Conflicting images of the Zuider Zee around 1900: nation-building and the struggle against water

In 1918, the Dutch government decided to enclose and reclaim the Zuider Zee (later called the IJsselmeer). The preceding decades had been marked by broad public debate about the utility and urgency of the project. Around 1900, its proponents constructed images of the region and of the Dutch nation in which the Zuider Zee was no longer a crossroads. They emphasized the backwardness of the area and depicted the sea as a domestic enemy, its violent storms posing a threat to the nation. Cornelis Lely’s Zuider Zee proposal (1891) promised a bright future for both the region and the Netherlands as a whole. The struggle against the water would revitalize the nation (by stimulating nation-building) and modernize its international image (perceived as a picturesque but archaic country). Opponents of the project feared the high costs and developed a counter-image: the Zuider Zee region as heartland of ‘authentic’ Dutch culture, a heritage that would be jeopardized by the project. The article concludes by highlighting the synchronicity of the non-synchronous: the Zuider Zee region was envisioned as a region living in the past, thereby constituting an ‘internal Other’ in a country undergoing rapid modernization around 1900.     

Assessing the reliability of pRIA for identifying ancient proteins from archaeological contexts

The use of immunological techniques for identifying the origin of proteins and inferring foodstuffs exploited by prehistoric occupations has been conducted for several decades. Cases of experimental laboratory and archaeological studies have shown the potential of these techniques for reliable results. However, very few of these case studies employ archaeological sites that have excellent preservation and high-resolution spatial contexts between identifiable faunal remains, features, and stone tools. We present an assessment of the identification reliability of one immunological technique, protein radioimmunoassay (pRIA), using faunal remains and stone tools from two sites from arctic and subarctic contexts. The results of this research indicate that, even in contexts with excellent preservation, the identifications produced by the pRIA technique are subject to misidentification and cross-reactions due to diagenetic alteration of proteins. We propose a higher minimum reaction value (percent binding of labeled antibody) that mitigates these effects, and renders the pRIA results more reliable for ancient, poorly preserved organic remains.     

Slum clearance, privatization and residualization: the practices and politics of council housing in mid-twentieth-century England

This article contributes to a growing literature on working-class suburbanization by arguing that both the residualization and privatization of council housing need to be properly historicized. This case study of housing policy in the borough of Brighton demonstrates that council house sales between the 1950s and 1970s were important in the residualization of inter-war estates well before the 'right to buy' legislation of the 1980s. Concerns about excessively affluent tenants can also be traced to the inter-war period, although it was not until the late 1950s that local Conservatives sought to push affluent council tenants into owner occupation via capping incomes and encouraging council house sales. The article shows that slum clearance had long been central to the local council's provision of municipal housing and that apart from two short periods following the First and Second World Wars, council housing was conceived of primarily as a residual tenure by those in control of policy implementation. It further demonstrates that slum clearance between the 1920s and 1960s altered the social constituency for council housing and, combined with selective privatization, specific allocation policies and disinvestment, led to the stigmatization of certain inter-war estates. The article suggests that further case studies are needed in order to test the wider applicability of these arguments during the middle years of the twentieth century.     

Suburban Affairs: Groups and Political Communities Across Sydney

According to recent international research, political mobilisation at the local level no longer reflects socioeconomic divisions in society, but is instead based on a post-material oriented ‘politics of choice’. This proposition is applied to group politics within six Sydney communities. We broaden the examination of political activity undertaken by local groups to include lobbying, advocacy and community organising. This leads us to find that the primary variance among communities is in the type of activities undertaken rather than the level of group activity. In more privileged areas of Sydney, local groups are more likely to be constituted as traditional interest groups, including those that focus on post-materialist concerns. However, group activity remains substantial in less affluent areas, but manifests in different forms, including hybrid groups that combine service provision and advocacy.     

The 'Mardi Gras' Shipwreck: Results of a Deep-Water Excavation, Gulf of Mexico, USA

The 'Mardi Gras' Shipwreck is the remains of an early-19th-century sailing vessel lost in approximately 1220 m of water in the Gulf of Mexico. A recent archaeological investigation documented the wreck and recovered several artefacts, including glassware, ceramics, navigational instruments, a cannon, and a stove. Analyses of these artefacts and the surviving hull have led to preliminary conclusions on the nature of the vessel and its crew.
© 2009 The Authors