Monitoring the French Panthéon: From Rondelet’s Historical Surveys to the Modern Automatic System

The damage of a historical structure can be today controlled with many sophisticated instruments. Nevertheless, this type of monitoring can give information only over a very short period of time compared with the long life of the building. This approach can be insufficient to reconstruct the whole evolution of the damage, and thus to understand the stress distribution inside the structural elements, particularly in cases for which long-term phenomena (such as viscosity or soil settlements) are present. To reach this more complex aim, an approach of historical monitoring should be applied, both looking at technical historical documents and surveying the traces of history directly on the monument itself. The case of the French Panthéon is presented in this study, showing the usefulness of this approach also for the present stability assessment. The comparison among the plentiful historical documentation (including 18th-century surveys, monitoring, and technical reports), the present surveys of deformations and the “modern” structural monitoring allowed a complete quantitative reconstruction of the main damages evolution from the construction till now, laying the base for a possible future conscious intervention.     

Measuring the impact of the European Capital of Culture programme on overnight stays: evidence for the last two decades

This study explores the effects of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) on tourism demand, measured as overnight stays, for the years 1998–2014. The analysis includes 34 ECoC hosts and makes use of data on approximately 800 European cities. A difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimator shows that hosting the ECoC leads to an increase in overnight stays of 8% on average during the year of the event but does not stimulate tourism demand in subsequent years. To account for deviations in the distribution of tourism inflows between ECoC and other cities, the quantile difference-in-differences estimator is used. This leads to similar but somewhat stronger results, especially for the year of the event and for the year after. Separate estimations of ECoC hosts reveal that there is a certain degree of heterogeneity in the effect. Long-term impacts can only be observed for a small group of cities (Essen, Guimarães, Salamanca and Tallinn).     

Heritage as sector,factor and vector: conceptualizing the shifting relationship between heritage management and spatial planning

Heritage is a highly malleable concept that is constantly in flux and whose substance and meaning are continuously being redefined by society. From such a dynamic perspective, it is inevitable that new approaches and practices have developed for dealing with heritage in the context of planned development. While most scholars acknowledge the existence of various heritage approaches, one of the major defining features is often neglected: their distinctive outlook on spatial dynamics. In this article, the shifting role and purpose of heritage conservation in Dutch spatial planning is analysed. A conceptual framework is introduced that frames three approaches to the planning treatment of heritage; the sector, factor and vector approach, respectively. Although these approaches have developed in a historical sequence, the new did not replace the old but rather gained ground amongst different actors. Thus, three quite different ways of treating the past in the present now coexist in Dutch planning practice. Although this coexistence can raise conflict, we argue that contemporary heritage planning does not call for a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather for a mixed-mode model.     

Suburban growth and land actors along by‐pass roads in Norway

It has been argued that by‐pass roads lead to suburban growth and that the construction of such roads will prompt the planning of industrial and other commercial developments, on the part of the local municipal government. This case study of five by‐pass roads shows that a significant, but limited suburban growth takes place along these roads. Actors who promote development have a greater effect on the planning process than those who resist land development. One exception is the regional authorities who can object to a local plan. The study also shows that most of the local development plans are submitted for approval by the local authorities themselves, either independently or jointly with private developers.     

Dental root dentine translucency used in age determination of medieval Norwegians from Trondheim

A pilot study on eight skulls from the churchyard of St Olav's church in Trondheim, excavated in 1988–1989, was carried out to compare age determined by root dentine translucency with the age assessed by a physical anthropologist. The difference in mean age between the two methods was not significant (p = 0.06). Age determinations based on root dentine translucency were then performed on removable teeth from the adults among the 248 skeletons found in the same churchyard, excavated in 1984–1985. A comparison between the ages determined using root dentine translucency and the ages previously determined by the direct inspection method was performed. A significant systematic difference was seen between the two methods (p = 0.000). The root dentine translucency method gave an age range for the cohort excavated in 1984–1985 between 30 and 72 years, whereas the direct inspection method gave a range between 15 and 63 years. Because evaluation of many criteria are required to achieve reasonably accurate estimates of age in connection with the direct inspection method, expertise in skeletal biology is necessary. The method of measuring root dentine translucency as a tool in archaeological and anthropological work and fieldwork and in forensic science seems to have advantages because the method can be used without previous extensive training.     

REVIEWS

SIX REVIEWS OF White Nation: Fantasies of White supremacy in a multicultural society by Ghassan Hage . Annandale, Sydney: Pluto Press. Pp. 280. Price: $24.95     

Fish as diet resource in North Spain during the Upper Paleolithic

During the last glacial maximum, the west European modern humans adapted to adverse conditions and their populations subsisted exploiting the natural resources available. Fish were always present as a source of animal protein, although their importance in the human diet and their contribution to the expansion of humans has not been fully explored. Based on the compilation of zooarchaeological evidences from north Spanish sites we have discovered a constant pattern of exploitation of freshwater fish (Salmonids) with high incidence in the human diet during the Upper Paleolithic. Shifts in the exploitation of marine resources can be explained by climate-related geographical changes. The characteristics of salmonids that make them target species for supporting human survival in adverse climate periods are identified and discussed.     

Digital cameras: agents in research with children

In a study on children's relations to outdoor places, 41 six- to eight-year-old children took photos with digital cameras during walks in schoolyards and nature environments. In the present article, the cameras and their role in the research process are in focus. A materialist approach has guided the analysis [Barad, K. 2003. “Post Humanist Performativity: Towards an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3): 801–831 and Barad, K. M. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press]. The research process is seen as a materialist-discursive phenomenon in which several human and non-human agents intra-act. The results indicate that the cameras give rise to explorative activities and function as a third party in social situations. These activities occasionally counteract the purpose of the study.     

THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE

In his thought‐provoking book, Alex Mesoudi argues for an evolutionary, unifying framework for the social sciences, which is based on the principles of Darwinian theory. Mesoudi maintains that cultural change can be illuminated by using the genotype‐phenotype distinction, and that it is sufficiently similar to biological change to warrant a theory of culture‐change based on evolutionary models. He describes examples of cultural microevolution, within‐population changes, and the biologically inspired population genetics models used to study them. He also shows that some aspects of large‐scale (macro‐evolutionary) cultural transformation can be studied by using ecological models and phylogenetic comparative techniques. We argue that although Mesoudi's evolution‐based perspective offers many useful insights, his ambition—the unification of the social sciences within a Darwinian framework through the use of the methods and models he describes—suffers from a major theoretical limitation. His reductive approach leads to overlooking culture as a system with emergent processes and features. Mesoudi therefore does not engage with any of the central past and present theories in sociology and anthropology for which the systems view of culture is central, and he does not analyze the emergent, high‐level properties of human cultural‐social systems. We suggest that a systems perspective, using some analogies and metaphors from developmental biology, can complement the evolutionary approach and is more in tune with a systems view of society. Such an approach, which stresses feedback and self‐sustaining interactions within social networks, and engages with the insights of sociological and anthropological theories, can contribute to the understanding of cultural systems by highlighting the evolution of processes of social cohesion, and by making use of the mathematical approaches of complexity theory.