Mammalian erythrocyte preservation in a 3500-year-old Egyptian pot

A ca. 3500-year-old Egyptian pot from the Fayoum site of Gurob contains ethmoid bones characteristic of the sinuses and morphological remains of erythrocytes. The pot contents are interpreted as the remnants of an embalmers studio, and substantiate records of mummification.     

A cargo of lead ingots from a shipwreck off Ashkelon,Israel 11th–13th centuries AD

Shipwreck cargo of lead ingots, some marked, discovered off Tel Ashkelon, weighed about four tonnes. C14 analysis of charred wood from an ingot dated it to the 11th–13th centuries AD, Crusader times. Lead isotopic ratios provenanced the ingots to Mont‐Lozère, France. Various aspects of the lead trade are discussed, including: lead sources, extraction, casting, lead in the international maritime trade, weight units in medieval trade, prices, transportation, sale and storage, lead cargo and ballast, reconstruction of the wrecking event, salvage after the vessel was wrecked, Ashkelon as a trading coastal town in the 11th–13th centuries AD, and the possible destination of the cargo.     

Sustained Organizational Influence: American Legislative Exchange Council and the Diffusion of Anti‐Sanctuary Policy

Building upon existing literature, we offer a particular model of network policy diffusion—which we call sustained organizational influence. Sustained organizational influence necessitates an institutional focus across a broad range of issues and across a long period of time. Sustaining organizations are well‐financed, and exert their influence on legislators through benefits, shared ideological interests, and time‐saving opportunities. Sustaining organizations' centralized nature makes legislators' jobs easier by providing legislators with ready‐made model legislation. We argue that sustaining organizations uniquely contribute to policy diffusion in the U.S. states. We evaluate this model with a case study of state‐level immigration sanctuary policy making and the role that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) played in disseminating model legislation. Through quantitative text analysis and several negative binomial state‐level regression models, we demonstrate that ALEC has exerted an overwhelming influence on the introduction of anti‐sanctuary legislative proposals in the U.S. states over the past 7 years consistent with our particular model of network policy diffusion. Implications are discussed.     

Feminism,Gender, and Women's Peace Activism

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on ‘Women, peace and security’, passed in 2000, reflects a recent growth in women's peace activism. Women's resistance to violence is widely believed to be a mobilizing factor in both local and international peace movements. This provokes questions around essentialism and violence of concern to feminists: are men inherently territorial and aggressive, and women naturally nurturing and peaceable? Or is the behaviour of both conditioned by particular local configurations of social relations of power? This contribution reviews these questions in the light of the experiences of women's peace organizations. It concludes that essentializing women's roles as wives, mothers and nurses discourages their inclusion as active decision makers in political arenas, as well as overshadowing the needs of other disadvantaged groups. Rather than seeing war as the violation of women by men, we should recognize that men and women are each differently violated by war.     

The Archaeology of Capitalism in Iceland: The View from Vieey

This paper examines the particular nature of Icelandic capitalism as it emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on a recent project investigating the material processes surrounding the rise and fall of an early capitalist venture in the fishing industry, the role of commodities and their intersection with issues of colonialism and nationalism is explored. The study centers on a village community established in 1907 on an island in the bay of Reykjavík, which saw two periods of boom and bust in its short life before the village was abandoned in 1943.     

Luminescence dating studies of Ye?ilova Hoyuk

Ceramic findings collected from Ye?ilova Hoyuk located in Izmir were dated using the thermoluminescence dating technique. The area is of significant archaeological importance since it is the first prehistoric settlement in Izmir. Recent archeological observations suggest that human occupation of the region took place about 8500 years ago comparing to previously determined dates of 5000 years. Three samples collected from the same archaeological layer (Neolithic period) in Ye?ilova Hoyuk were dated using the thermoluminescence method. Archaeological doses (AD) were obtained by single aliquot regenerative dose method (SAR) for thermoluminescence (TL) using coarse grain quartz minerals extracted from samples. Thick and thin Al₂O₃:C thermoluminescence dosimeters (TLD) were used to determine the annual dose rate. The archaeological doses were found to vary from 25.91±0.78 to 26.82±0.68 Gy, and the annual doses were found to be between 3.34±0.24 and 3.47±0.24 mGy/a. The ages obtained for the samples were determined to be 6000±830 BC, 5740±670 BC and 5460±740 years for samples ND1, ND2 and ND3, respectively, which supports the prediction of archeologist that the sampling layer dates from the Neolithic period.     

Set-up, optimization and first set of samples at the radiocarbon laboratory in Lebanon

A new radiocarbon laboratory has been established recently at the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission. This laboratory consists of benzene synthesis line and a low background liquid scintillation counter, Tri-Carb 3180 TR/SL for measurements with Bismuth Germanate (BGO) guard detector. The effectiveness of the benzene line was tested firstly by preparing benzene from a wood sample after carbide and acetylene receiving. Normalization and standardization of the liquid scintillation counter was carried out, as well as the Factor of Merit (E2/B) was determined for three different counting regions. To assure accuracy and reliability of results, reference materials were used. Based on z-score and u-score evaluation, as well as Student’s t-test, acceptable data were obtained from travertine and wood samples available through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA-C2 and IAEA-C5), and humic acid (U) and murex shell (R) from the Fifth International Radiocarbon Intercomparison (VIRI). After that, a preliminary study was done, which is the base for future research in order to assess the anthropogenic impact and degree of environmental pollution in terms of radiocarbon isotope ratio (Δ¹⁴C) deduced from the Percent Modern Carbon or PMC. This work represents the results of four reference materials and those of five green grass samples. The Δ¹⁴C of green grass samples collected from two different clean zones were found to be 50‰ and 52‰, while the values of those collected from different polluted zones were 23‰, 7‰ and 15‰.     

Early pan‐Arabism in Egypt's July revolution: the Free Officers' political formation and policy‐making, 1946–54

Between 1952 and 1970, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egypt's Free Officers Movement established the paradigmatic pan‐Arabist revolution from above. Yet it has become something of a cliché to maintain that the Free Officers had no blueprint of action before seizing power and that they later instrumentalised pan‐Arabism in their foreign policy, thinly veiling their actual commitments to Egyptian nationalism and imperialism. By contrast, this contribution underlines the impact of the British colonial context on the Free Officers' political formation and their early identification with pan‐Arabism in turn. Drawing on pamphlets, speeches, media output and memoirs, it shows that the Free Officers developed a distinctive form of anticolonial nationalism that emphasised social justice and invoked overlapping Egyptian and Arab identities. Their aspirations for liberation thus entailed a connected foreign policy and nation building programme in which pan‐Arabism was a prime – and early – component.