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.     

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.     

‘Not Like the Stories I am Used to’: East German Film as Cinematic Memory in Contemporary Chile

This paper is concerned with East German films which deal with the subject of Chile in the aftermath of the 1973 coup d’état in a contemporary Chilean cultural framework. Conceived in the charged political atmosphere of the Cold War, this material is valuable in Chile today because it reflects East Germany as a cultural and social environment for Chilean émigré artists during the 1970s and 1980s. The author explores the films’ potential as a form of cinematic postmemory for younger Chilean audiences, focusing on two feature films, Die Spur des Vermißten (1980) and Blonder Tango (1985). Do young Chileans accept these images as truthful and do they inspire a rethinking of the controversial subject of the Pinochet regime? The results suggest that the DEFA films, due to their narrative and aesthetic textures, present this audience with challenging perspectives, uncover misconceptions and evoke empathy with antagonistic social and political agents. Based on this case study, the author argues that the DEFA films are audio-visual materials which can be highly productive in cultural and educational contexts and can complement efforts to revive collective memory in Chile.     

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.