The composition of ‘naturally coloured’ late Roman vessel glass from Britain and the implications for models of glass production and supply

Naturally coloured, blue or green are the most common glass colours found in assemblages from the Roman world from the end of the 1st century BC onwards. In the 4th century two different compositions have come to dominate this group, ‘HIMT’ and ‘Levantine 1’ glasses, both of which are now thought to have been produced in the eastern Mediterranean. Using Romano-British glass assemblages from the 4th and 5th centuries, it is shown here that although the two naturally coloured glass types predominate, by far the most common composition in British assemblages is HIMT, although older, earlier blue-green compositions are still present. The earliest date HIMT could be identified in these assemblages is around AD 330, although two distinct compositions can be identified within this group which relate to changes in composition over time. A similar change over time is seen in the Levantine 1 glasses. The reasons for these patterns within the assemblages are explored within the archaeological evidence currently available for glass production and consumption in the Roman world.     

Ancient copper and lead pollution records from a raised bog complex in Central Wales,UK

This paper presents records of metal deposition as preserved by a peatland which has accumulated in the lowland coastal zone at Borth, near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, mid-Wales, U.K. The research objective was to explore the origins and history of metal mining and (or) metallurgy by reconstructing a geochemical record of copper, lead and zinc pollution for the last four millennia. Two cores were extracted from Borth Bog, one from the raised ombrotrophic part of the bog and another from a minerotrophic part of Borth Bog close to the ancient copper workings at Llancynfelin. Although peat stratigraphy and nutrient status have influenced the geochemical record, the results suggest that an early phase of copper and lead pollution occurred at Llancynfelin whilst lead enrichment occurred in the peat core taken close to the centre of Borth Bog during the Bronze Age and the Roman occupation. Therefore the origins of copper and lead mining and metallurgy possibly extend back to the Bronze Age in central Wales. No record of historical pollution exists at either site. The results of this study also provide further evidence that lead and copper are immobile in ombrotrophic peat and that pollution records can be elucidated from minerotrophic peat. Zinc, however, may have suffered from post-depositional mobility.     

Responsive advertising regulation: A case study from New Zealand

As the most visible element of the marketing communications mix, advertising has had its critics and, given the choice, developed countries usually select a self-regulatory approach to deal with unacceptable or irresponsible advertising. This article reviews the literature in this area and incorporates thoughtful contributions from research conducted with New Zealand's Advertising Standards Authority. This approach helps bridge the gap between theory and practice and assists advertising practitioners and regulators concerned with advertising control to eliminate undesirable features of such systems in the future. Findings indicate that practice differs from theory in the areas of complaint acceptance procedures and code enforcement. A challenge for future research lies in addressing these two key components of the model in more detail and less breadth.     

Wars as Dividing Lines? Rethinking the Significance of the Sino-Japanese War in Twentieth Century China

Historical periodization frequently takes wars as turning points—as ruptures that signify the end or beginning of an era. At the same time, front lines have often been taken as boundaries that contain the activities of one side or the other. Thus, discontinuity and disjuncture rather than continuity and fluidity have often been the points of emphasis among historians who have taken war events as turning points, or who have seen lines of combat as impermeable. A new focus on the Sino-Japanese War period has begun to reveal ways in which that moment served not as an interruption but as a part of longer term processes of change and development that characterized China’s mid-twentieth century. It also permits us to gain a deeper understanding of the fluidity of human movement and socio-economic interaction that frequently crossed both political and military boundaries and to think about similarities, linkages, and differences between various Chinese spaces. The aim of this paper is to consider ways in which the new generation of scholarship on the Sino-Japanese War period offers new ways of thinking about continuity, change, similarity and difference across both temporal and physical boundaries that have served as the parameters for much of the earlier scholarship on the period. To this end, the paper examines recent literature on the Sino-Japanese War period, as well as literature that crosses that period, to examine ways in which this historiography has challenged conventional periodizations and political and geographical delineations.     

Written in Stone: subverting the authoritative (auto)biographical voice—Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries and Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel

Diaries imply true confessions, and readers wish to believe Daisy Flett’s life story in Carol Shields’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Stone Diaries (1994), but her layered narration, alternating first- and third-person narrative, proves problematic. “Death,” the final chapter, is particularly puzzling, as third-person accounts of Daisy’s demise are punctuated by her comments, such as, “I’m still in here” (320). But how does a first-person narrator relate her own death? The secret to Daisy’s death narrative, as David Williams observes, is the correspondence between Shields’s postmodernist gem, The Stone Diaries, and Laurence’s modernist masterpiece, The Stone Angel (1964), published three decades earlier, as Shields’s title clearly references Laurence’s. Two decades after Williams’s insightful essay, we can extend the parallels (and delineate the differences) between the two—and explore their implications. Such intertextual resonance illustrates Shields challenging the borders between fiction and biography and parodying canonical texts.