Prioritising Heritage Resources in a Time of Loss: Sea Level Rise and Archaeological Resources of the Middle Atlantic Region,US

ABSTRACT

The US Middle Atlantic region, known for its rich archaeological record and diverse topographic settings, is experiencing a range of climate change impacts, most notably: sea level rise and coastal erosion in its tidal zones. Documented palaeostratigraphic and palynological studies throughout the region provide a record of late Pleistocene/Holocene environmental response to changing climate, confirming observations from other disciplines that the magnitude of modern impacts exceeds past temporal and spatial patterns. The corresponding impact on archaeological resources is great, requiring a renewed effort to document threatened sites while also working with local and state governments to develop mitigation strategies. The Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference (MAAC) created the Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Committee to promote regional partnerships in site impact assessment and mitigation strategies. The network highlights the predicament of archaeology in this time of climate change: accelerated research and discovery in the face of catastrophic loss.     

War Time Hysteria, 1917: Senator Miles Poindexter, ‘American-ness’ and the Strange Case of Colonel Carl Reichmann*

When, on 6 April 1917, the United States entered into the First World War, a wave of anti-German sentiment captured the nation. The Army was not immune from accusations of subversion. In 1917 Senator Miles Poindexter accused a high ranking officer named Carl Reichmann of being in league with Germany. Despite the support from officers such as Hugh Lennox Scott and John J. Pershing, Reichmann was not permitted a promotion to general or service in France. Although most senators supported the promotion, Poindexter was able to prevent a vote on the subject using internal Senate rules. The resulting notoriety Poindexter gained made him a viable Republican candidate in the 1920 election. Although the military did not prevail over Poindexter — thereby continuing the constitutional expectation of military subservience to the civil government — the forces sent to France were without a commander who had gained a scholarly understanding of modern warfare well before the actual conflict.     

Agency Characteristics and the Use of Executive Orders

Past scholarship has offered varying explanations for why presidents choose to use executive orders. However, to this point, much of what we know of unilateral powers does not adequately address the role the bureaucracy plays in the president's decision. This research seeks to account for bureaucratic factors as a strategic presidential consideration in the employment of such directives. I classify executive orders from 1989–2012 based on which agency or agencies they apply to, and consider the importance of various characteristics (e.g. agency ideology, level of centralization, politicization, etc.) in determining which organs of the bureaucracy presidents will direct executive orders to generally. The results provide evidence that the White House directs fewer executive orders to agencies that have a politically independent leadership structure, and this result holds across a variety of measures judging an order's impact. The results demonstrate that the type of directive is crucial in determining a president's strategic decision to use executive orders, in line with previous research, and that agency centralization is one crucial component of this strategic calculation.     

‘Germany’s salvation’: Carl Schmitt’s teleological history of the Second Reich

Although Schmitt’s enthusiastic conversion to National Socialism is well known, his short history of the German Kaiserreich, published in 1934, remains neglected in Anglophone scholarship. This article contextualizes Schmitt’s narrative through the National Socialist conception of history and its accompanying teleology leading to the formation of the Third Reich. By placing Schmitt’s historical text in conversation with his earlier Staat, Bewegung, Volk, this article argues that Schmitt appropriated the history of the Kaiserreich to construct liberalism as a social pathology which could only be cured through the ‘concrete state theory’ he outlined in Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Furthermore, this article argues that Schmitt’s history relied heavily on propagandistic clichés of the Third Reich and thereby functioned as a rhetorical legitimation of Hitler’s rise to power.     

Sexualities,subjectivities and urban spaces: a case for assemblage thinking

In this essay, we argue that assemblage thinking has much to offer geographers attempting to conceptualize the interrelationships between sexualities, subjectivities and contemporary urban spaces. In our current research on queer mobilities, we found that despite the explanatory weight provided by mobilities approaches, two fundamental questions remained: how to conceptualise the nature of ‘the queer subject’, and how to better explain why certain kinds of urban spaces still seemed to support these newly mobile queer subjects. Here we speculate on the potential of assemblage thinking to formulate some new theoretical and conceptual responses to these questions. While quite preliminary, there is the potential to understand how interlocking (but temporary and unstable) notions of identities, subjectivities and mobilities (of ideas, people, knowledge, capital, etc.) can be ‘assembled’ in and across urban spaces, recursively reshaping sexualities and places.     

Best for society? Transnational opposition to sexual and gender equalities in Canada and Great Britain

While much has been written about the limitations of new legislative equalities, there is a silence in geographies of sexualities regarding the backlash to these changes and the reiteration of particular heteronormativity. In working across Great Britain and Canada, we argue that these resistances are trans-scalar, operating transnationally as well as evoking nation, classroom, home and body. Arguments at the local level are embedded in and draw on the broader ‘natural family’ arguments circulating at local/regional, national and transnational levels. Drawing on the literature on transnationalism that understands these processes as (re)forming values and practices, this article explores the discourses that reiterate the naturalness and centrality of particular forms of heterosexuality as key for a healthy society and the protection of children. The latter works on three levels. First, the child cannot be ‘naturally’ produced outside of heterosexual sexual relations. Second, the raising of these children appropriately and healthily redefines ‘family’ within heteronormative structures. Third, comments that might be termed ‘homophobic’ are reframed as merely free speech as a way to counter LGBT recognition. We finish the article by arguing for explorations of heterosexuality within transnational networks to resistances to LGBT equalities.     

Identical rock types with different chemistry: sourcing phyllite-tempered Hohokam pottery from the Phoenix basin,Arizona

The organization of ceramic production and distribution among the ancient Hohokam of the Phoenix basin, Arizona, has been documented in recent years with much detail. Based on diverse temper and clay compositions, the provenance of individual ceramics is routinely determined with considerable precision. One exception is phyllite-tempered pottery, which was made in one corner of the basin but also across a broad upland zone adjacent to the north. The phyllite-tempered pottery from different production sources cannot be distinguished on the basis of their temper type. As shown with assays with an electron microprobe, however, both the temper and clay fractions are chemically diverse and geographically distinct, allowing many of the phyllite-tempered wares to be sourced. Among the phyllite-tempered ceramics consumed in the Phoenix basin, some are shown to have been made locally, but, surprisingly, large numbers were imported from the northern uplands. Their numbers support the idea that the connection between the Phoenix basin and the northern uplands was a prominent component of the Hohokam regional economy despite the great difference between them in settlement size and density.