Landscapes of political memories: War legacies and land negotiations in Laos

Wars and their aftermaths frequently transform land use and ownership, reshaping ‘post-conflict’ landscapes through new boundaries, population movements, land reforms and conditions of access. Within a global context of controversial land concessions and farmland acquisitions, we bring to light the continued salience of historical memories of war in the ways land conflicts are being negotiated in Laos. Considering circumstances at different scales—from bilateral government relations to village-level claims—we find that political capital linked to memories of wartime affiliations have crucial spatial and place-based connections, and that they affect the ways investors, government officials and villagers negotiate over land concessions. Ethnographic evidence, spatial analysis and a survey of expatriate development workers engaged with land issues in Laos suggest that such ‘political memories’ are an important but often overlooked factor in shaping an uneven concessions landscape. We discuss implications for foreign development organizations that tend to privilege technical and legal aspects of land management over such political dimensions.     

Participatory and community‐based research,Indigenous geographies,and the spaces of friendship: A critical engagement

Geographic engagement with Indigenous peoples remains inextricably linked to colonialism. Consequently, studying Indigenous geographies is fraught with ethical and political dilemmas. Participatory and community‐based research methods have recently been offered as one solution to address concerns about the politics of gathering, framing, producing, disseminating, and controlling knowledge about Indigenous peoples. In this article, we critically engage with the emergence of participatory and community‐based research methods as “best practice” for undertaking research into Indigenous geographies. We articulate four concerns with this form of research: a) dissent may be stifled by non‐Indigenous researchers’ investments in being “good”; b) claims to overcome difference and distance may actually retrench colonial research relations; c) the framing of particular methods as “best practices” risks closing down necessary and ongoing critique; and d) institutional pressures work against the development and maintenance of meaningful, accountable, and non‐extractive relations with Indigenous communities. We then contemplate the spatiality of the critique itself. We consider the ways in which our longstanding friendship, as researchers invested at multiple scales with Indigenous geographies and identities, provides its own distinct space of practice within which to confront the political and ethical challenges posed by research with/about/upon Indigenous geographies and peoples. While not arriving at any concrete template for undertaking research about Indigenous geographies, we suggest that certain friendships, established and situated outside research relationships, may be productive spaces within and through which research methods may be decolonized.     

Multiple origins of Bondi Cave and Ortvale Klde (NW Georgia) obsidians and human mobility in Transcaucasia during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic

Using PIXE four types of elemental compositions were found among obsidian artefacts from the Bondi Cave and Ortvale Klde, Middle to Upper Palaeolithic sites in NW Georgia. One of those types corresponds to obsidians from the Chikiani source, whose compositions were determined with a very good agreement by PIXE and ICP-AES/MS. The composition of Chikiani obsidians is remarkably constant despite K–Ar and ³⁹Ar/⁴⁰Ar extrusion ages from ca 2.4 and 2.8 Ma. The compositions of two other groups of obsidian artefacts are similar to source materials from eastern Anatolia and Armenia, in particular Ikisdere, Sarikamis, Gutansar, and Hatis. Obsidian is only a minority component in the lithic assemblages at the Bondi Cave and Ortvale Klde. Both Neanderthal and Modern Human populations used obsidian in particular from Chikiani. Considering that the shortest walking distance to this nearest source is at minimum of about 180 km, and to other potential sources of more than 350 km it is suggested that this material reached these two sites mostly, if not exclusively, by a series of ‘down the line’ exchanges.     

Crystallographic and structural transformations of sedimentary chalcedony in flint upon heat treatment

The early occurrence of intentional heat treatment of silica rocks has recently become a key element in the discussion about the cultural modernity of prehistoric populations. Lithic vestiges are the only sources that remain of this process and the understanding of the material’s properties and transformations are essential for reconstructing the conditions and parameters applied during heat treatment. Several models of the structural transformations upon heating have been proposed in the current literature. These models are often contradictory and do not account for the most recent structural and mineralogical data on chalcedony. In order to propose a new model, we elaborated an experimental procedure and applied different techniques involving infrared spectroscopy, solid state NMR, X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The results show that the major transformation to happen is the loss of silanole (SiOH) and the creation of new Si-O-Si bonds according to the reaction: Si?OH HO-Si → Si-O-Si + H₂O. This reaction starts between 200 °C and 300 °C and causes an increase in the hardness of the rocks. The maximal annealing temperature and the ramp rate are the functions of the ability of the structure to evacuate newly created H₂O and depend on the size of the specimen and the volume of its porosity. These results also show that the annealing duration at maximum temperature can be relatively short (<50 min) for a sufficiently large amount of transformation to be accomplished.     

Fatal Transactions: Conflict Diamonds and the (Anti)Terrorist Consumer

This paper brings recent research on the geographies of commodities and the politics of ethical consumption to bear on contemporary spaces of violence. Focusing on the discourse of “terror”, it discusses the tactics and ambivalences of a human rights advocacy campaign seeking to stop the financing of belligerents by the diamond trade. I argue that the campaign successfully reconnected “violent” spaces of exploitation and “peaceful” spaces of consumption and achieved significant trade reforms in the diamond sector. Yet, with its inclusion of racialized images of Africa, its responsiveness to policy compromises and its overtaking by savvy marketing by Western mining companies, the campaign and its mediatization also had ambivalent outcomes: burnishing the “reputable” character of Western industrialized mining interests at the expense of their historical accountability, indiscriminately associating terror with poor young African men, and overlooking state violence.     

Camelid Gastrointestinal Parasites from the Archaeological Site of Huanchaquito (Peru): First Results

ABSTRACT

Palaeoparasitological investigation was conducted on a first set of samples from 13 sacrificed domestic camelids recovered from the pre-Hispanic Chimú culture site of Huanchaquito-Las Llamas, Peru. The aim was to establish the animals’ gastrointestinal parasite diversity and enlighten on their health status at the time of their death. To this end, 20 samples of coprolites and intestinal contents were analysed to check for the presence of parasite markers, i.e. preserved eggs and oocysts. Microscopic examinations revealed the presence of five taxa of helminths and protozoans in a majority of the tested animals (61%). Our analysis revealed the presence in some animals of protozoan oocysts belonging to the species Eimeria macusaniensis (phylum Apicomplexa). Our study is the first report of the possible presence of a parasite egg attributed to the order Plagiorchiida (family Fasciolidae) in ancient camelids. This preliminary study shows that there is interesting potential for conducting palaeoparasitological analysis at the site and that such analysis is promising for answering questions about the health status of the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas camelids.