Silver phiale said to be from al‐Juba (al‐Wusṭa Governorate) — an archaeological puzzle

In March 2014, while recording finds in the Ministry of Heritage and Culture in al‐Khuwair, artefacts unexpectedly came to light reportedly from al‐Juba in Oman's Bar al‐?ikmān, in al‐Wus?a Governorate, until recently an archaeologically little‐researched part of the Sultanate. Some of the pieces could be attributed to the Samad LIA or perhaps the PIR, both from the centuries at the turning point of the ages from BCE to CE. Such finds have never before come to light in this part of Oman. Samad LIA sites are generally located some 220 km to the north on the southern flank of the al‐?ajjar mountains in a zone c.160 x 105 km in area. Diagnostic pottery finds spread from Wadi Bānī Ruwāhah (UTM 40Q 620570 m E, 2561848 m N) eastwards to the coast, a smaller area than previously believed.     

New Excavations at Border Cave,KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds, rhizomes, and charcoal, provide a profile of palaeo-vegetation through time. A bushveld vegetation community is implied before 100,000 years ago. The density of lithics varies considerably through time, with high frequencies occurring before 100,000 years ago where a putative MSA 1/Pietersburg Industry was recovered. The highest percentage frequencies of blades and blade fragments were found here. In Members 1 BS and 1 WA, called Early Later Stone Age by Beaumont, we recovered large flakes from multifacial cores. Local rhyolite was the most common rock used for making stone tools, but siliceous minerals were popular in the upper members.     

New government and policy change in western Australia 1983–1988: Did Mr Burke Make a difference?

Using four indicators of government activity, we identify a number of policy innovations in WA under the Burke government We argue that this government's policies are distinct in some measure both from those of its Liberal predecessors and from the aims of the WA Labor Party prior to the Burke leadership.

Comparison with other Australian states suggests though that these policies are broadly compatible with directions taken under other Labor administrations and distinct from those of non‐Labor administrations. Thus, whilst a Burke‐led government did make a difference in WA, its policies reflect broader Labor‐oriented state trends.     

Electrical instruments in 19th century France,between makers and users

Abstract

Having quickly described new historiographical approaches to scientific instruments, this paper explores some characteristics of the evolution of the relationship between scientific instrument makers and French physicists in the 19th century. Artisans without a scientific culture at the dawn of the century, a certain number of instrument makers were integrated into the scientific community by its end, sharing their practices and their values. These builders served as mediators between different physicists, between physicists and members of other disciplines like physiology and, finally, between savants and the world of technology (telegraphy and then industrial electricity). Symmetrically, a significant number of French physicists left mathematical physics for a physics based on instruments and their development. The emergence, extension, and eventual disappearance of the different contexts of use of an instrument (amateurs, public performances, teaching, research, medicine, telegraphy, industry, etc) illustrate both the boundary crossings between these different domains and the major role that use played in successive reconfigurations of instruments.     

Bristol and the eruption of memory: Making the slave-trading past visible

This article describes the work undertaken by the public authorities of Bristol to construct, for this old slaving port, a collective memory of the trade in Africans. It shows how the use of urban space is necessary to resurrect that past and implies a visual model to inform a new gaze on the city. Through intensive action on the memory of slavery, the author suggests, from the work of Paul Ricoeur, the passage from silence to 'too much memory'. This excess can be viewed as the result of a political instrumentalization linked to the requirements of the British multicutural model. Further, these actions on memory reveal distinctly divergent intentions for the different communities of the city.     

Making waves: The Royal Navy's management of invention and innovation in steam shipping, 1815–1832 1

Abstract

This paper explores the sources of invention and innovation in steam shipping, the distribution of funding and risk between the state and the private sector, and the Royal Navy's management of innovation, during the experimental period of steam power's adoption at sea. It identifies two intersecting channels through which steam‐related innovations reached the Royal Navy. First, “packages” of innovations were embedded in the marine engines that were commissioned by the Navy from private engine‐making firms. Secondly, the Navy was spontaneously offered a gamut of ideas and inventions, which varied enormously both in potential importance and in degree of development. Although the mechanisms for dealing with these two channels were different, the end result was much the same ‐ in minimizing both the expense and the risk borne by the public sector. It was principally the private sector that was funding scientific and technological development in this sphere. Recognizing its own lack of expertise and consequent hazard, the Navy Board was developing a systematic yet flexible method of assessing steam‐related inventions ‐ which appears to have served it well.