Quality Quartz: working stone at a bronze age kerbed Cairn at Olcote,near Calanais,Isle of Lewis

This paper discusses an assemblage of worked and smashed quartz associated with a Bronze Age kerbed cairn at Olcote. Most analytical treatments of quartz in Scottish prehistory have been structured around a pervasive dualism: quartz working is either the mundane use of a low quality raw material or the ritual use of a symbolically laden referent. The assemblage from Olcote highlights the dangers of such dichotomous analytical positions.     

LA-ICP-MS analysis of quartzite from the Upper Gunnison Basin,Colorado

We report the results of LA-ICP-MS analysis of 402 quartzite samples representing 48 collection loci in the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB), Colorado and determine the extent to which the sources can be geochemically discriminated from one another using this non-destructive technique. The ability to differentiate among the sources would open the door to provenance studies of the quartzite chipped-stone tools and debitage that constitute 95% or more of most of the 3000-plus prehistoric site assemblages documented in the UGB. Our samples represent prehistorically quarried and non-quarried quartzite sources, including outcrop (primary) and gravel (secondary) deposits. The results reveal spatial and chronological trends in quartzite elemental composition that can be exploited for provenance determinations of quartzite artifacts from UGB sites, albeit using an assemblage-based sourcing strategy that differs from the familiar approach of “matching” obsidian artifacts to their statistically likeliest geological source. We offer a preliminary version of a sourcing protocol for UGB quartzite.     

The Transformation of Labor Relations in Russian Industry: The Influence of Regional Factors in the Iron and Steel Industry

The author examines the role played by the economic geography of the former Soviet Union in the evolution of labor relations in Russian industry, using the iron and steel industry as a case study. More specifically, three regional factors are analyzed as they affect enterprise economic strategies, organization, and management-labor relations: (1) the inherited industrial structure; (2) the degree of product specialization at the regional level; and (3) the level and sophistication of regional political and labor structures combined with the presence (or lack of same) of a “regional agenda.” These factors are examined within the context of a model predicting several possible variants of post-communist labor relations at the enterprise level. 36 references.     

Multiculture,middle class competencies and friendship practices in super-diverse geographies

In this paper we use a small number of in-depth interviews with parents with primary school children to examine social mixing and friendship practices in two super-diverse North London boroughs. In these complex geographical contexts, characterized by gentrification processes and old and new migrations, we suggest that primary schools are convergent places where adults and children from different backgrounds are likely to meet and interact, and the paper explores the extent to which adults and children, thrown together in and through these sites, negotiate relationships with those who are differently socially and culturally situated to themselves. Informed by the interview narratives, the paper highlights the importance of focusing on the micro, quotidian ways in which differences in social and/or ethnic background shape those relationships and it explores some instances of the ways in which those differences are routinely encountered, managed and/or avoided. In this way the paper contributes theoretical and empirical nuance to current concerns around difference and diversity and the interactions of complex urban populations by ‘adding’ social class to everyday multiculture perspectives and everyday multiculture perspectives to urban middle class debates.     

Two long-snouted temnospondyls (Amphibia,Labyrinthodontia) from the Triassic of Queensland

Fragmentary remains of the first long snouted temnospondyls from the Triassic of Queensland are described. One is the first vertebrate fossil from the Glenidal Formation, while the other adds another member to the extensive fauna of the Arcadia Formation. Both specimens are placed provisionally in the Family Trematosauridae.     

Permian non-marine bivalves of the Falkland Islands and their palaeoenvironmental significance

Simões, M.G., Quaglio, F., Warren, L., Anelli, L.E., Stone, P., Riccomini, C., Grohmann, C.H. & Chamani, M.A.C. December 2012. Permian non-marine bivalves of the Falkland Islands and their palaeoenvironmental significance. Alcheringa 36, 543–554. ISSN 0311-5518.

We describe the occurrence of non-marine bivalves in exposures of the Middle Permian (Capitanian) Brenton Loch Formation on the southern shore of Choiseul Sound, East Falklands. The bivalves are associated with ichnofossils and were collected from a bed in the upper part of the formation, within a 25 cm thick interval of dark siltstones and mudstones with planar lamination, overlain by massive sandstones. The shells are articulated, with the valves either splayed open or closed. At the top of the succession, mudstone beds nearly 1.5 m above the bivalve-bearing layers yielded well-preserved Glossopteris sp. cf. G. communis leaf fossils. The closed articulated condition of some shells indicates preservation under high sedimentation rates with low residence time of bioclasts at the sediment/water interface. However, the presence of specimens with splayed shells is usually correlated to the slow decay of the shell ligament in oxygen-deficient bottom waters. The presence of complete carbonized leaves of Glossopteris associated with the bivalve-bearing levels also suggests a possibly dysoxic-anoxic bottom environment. Overall, our data suggest that the bivalves were preserved by abrupt burial, possibly by distal sediment flows into a Brenton Loch lake, and may represent autochthonous to parautochthonous fossil accumulations. The shells resemble those of anthracosiids and are herein assigned to Palaeanodonta sp. aff. P. dubia, a species also found in the Permian succession of the Karoo Basin, South Africa. Our results confirm that (a) the true distributions in space and time of all Permian non-marine (freshwater) bivalves are not yet well known, and (b) there is no evidence for marine conditions in the upper part of the Brenton Loch Formation.