Donkey Domestication

Donkeys are one of the least studied large domestic animals, even though they are economically important in many regions of the world. They are predominantly used as transport animals. Consequently, they are not kept in large numbers and this limits the number of archaeological specimens available for study. The donkey’s closest relative is the African wild ass, and genetic studies and zooarchaeological analyses of early donkeys indicate domestication of two genetically separate groups of wild asses in Africa. Maternal relationships revealed by mitochondrial DNA show that one group of donkeys was derived from the Nubian wild ass and that one was derived from an unknown ancestor distinct from the Somali wild ass.     

Presumption,policy and practice

This article aims to analyse the basis for the construction of current policy designed to use museums and galleries as agents of social inclusion in Great Britain. It does this by first analysing their social role and their historical contribution to social policy. The article then goes on to present the findings of a research project that compared the rhetoric surrounding this issue with practice. It concludes that a series of issues are preventing the successful construction and implementation of policy. These are: a lack of policy coherence across different parts of the British Government; an inability to successfully measure social impact; a lack of institutional clarity about how to respond to policy guidance; and a lack of understanding about what constitutes social exclusion. The final and most significant difficulty is the lack of clarity about what can be expected from museums and galleries in this respect. The underlying question of how they function in society remains largely unanswered and means that policy is not based upon firm foundations.     

Discourse,justification and critique: towards a legitimate digital copyright regime?

Digitization and the internet have posed an acute economic challenge to rights holders in the cultural industries. Faced with a threat to their form of capital accumulation from copyright infringement, rights holders have used discourse strategically in order to try and legitimate and strengthen their position in the digital copyright debate with governments and media users. In so doing, they have appealed to general justificatory principles – about what is good, right, and just – that provide some scope for opposition and critique, as other groups contest their interpretation of these principles and the evidence used to support them. In this article, we address the relative lack of academic attention paid to the role of discourse in copyright debates by analysing user-directed marketing campaigns and submissions to UK government policy consultations. We show how legitimacy claims are justified and critiqued, and conclude that amid these debates rests some hope of achieving a more legitimate policy resolution to the copyright wars – or at least the possibility of beginning a more constructive dialogue.     

A Study of African Wild Ass Behavior Provides Insights into Conservation Issues, Domestication Processes and Archaeological Interpretation

African wild asses (Equus africanus) were the wild ancestors of the donkey and are now critically endangered. Ethological and middle range research on Somali wild asses (E. a. somaliensis) at the Saint Louis Zoo provides insights into social behavior in captive setting and domestication processes. We observed a group of three young female Somali wild asses to develop an ethogram of social behavior in the first phase of a longer-term study of social, sexual, and maternal/infant behavior. The most unexpected finding was the frequency and extent of aggressive interactions, yet they also displayed a preference for close proximity. As the first quantitative study of the social behavior of wild asses, these results provide insights into domestication processes, suggesting that in captivity African wild asses are behaviorally plastic. These findings regarding the behavior of captive wild asses further the goals of both archaeology and conservation biology.     

Educating the Workers of Sheffield in the 18th and 19th Centuries: St Luke's National School,Garden Street,Sheffield

This article describes the archaeological recording of a Sunday school which was constructed in 1873, on the site of an earlier building, to provide educational needs for the working-class families which surrounded Garden Street. A brief historical background to the provision of education both nationally and in Sheffield is provided, along with the results of the recording of the standing building, and reference to below-ground remains of the residential accommodation which surrounded it is given. The recording concluded that the original form of the school was intact, with little in the way of modifications, apart from the addition of 20th-century industrial structures and an air raid shelter. The site provides a valuable insight into educational provision in one of the poorer areas of 19th-century Sheffield.     

Shadows of Song: Exploring Research and Performance Strategies in Yolngu Women's Crying‐songs

This paper provides an argument that research on women's crying‐songs in north east Arnhem Land can be effectively analysed as a series of shadow‐dances between the researcher, the singer and the performance context. Within this framework, it explores the processes of transmission and reception of a selection of crying‐song texts from one of the most highly regarded female performers in the region. As singing is a powerful force in the making of Yolngu social, spiritual and political life, music making is shown to play a crucial role in authorizing, describing, teaching and controlling social and ancestral knowledge between men and women and by extension the place of the researcher within the community. Through the regulation of knowledge the making and remaking of the singer and researcher is danced out in a web of mutuality, reciprocity and obligation in which processes of ‘strategic formation’ and ‘strategic location’ emerge. Thus, one woman's melodies of mourning are shown to be a musical gift exchange of various shadow‐dances between learning, receiving, performing and mutually engaging in Yolngu ways of knowing and coming‐to‐know.