Prehistoric Ceremonial Warfare: Beginning of Institutionalized Violence

Sadly, aggression is still one of the most common features of human behaviour; it is an instinct to promote and survive our own genes against the genes of others. Human intraspecific aggression has gradually become part of human culture over the last 40,000 years and has been institutionalized in various forms of social activities. Particularly in the post-glacial period, the level of social relations has developed dramatically in the context of population growth and the growth of human communities. In the time of Neolithic and Chalcolithic European agricultural populations, the motive of control over farming land became highly important. Also the control of main means of production and social power was increasingly maintaining the intragroup competition and aggression. Thus, violence was employed within the community in order to obtain and maintain individual or collective social status, but also against other communities in an effort to protect property and territory. Particularly the intracommunity aggression was soon transformed into variety of different formal ways of symbolic fighting, which usually did not lead to the unwanted death of a defeated member of the community. The symbolic struggle between members of the community as well as the defense against external aggression were gradually formalized in the form of introduction of specialized weapons designed for combat between people and creation of fortifications. During the Neolithic period a new phenomenon arose in human culture: warfare.     

Rescue excavation of a third‐millennium BC tomb at Al‐Khubayb,Sultanate of Oman

A third‐millennium BC tomb was subject to a rescue excavation in connection with the construction of a new road near the village of Al‐Khubayb in the Sultanate of Oman. It yielded a small number of finds, especially small metal objects that belonged to a later reuse of the tomb in the Samad period. As all diagnostic finds from the tomb date to the reuse, its architectural elements were the only indicator for the construction date of the tomb. Besides its small size and large wall thickness, which might suggest that the tomb is a transitional type between the Hafit and the Umm an‐Nar periods, its separation into two chambers and its facade made of white, dressed stones, can be seen as a clue for a construction date of the tomb in the Umm an‐Nar period.     

Paving the way for new regional industrial paths: actors and modes of change in Scania’s games industry

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarly work has enhanced our understanding of how new path development activities are enabled or constrained by ‘regional environments’, made up of pre-existing industrial structures, knowledge organizations, support structures and institutional configurations. This paper moves beyond overly static views on regional environments. We develop a dynamic perspective by analysing conceptually and empirically how a constraining environment can be transformed into one that enables the development of new growth paths. The paper offers a typology of various modes of change, including layering, adaptation and novel application that are used by key actors to ‘manipulate’ the regional support structures to facilitate new regional industrial path development. The conceptual framework is applied to a case study of the digital games industry in the region of Scania, southern Sweden. Our findings suggest that the creation of a more enabling environment for the growth of the digital games industry has been the outcome of multi-scalar processes and combinations of various modes of change employed by a few key individuals operating in the newly emerging path.     

The Revisionist Union and Britain: From declarations of “loyalty” to the employment of “methods of bullying”

The nature of British rule in Palestine, as it settled down after the approval of the Mandate in 1922, had its critics among the Zionist ranks. Using original sources, this paper examines the attitudes of the leadership of the Revisionist Union (RU) towards the British from the first quarter of the 1920s till the mid-1930s. Unlike the later paramilitary organizations, the Revisionist founders, convinced, in their own words, of the common interests shared with the British Empire, had no intention of terminating the British presence, but sought to transform it in order to serve Zionism’s objectives. While official Zionism preferred backstage diplomacy, the RU pursued a different strategy – appealing directly to the masses and making its cause as public and vocal as possible. Eventually, the RU’s strategy combined the principle of pro-British orientation with merciless criticism of Palestine policies on the ground. As far as the British were concerned, the Colonial Office was at best willing to tolerate a set of proposals they saw as unrealistic. Once these started to actively erode the integrity of British policy in the region, unsolicited “enthusiasm” was reclassified as dangerous “extremism.”     

Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill? A Low-Cost and Time-Efficient Molehill Survey of the Lost Medieval Harbor Site of Monnikerede,Belgium

Grasslands pose a particular problem for archaeological survey involving artifact assessment, as no material is plowed up to the surface. Although finds in molehills are often the only source of information available on sites with such low visibility, an archaeology of molehills has thus far been largely disregarded. Yet, by applying a low-cost and time-efficient methodology, both the potential and the pitfalls of molehill archaeology come to the forefront. At the medieval harbor site of Monnikerede, it was possible to assess material culture and to locate certain structural elements. However, when artifact densities were compared with the underlying geophysical anomalies, a more complex relationship appeared at the level of individual features.     

Collaborative Networks for Effective Ecosystem‐Based Management: A Set of Working Hypotheses

Ecosystem‐based management (EBM) represents a comprehensive approach to better govern the environment that also illustrates the collaborative trend in policy and public administration. The need for stakeholder involvement and collaboration is strongly articulated, yet how and for what purposes collaboration would be effective remains largely untested. We address this gap by developing and evaluating a set of hypotheses specifying how certain patterns of collaborations among actors affect their joint ability to accomplish EBM. Content analyses of management plans drawn from five EBM planning processes in Sweden are combined with analyses of the collaborative networks through which these plans have been developed. Our results indicate that system thinking and the ability to integrate across different management phases are favored by collaborations between different kinds of actors, and by project leaders being centrally located in the networks. We also find that dense substructures of collaboration increase the level of specificity in the plans in regards to explicating constraints on human activities. Having many collaborative ties does however not enhance the overall level of specificity. Our results also show that different network characteristics can give rise to similar EBM outcomes. This observed equifinality suggests there is no single blueprint for well‐performing collaborative networks.