Lithic raw material physical properties and use-wear accrual

Understanding the nature of the physical properties of lithic raw materials is a pre-requisite for developing more reliable interpretations of use-wear evidence and tool function. We use nanoindentation and use-wear experimentation as a way to measure differences in raw material surface hardness and roughness in order to show that differences in lithic material properties have implications for rates of use-wear accrual.     

The relationship of the Mimbres to other southwestern and Mexican populations

Previous aDNA research in the Southwest provides a framework to understand the Mimbres population which maintains a unique identity in the archeology of the desert Southwest of North America. Both the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups and haplotypes of a sample of 46 Mimbres individuals were identified from skeletal remains and compared to those of other ancient and modern populations in the American Southwest and Mexico. The haplogroup frequency distribution of the Mimbres resembles that of other Southwestern populations, suggesting a close relationship between the Mimbres and the neighboring populations and population continuity for a long period of time. However, their relatively low frequency of haplogroup A (11% n = 5) is consistent with a clinal distribution of haplogroup A from Mesoamerica to the Southwest. Moreover, unlike other Southwestern populations, the Mimbres share haplotypes with populations to the south, such as the Cora, Huichol, and Nahua, suggesting gene-flow from Mesoamerica. Here we discuss this data in light of the origin of the Mimbres population and their relationship to other Southwestern and Mexican populations.     

Naturwissenschaft und Religion in den Niederlanden um 1600

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio-economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti-traditional attitude, which had an anti-rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there was no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used. Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well-known book: The right use of-world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments.