Mapping ancient chinampa landscapes in the Basin of Mexico: a remote sensing and GIS approach

This paper uses remote sensing data to document a raised field, chinampa system adjacent to the Postclassic kingdom of Xaltocan in the northern Basin of Mexico. Various forms of landscape information; historic records and maps as well as remote sensing; are considered to understand the chinampa system. The remote sensing data examined include 1950s aerial photographs, Landsat 7 data, and Quickbird VHR, multi-spectral imagery. This article evaluates the utility of each of these forms of data to identify buried chinampa features and integrates them in a GIS to produce a map of Xaltocan's chinampa landscape. Canals of various sizes and hydrological positions comprised the chinampas and integrated the system together. Occupying at least 1500–2000 ha, Xaltocan's chinampa system represents the largest pre-Aztec, chinampa system in the Basin of Mexico.     

An experimental micromorphological investigation of bedding construction in the Middle Stone Age of Sibudu,South Africa

We conducted experiments to compare the micromorphological signatures of modern burnt sedge and grass bedding to laminated layers of carbonized material and phytoliths in Middle Stone Age deposits at the shelter, Sibudu. The experiments were designed to clarify the formation processes associated with the laminated layers and to investigate whether these previously identified layers of bedding were deliberately burned or not. The results indicate that the laminated layers were most likely produced by human activity related to the construction, maintenance and burning of bedding. Furthermore, our experiments demonstrate that large volumes of vegetal material could have produced the relatively thin, archaeological deposits of burnt bedding.     

Making space for queer youth: adolescent and adult interactions in Toledo,Ohio

Queer youths and queer youth-related issues are under-researched in geography. I contribute to the existing literature by investigating how adultist practices can both constrain and empower queer youth within the context of schools. Issues involving adolescence and sexuality are complex, and these nuances become more pronounced with regard to nonnormative sexual identities and expressions. Using interviews with adult queer youth advocates in Toledo, Ohio, I look at the ways in which adults construct uncertain, anxious and contradictory ‘safe spaces’ that can work to constrain/restrict queer youth but also to empower and/or facilitate queer youths' negotiation and navigation of other, predominantly heterosexist social spaces.     

Linguistic Archaeology

This chapter addresses the essential issues in evaluating works that use linguistic evidence in reconstructing the past. Linguistics has its own well-developed body of theory and practice. Its evidence is subject to rigorous validation. Any work claiming to infer history from linguistics must validate its evidence against a systematic phonological reconstruction, and it must provide that validating apparatus or else direct the reader to where that apparatus is to be found. Scholars do not get to pick and choose among the archaeological data to support their ideas. Neither does one get to pick and choose or to engage in special pleading to make the linguistic evidence fit one’s prior notions. The chapter illustrates the requirements of linguistic reconstruction by laying out the system of the Eastern Cushitic language group and showing how to apply the system, step by step, to reconstruct the presence of a particular component of the proto-Eastern Cushitic economy.     

The Shuidonggou site complex: new excavations and implications for the earliest Late Paleolithic in North China

The initial Late Paleolithic, said to appear between 40 and 30 kya in eastern Asia, is defined by the appearance of many innovations. These archaeological indicators include the appearance of more refined stone tool making techniques (e.g., include the appearance of blade and microblade technology), complex hearth construction, use of pigments and personal ornamentation, as well as worked faunal implements such as bone and antler tools. We report here new findings from a multidisciplinary research project conducted at the Shuidonggou (Choei-tong-keou) site complex in northern China, a series of localities that date from the initial Late Paleolithic to the Neolithic.     

Gilded Ages and Gilded Archaeologies of American Exceptionalism

Archaeology’s ties to an interest in America’s natural and cultural resources, enshrined in the Antiquities Act of 1906, can be tied to the development of the presumed entitlements associated with gilded age-era conceptions of America’s cultural and racial exceptionalism. Archaeology, historic preservation, and related interests in the materiality of America’s past were in fact among the mechanisms used to legitimize America’s global emergence in the modern era. Considering elite ideas about race and a fear of “race suicide” as well as the rise of the environmental conservation and the historic house movement, this paper argues that archaeology and related pursuits of historic materiality have been regularly deployed to enforce Anglo-Saxon racial values. Explicitly formed in the historical context of mass-immigration, this dynamic is explored in a discussion of two archaeological sites in Jamaica, Queens connected to gilded-age discourse on Americanization.     

Too late to buy a home? School redistricting and the timing and extent of capitalization

In the past 50 years, a voluminous literature estimating the value of schools through capitalization in home prices has emerged. Prior research has identified capitalization using a variety of approaches including discontinuities caused by boundaries. Here, we use changes in school boundaries and the opening of a new school in Fayette County (Lexington), Kentucky to identify this capitalization. Critical to properly estimating the effect of redistricting is to account for when information on redistricting is available. We treat the information about the effects of zoning as occurring in three stages: announcement of the intent to open the new high school and redistricting, approval of the specific redistricting plan (map), and implementation (opening of the new high school and actual changes in boundaries). We find significant changes in values for homes redistricted from lower-performing schools and we find that this capitalization occurs well before implementation of the redistricting. As we show, failure to account for capitalization occurring before implementation will attenuate and even change the sign of capitalization.     

Obsidian hydration dating by infrared spectroscopy: method and calibration

Low temperature (90–190 °C) hydrothermal experiments have been conducted on seven obsidians where composition of the glass varies significantly in the concentration of structural water within the unhydrated bulk material. Infrared transmission spectroscopy was used to track the diffusion of molecular water into the glass surface as a function of time and temperature. Long-term (60–360 days) hydration sequences at 90 °C show a t^0.6 time dependence for the mass uptake of molecular water that forms the hydration layer. The structural water concentration of the unhydrated bulk obsidian is highly correlated with the pre-exponential and activation energy and may be used to estimate the Arrhenius constants. In addition, secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) hydrogen profiling of Napa Glass Mountain obsidian hydrated at 90 °C reveals that the early stages of diffusion exhibit a dynamic behavior that includes a fluctuating hydrogen concentration and a changing diffusion coefficient that slows with time.     

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF SEA‐LEVEL RISE ON COASTAL REAL ESTATE: A HEDONIC PROPERTY MODEL APPROACH*

ABSTRACT This study estimates the impact of sea‐level rise on coastal real estate in North Carolina using a unique integration of geospatial and hedonic property data. With rates of sea‐level rise approximately double the global average, North Carolina has one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the United States. A range of modest sea‐level rise scenarios based on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report projections (2007) are considered for four counties of North Carolina—New Hanover, Dare, Carteret, and Bertie—which represent a cross‐section of the state's coastline in geographical distribution and economic development. High‐resolution topographic LIDAR (light detection and ranging) data are used to provide accurate inundation maps for the properties that will be at risk under six different sea‐level rise scenarios. A simulation approach based on spatial hedonic models is used to provide consistent estimates of the property value losses. Considering just four coastal counties in North Carolina, the value of residential property loss without discounting in 2030 (2080) is estimated to be about $179 ($526) million for the mid‐range sea‐level rise scenarios. Low‐lying and heavily developed areas in the northern coastline are comparatively more vulnerable to the effect of sea‐level rise than the other areas.     

Military morality transformed: weapons and soldiers on the nineteenth-century battlefield

The increased lethality of nineteenth-century “arms of precision” caused military formations to disperse in combat, transforming the ordinary soldier from a near automaton, drilled to deliver random fire under close supervision, into a moral agent who exercised a degree of choice about where, when, and how to fire his weapon. The emerging autonomy of the soldier became a central theme in contemporary tactical debates, which struggled to reconcile the desire for discipline with the individual initiative necessary on the battlefield. This tactical conundrum offers revealing insights about human aggression and mass violence. Its dark legacy was the propagation of military values into civilian society, thus paving the way for the political soldiers of the twentieth century.