‘Las Vegas is not where we are’: Queer readings of the Civil Partnership Act

This article interrogates the United Kingdom's new Civil Partnership Act, which is intended to create a new legal status of ‘civil partner’. The Act confers benefits and imposes legal responsibilities on those same-sex couples who register their relationships. Analysing the Governmental material produced in support of the legislation, as well as Parliamentary debates, the article provides a critical analysis of the ideological underpinnings of civil partnership. A series of dichotomies—marriage/not marriage; sex/no sex; status/contract; conjugality/care; love/money; responsibilities/rights—informs the Government's construction of the category of ‘same-sex partner’. Those dichotomies lend themselves to a deconstructive analysis, applying the insights of queer theory. The result is a skepticism regarding the Act's replication of a marriage model for same-sex couples. Instead, the article concludes by advocating the search for more pluralistic and flexible legal models that better represent the diversity of relationship forms found today.     

How the Olmec used bitumen in ancient Mesoamerica

Bitumen, found in abundance in Mesoamerica’s southern Gulf Coast region in natural seeps and in many archeological contexts, is an important economic resource and exchange item that has received little consideration in Mesoamerica. Analyses of archeological, ethnoarcheological, and experimental data provide insights on the organization of bitumen processing activities, and the end product (archeological bitumen), which the Olmec (1200–400 BC) used in the production of many items. Archeological data are derived from investigations at El Remolino and Paso los Ortices— two Early Formative period levee sites in the San Lorenzo Olmec region. Our findings suggest that among the Olmec, bitumen processing was organized as a specialized activity, involving multiple production stages, but not necessarily elite involvement or control.     

The bishop and the Basques: The diocese of Calahorra and the Basque provinces of Alava and Vizcaya under Bishop Rodrigo Cascante, 1147–1190

Under Bishop Rodrigo Cascante (1147–90), the northern Iberian diocese of Calahorra made its first significant administrative inroads into Alava and Vizcaya since its nominal assimilation of those Basque provinces around 1090. An examination into the fluctuating history of Calahorra's administrative penetration of its Basque provinces during this period highlights the extreme difficulty of this undertaking, which was severely hampered by the opposition of a strong Basque regional nobility. It also reveals a close connection between the fluctuations that characterized Calahorra's administrative fortunes north of the Ebro and the see's turbulent political context, defined by its position straddling a volatile frontier between Castile, Navarre and Aragon. Finally, it provides a useful opportunity to analyse Rodrigo Cascante's changing relationships with the secular powers that competed for the territory of his Riojan see. This analysis leads to the conclusion that the bishop of Calahorra was not a passive partner in these relationships, but actively adjusted his stance with respect to the crowns of Castile and Aragon, primarily in function of how well they did, or might, contribute to the realization of his Basque agenda.     

In the shadow of Moundville: A bioarchaeological view of the transition to agriculture in the central Tombigbee valley of Alabama and Mississippi

Biocultural patterns surrounding the emergence of agriculture from 11 sites in the central Tombigbee River valley (500–1200 AD), 50–100 km west of the emerging Moundville polity, suggest that while food production may have alleviated some ecological stress, it came at a cost. Markers of childhood arrest indicate earlier weaning, likely creating a cycle of rising fertility and competition, but surviving adults appear better off following intensification. Health disparities at farmsteads, including more prevalent anemia, growth defects, lower limb infections, and accidental trauma, are consistent with increasingly competing demands of domestic and corporate modes of production. Although these agricultural settlements in the hinterlands were not severely compromised as predicted by a strictly top down model of provisioning, health risks assumed by farmsteads may have resulted from provisioning to centers and/or corporate lineages while simultaneously mitigating larger risks (e.g., raiding). The greater health risks assumed by farmstead females suggest that they had less control over production and decision-making than women buried at centers, while height and upper body strength at mound centers, in addition to rare but extreme trauma, point to identities that were mapped not only onto the landscape, but onto the bodies of men and women occupying elite spaces.     

Stylistic variability of stemmed obsidian tools (mata’a), frequency seriation,and the scale of social interaction on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, has been the focus of much research and speculation, particularly with reference to the island’s hundreds of giant, enigmatic statues and the set of conditions that supported their construction and transportation. In this paper, we analyze an abundant class of lithic artifacts, mata’a, to study of patterns of cultural transmission with implications for the evolution of groups, competition, and scale of socio-political organization among this island population. While these kinds of studies often draw upon assemblages of decorated ceramics, here we show how analysis of variability unconstrained by performance allows us to measure aspects of inheritance related to the manufacture of these artifacts. In the case of mata’a from Rapa Nui, we demonstrate that it is possible to reach falsifiable conclusions about the evolutionary dynamics that shaped the remarkable archaeological record on Rapa Nui.