Local Labour Markets and the Reconfiguration of the Sugar Industry in Northeast Brazil

This paper focuses on a set of debates surrounding the working of local labour markets in the depressed sugarcane sector of Pernambuco, which faces strong competition from the Centre-South of Brazil. Millowner, planter, labour and union perspectives on current problems in the sugar industry and their solution are reviewed, with particular reference to issues of low productivity, access to land and the potential for diversification out of sugar. Historical antagonisms between (white) landowner classes and (black) labour, and their reworking in recent years, complicated by competing economic rationalities between these groups, make progress towards viable, sustainable socioeconomic improvement difficult. Employer attempts at reconfiguration of the labour market by relocating sites of labour reproduction (thereby breaking old social attachments) while retaining control over labour at sites of production bring continued conflict with the unions.     

Assessing individual systemic stress through cortisol analysis of archaeological hair

As a product of physiological status and the social and physical environments, stress has significant impact on health and well-being in both ancient and contemporary societies. In bioarchaeological research, stress is characterized using an array of skeletal indicators that record stressful periods during childhood and adulthood. In modern clinical research, exposure to stress can be assessed using systemic cortisol levels that have been shown to fluctuate in response to experienced stress. Analysis of cortisol levels in archaeological hair should enable assessment of stress during a short, but critical, period of an individual's life. For this pilot study, we selected hair samples from ten individuals from five different archaeological sites in Peru, and analyzed them in segments to determine cortisol levels. These data demonstrate that it is possible to observe biogenic patterns of cortisol production, and that individual experiences of stress can be reconstructed for the period of time represented by each hair sample. Analysis of cortisol levels in hair has the potential to be a valuable short-term dynamic stress indicator that will complement paleopathological and biochemical studies of health and stress, and permit the reconstruction of increasingly detailed life histories.     

Management cultures and regional development: High performance management and the location of new manufacturing plants

In-depth case studies of new manufacturing plants are used to motivate a new business location model that incorporates management practices and cultures as location factors. This model is tested using US data on the location of new manufacturing plants. It is found that plants that adopt high performance management practices and cultures rely on different criteria when making their location decisions from those plants that are managed in more traditional ways. Omitting management culture from studies of business location may result in biased estimates of the importance of various traditional location factors. By demonstrating that location decisions are differentiated according to the management practices of firms, it is argued that regional development planning should pay more attention to specific business characteristics and that regional development policy include programmes that strengthen complementarities between management practices and the regional economic environment.     

Multidisciplinary analysis of a mummified cranium claimed to be that of a medieval execution victim

This article presents a multidisciplinary analysis of a human skull with preserved soft tissue curated by a small museum in Boscastle, Cornwall, UK. The skull lacks a mandible and is coated in a black tar-like substance. Records left by a previous museum curator (now deceased) claimed the skull to be the head of a medieval execution victim. The skull was purportedly recovered from a London church that was destroyed during the Second World War where it had been kept in a carved oak box. If these details are correct, the skull would appear to have been venerated as a relic. The skull and box have been analysed using a range of techniques including computerised tomography, laser scanning, microscopy, infrared spectroscopy and radiocarbon dating. These analyses demonstrated the skull in fact to be that of an Egyptian mummy dating from the Ptolemaic period. Other instances have been noted of parts of Egyptian mummies being presented as European saintly relics, and the ‘Boscastle skull’ would appear to be an example of such. A wider point illustrated by the work presented here is that sufficient application of modern analytical techniques may reveal considerable information regarding human remains which otherwise have little or no provenance. This point strengthens arguments for the retention of such remains by curating institutions.