Fallow deer (Dama dama dama) management in Roman South-East Britain

This paper presents new carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope data for European fallow deer (Dama dama dama) in Roman Britain and discusses results in light of evidence from classical texts, landscape archaeology, zooarchaeology and the limited available samples of metric data. The new isotope data presented here are from Fishbourne Roman Palace (Sussex), two sites on the Isle of Thanet (Kent) and a further two sites in London. In spite of small sample sizes the data make an important contribution to the very limited corpus of scientific research on the species and provide new resolution to the nature of fallow deer movement and management in Roman Britain.     

Hatching Feminisms: Czech Feminist Aspirations in the 1990s

This article explores a range of conversations in Czech that have been undertaken by popular and intellectual Czech feminists since 1989. These have attempted to ‘explain the usefulness of feminist thinking’ to frequently reticent Czech audiences. It examines feminists' claim that feminism and feminist social criticism have an important role to play in making a new social order in which what they describe as women's values and cultures would have a central place. It explores the often maternalist strategies that intellectuals have devised for working through the pall of ambivalence that surrounds feminism in the Czech Republic, and it examines how an enthusiastic defence of local feminisms and the desire to highlight intransigent attitudes towards the remaking of gender identities have become important hallmarks of contemporary Czech feminisms.     

“Modernizing” Māori Marriage in New Zealand

In 1952, Māori forms of customary marriage were made legally invalid. This article investigates the application of a state marriage registration system to Māori in the early decades of the twentieth century that was designed to encourage Māori to conform to European marital models. It focuses, in particular, on how Christianity and English law were deployed as modernising forces by a new generation of Māori intellectuals who emerged in the 1890s under the banner of the Te Aute College Students' Association (TACSA), later known as the Young Māori Party. United by their Anglican faith, TACSA favoured a process of adaptive acculturation in certain areas of social life, where select customs were to be retained and protected, so as to secure demographic and cultural survival. Marriage was highly valued because it was linked to the collective interests of whānau (family) and iwi (tribe) in matters of land and inheritance. As marriage was linked to collective futures, the article argues that maintaining and protecting marriage customs was one strategy for holding on to culture, land and autonomy in the face of increasing state efforts to require Māori to conform to European norms and traditions.     

(Dis)(em)placing gender at Ukwimi: refugee resettlement and repatriation in eastern Zambia

There is growing recognition within feminist scholarship that managing displacement is a highly contested, politicized, and gendered process. This article seeks to contribute by demonstrating that the processes of resettlement and repatriation (both thought of as ‘solutions’ to displacement) are also contested, politicized, and gendered. My analysis is situated within feminist geopolitics and includes empirical data collected from interviews with and observations of Mozambican/Angolan refugees, their hosts, and institutional actors at Ukwimi Refugee Settlement (URS), Zambia. Specifically, the discussion focuses on two realities. First, that resettlement to formal, organized settlements (like URS) actively displaces gender dynamics, as illustrated by the case of Mozambican refugees resettled to URS. Second, that large-scale, organized repatriation also displaces gender relationships in profound ways, as demonstrated by the large-scale repatriation of Angolan refugees from URS. In the midst of multiple displacements, the daily (and highly gendered) struggles of people at URS reflect the concrete ways in which refugees and their hosts actively seek to emplace themselves at URS.     

A hypothesis on different technological solutions for outdoor and indoor Roman wall paintings

The determination of the chemical composition of different parts of wall paintings (pigments, mortars and binders) provides information about technology of preparation of an artefact. Herein, we present a multi-methodological characterisation of wall paintings from a Roman archaeological site in Cuma, focusing on differences between an indoor (domus) and outdoor fabrication (a temple, Tempio con Portico (TCP)). Both pigments, binders and mortars were studied via a combination of destructive/μ-destructive (mass spectrometry, ionic chromatography, ICP-based techniques) and non-destructive (Raman microscopy, small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and X-ray diffraction) methodologies. Particularly, the systematic presence of dolomite only in mortars from TCP may suggest an intentional use of such limestone for the outdoor fabrication of public interest. Differences between TCP and domus are also related to the composition of the pigment binder. In particular, the detected binders (studied by LC-MS/MS and GC-MS) were proteinaceous in the case of domus (possibly egg and animal glue) and drying oils in the case of TCP. Ultimately, our multi-methodological study provides an overall picture of the material components of paintings from fabrications with different use, proposing a hypothesis on technological choices according to conservative and destination reasons.