Analysis of Heavy Metals in Smoke Deposits in the Limewash of the Royal Artillery Factory of Seville (17th Century): Contributions to the Location of the Furnaces

The Royal Artillery Factory of Seville in Spain originated from pre‐existing private bronze foundries dating from the 16th century. The paper analyses the stratigraphy of wall cladding in the areas traditionally known as the ‘Old Foundry’ and the ‘New Foundry’, through its characterization by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectrometry (SEM‐EDX), micro‐X‐ray fluorescence (μ‐XRF) and micro‐X‐ray diffraction (μ‐XRD), in order to analyse the metal deposits that have accumulated since the 17th century. The data obtained allowed the verification of the available historiographical information and the location of the original bronze smelting furnaces. The analysis of patinas deposited on the overlapping layers of lime also confirmed that neither the raw materials nor the composition of the alloys used presented any substantial changes.     

Disability Consciousness on the Frontlines of Urban Struggle

Drug wars, austerity and gentrification are interwoven social relations in many North American urban centres and are typically met with organising of varying degrees of militancy. Loïc Wacquant characterises many of these sites as highly stigmatised, associated with violence and pathology. In Toronto's downtown east end (DEE), one such stigmatised urban space, disabled activists are far from unfortunate casualties. They tend to refer to the DEE as an “urban battleground”, where disabled people politicise and challenge the DEE's pathology and stigma by linking into emerging radical disability politics across the global North and by developing localised revolutionary disability consciousness. Drawing on oral stories, zines and blogs of disabled activists and workers in Toronto's DEE, this article uses Rachel Gorman's dialectic of disability/disablement to analyse the emergence of revolutionary disability consciousness and the centrality of disabled people on the frontlines of anti‐gentrification and harm reduction organising in Toronto's DEE.     

Local amber in a Palaeolithic context in Cantabrian Spain: the case of La Garma A

It is important to determine the geological sources of Palaeolithic ambers in the south of Europe in order to understand the mobility and interchanges of prehistoric societies. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analysis carried out on Upper Palaeolithic ambers from La Garma A cave (Cantabria, Northern Spain) allowed us to identify their source area. Their diagnostic features were found to be similar to the amber obtained in the Lower Cretaceous outcrops close to this archaeological site, and to differ clearly from Baltic amber, which has been generally suggested as the amber found in European prehistoric sites. These results show that the origin of the Gravettian amber found in La Garma A is local and, consequently, a hypothetical contact route is not required to be able to account for the presence of this material in the Iberian Palaeolithic context studied here. For the first time it has been demonstrated that the provenance of an archaeological amber in the Iberian Peninsula is local, with both geographical and spectroscopical evidences. Our study also concludes that the archaeological amber of La Garma A possibly belongs to an araucariacean resin that originated from the coniferous forests which grew in the northeast portion of the Iberian Plate c.110-million years ago.     

A contribution to the study of post-depositional alterations of pottery using TL dating analysis

In luminescence dating, the potassium concentration significantly contributes to the dose rate value in the age estimation. Within this study, fine-grain thermoluminescence dating has been applied on sherds of calcareous pottery of known age, excavated at a Roman site in Mallorca, Spain. For those of the samples that showed signs of severe potassium leaching, according to chemical and mineralogical examination, the thermoluminescence analysis provided overestimated dates. By using the known archaeological age of the samples, a corrected dose rate value can be estimated which provides the potassium concentration averaged for the burial period. Finally, a step-like model can then be used to estimate the fraction of the burial period after which most of the alteration effects took place.     

Urban Planning System in Contemporary Spain

This work analyses the main Spanish legislative and urban planning instruments, highlighting some of the most important structural problems of the current Spanish urban realities. The survey on legislation runs from the first Land Use Act of 1956 to the decentralization of the administration and the culmination of the transfer processes to the respective Spanish regions. Later, we study the complete well-structured hierarchy of urban planning instruments in use at present. Finally, we analyse how these and other factors have an influence on the capacity to control housing prices and on a lack of sustainability characterized by the excessive urbanizing use of the land.     

Evidence of Stress Fracture in a Homo antecessor Metatarsal from Gran Dolina Site (Atapuerca,Spain)

We present the palaeopathological analysis of a right fourth metatarsal (ATD6‐124) recovered from the Atapuerca–Gran Dolina site (Spain). This fossil, ca. 1 Ma, belongs to Homo antecessor, the earliest known European hominin species. The metatarsal exhibits a proliferative lesion on its medial periosteal surface. Periosteal reaction can be the bone response to a wide number of injurious processes. We describe a lesion on the basis of macroscopic and microscopic analyses, including microtomography and scanning electron microscopy. Externally, the osteoblastic lesion presents a highly porotic and disorganised morphology. Internally, we observe a series of micro‐fractures on the compact bone that do not affect the medullary canal. We provide a differential diagnosis and suggest that the ATD6‐124 lesion could correspond to a pedal stress fracture, also known as fatigue or march fracture. Stress fractures have been related to a load increase and muscular fatigue. This type of fracture has been widely reported in the foot of soldiers and athletes, which are usually engaged in strenuous, excessive or prolonged locomotive activities. Despite its high frequency in these groups, stress fractures have not been reported as such in fossil collections, with the exception of a metatarsal belonging to the Sima de los Huesos site (Atapuerca). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

EMERGENCE OF LEAPFROGGING FROM RESIDENTIAL CHOICE WITH ENDOGENOUS GREEN SPACE: ANALYTICAL RESULTS

Leapfrog development is a typical form of sprawl. This paper aims at analyzing the existence, size, and persistence of leapfrogging in a dynamic urban economic model with endogenous green amenities. We analyze whether incoming households choose to settle at the fringe of the city or to jump further away depending on their preferences and the structure of the city. We first provide an analytical treatment of the conditions and characteristics under which a first leapfrog occurs and show how the optimal choice is affected by the size of the city, income, commuting costs, as well as the size of the area where green amenities are considered. We then study how further leapfrogging and multiple urban rings may appear and be maintained in the long‐run equilibrium, and how infill processes take place through time.