Church Architecture in Devon

Identity is formed and reproduced through our relationships with human and non-human others. This paper applies this perspective to conduct an archaeological investigation of how identities emerged in urban environments during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries through cuisine. This is achieved through a comparative analysis of food remains and the associated material culture from a range of medieval sites in Hampshire of different size and status. I argue that choices and strategies in preparing, cooking and consuming food were enmeshed within multiple facets of urban identity including gender, status and profession.     

The influence of temperature on rehydroxylation [RHX] kinetics in archaeological pottery

Almost all archaeological ceramics undergo slow, progressive rehydroxylation by chemical combination with environmental water. The reaction is accompanied by an expansion, and also by the small but measurable mass gain that provides the basis of the RHX dating method. The rate of the RHX reaction increases with increasing temperature. Here we describe comprehensively the effects of temperature on the RHX process in relation to the dating methodology. We deal in turn with the kinetic model of the RHX reaction, the temperature dependence of the RHX rate, and the influence of varying environmental temperature on the RHX mass gain. We define an effective lifetime temperature and show how this is calculated from an estimated lifetime temperature history. Historical meteorological temperature data are used to estimate the lifetime temperature history, and this can be adjusted for long-term climate variation. We show also how to allow for the effects of burial in archaeological sites on the temperature history. Finally we describe how the uncertainties in estimates of RHX age depend on the estimates of temperature history and effective lifetime temperature.     

Human soft tissue preservation in the Cova des Pas site (Minorca Bronze Age)

The preservation process of soft tissues in an archeological context is mainly unknown because they occur only in truly exceptional situations. The Cova des Pas is a Bronze Age site in Minorca where the special conditions enabled the preservation of some soft tissues associated with 66 individuals. This finding allows the study of the preservation process that took place by means of the analysis of the histological and chemical characteristics of the tissues. Our results show that the preservation mechanism was the adipocere, because the fatty acids profile shows higher concentration of saturated than unsaturated fatty acids. The evidence indicates that the kind of funerary ritual and the environmental conditions favored this preservation.     

Heritage,identity and community engagement at Dunluce Castle,Northern Ireland

As Northern Ireland transitions out of conflict, increased attention is being paid to the role heritage can play in building peace across society and developing a more sustainable future. Recent archaeological investigations at Dunluce Castle have uncovered elements of the site’s Gaelic past and the remains of an early seventeenth-century town built immediately prior to the Crown-sponsored Plantation of Ulster. The project included a dynamic programme of community engagement and outreach that created opportunities to work as a group in the embodied act of recovering the physical past. This formed a space in which to challenge aspects of the region’s contested past and facilitated the renegotiation of accepted local histories and existing identity constructs.     

Dynamics of Social Complexity in Early Nineteenth-Century British Fur-Trade Posts

During the early nineteenth century, the Hudson's Bay and the North West Companies controlled much of western Canada. Both companies employed hierarchical command structures that influenced all elements of social life within the posts. Both companies confronted a significant level of interrank tension, and sought to reinforce authority figures using imported wealth items and privileges. However the enormous transportation costs made it prohibitively expensive to supply many of these status items to junior officers stationed at remote outposts. As a result, new informally derived means of symbolizing and defending social position were negotiated using techniques and commodities that were unaffected by transportation difficulties.     

Collaborative Governance of Climate Change Adaptation Across Spatial and Institutional Scales

We examine two related questions that are key for understanding collaborative outcomes in complex governance systems. The first is the extent to which collaboration among policy actors depends upon their joint participation in policy forums. The second is how the scales at which these forums operate conditionally affect the likelihood of collaboration. We address these questions using data from a recent survey on actors’ collaborative interactions as well as their participation in climate change adaptation policy forums in the Lake Victoria region in East Africa. Exponential random graph models show that actors are more likely to collaborate if they jointly participate in policy forums. However, this effect weakens at progressively higher spatial levels at which forums operate. Similarly, collaboration is less likely among actors jointly participating in forums that sponsor decision making at the higher collective choice level rather than lower operational choice level. While policy forums may catalyze collaboration, our findings suggest that their capacity to do so may be subject to scale‐dependent transaction costs of political contracting.     

Resistance and radical democracy: freedom,power and institutions

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that resistance and radical democracy can be used to the good of representative democracy. I submit that resistance is about the popular power – the freedom as power – to create better institutions. I argue that the conflict and resistance that is at the core of radical democracy enables freedom and democracy and resists domination best if it is institutionalized. This counterintuitive claim is substantiated by an argument for freedom as power through representation and how the power to resist is linked to at least four domains of freedom. This builds on the work of Machiavelli, Marx and Foucault, amongst others, and insights drawn from resistance struggles across the globe. I end by proposing institutional changes to representative democracy that, I suggest, would allow us to conceive of democracy as both a form of government and a constantly destabilizing transgressive practice.