closely related to the welfare of each region. This paper suggests using changes in the spatial distribution of accessibility as a proxy to assess regional cohesion effects of transport infrastructure investments. However, as the conclusions taken depend heavily on the formulation of the accessibility measure, we recommend computing a set of accessibility indicators and analysing their results in a complementary way. The proposed methodology is tested by assessing regional cohesion effects of the large-scale road and rail transport infrastructure investments carried out in Spain in the period 1992–2004. The results obtained show that cohesion has improved for the road mode, while regional disparities have increased for the rail mode. This paper identifies the main factors driving this final cohesion effect and explores the strengths and weaknesses of the different accessibility indicators that were considered. The approach suggested in this paper has the potential to be applied in transport planning processes, and may eventually complement existing strategic assessment methodologies.