ANIMAL HISTORY

This review reflects on animal history as a subfield of the discipline of history and presents its main arguments and future tasks. Its main goal is to identify the new research prospects and potentials proposed by the book edited by Susan Nance, The Historical Animal. These include such topics as the problem of “the animal's point of view,” animal agency (animals understood as “historical” agents and actors), the problem of identifying traces of animal actions in “anthropocentric” archives and searching for new historical sources (including animals’ testimonies). It also explores methodological difficulties, especially with the idea of the historicization of animals and the possible merger of the humanities and social sciences with the natural and life sciences. The review considers how studying animals forces scholars to rethink to its foundations history as a discipline. It claims that the most progressive proposals are coming from scholars (many of whom are historians) who advocate radical interdisciplinarity. The authors are not only interested in merging history with specific sciences (such as animal psychology, ecology, ethology, evolutionary biology, and zoology), but also question basic assumptions of the discipline: the epistemic authority claimed by historians for building knowledge of the past as well as the human epistemic authority for creating such knowledge. In this context several questions emerge: can we achieve “interspecies competence” (Erica Fudge's term) for creating a multispecies knowledge of the past? Can research on animals’ perception of change help us to develop nonhistorical approaches to the past? Can we imagine accounts of the past based on multispecies co‐authorship?     

A Mid Upper Palaeolithic Child Burial from Borsuka Cave (Southern Poland)

During the excavation in the Borsuka Cave site (southern Poland), extraordinary materials were obtained for the study of the Mid Upper Palaeolithic (MUP) settlement in the region. In layer VI, six deciduous teeth of a modern Homo sapiens infant were discovered together with 112 pendants made from the teeth of European elk and steppe wisent or aurochs. The teeth appear to belong to a 12‐ to 18‐month‐old child. The sex of the child cannot be determined. Diagnostic features of the teeth and the fact that they all represent the same developmental phase suggest that they belong to a single individual. In this paper, we put forward a number of alternative explanations for why only a child's teeth and numerous pendants were deposited in the late Pleistocene sediments of Borsuka Cave, for example, natural factors (carnivore activity), human habitation, existence of a pendant workshop in the vicinity of the cave and intentional burial. Although no traces of a burial pit were encountered, intentional burial, the oldest known from Poland, is indicated by the presence of human remains together with numerous ornaments and absence of ‘domestic’ finds, such as lithic cores, debitage and tools. An unusual presence of a larger number of pierced teeth of large herbivores in a child burial is noticeable among assorted mortuary practices recorded in MUP Central Europe. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preservation of bird bones: erosion versus digestion by owls

Surface damage to bird bones from pellets of three species of owls (S. aluco, A. otus and B. bubo) was compared with that of bird bones exposed to weathering and soil corrosion (Záskogo Cave in the Western Balkan Mountains, Bulgaria and Ciemna Cave, southern Poland). Scanning electron microscopy and light microscope examinations indicate that the effects of weathering of bird bones (extensive pitting and flaking away on whole bones, holes with sharp edges, depressions with rough bottoms and sharp edges of breakage) are distinguishable from those of digestion (rounding of hole edges on articular ends and sometimes on shafts, rounding of breakage). However, soil corrosion may produce similar rounding to that of digestion, which may hamper taphonomic interpretations of fossil assemblages. Two stages of weathering in bird bone are distinguished. Generally, the kind of damage done to bird bones is similar to that done to mammalian remains. Taphonomic studies of fossil bird remains should take into account a combination of features, including surface damage, fragmentation and possible chemical alterations of bone tissues. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inappropriate object: Warsaw and the Stalin‐era Palace of Culture after the Smolensk disaster (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article is about the shifting relationship between the city of Warsaw and the Palace of Culture and Science – a gigantic Stalinist skyscraper which dominates the city centre – in the aftermath of the 10 April 2010 plane crash that killed the Polish president and 95 others (mostly very senior military and political figures) in the woods outside Smolensk in western Russia. The crash's victims had been on their way to a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of a massacre in the Katyń forest, near Smolensk, during which thousands of Polish army officers were shot on the orders of Stalin. Despite its status as Warsaw's most obvious material relic of Russia's historical domination over Poland, the Palace of Culture has in the last two decades been gradually reappropriated into the city's own landscape and everyday life. In fact, since the fall of communism, the Palace has eclipsed the city's traditional emblems and monuments to become regarded as the most identifiable marker, or ‘symbol’, of the contemporary city. Further, the Palace has consolidated the tangible and powerful impact it exerts on the city's architecture and urban layout, on its political, bureaucratic, ‘cultural’, commercial and educational life, and on the bodies and minds of its citizens. The very word ‘palace’ is normally understood in Warsaw to refer to the Palace of Culture. For a time after Smolensk, however, the word acquired a new association with the Presidential Palace, where crowds gathered to lay flowers, light candles and stand vigil. The markedly muted presence in Warsaw of the Palace of Culture during the mourning period after Smolensk demonstrated that the happy interaction between post‐socialist Warsaw and the rehabilitated Palace does not extend into every domain. The topography of mourning in Warsaw in the days after 10 April seemed to highlight the abject dimension of the Palace's uncanny presence in the city. This article explores why, how and for how long the Palace withdrew and was withdrawn from the life of the Warsaw after Smolensk.     

ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS AND URBAN ABANDONMENT: CASE STUDIES AND TYPOLOGICAL ISSUES

The article discusses the phenomenon of urban abandonment as a result of environmental hazards. Seen as an outcome of environmental drivers, the underlying assumption is that a characteristic of environmental hazards is their spatial and temporal constancy of impact, whereby processes and phenomena having taken place in the past have their analogies in the present. In order to generate insights for future research and policy development, there is a need to pay greater attention to the precarious relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past through the study of historical cases. The article clarifies the dynamic interactions of drivers and their progression through various stages of urban abandonment. This is done by recourse to an analysis of some general trends and an in‐depth examination of three selected case studies from Poland. It has two objectives. The first is to identify the historical role of environmental drivers in the process of urban abandonment, while the second one is to contribute to the typology of environmentally related processes of urban abandonment in order to better identify future calamities. With respect to the former, the findings reveal that the relation between environmental hazards and urban abandonment is pertinent in regions with specific geographic conditions and pertains only to certain categories of urban settlements. With respect to the latter, by drawing on these findings, we propose some alterations and amendments to McLeman's comprehensive model of settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change.     

Early development of late Vistulian (Weichselian) lacustrine sediments in the Żabieniec swamp (central Poland)

The early sedimentological and ecological developmental stages of a late Vistulian lake in the ?abieniec swamp near ?ód? (central Poland) were analysed by radiometric dating, changes in the frequency of specimens and species composition of Cladocera and multivariate statistical analysis (DCA). The longevity of the lake resulted in a fairly complete sedimentary record from approximately 22 ka to 11 ka cal BP. Species composition and the variability in the frequency of Cladocera specimens has made it possible to distinguish eleven zones of their development, which are well correlated with radiocarbon data. The results were compared to those from other sites of north and central Europe. The initial Cladocera development comprises the richest and oldest late Vistulian Cladocera record in Europe. These cladoceran assemblages show that a deep, oligotrophic, moderately cold-water lake was present at the beginning. It appears that the cladoceran development was mainly due to climate change, but also to changes in locally prevailing conditions in the water body. The high frequency of cladocerans, as well as the presence of cladoceran taxa preferring warmer water, was noted before approximately 16 ka BP. The biota suggests that the Oldest Dryas cooling was not severe and fairly variable in terms of humidity and temperature. The changes in Cladocera composition give evidence of what is described as the Intra-Bølling Cold Oscillation. It is also concluded that the Bølling is represented by two phases in the ?abieniec lake sediments.     

Investigations on pre-treatment prior to freeze-drying of archaeological pine wood with abnormal shrinkage anisotropy

The current research is aimed at determining the nature of changes in the dimensions and hygroscopicity of archaeological Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) wood after treatment with polyethylene glycols and vacuum freeze-drying. The research was undertaken on mature sapwood with narrow annual rings and a small percentage of latewood. The experimental material used in a comparative assessment is characterised by a considerable degree of wood degradation, but low tangential and radial shrinkage and relatively high longitudinal shrinkage. The waterlogged samples were treated with aqueous solutions of PEG 300 with final concentrations: 8, 12, 16 and 20% (v/v), to which PEG 4000 with final concentration: 15, 20 and 25% (w/v) was added. After freeze-drying and seasoning of samples in the air at RH 30, 40, 50 and 65%, the water content of the samples and the degree of shrinkage of wood in three anatomical directions were determined. The dimensional stability of the samples was also determined on the basis of ASE values at RH 50%.     

Age and sedimentological features of fluvial series in the Toruń Basin and the Drwęca Valley (Poland)

The deposits of the Toruń Basin are dominated by a few-metre thick sand series which fill up buried valley-like depressions. In many cases they underlie the Weichselian till which builds up the ice marginal streamway (pradolina) terraces or they are exposed at the basin slopes. As the results of the geological and sedimentological studies, as well as of the dating of the deposits at the sites in the Toruń Basin indicate, the deposits include two fluvial series accumulated before the advancement of the Leszno Phase ice sheet, i.e. in Middle Weichselian and at the beginning of Late Weichselian. The oldest fluvial series connected with the Saalian Glaciation was found at the mouth section of the Drwęca Valley. The fluvial system of the Toruń Basin during Middle Weichselian and at the beginning of Late Weichselian developed in two phases of the sand-bed braided river. During the first one the river channel were dominated by large mid-riverbed sandbars, while during the second phase the water flow was smaller and, as a result, low transverse sandbars and two-dimensional dunes developed. Other active river channel also showed low-energy flows, more intensive meandering than in the case of the braided rivers, as well as sandy side-bars. Analysis of the rounding and frosting of the quartz grains indicate that the studied series of the Weichselian sandy deposits represent alluvia of a river which were fed from two diverse sources. The first one might have represented the alluvia of a warm river which transformed its load, while the other one might have mainly carried the underlying Quaternary deposits.