Millet cultivation history in the French Alps as evidenced by a sedimentary molecule

We report on the detection, in a sediment core drilled in Lake Le Bourget (French Alps), of a fossil molecule (miliacin) that was synthesized by broomcorn millet cultivated in the watershed, and then exported to the sediment. The variation in abundance of this molecule allows us reconstructing the history of millet cultivation around Lake Le Bourget. Our results support the introduction of millet around −1700 BC in the region. After an intensive cultivation during the Late Bronze Age, the failure of millet cropping during the Hallstatt period coincides with a phase of climatic deterioration. Millet cultivation recovers during the Roman and Mediaeval periods before falling most probably due to the introduction of more productive cereals. These pioneering results constitute the first continuous record of an agrarian activity covering the last 6000 years and emphasize the close relationships between local hydrology, land use and agro-pastoral activities around Lake Le Bourget.     

Effect of Irregular Seabed on Seismic Motions

Several studies indicate that marine seismic activity is vast. Actually, about 90% of all natural earthquakes have epicenters in o_shore areas and may cause damage to subsea and floating structures. In this numerical study the indirect boundary element method is used to analyze the influence that some parameters, involved in this kind of problems, have on the dynamic response of marine waters under the incidence of theoretical seismic events. According with the results, the seismic amplifications depend on the seabed configuration and produce displacements which can be a serious concern.     

School holidays: examining childhood,gender norms,and kinship in children's shorter-term residential mobility in urban Zambia

This article discusses a practice of child residential mobility in Zambia that is frequently overlooked in migration studies and difficult to capture through standard survey methods: the practice of ‘going on holiday’ to the homes of relatives during breaks in the school term. Drawing on child-centered and quantitative research, this article examines the multiple dimensions of ‘going on holiday’ for children living in a low-income urban settlement in Lusaka. Findings suggest that the practice was gendered and may map onto changing norms in schooling in Zambia. Within a context where resources are severely constrained, going on holiday may serve as one means for cultivating reciprocity, sharing the burden of care and household labor, and strengthening kin ties. This work further demonstrates the importance of using locally meaningful terms and practices in survey research where general questions about children's mobility may fail to capture the nature and extent of children's movements.     

Services in Russia: past,present, and future

In spite of ambitious modernization plans of the government, structural change in Russia is not proceeding in the direction of highly developed economies. Part of the lag in the tertiarization process can be explained by the fact that, as during the Soviet period, the role of services in the economy is still ignored, particularly regarding innovation. This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the evolution of services in Russia since the mid-1990s and its future prospects by compiling data from the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, Rosstat, and the World Input–Output Database. Two complementary and novel perspectives are adopted: a production system perspective and a spatial perspective. Regarding services in the Russian production system, comparison of interindustry linkages reveals that, in addition to traditional relevant activities like wholesale/retail trade and transport and communications, business services are acquiring great importance as production process inputs. Concerning the spatial perspective, we observe a greater presence of non-market services in less densely populated federal districts, while strategic service activities are highly concentrated in the most dynamic ones. Analysis of major Russian cities confirmed the trend of business services concentrating in densely populated and highly innovative cities. In brief, services, and in particular business services, can be a means to boost innovation and growth in Russia, but more attention from political leaders is necessary for these activities. The modernization process should abandon its current “high-technology industry myopia” and take into consideration the innovative, and especially, the knowledge-diffuser role, that services can exert.     

Sherds of a Kingdom: Historical Pottery of the Lake Tana Region (Northern Ethiopia)

Although the Gondärine period of Ethiopian history is relatively well-known due to local and foreign historical texts, and the architectural remains of the Solomonic dynasty, little is known about the material culture of the communities who inhabited the core area of this kingdom between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This paper deals with the historical pottery documented in the Lake Tana region, summarizing the results of a nine-year project in the area of Gondär and linking it with materials from nearby areas. A comprehensive study of the ceramic remains has been undertaken with a combination of ethnographic, written, and archaeological sources, providing a first chronological and typological framework for this pottery, and some hints about the reasons for the changes detected throughout time related to the consolidation of a centralized Ethiopian monarchy in the mid-sixteenth century.     

Traces of Fatty Acids from a Byzantine Sounding Lead Recovered off the Israeli Coast

Fatty acids, typical to large herbivores, were isolated from a 7th century Byzantine sounding lead recovered from a shipwreck off Dor, an ancient anchorage in Northern Israel. The fatty acids survived by being sheltered in an anaerobic environment provided through a site formation process induced by the disintegrating wreck. Previously established identification criteria for fatty acids, absorbed in ceramics, were used to show that tallow was used in this navigational instrument in the Eastern Mediterranean during late antiquity.