Under Pressure: A Laboratory Investigation into the Effects of Mechanical Loading on Charred Organic Matter in Archaeological Sites

The present publication investigates what happens to archaeological sites when they are built over. Focus is put on the degradation of charred organic materials by static loading. It is assumed that materials lose archaeological value if their fragments become too small to be recovered, or too distorted to be classified at species level. Several charred ecofacts of a few millimetres in size (wood fragments, hazelnut shells, and seeds) have been selected and subjected to individual particle strength tests. Assemblages of these particles have also been compressed one-dimensionally and scanned at several stages of testing using laboratory based X-ray microtomography. Microscopic damage by splitting or crushing is found to be limited at the macroscopic yield stress. It initiated at stresses less than 80 kPa for the weakest assemblages, and in all cases at stresses below 320 kPa. (80 kPa represents the load of a 6 m high sand embankment on soft soil that has half-settled underneath the groundwater table, while 320 kPa corresponds to stresses applied beneath the pile foundation level of high-rise buildings.) Sand seeded with charred particles has also been tested to illustrate the beneficial effect of embedment of charred particles in sand during static one dimensional loading.     

Le marché dans son histoire

Sans résumé a récemment publiéFran?ois de Neufchateau. Biographie intellectuelle, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005. a codirigé avec Steven Kaplan,La France, malade du corporatisme? xviii ^e –xx ^e siècles, Paris, Belin, 2004.     

Extinct species identification from late middle Pleistocene and earlier Upper Pleistocene bone fragments and tools not recognizable from their osteomorphological study by an enhanced proteomics protocol

Ancient preserved molecules offer the opportunity of gaining a deeper knowledge on their biological past. However, the development of a proteomic workflow remains a challenge. The analysis of fossils must involve a low quantity of material to avoid damaging the samples. In this study an enhanced proteomic protocol was applied to 5-milligram samples of about 130,000-year-old mammalian bones ranging from the end of the Middle Pleistocene up to the earlier Upper Pleistocene, excavated from Scladina Cave (Sclayn, Belgium). Using sequence homology with modern sequences, a biological classification was successfully achieved and the associated taxonomic ranks to each bone were identified consistently with the information gained from osteomorphological studies and palaeoenvironmental and palaeodietary data. Amino acid substitutions on collagens were identified, thus providing new information on extinct species sequences and helping in taxonomy-based clustering. Considering samples with no osteomorphological information, such as two fragments of bone retouchers, proteomics successfully identified the families providing paleontologists new information on these objects. Combining osteomorphology studies and amino acid variations identified by proteomics, one of the retouchers was potentially identified as belonging to the Ursus spelaeus species.     

‘It’s a horrible,horrible feeling’: ghosting and the layered geographies of absent–presence in the prison visiting room

This paper advances geographies of absence by considering the multiscalar, overlapping, ambiguous and reciprocal absences inherent in incarceration, and the compound nature of the experiential and embodied absences characteristic of prison visiting. It progresses extant literatures by considering as absent a group which differs from those previously thus conceptualised, and by postulating absence even when whereabouts are known and co-presence is possible. Drawing on a major RCUK-funded study of the socio-spatial context of prison visitation in the U.K., it brings carceral geographies and geographies of absence into productive dialogue, demonstrating that attention to the felt presence of absence in the context of prison visiting is highly revealing of the poignant and bittersweet nature of family contact during incarceration.     

Facility Location Under Zone Pricing

Zone pricing consists in determining simultaneously several delivered prices together with the zones where these prices apply. A model and algorithm are proposed to determine optimal facility locations, prices, tariff-zones, and market areas in order to maximize the firm's profit under zone pricing. The resulting nonlinear mixed-integer program is tackled by projecting the objective function on the price space, solving repeatedly uncapacitated facility location problems for fixed values of the prices. The implicit profit function so defined is optimized by branch-and-bound. Computational results are reported.