Iron Age Diet at Sisak,Croatia: Archaeobotanical Evidence of Foxtail Millet (Setaria Italica [L.] P. Beauv.)

Recent excavations at Sisak, Croatia, unearthed an Early Iron Age pot filled with archaeobotanical remains within the floor of a structure dating to between the sixth and fourth centuries BC. Burnt in situ the archaeobotanical remains provide unique evidence for diet and agriculture in a region where archaeobotanical evidence is rare. The preliminary results from this analysis are outlined here, with a focus on the discovery of foxtail millet (Setaria italica [L.] P. Beauv.) and its contribution to the diet of the Early Iron Age population at Sisak.     

C. Douglas Dillon,President Kennedy's Economic Envoy*

This article focuses on President John F. Kennedy's Secretary of the Treasury, C. Douglas Dillon and contends that he played an important part in sustaining the political cooperation that underpinned the Bretton-Woods system during one of its first crisis points. Rather than focusing solely on structural, economic trends, the article suggests that individual actors mattered as well. As a bipartisan figure that was well regarded in Europe, Dillon was able to act effectively as an envoy to the private sector, principally Wall Street, and to France, which both threatened the stability of the dollar. The article explores Dillon's role in shaping Kennedy's economic policies in a more conservative direction than his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and in his external efforts to garner support for the Democratic administration.     

Nationalist geographies in interwar Yugoslavia: manoeuvring between national and transnational spaces

Taking into consideration several seemingly contradictory characteristics of Yugoslav geography, this article examines the employment of transnational spaces by the competing nationalist geographical narratives in interwar Yugoslavia. Though preoccupied with Yugoslavia and its political crises, at the beginning and the end of the interwar period Yugoslav geographers were concerned with international political developments, especially in East Central Europe. There were tensions between a geographical region and a national space as a preferred framework of research as well as between the belief that the political, economic and cultural development of Yugoslavia was unique and that it was comparable to development of other parts of East Central Europe. The determinist understanding of the nation as shaped by the physical landscape emphasized not only the ability, but also the necessity, of nationalist geographies to function on multiple spatial levels. Yugoslav geographers used the conceptual apparatus developed by French and German geographical traditions to establish a comparative framework in which they elaborated on various geographical characteristics of Yugoslavia, especially those politically significant, by referring to other European countries because it seemed difficult to describe the new country in terms of itself. German Geopolitik became particularly influential and, although taking different stands on it, several Yugoslav geographers pointed to geopolitical similarities with Czechoslovakia and Poland to draw conclusions regarding Yugoslavia. But geographical comparison had ambiguous implications, as it was used both to fortify and challenge the interwar Yugoslav state.     

Damage assessment and conservation strategy for the largest covered market in Europe: the Ribera Market (Bilbao)

Facing a scarcity of land for urban development and demand for public services, the Municipal Council of Bilbao recognizes the need to make good use of its built heritage and to upgrade it, while maintaining its cultural and functional features. A good example is the case of the Ribera Market, the largest covered market in Europe. Deterioration of the market building and public pressure for improved services has led to proposals for its rehabilitation. To do so, the constructive condition of the building must first of all be assessed and, then, the most appropriate and compatible intervention technique must be selected. Today, there is a broad selection of intervention technologies, for the improvement of both mechanical behaviour and durability. However, in this article, it is demonstrated that these technologies are not always applicable in old buildings, because they depend on the severity of the pathology and the intrinsic characteristics of the building: for example, corrosion due to chloride ions originating from the concrete mass. The lack of knowledge on constructive techniques and the requirements for the application of new technologies complicate the interventions, which in turn further complicates decision-making with regard to the property.     

Austria-Hungary,Unrestricted Submarine Warfare,and the United States' Entrance into the First World War

This study shows that Austro-Hungarian policy toward the United States of America was in winter 1917 not primarily dictated by its German ally but by the sober evaluation of its own interests. The separate peace, which was offered by the Wilson administration, was not a realistic foreign-policy option for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Therefore, this article shows why Austria-Hungary did not accept US peace feelers. On the other hand, it also demonstrates that in the winter of 1917 Washington did not treat Germany and Austria-Hungary as equals, with the latter being in a better position. But the monarchy's acceptance of the German course in the submarine war strengthened the perception of the monarchy as an appendage of the stronger Germany in the United States, and finally caused great damage to its reputation across the Atlantic.     

Sputniks,explorers and propaganda: The discovery of the earth's radiation belts 1

Abstract

The most important scientific discovery of the early space era ‐ the 1958 discovery of the radiation belts of the Earth ‐ was made in the context of Cold War rivalry between the USSR and the USA. The paper uses previously unavailable archival records to reconstruct the relative contributions of American and Soviet researchers and their interations during the process of discovery. The former discovered what is now known as the inner radiation belt, while the latter observed the outer radiation belt and gradually came to realize the existence of two distinctively different zones of radiation. The uses of science for the purposes of Cold War political propaganda affected the behavior of scientists and led to the misrepresentation of the events in mass media.     

Partners for stability? Irish Free State perceptions of the incoming British Labour government 1923–24

This article examines the anxiety and frustration of the Irish Free State government faced with the uncertainty of which party was going to become the next British government in 1923–24. The Free State government had only recently emerged victorious in its own fratricidal civil war and its moral and political legitimacy was still challenged in Ireland itself. The most contentious issue an incoming British government had to deal with on Ireland was the final demarcation of the boundary between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland which, according to Article 12 of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, would be determined by a boundary commission. The Free State government remained unconvinced that any incoming British Labour government had the competence, understanding or commitment to resolve this issue and contribute to long-term stability in Ireland, given Labour's perceived lack of knowledge and interest in Irish politics and its commitment to social and economic issues taking precedence. This apprehension was articulated in contemporary Irish government papers and personal correspondence and proved well founded, given the legalistic and cautious approach of the Labour government to establishing the Irish Boundary Commission.     

The goodness of fit and statistical significance of seriation solutions

This paper presents a method for determining the statistical significance and goodness of fit of seriation solutions based on correspondence analysis. The basic assumption is that seriation solutions corresponding to relative chronological sequences should have unimodal distributions of types across assemblages in a sequence. In order to evaluate significance of chronological signal in data, the observed number of modes of a seriation solution based on correspondence analysis is compared to a distribution of number of modes generated by randomization of the original data table. A quantitative measure of the goodness of fit is presented. The method is tested on two data sets: 1) archaeological data with a known chronological ordering 2) non-archaeological data without a chronological patterning. The method successfully detected a significant chronological signal in the former, and failed to detect it in the latter.     

Peter Kozler and His Map of the Slovenian Land and Its Provinces (1849–1871)

Early modern regional maps of Europe usually indicated the area occupied by people who were beginning to refer to themselves as Slovenians under various names. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the actual extent of the Slovenian language was depicted on a map and Slovenians were recognized as a nation within the Austrian Empire. Much of the credit for the systematic recording of the distribution of Slovenian speakers can be attributed to Peter Kozler, the Gottscheer German lawyer who compiled his pioneering The Map of the Slovenian Land and Its Provinces [Zemljovid slovenske de?ele in pokrajin] during the political upheavals associated with the ‘Spring of Nations’ and the 1848 Revolution in the Habsburg Monarchy. Although Kozler’s map was completed in 1852 and first printed in 1853, the authorities repeatedly delayed its publication until 1861. This article uncovers the history of the map’s production and eventual publication.