„Was für Grün in der Stadt?“

Urban green space is a key subject of actual urban negotiation processes on how the city shall develop. Visions of the ideal city are reflected in the meanings currently ascribed to urban gardening. Thereby the relation between human and nature as well as between build and natural environment in the city plays a central role. Results from different Swiss cities show that allotment gardens as well as newer forms of urban gardening are oscillating between a compensatory and a complementary understanding of nature, and they equally combine the desire for pristine nature with the demand for functional green space in the city.     

Technological,Functional and Contextual Aspects of the K2 and Mapungubwe Worked Bone Industries

Mapungubwe (AD 1220–1290) is generally regarded as the first urban centre in southern Africa, functioning as the seat of power for an extensive but short-lived polity. More than 80 years of excavations here, and at its nearby predecessor K2 (c. AD 1000–1220), resulted in a substantial assemblage of material remains from elite and commoner contexts. This assemblage includes a large collection of worked bone objects, such as needles, awls, tubes and objects of personal adornment. Of particular interest are the bone arrowheads and link-shafts, of which a significant number of specimens were found complete and intact. Such quantities of well-preserved worked bone objects are unique in the archaeological record of the region. The worked bone assemblages from these two sites provide a rare opportunity to study multiple components of the production process as well as the use context of bone objects. In this paper, we characterise the K2 and Mapungubwe worked bone industries through various morphological, technological, use-trace and contextual approaches and discuss the significance of these aspects in terms of raw material selection and manufacture and archaeological use context. In particular, this study shows the complexity of these worked bone industries over time.     

Of Buffalo and Butchers: Coupling Traditional Procurement Studies with Taphonomic Analyses to Explore Intensive Wild Animal Processing Patterns at Two Early Iron Age Sites in the Kruger National Park

Located in northeastern South Africa in the Kruger National Park, the wild-dominated faunal assemblages at Le6 and Le7 allow for a site-level examination of the treatment of wild species within the highly variable spectra of Early Iron Age animal use. Looking at hunting beyond pure subsistence choices, this paper couples traditional morphological analysis with taphonomic analysis and theoretical frameworks of intensification to ask new socially focussed zooarchaeological questions of these assemblages. Through this, both the procurement and processing methods utilized at Le6 and Le7 are identified and the significance of these choices is discussed. In so doing, the paper addresses possible specialization in both the hunting and the processing of large wild mammals. The socio-economic implications and potential drivers of these faunal choices are then considered within the broader context of the southern African Early Iron Age, and a potentially new faunal use strategy and site type are introduced.     

The Current Status of the Kenya Capsian

East Africa is home to a rich array of stone-tool traditions that span human prehistory. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the region attracted pioneer prehistorians in the early twentieth century, including L. S. B. Leakey, E. J. Wayland and T. P. O’Brien, who created the first cultural framework for East African prehistory during the 1930s. Although aspects of this framework remain relevant today, others have become misunderstood relics of an old classification system that hinders current research. This is particularly evident in the classification of a Later Stone Age (LSA) culture – the Kenya (East African) Aurignacian, later known as Kenya (East African) Capsian. Although this cultural entity was redressed during the 1970s and 1980s and redefined as the Eburran industry, there is still mystique surrounding the current status of the Kenya Capsian, its original scope and definition, the relationship with the Eburran and its position within a modern understanding of the East African LSA. This is largely due to paradigmatic shifts in researcher attitudes, leading to the use of the Eburran as a false proxy. It is necessary now to completely remove the term Kenya Capsian as an indication of similarity among the different LSA technologies. However, there also needs to be less emphasis on the importance of the Eburran and recognition that it is just one example of a multitude of diverse localised LSA industries. This will open the way for future research into the LSA and facilitate our greater understanding of recent prehistory in East Africa.     

The Awkward Squad: Arts Graduates from British Tropical Africa Before 1940

ABSTRACT

Before the Second World War, most Africans from British Tropical Africa who studied abroad were seeking qualifications in three professions: law, medicine and the Church. In all these, they could be reasonably sure of employment on their return. True, government employment was problematic, but law and medicine did offer the alternative – often more lucrative – of private practice. Much more threatening to colonial authority were arts students: those who read philosophy, literature, politics or sociology. This article focuses on several men who graduated in Britain or the USA: Kobina Sekyi, J.B. Danquah, James Aggrey, Bankole Awoonor-Renner (Gold Coast); Eyo Ita, Nathaniel Fadipe, Nnamdi Azikiwe – and his (mostly Igbo) protégés (Nigeria); Hosea Nyabongo, Balamu Mukasa, Ernest Kalibala (Uganda); Peter Koinange (Kenya). It concludes by surveying the career of Nicholas Ballanta-Taylor (Sierra Leone), who studied music in New York and in 1927 won a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation for musicological research in Africa. Of these pioneer African Africanists, four wrote successful doctoral theses, Azikiwe published an academic study. Aggrey and Fadipe died prematurely. Danquah applied his intellect to essentially non-academic pursuits. Ballanta, worked as a practical musician in the 1930s, but his African research remains virtually unpublished.     

Re-evaluating the Neolithic: The Impact and the Consolidation of Farming Practices in the Cantabrian Region (Northern Spain)

Research projects undertaken in the Cantabrian region since 1980 have produced new, high-quality information about the neolithisation process(es) in this area. It is now necessary to review this archaeological information and test the main hypotheses put forward to explain it. This paper presents an update on the archaeological evidence (sites, chronological dates, archaeozoological, archaeobotanical and technological information) for the early Neolithic in the Cantabrian region. It summarizes recent research on neolithisation in the region, and assesses the impact of this process during the early Neolithic, and its later consolidation. Although the available information is still incomplete, it is now possible to identify the focal point of the introduction of elements characteristic of the Neolithic way of life in the region. Current evidence suggests that it is in the eastern sector, where the earliest arrival of domesticates and new technologies such as pottery has been attested. The existence of continuities—such as sustained reliance on hunting and gathering and the coexistence of old and new funerary rites—suggests the persistence of native populations, which gradually participated in the neolithisation process after an ‘availability phase’.     

Clowning and tragic clowning: Miguel de Unamuno as a funny writer

ABSTRACT

The present study considers the role and function that humor has in Unamuno's intellectual and literary universe. It traces Unamuno's attitude toward humor to his reading of the Spanish character in En torno al casticismo (1895) and to his dialogue with the figure of Don Quixote, as found in Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (1905) and Del sentimiento trágico de la vida (1912). Finally, it looks at the theory of humor offered in the novel Niebla (1914) and also at the role that humor played in Unamuno's later political writings, especially those of exile (1924–1930).     

An Archive of Difference: Syrian Women,the Peddling Economy and US Social Welfare, 1880–1935

Historians have scrutinised the racial classifications of Arab immigrants in the census, in immigration documents and in early‐twentieth‐century naturalisation cases. However, recent scholarship has shown that other archives – ones that do not focus on interactions with the law – reveal a different process of Arab‐American racialisation. This article contends that looking in other archival spaces, specifically the US social welfare archive, shows how ideas about gender, sexual and class difference constituted early Arab‐American racialisation. Social welfare reformers in institutional settings, including the International Institute of Boston, the National Conference of Social Work and the pages of the social work periodical The Survey, systematically linked Syrian labouring practices with notions of dependency, sexual and gender deviance, and Orientalist difference. Syrian women were racialised through their participation in the peddling economy – a network of peddlers, suppliers and domestic labourers that sustained a widespread profession of the early Syrian American community. Syrian women's labouring practices conflicted with white middle‐class femininity and posed a threat to Syrian claims of whiteness. This analysis demonstrates the centrality of gender, sexuality and class to studies of early Arab America and demonstrates how Arab migrant women's labouring practices affected their communities’ standing in the American context.     

Models as Evidence for Sewn‐boat Traditions

Models of traditional boats stitched together with thread or cane from different parts of the world are commonly found in museum collections. They are often highly detailed and assembled in a way that is characteristic of a particular region. Through the presentation of a range of sewn‐boat models, particularly focusing on those from Sri Lanka, this paper considers how representative models are of full‐size boats, and if they can tell us about boat types and construction techniques. It provides guidance on using and interpreting models and aims to promote the use of these objects to further understand sewn boats.