Italy and the EU's environment and consumer policies: coalition‐building,problem framing and informal channels of influence

This article examines Rome City Council's policies concerning the Roma during Francesco Rutelli's two terms as mayor (1993-2001). It demonstrates that the Rutelli administration's policies for these minority communities shifted from a superficial but genuine attempt to overcome aspects of marginalization to a criminalizing strategy of exclusion. It is argued here that the failure significantly to improve the social conditions of the Roma was due to (a) a refusal to tackle the inter-related causes of their social exclusion and (b) submission to the anti- Roma hostility of parts of the voting public. Following the demolition of Rome's largest shanty town in October 2000, the Council was unable to house many of the Roma it had made homeless. It would seem that a 'cleaning-up' campaign was intro duced to distance undocumented individuals and those with criminal records from the city through a notable rise in police raids. This change in approach was accompanied and justified by an intensification of ethni cized public order discourse.     

Colourless glass from the Palatine and Esquiline hills in Rome (Italy). New data on antimony- and manganese-decoloured glass in the Roman period

A collection of 21 glass samples (18 colourless and 3 light aqua blue) found in recent excavations performed at the Palatine and Esquiline hills in Rome has been investigated by means of SEM-EDS, EMPA and LA-ICP-MS. The glass was recovered in the “Baths of Helagabalus” and the Horti Lamiani. The collection included cups and bowls widely attested in Rome and Ostia from the late second to the first half of the third century AD. The analyses assigned this collection to the RC/LAC-MnSb groups (Roman and Late Antique colourless glass with both antimony and manganese) which seemed closely related to the Levantine area.     

Black limestones used in antiquity: the petrographic,isotopic and EPR database for provenance determination

We compiled a database of some of the most important black limestone quarries used in Roman times to be able to determine the provenance of ancient artifacts. For this purpose, we adopted a multimethod approach using the techniques commonly applied to study the provenance of white marbles: petrographic observations, carbon and oxygen isotope composition, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra characteristics. Few black limestones were quarried and traded in ancient times; indeed, the importance of most of these quarries was restricted to the areas in which they were located. In this work, we selected a limited number of quarries that produced material believed to have been exported and used throughout the Mediterranean area; most of the quarries selected are found in northern Tunisia, i.e. the Roman proconsular Africa: Djebel Oust, Djebel Azeiz, Ain al Ksir and (presumably) Thala. The “Nero Chiota” limestone quarried on the Aegean island of Chios (Greece) was also included in the database.     

PETROGRAPHIC AND ISOTOPIC CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MARBLE OF THE ISLAND OF TINOS (GREECE)*

Most outcrops of good‐quality crystalline marble in Mediterranean countries were exploited in Greek and Roman times. Hence, a wide variety of marble is now found in archaeological excavations. The precise determination of the provenance of a marble object is of great archaeological importance, and is now mostly obtained by coupling the petrographic study of a thin section with the analysis of the C and O stable isotopes, or by stereomicroscopy and EPR. The existing databases are considerable but still insufficient, because our knowledge about and study of ancient Mediterranean quarries remain incomplete. The contribution of this research is to add new petrographic and isotopic data on small quarries on the Greek island of Tinos that were exploited in antiquity. This marble belongs to the same geological horizon; it is quite pure, sometimes dolomitic and characterized by a low‐T, high‐P metamorphism that produced a limited recrystallization (MGS varying from 0.64 to 2.50 mm) on marine limestone protoliths. The petrographic features are quite distinctive: the fabric is strongly lineated and often stressed; and the accessory minerals are ubiquitary quartz, ore minerals, graphite and muscovite. As far as the isotopic data are concerned, δ¹³C_PDB varies from 1.1 to 2.7, and δ¹⁸O_PDB from ?1.7 to ?11.4. Both the features and the data have been compared with those of similar marbles used in antiquity, showing that their combination mirrors the fingerprint of the Tinos marble.