Managing Change and Master Plans: Machu Picchu Between Conservation and Exploitation

Machu Picchu is among the world’s most controversial heritage sites. It represents a case where raising money through ticket sales and other activities, rather than an opportunity to fund site preservation, in fact constitutes a major threat to the survival of the site through overexploitation. Unesco has been very critical in recent decades about the management of Machu Picchu. International pressure resulted in the establishment of two master plans, in 1998 and in 2005. In this paper we investigate in depth the contents and rhetoric of the two plans, comparing changes in the two different versions, and linking the change in planning attitude to actual changes taking place in the site. This is also an opportunity to open a discussion on the interdisciplinarity of master plans in heritage sites.     

Migration and the location of MNE activities: Evidence from Italian provinces

We investigate the migration-inward foreign direct investment (FDI) nexus in narrow geographies. A novel two-stage empirical strategy allows us to investigate the role of migration as a determinant of multinational enterprises (MNEs) location choices and unpick heterogeneity in foreign investors' preferences towards the presence of migrants in the host location. This allows us to shed light on the relative importance of the underlying mechanisms linking migration and inward FDI. Relying on 1113 greenfield investments by 895 MNEs in Italian NUTS3 regions over 2003–2015, we find that immigrants from the country of origin of the investor exert a positive but highly heterogeneous effect on MNE location choices. Investors are more sensitive to the presence of migrants from their country of origin when they lack experience in the destination country (first-time investors) and when their investments concern market-access or business-services (downstream) activities. This is consistent with the view that migrants act as information brokers that bridge the fixed costs of international business activities.     

The origin of the ancient Egyptian drink Shedeh revealed using LC/MS/MS

Ancient Egyptians were buried with the most precious food and drink as sustenance for their afterlife. One of these was Shedeh, the most valued and appreciated beverage in ancient Egypt. The botanic origin of Shedeh remains unclear as no mention of its raw material has survived. Some scholars have proposed that Shedeh was a pomegranate wine, while others, a grape wine. Presented here is the first ever analytical evidence of Shedeh's origin through the analysis of a sample of a residue from an extraordinarily well preserved Shedeh amphora from King Tutankhamun's collection. The previously developed LC/MS/MS wine markers method for archaeological samples was used and our results reveal Shedeh had a red grape origin.     

Free trade, feudal remnants and international equilibrium in Gaetano Filangieri's Science of Legislation

In his main work, The Science of Legislation (1780–1783), the Neapolitan Gaetano Filangieri proposed a set of extensive political and cultural reforms. These reforms were necessary to free eighteenth-century societies from the remnants of feudal institutions that obstructed international peace and economic growth. Filangieri's ideas were shaped by the international political climate between the seven Years’ War and the eve of the French Revolution. Reinterpreting Montesquieu and Genovesi through the influences of French radical and Enlightenment thought (Helvétius, Raynal, l’Encyclopédie), as well as the economics of Hume, Verri and the Physiocrats, he concluded that European modernity was inherently contradictory.From this perspective Filangieri set out to force a clean break between the technical horizons of mercantilism and enlightened absolutism and a society based on civil rights, a fair distribution of wealth and resources, and free trade. Proper ‘scientific’ knowledge of the rules and principles of legislation would allow governments to balance out the natural and cultural factors that characterise individual states, and to identify the appropriate model for social and economic development. If all states acted on their proper interest, international free trade and peaceful competition between states would emerge and the potential for general economic growth be materialised. Thus, the natural equilibrium and ‘universal consensus’ among nations could be restored.     

Isotopic evidence for the reconstruction of diet and mobility during village formation in the Early Middle Ages: Las Gobas (Burgos,northern Spain)

Strontium, carbon, and nitrogen isotopes of human bone and tooth remains have been used to reconstruct residential mobility and diet of early medieval populations at Las Gobas from the sixth to eleventh centuries. Most non-local individuals correspond to the tenth to eleventh centuries and were mostly women and infants. This residential mobility coincided with the formation of Laño village and the abandonment of artificial cave settlement. Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of bone collagen indicate an omnivorous homogenous diet based on terrestrial plant resources, with few animal-derived proteins from livestock. Millet consumption was restricted to an earlier period of time (seventh to ninth centuries); and in later periods (tenth to eleventh centuries), mainly C₃ plants such as wheat and barley were consumed. In general, there were no dietary differences between individuals according to sex or age. Sex-related dietary differences have only been observed in the tenth to eleventh centuries, when females consumed a more vegetarian diet and less animal protein. The higher δ ¹⁵N values in infants reflect the weaning effect, while the differences in δ ¹⁵N values between young adult men and young adult women can be explained as a physiological factor related to pregnancy or different origins. In a comparison with contemporaneous medieval populations in the northern Iberian Peninsula, both δ ¹³C and δ ¹⁵N values suggest similar foodstuff resources and diet among Christian and Muslim populations.     

Minero-petrographic characterization of fine ware from Cales (South Italy)

79 samples of black glazed pottery, Terra sigillata, fine common ware, and production indicators were recovered in the archaeological site of Cales and investigated via a multi-analytical program (polarized light microscopy, thermal analyses, XRPD, XRF, FESEM, FESEM-EDS). Among the materials, finds of important production indicators, represented by welded pieces of black glazed pottery and spacers, attest a local production. Polarized light microscopy shows that the inclusions consist of feldspar, quartz, mica, calcite, and lithic fragments of both volcanic and sedimentary nature. Additional information about the mineralogical assemblage comes from the XRPD that revealed the presence of neoformed Ca-silicates, indicating equivalent firing temperatures ranging from 750 to 1050°C. All the samples show a Ca-rich character and an extreme compositional homogeneity, including the production indicators. The comparison with some Ca-rich Campanian clay raw materials shows a greater affinity with the Mio-Pliocene marine clay sediments of the Apennine sector, which include local clays. This allowed us to formulate the first hypotheses about clay sources used to produce fine pottery during the third century BCE to the early imperial period in Cales.     

Cultural policies in cities of the ‘global South’: a multi-scalar approach

ABSTRACT

Building on the literature on global cities and on the worlding of cities, the articles in this special issue chart how cities outside Europe and North America try to reinvent and rescale themselves using culture. They suggest that the fabric of urban cultural policy is embedded in multi-scalar power dynamics. First, the contributions in this special issue reveal the importance of circulating standards across borders in structuring narratives about urban history, heritage and identity, in conjunction with local actors’ interests. Second, the diffusion of hegemonic cultural policy models such as the “creative city” leads to logics of exclusion, gentrification, and has been met with resistance, which suggest that these models can be to the detriment of local residents, despite the progressive values they are often claim to promote. Third, this special issue points to the need to rethink the politics of cultural policy mobility and offers conceptual tools such as vernacularization to make sense of the ways in which urban elites navigate, negotiate and take advantage of circulating cultural policy models.     

Inhabiting a risky earth: The Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 and its impacts (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland in 2010 caused havoc to global air traffic. This article examines that event by looking at theories of risk and culture. We demonstrate the fragility of today's mobilities, which depend on unpredictable nature as well as complex technological systems. A new type of risk was revealed by the eruption, which has since become a feature of cultural risk portfolios in contemporary society.