Editorial

Abstract

The Fiestas de Astures y Romanos (The Festival of Astures and Romans) is a thriving historical re-enactment performed in the town of Astorga, in north-west Spain. The objective of our research has been to explore the complex interactions between politics, the public, and heritage management, and to evaluate their impact upon archaeology as a discipline. We draw on a participant ethnography carried out during the 2011 event. The concept of ‘Celtic-Barbarian Assemblage’ enables us to understand how different usages of the pre-Roman past condition identity politics and heritage policies at the local level. Finally, we reflect upon our findings and suggest potential lines of action to tackle what we perceive to be the increasing gap between public and academic archaeology in Spain, whose long-term consequences can be detrimental for the discipline as a whole.     

Defending Byzantine Spain: frontiers and diplomacy

The centrality of the Reconquista in the historiography of medieval Spain has meant that there has been little examination of the evidence for interaction on and across political boundaries in pre‐Islamic Spain. This article re‐examines existing theories about the defence of the Byzantine province of Spania that had been established by Justinian in the 550s and was taken by the Visigoths in 625. The two existing and opposing models for the extent, defence, and – therefore – the importance of the province to the empire do not explain the evidence convincingly. Rather, a fluid zone of interaction was established in which diplomacy and ‘propaganda’ was the primary means by which opposition was articulated.     

Comparison between the Seismic Performance of Integral and Jointed Concrete Bridges

This article presents a probabilistic fragility analysis for two groups of integral and jointed concrete bridges, with varying length and column height. The results show that the integral bridges perform consistently better from a seismic perspective than the jointed bridges. Comparisons are also drawn between the seismic fragility of different geometric configurations. The results show that for integral bridges, the seismic vulnerability increases with an increase in bridge length and decreases with an increase in column height. For the jointed bridge, it was found that geometric variation in column height and bridge length does not significantly affect its seismic vulnerability.     

新巨人登场

近日纽约与新泽西港口事务管理局宣布,纽约世界贸易中心一号楼目前楼体高度达到1271英尺（387．4米）,成为纽约及西半球的第一高楼。4月30日下午,建筑工人竖起世贸中心一号楼第100层的第一根钢柱,     

Neoliberalizing Space

This paper revisits the question of the political and theoretical status of neoliberalism, making the case for a process–based analysis of "neoliberalization." Drawing on the experience of the heartlands of neoliberal discursive production, North America and Western Europe, it is argued that the transformative and adaptive capacity of this far–reaching political–economic project has been repeatedly underestimated. Amongst other things, this calls for a close reading of the historical and geographical (re)constitution of the process of neoliberalization and of the variable ways in which different "local neoliberalisms" are embedded within wider networks and structures of neoliberalism. The paper's contribution to this project is to establish a stylized distinction between the destructive and creative moments of the process of neoliberalism—which are characterized in terms of "roll–back" and "roll–out" neoliberalism, respectively—and then to explore some of the ways in which neoliberalism, in its changing forms, is playing a part in the reconstruction of extralocal relations, pressures, and disciplines.