An event of geographical ethics in spaces of affect

This paper contributes to a rethinking of the ethical sensibilities of geographical research in the context of an emerging interest amongst geographers in non-representational registers of thinking and moving. Rather than undermining geographical engagements with questions of the ethical, the paper argues that this emerging interest in questions of the non-representational actually extends the range and repertoire of empirical contexts and conceptual vehicles within and with which such an engagement can take place. The paper argues that attending to and through the relation between affect and ethics is particularly important to this effort. The importance of affect in this regard is illustrated through a series of examples drawn from an 18-month participatory encounter with a specific therapeutic practice, Dance Movement Therapy. Drawing upon such examples, the paper offers some lines of ethical potential that might provide orientation to further geographical research. In doing this, the paper concentrates in particular on the necessity of cultivating a fidelity to the affective event of geographical ethics as much as remaining faithful to the subject or object of an ethical code.     

Thermoluminescence as a technique for determining the nature and history of small solar system particles

The thermoluminescence phenomenon has been used for pottery dating and radiation dosimetry for sixty years and for forty years has been applied to the study of meteorites, being successful in quantifying metamorphic histories and providing new insights into terrestrial age and orbits. Here we review some of the fundamental properties of thermoluminescence with particular focus on the study of small extraterrestrial particles. We suggest that natural TL data can be used to identify the burial and release history of cometary particles and that induced TL measurements can provide in-sights into the mineralogy of particles (even when largely amorphous) and the metamorphic history of those particles. We illustrate the use of TL to study small particles by describing recent studies on micrometeorites and 10–100 μm fragments taken from the matrix of a meteorite Semarkona which is type 3.0 ordinary chondrite.     

The nature of third-millennium settlement: The example of al-Tikha (Rustaq) an Umm an-Nar site on the Batinah coast of Oman

al-Tikha is a mid to large Umm an-Nar (c. 2700–2000 BC) settlement situated near Rustaq at the back of the Southern Batinah coastal plain in the Sultanate of Oman that was discovered (or rediscovered) in 2014. The site is unique because its layout and spatial organisation are very largely (possibly completely) visible on the surface. This includes two separate areas of stone-built housing, a large pottery scatter of varying density, three or four typical Umm an-Nar round towers and a small cemetery consisting of at least four tombs, along with a few other features. The layout of the site is described and discussed in detail, in particular, in relation to what it might tell us about the nature of Umm an-Nar settlement and social organisation more generally. The location of the site within a pattern of repeating Umm an-Nar settlement along Wadi Far (Wādī al-Farʿī) is also described and discussed.     

Assignment of the South Chinese Ordovician trilobite Calymene paronai to Neseuretus

Turvey, S.T. & Siveter, D.J., June 2007. Assignment of the South Chinese Ordovician trilobite Calymene paronai to Neseuretus. Alcheringa 31, 173‐183. ISSN 0311-5518.

Calymene paronai Pellizzari, 1913 Pellizzari, G. 1913. Fossili Palaeozoici antichi dello Scensi (Cina). Rivista Italiana di Palaeontologia, 19: 33–47.  [Google Scholar] was described on the basis of an almost complete enrolled specimen from the Ordovician (probably the early Llanvirn Yangtzeella poloi Biozone) of southern Shaanxi, China. It represents one of the first Chinese trilobite species to have been established, but has been almost completely ignored by subsequent workers. This species is redescribed and reassigned to the Gondwanan inner shelf indicator calymenid Neseuretus, compared with other South Chinese taxa previously assigned to this genus, and interpreted as a senior synonym of N. concavus Lu, 1975 Lu, Yanhao. 1975. Ordovician trilobite faunas of central and southwestern China. Palaeontologica Sinica, New Series B, 11: 1–463. (in Chinese and English) [Google Scholar].