Marine resource intensification in Viking Age Europe: the molluscan evidence from Quoygrew,Orkney

This paper addresses whether molluscan evidence from Orkney can shed light on the hypothesis that there was a trend towards the intensification of marine resource use at the end of the first millennium AD. The stratified middens of Quoygrew, which date from approximately the 10th to the 13th centuries, are shown to contain predominantly limpets, which may have been used for baiting fish. From metrical data it is shown that these limpets reduce in size through time. In order to test whether this observation is related to intensification in exploitation, analysis of limpet shoreline location was carried out. In addition, age data were used to demonstrate a lowering of average age which suggests intensification in gathering rather than environmental influences, particularly during the 11th–12th centuries at this site.     

The political ecology of recovery from armed conflict: the case of landmines in Mozambique

The devastation wrought by landmines on local populations is well known. However, the broader effects of mine presence on postwar recovery, and the progress of a ‘peace process’, remain largely unexamined. Both the academic and the practitioner literature regarding landmines lack a framework within which the mix of economic, political, social, agricultural, and ecological repercussions of mine presence in a context of postwar recovery can be investigated. Here, we consider the utility of political ecology to examine the influence of landmine presence on the socioecological relations important to postwar recovery in Mozambique. Landmines constitute the primary obstacle to the reconstruction and development in Mozambique. Because mine presence influences different aspects of recovery differently, we have selected three cases in the country where mine presence has impacted important components of recovery: agriculture, transportation corridors, and international investment. Peace process and recovery efforts by the international community do not presently address the broader, non-medical influences of landmine presence on recovery, and it is the intention of this article to contribute to an initial examination of these issues.     

Culture versus commerce: societies and spaces for elites in eighteenth-century Liverpool

Our understanding of an eighteenth-century renaissance in English towns is based around the emergence of cultural infrastructures and organisations which formed the cultural capital of a polite society concerned with both sociability and differentiation. Urban improvements are seen as spreading to a wide variety of towns including a number of large commercial centres. This paper explores the experience of this urban renaissance in Liverpool, focusing in particular on the ways in which cultures and counter cultures were created around the changing social and economic infrastructure of the town. The changes occurring in Liverpool were characteristic of wider debates about the relationship between commerce and culture. The town had ambitions to cultural grandeur, a wealthy corporation and a growing number of middle-ranking professionals, merchants and tradesmen. And yet many of its social and leisure facilities were lost as Liverpool grew into the leading provincial port of late eighteenth-century England. Rather than see the fate of these spaces and societies as the triumph of commerce over polite culture, or as a reflection of an alternative culture, the paper argues that their demise can only be fully understood in the context of political and ideological conflict between elite groups, especially over the slave trade. The gradual resolution of these conflicts around the turn of the nineteenth century encouraged growing investment in cultural capital in the town.     

Evaluating European Regional Innovation Strategies

In this paper we analyse the degree of achievement of the Regional Innovation Strategy goals. This is an European Union Commission policy oriented toward the promotion of regional Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy design through the involvement of regional stakeholders. We analyse two categories of objectives: those dealing with process participation and those dealing with behavioural change. Our results show that the overall achievement of the goals is meaningful: the former have been achieved in a larger extent than the latter ones. However, other aspects such as multidisciplinary, and the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation system have not been so fruitful.