The Phoenicians and the Ocean: trade and worship at La Caleta,Cadiz, Spain

The area of La Caleta, north‐west of Cadiz, is a key location for studies of the relationship between the Phoenician city of Gadir and the ocean. The port channel and the small islets that characterize the area was one the busiest sectors of the city, and there are abundant underwater remains attesting to past commercial activities. The area also had an important religious role: two sanctuaries were located at the western end of the rocky promontories that surround the channel, and many items identified as offerings have been found. This article synthesizes previous research and provides an overview of the results of a recent project (2008–2010), which enables a thorough review of the development of the seascape and its use during the 1st millennium BC.     

Talking to others: analysing tourists’ communications on cultural heritage experiences

In the area of cultural heritage, tourists’ experiences emphasise not only the moment and its personal nature but also socio-cultural traits. These experiences when expressed (social communications) are an important gateway to knowledge about tourists’ sense-making processes. This paper reports on the mediation between tourists and heritage sites via comments on a digital platform (TripAdvisor) about two Spanish tourist destinations with opposing characteristics and four heritage sites, which are analysed. The methodology used seeks to transcend the individual and anecdotal aspects of tourists’ comments. Indeed, the results obtained show the relevance of the humanisation and the discursive weight of heritage contexts in emotional/personal stories. Tendencies observed in non-regulated contexts confirm the role of a complex negotiation at cultural heritage sites and highlight the need to explore possible exchanges of sense in tourists’ encounters with such sites.     

Restoration of paintings on domes with non-developable geometry (Los Santos Juanes Church in Valencia)

The restoration of paintings on elements in cultural heritage buildings (fundamentally, churches) involves two structural problems: capturing the geometry of the construction element and its development. In many cases, the geometries are regular (e.g., cylinders, spheres, elliptical domes). However, there are cases in which the elements cannot be adapted to any known geometry, much less one that can be mathematically developed. The development of surfaces becomes essential for the restoration of paintings over “flat elements” (over which work is performed on the ground) that are subsequently transferred to the real surface (ceilings). The mathematical transformations that allow regular geometries to be developed are widely known (cartographic projections). However, when the geometry is irregular, there is no development. This study presents a new methodology based on differential rectification and its application for the development of oculi in the Los Santos Juanes Church (Valencia), whose geometry is completely irregular both in shape and as a result of construction defects (and damage caused by fire). The present study focuses on the restoration of paintings damaged by fire.     

Looking for Ancient Fish Products Through Invisible Biomolecular Residues in the Roman Production Vats from the Atlantic Coast

As organic materials, fish and its derivative products are perishable and break down rapidly and ultimately disappear. Unless they include bones or scales, the only means of identifying them in the archaeological record is through the identification of the chemical constituents that are left behind after decomposition. Fish flesh mainly consists of proteins and lipids. Since these molecules are unstable they degrade irreversibly after death or discard, losing a significant part of the original chemical elements, consequently hampering or complicating their identification. In this paper, two main types of fish products are considered: raw, salted or cooked fish, and fermented fish-based products. In the first case, the degradation of the native markers results from chemical post-depositional degradation, and eventually thermal degradation during cooking. In the second case, the biochemical processes involve bacteria that cause the rapid decomposition of fish as part of the process of forming fish sauces, such as Roman garum. To detect and identify fish products we combined experimental archaeology and organic analyses. The identification of the degradation products of cholesterol appeared to provide a strong indicator for detecting the presence of fish sauces. Analysis of samples taken from fish-salting vats located along the Atlantic coast (Marsa, Baelo Claudia, Troia, Kerlaz, and Etel) with samples taken from actual experimental garum sauces made from mackerel (Scomber scombrus), sardines (Sardina pilchardus), and/or oysters (Ostreidae), revealed the presence of common markers of fermented fish-based products. The application of the analytical methodology described here to structures involved in ancient fish sauce manufacture and storage has enabled investigation of the production of the sauces by searching directly for the fish markers on the inner sides of the containers. For the first time the addition of molluscs and fruits in the fish product has been identified as part of the process of manufacturing garum.     

San Juan,the Fragile City: Finance Capital,Class, and the Making of Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis

This paper narrates Puerto Rico's fiscal and financial crisis through a reading of San Juan's urban landscape. We underscore the role of capital in the city, primarily embodied by the local capitalist class (the Criollo bloc) and foreign capitalists. Historically excluded from the manufacturing sector (dominated by US capitalists), the Criollo bloc accumulates its wealth by concentrating financial assets in the city. In times of crisis, the Criollo bloc resorts to the acquisition of new assets and asset exchange with foreign capitalists to remain solvent and provide short‐term solutions to the state's fiscal and financial limits. The survival of the local capitalist class, we demonstrate, is dependent on asset stripping. Drawing on Clyde Woods, we document how asset stripping unevenly redistributes wealth and risks along class and racial lines within a colonial economy. The finance capital/asset stripping basis of San Juan's economy renders it an extremely fragile city, we contend.     

When Epistemic Communities Fail: Exploring the Mechanism of Policy Influence

Epistemic communities are an established concept in the study of international relations but can also explain policy change at the domestic level. This article asks why some epistemic communities manage to convince decision makers of their preferred policies while others do not. It suggests that the reason lies in the causal mechanism of epistemic communities' influence on decision makers, mediated by decision makers' demand for expert input. Most epistemic communities scholarship focuses on single case studies where the communities' influence on policy was strong and clear, leading to an overestimation of the groups' influence. To help correct this probable bias, this article compares a successful case of epistemic community influence (health technology assessment in Poland) with an unsuccessful example of the same policy (in the Czech Republic). The juxtaposition allows for unpacking of the necessary parts of the causal mechanism (emergence of an epistemic community, its activity, access to decision makers, and successful suasion) and separating them from the crucial scope condition. Decision makers' uncertainty about the policy issue at hand has traditionally been the key scope condition for epistemic communities but the successful Polish case demonstrates that epistemic communities can be influential even in highly certain areas of routine policymaking, leading to a reconceptualization of uncertainty as policymakers' demand for expert input. Demand can originate from various sources, but any change of it affects individual parts of the causal mechanism, leading to a success or failure of epistemic communities' policy enterprise.     

Cruel and unusual

From early April to late June 2018, the nearly 2,600 immigrant children – mostly refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Central America – were forcibly taken from their parents at the United States’ southern border following implementation of the Trump administration's ‘zero tolerance’ policy. The policy took effect when the US Justice Department began aggressively prosecuting undocumented immigrants crossing the US‐Mexico border. Following a public outcry and growing protests, President Trump issued an executive order declaring an end to family separations on 20 June. Several days later, a federal court mandated that the government reunite those immigrant families affected by the ‘zero tolerance’ policy. In mid‐August, more than 550 children who had been detained following the implementation of the policy remained in federal custody. Thousands more ‘unaccompanied minors’ – typically teenagers who were caught crossing the border without adults –remain in indefinite detention. This editorial analyzes this situation from an anthropological perspective by reviewing relevant ethnographic literature on undocumented Latin American immigrants in the US.     

Partial mummification and extraordinary context observed in perinate burials: a complex osteoarcheological study applying ICP-AES, μXRF,and macromorphological methods

Very small, green colored, partially mummified remains of a perinate individual were found buried in a ceramic pot with a copper coin in the Late Medieval cemetery of Nyárl?rinc-Hangár út (“Nyárl?rinc 3. lel?hely”) in southern Hungary. The remains must date back to the second half of the nineteenth century AD. In this paper; we present data gathered in a series of multidisciplinary investigations targeted to the partially mummified remains (ind. no. 14426) and two other non-mummified perinates (ind. no. 10662 and no. 14336) possibly buried under similar circumstances in the cemetery. Besides standard macromorphological and stereomicroscopic examinations, we compared Cu concentrations in the remains using ICP-AES and mapped Cu concentration changes using μXRF. The partially mummified perinate showed the highest Cu concentrations, while the individual buried without a possible Cu source showed the lowest. Body parts in the closer proximity of the copper coins always showed higher concentration. The mummified individual showed 497 times higher Cu values than average, and even the perinate buried without copper coin measured higher than the otherwise normal Cu content of the soil. Extremely high Cu values may be related to the corrosion of the coins included in the burials. Mummification must have been facilitated by copper deriving from the coins. Uneven Cu concentrations and only partial mummification of one of the individuals refer to the importance of other environmental factors involved in a possible quasi-natural mummification process. However, the Nyárl?rinc perinate burial no. 14426 may be the first solely copper-driven mummification case ever reported, and hopefully, more cases are to appear in the future.     

From Neo-Francoist Memory to Political Feeling in Narratives of Unearthing: Sánchez Dragó's Muertes Paralelas (2006) and Andrés Trapiello's Ayer no más (2012)

This article analyzes the novels Muertes paralelas and Ayer no más as representatives of two clearly defined perspectives within the Spanish twenty-first century narrative production on unearthing the past of Francoism. The symbolic construction of unearthing permits an investigation of the remnants of a neo-Francoist vision of the legacy of the civil war, while opening the view of a political feeling by which personal memory inserts itself most profoundly as a commitment to a more comprehensive and lasting closure of the past.