The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Laws in the United States

There is a link between changes in the contemporary political economy and the criminalization of homelessness. Anti-homeless legislation can be understood as an attempt to annihilate the spaces in which homeless people must live, and perform everyday functions. This annihilation is a response to the economic uncertainty produced by the current political economy. The process of criminalizing homelessness 1) destroys the very right of homeless people to be; and 2) reinforces particularly brutal notions of citizenship within the public sphere. Such laws are made possible when urban government and surrounding communities and elites seek to promote the urban landscape at the expense of urban public space. This usurpation of public space will have profound impact not only on homeless people but also on how the housed interact with each other.     

Studies on amerindian dogs, 1: Carbon isotopes in relation to maize in the diet of domestic dogs from early Peru and Ecuador

Work initiated purely as a dating project in support of a craniometric and morphological investigation of domestic dogs from early Peru has proved to have much wider implications. The stable carbon isotoperatios (¹³C/¹²C) of hair samples from ten dogs show that maize formed a significant part of their diet. Radiocarbon dates for these remains have confirmed that they belong to the period well after the cultivation of maize was first established. Stable carbon isotope measurements can thus be used to test for the presence of maize as a dietary constituent at earlier sites even where there is otherwise only indirect evidence for its cultivation. Collagen from animal or human bone is a suitable alternative to hair for this purpose and the method has been successfully applied to collagen dating to c. 3000 BC from the Valdivia culture site of Real Alto, Ecuador, as well as to a series of early Peruvian dogs.