Maritime Worlds Collide: Agents of Transference and the Metastasis of Seaborne Threats at the End of the Bronze Age

Primary sources from the end of the Bronze Age have long been read as suggesting a time of chaotic transition, particularly with regard to threats from the sea that the established powers had no means of combatting. While the scale and severity of seaborne attacks seems to have increased in the late 13th century, these were not in themselves new phenomena, as a state of maritime threat seems to have been a constant for coastal polities and mariners in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. However, a combination of internal and external factors in the late 13th and early 12th centuries combined to make these attacks more effective than they had been in the past, and polities more vulnerable to them. These included the rapid spread of improvements in maritime technology, particularly from the Aegean and the Levant, via high–intensity ‘zones of transference’, as well as an increase in the scale of ship­–based combat operations, due in part to the displacement of people during the Late Bronze Age collapse. This paper addresses this in two parts, beginning with the ‘background’ evidence for a constant state of maritime threat in the centuries leading up to the end of the Bronze Age, and concluding with the ‘foreground’ evidence for zones of transference and the transmission of groundbreaking elements of naval technology in the years surrounding the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition.     

Everybody Loves a Winner: On the Mutual Causality of Presidential Approval and Success in Congress

A large literature argues that approval affects presidential legislative success, but Washington observers often believe that legislative success leads to higher presidential approval ratings, that is, success and approval may be endogenous. This article tests for the endogeneity of approval and success. After building a theory that links success to higher approval, annual aggregate data from 1953–2011 are used to test for the endogeneity between approval and success. All statistical tests indicate that approval and success affect each other. This article concludes by putting the findings into perspective and suggesting new research directions.     

African-Americans and the French Imagination

Frappé par certains grands succès de librairies récents (notamment Les Bienveillantes, JanKarski et HHhH), on a beaucoup réfléchi, notamment dans le numéro spécial du Débat consacré à « L'Histoire saisie par la fiction », sur la place, la portée et la fonction de l'histoire dans la production de textes littéraires. Nous nous emploierons dans le présent article à apprécier certains aspects littéraires de l'écriture historienne dans « l'enquête » de l'historien Ivan Jablonka, Histoire des grands-parents que je n'ai pas eus. Retraçant l'itinéraire de ses grands-parents, juifs communistes militants qui, fuyant la répression politique, quittent enfin leur shtetl polonais dans l'espoir de trouver refuge en France avant d'être emportés par la guerre et le génocide comme tant d'autres, Jablonka s'y implique pleinement, nous livrant aussi le récit de ses recherches et de sa façon personnelle de vivre ce passé dramatique. En analysant la fonction de cette implication subjective de l'historien dans la poursuite de ses recherches et l'écriture de son récit, nous verrons que Jablonka nous fait voir l'itinéraire tragique de ses grands-parents, mais aussi les grands courants de l'histoire dans lequel il s'inscrit, « comme Elstir peignait la mer », c'est-à-dire à partir de la manière particulière dont ils ont pu vivre ce passé.     

Technological successions in the Middle Stone Age sequence of Diepkloof Rock Shelter,Western Cape,South Africa

The southern African MSA comprises a series of phases of unique technological innovations that fuel current models on the evolutionary processes of Anatomically Modern Humans. However, the nature and variability of these technological phases remain poorly documented. This study reports on the previously unpublished sequence of Diepkloof Rock Shelter (South Africa) and investigates the main technological changes therein, particularly emphasizing the emergence, succession and disappearance of the Still Bay (SB) and the Howiesons Poort (HP). We argue for technological change that occurred at different rates and under the influence of variable driving factors. Our model implies that the SB and the HP are not related to the influx of new populations but have regionally specific origins. Unlike the other techno-complexes, the HP at Diepkloof is subdivided into different phases (Early, Intermediate and Late) but only the upper phases resemble the so-called “classic” HP. Finally, the technological sequence of Diepkloof questions the homogeneous picture which has been so far assumed for the southern African MSA and places emphasis on the importance of exploring long regional sequences.     

Henry Pelham's Lost Grand Jury Map of Kerry (c.1800): A Newly Found Derivative

The ‘South Division of the County of Kerry’ (GSI FS 1.2.001) is a copy of the southern half of a lost late eighteenth / early nineteenth century map of County Kerry, in southwestern Ireland. Geological annotations on the map are traced to specific episodes (c.1820, 1838 and 1844) in the unofficial geological survey of Ireland conducted by Richard (later Sir Richard) Griffith between 1811 and 1855. The Griffith provenance of the map is part of the evidence used to identify the ‘South Division of the County of Kerry’ as a derivative of the now lost Grand Jury map of Kerry made by the American émigré artist and cartographer Henry Pelham.     

First record of Acesta (Bivalvia: Limidae) from the Cretaceous of Australia

The cosmopolitan, Jurassic to Recent, bivalve Acesta (Limidae) is documented from Australian Cretaceous (upper Albian) rocks in the lowermost section of the Mackunda Formation of Queensland. These specimens from Landsborough Downs, Flinders Shire, represent an endemic new species, herein named Acesta (Acesta) backae n. sp. Acesta (A.) backae n. sp. was a shallow-water suspension feeder that inhabited the Cretaceous Australian epicontinental sea of the Great Artesian Basin. Although hinge details of Acesta (A.) backae n. sp. are wanting, this new taxon is most closely allied with Acesta? sp. of the Miria Formation of Western Australia and can clearly be discriminated from other Cretaceous Austral forms.