Kisar and the Archaeology of Small Islands in the Wallacean Archipelago

The occupation of small islands presents particular challenges for people largely related to limited terrestrial resources and susceptibility to natural disasters. Nevertheless, the challenges and risks inherent in maintaining stable populations on small islands can be offset or overcome through the use of maritime technologies and exchange networks. The archaeology of Here Sorot Entapa rockshelter (HSE) on Kisar Island in the Wallacean Archipelago provides an unparalleled record for examining these issues in Southeast Asia. Kisar is the smallest of the Wallacean islands known to have a Pleistocene occupation record, and one of the smallest permanently inhabited today. Our results indicate that Here Sorot Entapa was first occupied in the terminal Pleistocene by people with advanced maritime technology who made extensive use of local marine resources and engaged in social connections with other islands through an obsidian exchange network. As a result, populations appear to have been maintained on the island for approximately 6,000 years. In the early Holocene occupation at HSE ceased for unknown reasons, and the site was not reoccupied until the mid-Holocene, during which time a major change in the lithic resources can be observed and the exchange network appears to have ceased.     

Ethical consumption? There's an app for that. Digital technologies and everyday consumption practices

Ethical consumption mobile phone apps are increasingly popular. These apps allow consumers to scan the barcodes of products they are considering purchasing and determine whether or not they align with their ethics. App technologies are often applauded for their potential to provide consumers with targeted, crowd-sourced information about products while shopping and to foster more political, and less individualistic, consumption practices by connecting users to one another and to campaigns. There is a growing field of scholarship conceptually examining the role of information and digital technologies in ethical consumption. However, there is little empirical research on how consumers engage with ethical consumption apps in everyday ways. Drawing on an in-depth study with 21 participants, this paper explores how app use mediates people's experiences of ethical consumption. We contend that the app design structures and limits how individuals engage in ethically motivated consumption and influences their conceptualizations of ethical consumption as a political practice. We conclude by illustrating that critically examining what it means to be “ethical” in a digital world is a crucial area of research for geographers, particularly as these ethics play out through the everyday use of mobile technologies.     

Judicialization and Health Policy in Colombia: The Implications for Evidence‐Informed Policymaking

The existence of the tutela mechanism and the endemic weaknesses of the legislative and executive branches of the Colombian state have led to a de facto judicialization of health policymaking. The objective of evidence‐informed policy is to identify effective policy approaches and legitimize policy decisions. Questions arise about the basis on which judges take decisions with significant policy and budgetary consequences, and the forms of evidence they use to inform these. This article focuses on the extent to which courts take account of research evidence in judgements and assesses the implications for health policy in Colombia. We place these discussions in the context of a broader analysis of the ongoing reforms to the Colombian health system and the most recent literature on evidence‐informed policymaking. The judicialization of health policymaking offers a suboptimal means to achieve the objective of evidence‐informed policymaking. The emergence of a range of evidence advisory bodies in recent years is an attempt to address the issue of judicialization alongside the other constitutional and political weaknesses Colombia faces.     

The diagnosis of pituitary disease from human skeletal remains

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the radiological criteria once widely used when investigating pituitary disease in the living can be applied to early man. The material examined forms part of the assemblage of skulls in the Duckworth Collection in Cambridge. It proved possible to measure the sella turcica from the radiographs of 88 of 155 predynastic adult Egyptian skulls with an intact base. These were compared with the measurements from 41 of 76 adult Burmese skulls of more recent origin and those of a randomly selected sample of living Caucasian adults. There was a wide range of sellar volumes in all three groups. The results were subjected to statistical analysis. Opportunities to apply the results of this study have been limited to the assessment of sellar erosion in a predynastic Badarian, review of the diagnosis of acromegaly in a, presumed, early Egyptian and the investigation of a hydrocephalic skull. The radiological examination of human skeletal remains thought to show evidence of pituitary disease or hydrocephalus can make palaeopathological diagnoses more secure.     

Organic Public Geographies: “Making the Connection”

Abstract: A new field of “public geographies” is taking shape ( Fuller 2008 ) in geography's mainstream journals. While much is “traditional”, with intellectuals disseminating academic research via non‐ academic outlets ( Castree 2006 ; Mitchell 2008 ; Oslender 2007 ), less visible is the “organic” work and its “more involved intellectualizing, pursued through working with area‐based or single‐interest groups, in which the process itself may be the outcome” ( Ward 2006 :499; see Fuller and Askins 2010 ). A number of well‐known projects exist where research has been “done not merely for the people we write about but with them” ( Gregory 2005 :188; see also Cahill 2004 ; Johnston and Pratt 2010 ). However, collaborative writing of academic publications which gives research participants authorial credit is unusual ( mrs kinpainsby 2008 ; although see Sangtin Writers and Nagar 2006 ). This paper is about an organic public geographies project called “Making the connection”. It is written by a diverse collection of (non‐)academic participants who contributed to the project before it had started, as it was undertaken, and/or after it had finished. This is a “messy”, process‐oriented text ( Cook et al. 2007 ) working through the threads (partially) connecting the activities of its main collaborators, including a referee who helped get the paper to publication.     

Dorsetshire Numismatics; The Ancient Mints,with Notices of Some Medals Connected with the County

For several years, studies of popular religion within pre-Reformation England have tended to emphasize that religious practice within the medieval parish church had become increasingly privatized and exclusive, as a result of the foundation of so-called ‘private’ chantry chapels. In many cases, these works have neglected the wider role of the chantry in shared religious experience at parish level, a deficit that has only recently been challenged by historians. This paper sets out to consider how the structural analysis of surviving above-ground evidence for former chantry chapels can uncover a wider context for chantry foundation in the medieval parish church. This paper based on recent research in the south and west of England discusses how the analysis of church space, light and, particularly, vision enables the reconstruction of aspects of chantry chapel foundation and can illustrate their wider social dimension. It examines the nature of the architectural feature known as the ‘squint’ and discusses how it can help in the analysis of former ritual topography and shed light on the level of private and communal piety. Furthermore, this paper shows how the use of archaeological approaches can illuminate aspects of medieval religious practice only hinted at in historical documents.     

Marriage and Kinship in South India,South America,and the USSR: Essays from three cultural perspectives

Dumont, Louis. Affinity as a Value: Marriage Alliance in South India, with Comparative Essays on Australia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. x + 230 pp. including references and index. $22.00.

Kensinger, Kenneth M., ed. Marriage Practices in Lowland South America. Illinois Studies in Anthropology, No. 14. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. x + 297 pp. including references and index. $19.95.

Dragadze, Tamara, ed. Kinship and Marriage in the Soviet Union: Field Studies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. xiii + 269 pp. including brief guide to Soviet ethnographic journals. $39.95.