The combined use of oxygen isotopes and microwear in sheep teeth to elucidate seasonal management of domestic herds: the case study of Çatalhöyük,central Anatolia

This paper presents and tests a model designed to investigate how off-site herd management developed in settled pre-historic societies. The model is constructed from data collected from traditionally raised local sheep, acting as an interpretive link to published data. The modern comparator was small, but plausible results allow modelling of the archaeological data to be explored. Birth seasonality and herding location are identified through modelled patterns in oxygen isotope data in tooth enamel, and diet just before death by microwear in the same tooth. In combination, these allow aspects of seasonal management of breeding, fallow and slaughter herd sections to be interpreted. Novel practices are discussed in comparison local wild sheep ethology. The case study is Neolithic Çatalhöyük (7400–6200 cal BC) in central Anatolia. Its location provided the opportunity for different parts of the landscape to be used for herding, although choice might have been socially constrained. Data are taken from 72 specimens; the results suggest settlement-wide preference for a suite of practices that kept herds within a day of the settlement and that maintained breeding cycle synchrony with optimal resource availability. Chronological analysis suggests birth season manipulation was tried but rejected, whilst hay or cereal fodder was introduced and became increasingly important. It is argued that herding was probably on dedicated pasture on the arable fringes rather than in closer integration on ‘garden plots’, as there is no evidence of field-edge weed diets and little evidence of adjusting the birth season to accommodate the crop cycle.     

Policy Change and Learning in Response to Extreme Flood Events in Hungary: An Advocacy Coalition Approach

In an analysis of the 200‐year history of flood management in Hungary, I use the advocacy coalition framework and the focusing event literature to examine what policy change occurs and what is learned as a result of experiencing extreme and damaging flood events. By analyzing the policy response to a series of extreme floods (1998–2001) in this newly democratizing nation, I attempt to identify the factors that influenced the occurrence of policy change and policy‐oriented learning. In 2003, Hungary enacted a comprehensive flood management program that included economic development and environmental protection goals, a distinct departure from Hungary's historical structural approach to flood management. However, it is less clear that long‐lasting changes in belief systems about how floods should be managed have occurred. In this analysis, I argue that processes external to the flood policy subsystem (e.g., process of democratization and Hungary's accession to the European Union), along with the occurrence of the extreme flood events, enabled a coalition of individuals and organizations to press for policy change.     

Situating banal nationalism,the culture wars,and civil religion: governing localized geographies of national identity in Indiana

Various material forms of national identity have become ubiquitous features of the post-9/11 American cultural landscape. This research specifically examines the ‘In God We Trust’ (IGWT) license plate in the state of Indiana as a material expression and territorialized form of national identity. While conceptually anchored in banal nationalism research, exploring the spatial patterns of adoption or non-adoption of IGWT license plates by Indiana residents is only possible through situating this research through the mediating lens of the culture wars and civil religion. Although the IGWT license plate project legislatively materialized through the localized spatial networks of non-state actors in the context of a new and conservative state–citizen relationship firmly anchored in the culture wars, adoption behavior is also mediated through the much broader influence of civil religion. We conduct a quantitative analysis to determine license plate spatial distribution by county, but more importantly to explore the sociodemographic dimensions of IGWT license plate adoption and non-adoption. While our results generally mirror the sociodemographic findings of social issue-based electoral geography, the imbrication of banal nationalism, the culture wars, and civil religion as materially expressed by the IGWT license plate yields an ideologically different and broader dynamic when compared to culture wars defined by national identity.     

Catholic-Confucian Mortuary Practices in a Rural Manchurian Cemetery

Historical Archaeology - Catholic missionaries were active among rural populations in Manchuria, in northeast China, around the turn of the 20th century. Their presence influenced everything from...     

Cultural policy as development policy: evidence from the United States

Cultural policies and cultural projects in the United States have been reframed to emphasize their economic benefits to cities. New alliances between arts advocates and place promoters are apparent at all levels, but are most prominent locally. These new alliances are facilitated by the changing interests of local officials and business people, who have come to believe there is economic value in the arts and of arts administrators, for whom attracting broader public support has become imperative. In some cities, entirely new organizational structures have sprung up to plan and implement projects that serve cultural and economic development advocates simultaneously. Such new institutions are most prominent in more economically disadvantaged cities.     

A Tile Pavement from the Queen's Chamber,Clarendon Palace,Dated 1250-2

This article undertakes an object-focused study of a single work of art of great material and visual complexity: the Wallace Collection pax. This object stimulates an important discussion on how the making, materials and form of a work of art are fundamental to unravelling the object’s function and meaning for a contemporary audience. In placing at the core of the object a rare example of a late medieval amber Vera icon, the Wallace Collection pax also opens up a wider discussion on the nature and popularity of amber as a material of artistic expression in the later Middle Ages. In basing this article on the physical and material history of the work of art, I hope to illustrate the importance of going back to first principles when undertaking object-based research, and I intend to highlight the complex interaction between material and form in late medieval art.