A Ticking Clock? Preservation and Management of Greenland’s Archaeological Heritage in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACT

Evaluating the rate of deterioration at archaeological sites in the Arctic presents several challenges. In West Greenland, for example, increasing soil temperatures, perennial thaws, coastal erosion, storm surges, changing microbial communities, and pioneer plant species are observed as increasingly detrimental to the survival of organic archaeological deposits found scattered along the country’s littoral zones and extensive inner fjord systems. This article discusses recent efforts by the REMAINS of Greenland project for developing a standardised protocol that defines the archaeological state of preservation, the preservation conditions, and asset value of organic deposits. Special emphasis is given to the degradation of materials such as bone and wood that are historically observed to be well-preserved in Greenland but now currently at risk. The protocol provides a baseline for monitoring future changes and will assist archaeologists in Greenland with a procedure for documenting and predicting areas of increasing vulnerability due to a warming climate.     

The reasons of Europe: Edmund Husserl,Jan Patočka,and María Zambrano on the spiritual heritage of Europe*

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the genuinely philosophical engagement with the idea of Europe twentieth century philosophy. Here, especially phenomenology has developed a distinct tradition of conceiving Europe not as a geographical and political entity but rather as a ‘spiritual shape.’ Husserl, as the originator of this thought, traces this spiritual Europe back to Ancient Greece of the 7/6 century B.C. in which an unprecedented ‘theoretical attitude’ towards the world originated. Hence, Europe is conceived as a project of reason, of pure rationality while at the same time leaving out the constitutive dimension of religion. Furthermore, this non-historical philosophical genealogy proves itself to be an arbitrary but intentional genealogy whose intentions have to be put into critical reconsideration. In this article, I will introduce Pato?ka and Zambrano as important critiques of Husserl’s genealogy, or even potentially violent mono-genealogy, as Derrida has emphasized. Following Foucault, it is the aim of this article to put into question the myth of a single historical-political origin of Europe’s spiritual heritage and furthermore to pay attention to the transformations and conflictual relations between Europe’s different forms of reason and religion.     

Do electoral district size and diversity affect legislative behaviour?

This paper analyses how the size and socio-economic diversity of their electorate affect parliamentarians’ legislative behaviour. We study the Australian senate, which wields considerable legislative influence and is marked by large differences in the size and socio-economic makeup of the districts that senators represent. We demonstrate that as the size of their district increases, senators ask more questions and introduce more bills and amendments. By contrast, senators become less active as the diversity of their electoral district increases. The paper thus establishes that size and diversity of electorates have significant effects on legislative behaviour.     

Is Morality Policy Different? Testing Sectoral and Institutional Explanations of Policy Change

We analyze morality policy change from the perspective of punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) to test whether reform dynamics in this policy sector follow a distinct pattern. First, we propose a new measurement scheme capturing changes in the intensity of morality policy output. Second, we demonstrate that morality policy change is strongly punctuated. Finally, and most importantly, we show that the degree of policy punctuations varies between different domains of morality policy, but not according to institutional features operating on the country level, supporting existing PET research, which has discovered similar domain‐specific dynamics in changes of public spending. Specifically, punctuations are particularly pronounced in areas of manifest morality policy, that is, policies characterized by strong value conflicts, whereas punctuations are less pronounced for latent morality policies, that is, policies in which other dimensions of conflict are present next to the value dimension. Significant differences in reform dynamics are neither discerned for countries belonging to the religious or the secular world, nor for countries with majoritarian or consensual democracies. The analysis relies on an original dataset capturing legislative changes in five manifest (abortion, euthanasia, prostitution, pornography, and homosexuality), and three latent morality policies (drugs, gambling, and handguns) in 19 European countries (1960–2010).     

Carnelian,agate, and other types of chalcedony: the prehistory of Jebel al‐Ma'taradh and its semi‐precious stones,Emirate of Ra's al‐Khaimah

The Jebel al‐Ma'taradh and its surroundings contain exceptional deposits of lithic raw materials, including flint and chert, but especially chalcedony, agate, carnelian, and chrysoprase. These deposits were intensively exploited during the Neolithic, and some of the artefacts produced entered the trade network that included settlements on the coast and inland, sometimes as far as 300 km. During earlier periods, probably as early as the Pleistocene, only flint was used. Between the sixth and the fourth millennia, carnelian and agate were exploited to make beads, which are found in the necropolises and settlements of the UAE.