Snow Fences: Then and Now

Snow fences are an increasingly widespread cultural feature in the great east-west “snow belt” of the northern hemisphere. They are there not only to protect railroads, highways and buildings from the hazards of blowing snow, but also whole towns subject to the ravages of avalanches. Although their origin is unknown, their construction and use have been advanced and improved greatly by many experimenters of more than a dozen nationalities since the middle of the 19th century.

A modern example of snow fence use is analyzed for a locally named section of Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins in southern Wyoming known as the “Sno Chi Minh Trail.” Here big systems of mostly 12 feet high snow fences line more than half of the western side of the highway for 50 miles. They have reduced accidents and plowing costs by significantly improving visibility in “ground blizzards” of fast-blowing snow.     

The Anthropology of Virtual Worlds: World of Warcraft

Three recent ethnographies of the well-known massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft demonstrate the health and vitality of the study of virtual worlds. In particular, they emphasize the importance of anthropologists reading ethnographic work done by researchers in other disciplines, and by connoisseurs and cultural practitioners of video games who deserve to be taken as intellectual interlocutors. It may be, however, that less and less work will be done on virtual worlds in the future as scholarly attention focuses on other, more novel forms of technology.     

Women and politeness: A new perspective on language and society

Robin Lakoff. Language and Woman's Place. New York, Evanston, San Francisco and London: Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row Publishers, 1975. 85 pp. Bibliography. $2.25 (paper).     

Two AHA Sessions: The Revolutionary Mr. Kuhn and the Evolutionary Mr. Bertalanffy

Abstract

Quantitative methods of content analysis have become established in most subfields of political science, but remain relatively unutilized in studies of political theory, despite the exclusive focus of that subfield on textual sources. This article develops a variation of content analysis—termed usage analysis—and employs it to resolve a standing debate in scholarship on Cicero's political theory regarding the synonymy of the major Latin terms for the state (civitas and res publica). The resulting distinction between these concepts then informs an exposition of Cicero's ideal state not as the Roman Republic itself or the mixed constitution alone, but as a universal, everlasting political society supported by justice, a mixed constitution, and active citizenship.     

Domestic Pigs in Africa

The history of African pig breeds is still controversial due to the relative scarcity of archaeological and genetic data clarifying their origins. While these breeds might descend from Near Eastern pigs entering the continent via Egypt during the Neolithic, Africa may be a primary domestication locus for pigs, as indicated for other species such as cattle and donkeys. In this regard, characterisation of the mitochondrial gene pool of African pig breeds has revealed a very low frequency of Near Eastern alleles, suggesting that, if Fertile Crescent pigs played a part in the foundation of African breeds, their genetic signature has been substantially erased. Interestingly, genetic analysis of western and eastern African pig breeds has revealed a strong phylogeographic pattern, with the latter harbouring Far Eastern alleles at high frequencies. This finding is consistent with data obtained for chickens and confirms that livestock was transported in ancient times, from the Far East to Africa as a consequence of the Indian Ocean trade. European colonisation of Africa also involved the introduction of exotic swine breeds such as Iberian pigs. The confluence of the highly divergent European and Far Eastern Sus scrofa gene pools contributed to significantly enrich the genetic reservoir of African swine breeds, favouring their adaptation to environmental conditions that are often harsh. Conservation of this genetic legacy will be of utmost importance to ensure the prosperity of current resource-based subsistence farming systems in Africa.     

DNA analysis in charred grains of naked wheat from several archaeological sites in Spain

In the present work we attempt to recover endogenous ancient DNA from cereal grains preserved under different conditions: charred, partially charred and waterlogged. A total of 126 grains from naked wheat and 18 from barley from different sites on the Eastern Iberian Peninsula ranging from the beginning of agriculture in the region to the turn of the Common Era, were studied. Two different extraction protocols were used, a standard phenol–chloroform method and a silica-based DNA extraction procedure implemented for artificially charred seeds. Amplifications were directed to three markers: the large subunit of ribulose 1,5 biphosphate carboxylase (rbcL) and the microsatellite WCT12 in the chloroplast genome and the x and y subunits of the high molecular weight glutenin gene (Glu-1) in the nucleus. The first two were used to assess the preservation status of the samples, while with the third we tried to identify the wheat grains at species level. It was possible to obtain eleven positive amplifications in 8 partially charred seeds but only two amplifications of the Glu-1 gene from a single sample of the Early Bronze age were genome-specific. Different contamination sources were identified and reported. Cloning and alignment of sequenced clones showed a correspondence of the amplified fragment to modern wheat D genome haplotypes. This result suggests that the sample corresponds to hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), thus being the first ancient DNA evidence to date for the cultivation of hexaploid wheat in the prehistoric agriculture of the Iberian Peninsula. Moreover, obtained results highlight contamination problems associated to the study of ancient archaeobotanical charred seeds suggest that the combination of a silica-based extraction method together with the amplification of specific targets is a good strategy for recovering endogenous ancient DNA from this kind of material.