Taphonomic analysis of remains of mammals eaten by pumas (Puma concolor Carnivora, Felidae) in central Argentina

Prey remains recovered from puma (Puma concolor) scat were analyzed in order to identify taphonomic features produced on them by this predator. Mammal remains are abundant in puma scat, but recognition of bone remains decreases as prey size increases. Modifications produced by digestion are strong. However, micromammal bones show a gradation in preservation that includes well preserved specimens. Data presented here and their interpretation may possibly be extrapolated to zooarchaeological or paleontological assemblage.     

Aesthetic Dissent: Urban Redevelopment and Political Belonging in Luanda,Angola

Over the previous decade, African cities experienced a wave of frenzied construction driven by imaginations of world‐city status. While these projects provoked new discussions about African urbanism, the literature on them has focused more on the paperwork of planning than actual urban experiences. This article addresses this lacuna by investigating residents' reactions to the post‐conflict building boom in Luanda, Angola. I show that Luandans' held highly ambivalent orientations towards the emerging city. Their views were shaped by suspicions about pacts between Angolan elites and international capital that recapitulated longstanding tensions over national belonging. These concerns were voiced via discussions of the very aesthetics of the new city. Buildings became catalysts for expressions of dissent that put into question the very project of state‐driven worlding. The paper therefore argues that the politics of aesthetics are central to grasping the contested understandings of urbanism currently emerging in various African cities.     

Taphonomic analysis of rodent bone accumulations produced by Geoffroy's cat (Leopardus geoffroyi, Carnivora,Felidae) in Central Argentina

Rodent prey remains recovered from Geoffroy's cat (Leopardus geoffroyi) scats were analyzed in order to identify taphonomic features produced by this predator. The analysis includes a year-long sampling discriminated by the seasons. Modifications produced by digestion are heavy. Taphonomic variables in samples discriminated by the seasons did not show major differences with respect to the total sample; thus, scats collected in any season clearly show the modifications on the bones of prey rodents made by Geoffroy's cats. The results presented here and its interpretation could be extrapolated to an analysis of zooarchaeological or paleontological assemblages.     

Landscapes of Desire: Tourists, Touts and Sexual Encounters at the World Heritage Site of Thebes

Cultural tourism capitalises on archaeological sites with World Heritage status on a global scale. The encounters of visitors from all over the world with local residents and other stakeholder groups, like local and international entrepreneurs, set off complex processes of interaction in which the physical and social space of the heritage site is negotiated, shaped and consumed. In a case study from Luxor/Egypt, this paper investigates a particular facet of these interactions, namely sexual encounters between tourists and members of the local community. It delineates the economic and social conditions of this phenomenon and discusses the role it takes in the production, perception and use of the World Heritage site of Thebes.     

Archaeology, Development and Conflict: A Case Study from the African Continent

Apart from wars, other contexts of social conflict have recently become a setting in which archaeologists are faced with acute, sometimes armed, violence. On the African continent, a region often overlooked in discussions of “archaeology in conflict”, rapid economic development has led to several such scenes. The paper discusses a particularly poignant example from the Middle Nile valley in Sudan, where large dam projects have been met with various levels of opposition by affected populations. Local communities opposing the construction of further planned dams on the Nile are increasingly stressing ‘cultural survival’ and fear of ‘developmental genocide’ as two of their major motivations for fighting these projects. Assuming a close link between the developer and archaeological salvage missions, affected people have started to use the expulsion of salvage teams from their territory as a strategy of resistance—posing an ethical dilemma for the archaeologists who struggle to find a position in the increasingly violent controversies accompanying these contested development projects.     

Organicism,womanhood and domesticity in Anne LaBastille's Woodswoman saga

Anne LaBastille's Woodswoman saga presents an ecological approach to organicism that aims to recuperate the notion of nature and the wilderness as live organisms in perpetual, cyclical transition. LaBastille's conception of nature as an animate entity to which the self is intimately connected unleashes her discursive advocacy for a necessary reversion to a communion with natural rhythms. Her hermitage represents a voluntary conversion into the laws of nature, a conversion which results in the identification of the self as a self-in-place, and in the redefinition of the categories of domesticity, privacy and territoriality from an ecofeminist perspective. Such redefinitions lead to an implosion of the notion of femininity itself: as LaBastille negotiates between the categories of womanhood, the wilderness, and private and public domains in accordance to organicist principles, she opens a new discursive space that acknowledges women's need for a territory of their own where they too can become independent selves-in-relation.     

Late Miocene continental birds from the Cerro Azul Formation in the Pampean region (central-southern Argentina)

Cenizo, M.M., Tambussi, C.P. & Montalvo, C.I., iFirst Article. Late Miocene continental birds from the Cerro Azul Formation in the Pampean region (central-southern Argentina). Alcheringa, 1–22. ISSN 0311-5518.

The oldest known birds from the Cerro Azul Formation are described, including the oldest records for the genera Eudromia and Nothura (Tinamidae), Milvago (Falconidae), Pterocnemia (Rheidae) and an undetermined Tyrannidae. The first remains of Phorusrhacidae for this formation are reported and a specimen previously referred to the giant teratorn Argentavis magnificens is reassigned to this family. We outline and update the current knowledge of the groups studied herein. The palaeornithological record from the Cerro Azul Formation is congruent with palaeoenvironmental inferences previously drawn from mammalian assemblages recovered from this unit, which point to the existence of open environments, possibly xerophyllous shrubby steppes, perhaps with some trees. These records are the first indications of a typically Pampean bird fauna at the end of the late Miocene in central-southern Argentina.     

Palaeontology of the Cerros Bayos section,Roca Formation (Danian), La Pampa Province,Argentina

Palynofloras from an outlier of Tertiary sediments in the One Tree Hill area north of Adelaide are nonmarine and correlate with similar assemblages from Middle Eocene North Maslin Sands from Maslin Bay and Golden Grove. Although there are similarities with time-equivalent Lower Nothofagidites asperus Zone palynofloras in the Gippsland Basin, a number of species in the South Australian palynofloras do not extend below the Late Eocene in the Gippsland sequences. This indicates earlier appearances for these species in southcentral Australia. The sediments overlie a highly weathered bedrock palaeosurface, indicating that a phase of significant weathering occurred prior to the Middle Eocene. A number of selected taxa are illustrated and their distribution in the palynofloras is discussed. Two new species, Proteacidites mildenhallii and Proteacidites parrawirrensis, are described and one species, Rhoipites byfieldensis, is emended.     

Human Rights and Multilateral Lending: The World Bank,Argentina, and the United States, 1976–1978

Abstract

Since its establishment at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, the World Bank (WB) has been expected to follow a self-imposed and vaguely defined principle of ‘neutrality.’ According to this principle, the decisions made by the WB and its officers were expected to be based purely on economic criteria, with no input from political considerations. By focusing on the generous support that the WB provided to the dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, especially during its formative period (1976–1978), the article examines the concrete aspects of this neutrality and the different ways in which each party involved interpreted and used it. Drawing on never previously consulted WB documents and additional primary sources, it maintains that at a time when the US, the strongest member-state in the WB, strove to make multilateral lending contingent on improvements in the human rights arena, the WB’s alleged ‘neutrality’ provided it with the means and justification to support a regime that egregiously violated those rights. Whatever the exact nature of this so-called neutrality, what is clear is that it was used to enable the WB and member states to ignore US instructions and support a right-wing regime determined to substantially liberalize Argentina’s economy.