Computational Reproducibility in Archaeological Research: Basic Principles and a Case Study of Their Implementation

The use of computers and complex software is pervasive in archaeology, yet their role in the analytical pipeline is rarely exposed for other researchers to inspect or reuse. This limits the progress of archaeology because researchers cannot easily reproduce each other’s work to verify or extend it. Four general principles of reproducible research that have emerged in other fields are presented. An archaeological case study is described that shows how each principle can be implemented using freely available software. The costs and benefits of implementing reproducible research are assessed. The primary benefit, of sharing data in particular, is increased impact via an increased number of citations. The primary cost is the additional time required to enhance reproducibility, although the exact amount is difficult to quantify.     

Government and (non)event: the promise of control

Control rooms routinely deal with happenings that might become events. They attempt to hide events and their possibility from the users of infrastructure by undertaking various forms of action to stop events coming to pass. Based on ethnographic research in a motorway control room, in this paper we describe how events are grasped and handled and subject to the effect of control. Focusing on how the promise of control is provisionally achieved through detection–diagnosis–response work, we show how control room action is situated on the ambiguous line between event and non- or quasi-event and involves making happenings that might be or might become events into their opposite: non-events, or routine occurrences. We use the case of the work of control rooms in dialogue with Michel Foucault on the relation between ‘government and event’ and Lauren Berlant on ‘modes of eventfulness’ to challenge the emphasis on the event as dramatic transformation in some current research on securing life and some geographical work on events. Paying close attention to what control rooms do shows the multiplicity of relations between government and (non)event, and invites us to expand the ‘modes of eventfulness’ that social and cultural geographers learn to sense and disclose.     

The Godless Congress of 1938: Christian Fears About Communism in Great Britain*

In September 1938, the World Union of Freethinkers held a conference in London. Fascistant Protestants and many Catholic intellectuals and clerics called the event the “Godless Congress,” and they viewed it as a part of a communist attack on Christianity in Britain and wanted it to be banned. Mainstream Protestants were also provoked by the conference, but most believed that the congress provided Christianity with an opportunity to re‐assert itself. These varied but substantial reactions show that many Christians were ready and able to defend publicly their Christian faith against what they saw as atheistic communism.     

Language contact and education

Paul R. Turner, ed. Bilingualism in the Southwest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973. xv+352 pp. Figures and index. $7.45.     

Eclectic and pragmatic: the colours of Dutch social and cultural geography

In the Netherlands, human geography has traditionally been an applied, practical science. Close ties have always existed with spatial planning and regional-economic policy. With good reason, the first generation of planning specialists—in the 1960s—consisted largely of people trained as geographers. Geographers were also the socio-spatial engineers of the welfare state (de Pater 2001b; de Pater and de Smidt 1989).     

A house of Treasures: The Account of Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25—Observations and Implications

The account of the reign of Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25 is a true house of treasures for those studying the book of Chronicles in its historical milieu or reconstructing the intellectual milieu of ancient Yehud. In particular, this study shows how 2 Chronicles 25 calls attention and sheds light on: (1) matters of time construction and periodization; (2) multiple temporal relations within one account in Chronicles and their significance for understanding both reading strategies of the intended and primary readerships and the organization of their memories of the past; (3) chaotic tendencies and their non-random distribution in the past that the readers are asked to remember and vicariously partake through reading and studying; (4) the significance of a memory of the past in which the size of armies diminishes through time; (5) concepts of “otherness” and the remembrance of some concrete constructions of “otherness” through the reading and rereading of the book; (6) otherness and the question of northern Israel; (7) attributes associated (or not) with being a Jerusalemite; and (8) on deontological vs. consequentionalist approaches to evaluate whether actions are to be judged right or wrong and the influence of a continuous remembrance of related events narrated in 2 Chronicles 25.     

Isaiah 1,4–9, Isaiah,and the events of 701 BCE in Judah

Abstract

The title of this paper points to the relationship between the Israelite cult as cultural performance and current trends in modern interpretation of the Psalms. The first part includes a review of the wellknown “spiritualisation” of cultic language which is compared to a new approach that describes this phenomenon as a “transformation” of cultic patterns. The second part intents to demonstrate how such transformations could have worked. The “liturgical” text of Ps 24 may serve as an eloquent example of this. Here, a fragment from the ancient temple cult is quoted in order to demonstrate the close connection between the secrets of the inner temple and everyday life. Ps 24 now appears to be an erudite text used for educational purposes.     

Children,Work and ‘Child Labour’: Changing Responses to the Employment of Children

This article examines the ways in which the problem of child labour has been perceived and addressed, from the beginnings of social concern about these issues until the present, with illustrations from The Netherlands and Indonesia. National and international responses to the problem of child labour reflect a number of assumptions which are almost completely at odds with the views and the preferences of children themselves. Paradoxically, powerful lobbies in some of the world's wealthiest countries – which cannot enforce, and in some cases are beginning to relax, their own child labour laws – are trying to insist that the developing countries tighten and/or enforce their laws, under the threat of various forms of sanction or boycott. These increasingly active threats make it highly inadvisable for any exporting country to acknowledge the existence of children's employment at all, for example by protective legislation or other efforts to promote the improvement of children's working conditions.     

Deep hanging out in the arts: an anthropological approach to capturing cultural value

This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project carried out from September 2013 to March 2014 by five researchers at the University of Leeds (UK), who paired off with five audience-participants and engaged in a process of ‘deep hanging out’ at events curated as part of Leeds’ annual LoveArts festival. As part of AHRC’s Cultural Value project, the overarching aim of the research was to produce a rich, polyvocal, evocative and complex account of cultural value by co-investigating arts engagement with audience–participants. Findings suggested that both the methods and purpose of knowing about cultural value impact significantly on any exploration of cultural experience. Fieldwork culminated in the apparent paradox that we know, and yet still don’t seem to know, the value and impact of the arts. Protracted discussions with the participants suggested that this paradox stemmed from a misplaced focus on knowledge; that instead of striving to understand and rationalize the value of the arts, we should instead aim to feel and experience it. During a process of deep hanging out, our participants revealed the limitations of language in capturing the value of the arts, yet confirmed perceptions of the arts as a vehicle for developing self-identity and -expression and for living a better life. These findings suggest that the Cultural Value debate needs to be reframed from what is currently an interminable epistemological obsession (that seeks to prove and evidence the value of culture) into a more complex phenomenological question, which asks how people experience the arts and culture and why people want to understand its value. This in turn implies a re-conceptualization of the relationships between artists or arts organisations and their publics, based on a more relational form of engagement and on a more anthropological approach to capturing and co-creating cultural value.