Deciphering the inorganic chemical record of ancient human activity using ICP-MS: a reconnaissance study of late Classic soil floors at Cancuén,Guatemala

Inorganic chemical analysis of soil floors using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was undertaken to provide information on the nature and location of past human activity in the ancient Maya city of Cancuén, Guatemala. The use of ICP-MS to detect trace and ultra-trace elemental enrichment of two excavated soil floors from the late Classic period is the first study of its kind in Mesoamerican archaeology. Geochemical background of the site was established by the analysis of palaeosols and nearby undisturbed ‘off-site’ soil profiles. Robust statistical methods used in the study clearly distinguished the level of anthropogenic enrichment across the former floors. Many elements measured showed only minor departures (10–20%) from the site's background soil chemistry. The greatest levels of elemental enrichment were detected in the rare earth elements, mercury, and gold. The latter is of particular interest considering the consensus that gold was absent from the world of the Classic-period Maya. Comparisons of the spatial pattern of mercury enrichment with lithic and archaeological data show strong linkages to past industrial and ritual activities. Elevated rare earth element concentrations were recorded broadly across both soil floors and are considered to be related to concentrated human occupation in antiquity.     

Spatial Dimensions of the Easterlin Hypothesis: Fertility Variations in Italy

The paper re–evaluates the Easterlin hypothesis in a multiregional context by conceptually and methodologically accounting for two processes of spatial interdependence in an open subnational demo–economic system: diffusion of fertility norms and values across space, and movements between labor markets. The empirical analysis estimates pooled cross–sectional, time–series models using data for 18 Italian regions from 1952 to 1995. The results suggest that accounting for spatial interdependencies is necessary to avoid model misspecifications. Moreover, the models lead to space–time landscapes of fertility elasticities that suggest, for the majority of space–time units, an inverse Easterlin effect for the diffusion component but support of the Easterlin hypothesis due to labor movements across space.     

Her(media)land ? Nouveaux espaces militants par et pour les lesbiennes en France au XXIème siècle

ABSTRACT

Moins visible et moins flamboyante que la vie culturelle médiatisée des gays, celle des lesbiennes françaises n’en est pas moins riche et variée, surtout depuis les années 2010, malgré une diffusion moindre.

En 2014, le magazine Well Well Well revue au format mook (mi-magazine, mi-book) sort son premier numéro à l’automne avec Céline Sciamma en couverture. Au même moment, la journaliste Anne Delabre crée l’association « Le 7e Genre », qui propose un ciné-club mensuel dans le but de « décrypter les représentations des questions LGBT au cinéma ». Plus récemment encore, les lesbiennes s’invitent à la radio en contribuant une fois par mois aux émissions d’Homo-micro sous le titre « Gouinement lundi ».

Cet article s’intéressera à ces nouvelles formes de militantisme lesbien, en s’interrogeant sur la manière dont elles s’inscrivent dans un continuum d’activisme LGBT tout en générant leurs propres singularités. Il analysera les publics lesbiens visés par ces démarches et la manière dont ces médias lesbiens du second millénaire intègrent et s’adressent à « toutes ces femmes qui viennent d’horizons si différents et qui n’ont en commun qu’une orientation sexuelle » comme l’écrit Marie Kirschen.     

Rethinking the value of unpaid care work: lessons from participatory visual research in central Tanzania

Abstract

The contemporary international development agenda addresses several important gender issues, including the contribution of unpaid care work (UCW) to human well-being. The inclusion of UCW into the mainstream policy debate is undoubtedly a major milestone in the history of feminist scholarship and activism. However, we argue that the universalistic and capitalocentric assumptions laden in the dominant policy discourse belie the diversity of the lived experiences and subjective meanings of UCW often performed by women and girls in different cultural and geographical contexts, particularly in the predominantly agrarian global South. We draw on participatory and visual ethnographic fieldwork to show that rural women in Tanzania perceive UCW as an experience that entails not only physical toil and drudgery, but also positive emotions of joy, satisfaction, and fulfilment, which are integral to affirming their self-perceived identities and roles as farmers and mothers in their communities. These material, affective, and symbolic dimensions of UCW emerge from agrarian women’s situated knowledges and experiences of ensuring household social reproduction on and with the land, as well as the gender relations and seasonal dynamics that shape the organization of work tasks in agrarian landscapes. To achieve transnational gender justice, we suggest that a more fine-tuned and nuanced approach to understanding the variability and complexity of care work as practiced and perceived by heterogeneous groups of women (and men) in particular places and times is needed.     

Statistical Analysis of Area-wide Alcohol-related Driving Crashes: A Spatial Econometric Approach

The article analyzes area-wide alcohol-related driving crash rates, with an emphasis on neighborhood effects, edge effects, and spatial effects arising from shared roadways that traverse area boundaries. Using township data for the state of Indiana, spatial Durbin models of alcohol-related driving crash rates are presented. The results suggest that a township's population composition and its abundance of alcohol-related businesses impact the alcohol-related driving crash rates. Moreover, positive spatial dependence is found to be highly significant, cautioning against the reliance on possibly biased OLS estimators. Due to restrictions in access to the crash and alcohol-related businesses data of the neighboring states, an alternative approach is adopted to address the spatial edge effects that may arise from alcohol consumption of residents from the edge areas of the neighboring states (possibly leading to crashes inside the border townships). Given the variation in alcohol laws and regulations across states, an empirical assessment of the edge effects is particularly relevant where some border crossing may be deliberate so as to avoid more stringent alcohol restrictions.