The Unbearable Lightness of Bones: Memory,Emotion, and Pedagogy in Patricio Guzmán’s Chile,La Memoria Obstinada and Nostalgia De La Luz

Focusing on two documentary films by Patricio Guzmán, Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997) and, especially, Nostalgia of the Light (2010), this paper examines some of the relations between neoliberal violence (during and after the Pinochet dictatorship), memory, knowledge and emotionality, both historical and personal. It does so by reading and reviewing the actions, narratives and experiences of a group of astronomers, archaeologists and geologists who work in the Atacama desert of northern Chile and a group of women who search for the remains of their loved ones, victims of political violence, in the same desert within the shifting contexts of cinematic spectatorship. Attentive to the possibilities and pitfalls of empathic identifications and connections, it also considers the ethical and political implications of the interplay of cinema (Guzmán), photography (Paula Allen) and poetry, sky writing and "land art" (Raúl Zurita).     

A Whole New Ballgame: The Rise of Canada's Fifth Party System

This article asserts that Canadian politics underwent a major transition beginning in late 2003 and represents the rise of a new era in Canadian politics: the fifth-party system. This era is drastically different from the previous “fourth party system.” The fifth party system is characterized by the introduction of a number of new variables, most notably new patterns of partisan competition, amendments to Canada's system of campaign finance, the growing importance of policies appealing to the family, and growing importance of Web 2.0.     

The 1864 Sully Expedition and the Death of Captain John Feilner

This article addresses an area of nineteenth century American history that is often ignored in history textbooks. While a great deal of emphasis is often placed on the Civil War era (1861–65), it is also important to realize that other notable events occurred during the same time on the northern plains of the United States. As a result of the 1862 Minnesota Uprising by the Santee Sioux, the United States military began an aggressive campaign to break the will of the Sioux Indian nation. General Alfred Sully’s first retaliatory campaign in 1863, which resulted in the disgraceful events at Whitestone Hill, and his follow‐up campaign of 1864, in which Captain John Feilner was killed, reflect the attitudes and hostilities that existed during the 1860s. This article addresses the situation on the northern plains as whites continued to move westward.     

Can Lithic Attribute Analyses Identify Discrete Reduction Trajectories? A Quantitative Study Using Refitted Lithic Sets

Quantitative, attribute-based analyses of stone tools (lithics) have been frequently used to facilitate large-scale comparative studies, attempt to mitigate problems of assemblage completeness and address interpretations of the co-occurrence of unrelated technological processes. However, a major barrier to the widespread acceptance of such methods has been the lack of quantified experiments that can be externally validated by theoretically distinct approaches in order to guide analysis and confidence in results. Given that quantitative, attribute-based studies now underpin several major interpretations of the archaeological record, the requirement to test the accuracy of such methods has become critical. In this paper, we test the utility of 31 commonly used flake attribute measurements for identifying discrete reduction trajectories through three refitted lithic sets from the Middle Palaeolithic open-air site of Le Pucheuil, in northern France. The experiment had three aims: (1) to determine which, if any, attribute measurements could be used to separate individual refitted sets, (2) to determine whether variability inherent in the assemblage was primarily driven by different reduction trajectories, as represented by the refitted sets, or other factors, and (3) to determine which multivariate tests were most suitable for these analyses. In order to test the sensitivity of the sample, we ran all analyses twice, the first time with all the available lithics pertaining to each refitted set and the second time with randomly generated 75 % subsamples of each set. All results revealed the consistent accuracy of 16 attribute measurements in quadratic and linear discriminant analyses, principal component analyses and dissimilarity matrices. These results therefore provide the first quantified attribute formula for comparative analyses of Levallois reduction methods and a basis from which further experiments testing core and retouch attributes may be conducted.     

Identification of a Deep-water B-29 WWII Aircraft via ROV Telepresence Survey

American-produced B-29 Superfortress bomber aircraft flew missions against Imperial Japan in the Pacific Theater from air bases in the Mariana Islands from November 1944 until the end of WWII. Mechanical failures forced many B-29s into the ocean surrounding Saipan and Tinian. Terrestrial wreckage of these aircraft has been located in the Pacific region, but no losses in deep water were located until 2016, when a NOAA exploration cruise investigated sonar targets in the Saipan Channel, between Saipan and Tinian. Disarticulated wreckage from a B-29 was located at 370 m over a large area of the seabed. Telepresence-enabled, non-invasive exploration from NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer allowed scientists on shore to view live streaming video and to work collaboratively to guide the investigation. Experts in aviation archaeology, corrosion studies, WWII history, forensic studies, marine biology, and oceanography participated in the survey using an ROV, highlighting components which could lead to possible identification of the B-29 in situ, and conducting an environmental characterization of the site. This deep-water aircraft site exemplifies multiple-stakeholder driven research in aviation archaeology and highlights several issues in the value of individual site identification.