Dating of 4th millennium BC pile-dwellings on Ljubljansko barje,Slovenia

We present absolute dates of seven late Neolithic pile-dwellings on Ljubljansko barje, Slovenia. They were settled from ca. 3600 to 3332 (±10) and from 3160 to 3071 (±14) cal BC, as shown by investigations of wood using dendrochronology and radiocarbon wiggle-matching. We defined eleven periods of intensive tree felling (and building activities) and one major settlement gap (when no trees were felled) from 3332 to 3160 cal BC. A major settlement gap presumably also followed after 3071 cal BC (i.e., after the end date of the investigated sites). Our investigations included over 2500 pieces of wood, mainly from the piles on which the dwellings were built. Among important wooden artefacts were a wheel with axle (one of the oldest preserved wheels in the world) and two dugout canoes, all from the settlement phase from 3160 to 3100 cal BC. As shown by parallel studies, the economy in the sites was characterized by copper metallurgy, skilful wood processing and use, cultivation of domestic plants, gathering of wild plants, animal husbandry, hunting and fishing. The settlements were contemporaneous with a number of sites in the north of the Alps, the younger ones coincided with the lifetime of the Neolithic Iceman (Ötzi). Since Ljubljansko barje has a strategic position at the crossroads between western central and (south) eastern Europe the presented absolute dates provide a basis for their comparison with other dated contemporaneous sites (in the west), to revise the chronology of similar sites in the (south) east (which are not yet exactly dated), and to evaluate their interconnection and roles in cultural development in prehistory.     

‘New face of Serbia’ at the Eurovision Song Contest: international media spectacle and national identity1

The aim of this paper is to examine the construction/recycling of national identities primarily through the participation of Serbia (and Montenegro) at the Eurovision Song Contests 2004–2008. First, the performances of this country's representatives at the Eurovision Song Contest will be examined, emphasising the aspects that contribute to the popularity of the songs chosen to represent the nation and the state. All those elements reinvent a picture of the past in its lived totality, managing to reawaken the sense of the supposedly idyllic national past associated with them. In this manner of (re-)creating identity, the recycling of memory and imagined tradition, but also references to European cultural, media and political spheres, have great symbolic weight. The second part will offer a discourse analysis of media coverage of the performance of the country as a host of the Eurovision Song Contest. It is shown how the notion of ‘the new face of Serbia’ is supposed to balance different, sometimes even confronted cultural markers present in concurrent identity strategies in Serbia.     

Of love and national borders: the Croatian anthem ‘Our Beautiful Homeland’

Croatia became a UN member only in 1992, after the violent break‐up of Yugoslavia. Its anthem is marked by historically founded ambivalences as to the nature and territorial extent of the nation in question. This article offers an interpretation of the current version of the anthem and an analysis of the narrative and imagery of the nineteenth‐century poem from which the anthem originates. Three of the anthem's four stanzas speak about the Croats’ love for their homeland and their people and of the steadfastness and immortality of their love; the remaining stanza extolls the beauty of the homeland. By addressing the homeland's rivers and the sea directly, its singers appropriate this geography and so demarcate the borders of their much‐loved homeland. The anthem thus asserts Croatia's unity (against potential pretenders) and its unbreakable ties with its people. In contrast, the original fourteen‐stanza poem ‘The Croatian Homeland’, written in 1835, is a paean to the Croats’ ties to nature, their simple life and bravery – the romantic virtues of pure national souls. On their path to anthemhood, the four stanzas drawn from this poem have undergone significant modifications and additions, the result being a song that is doubly reassuring: it reassures the singers first of the people's love for themselves as a people, and second that this love is the means by which the ‘natural’ territory of the homeland is maintained.     

Growth responses of Norway spruce (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Picea abies</Emphasis> (L.) Karst.) to the climate in the south-eastern part of the Českomoravská Upland (Czech Republic)

The research was conducted in selected 80- to 110-year-old spruce stands in the south-eastern part of the Českomoravská Upland at altitudes from 350 m a.s.l. to 465 m a.s.l. The regional standard tree-ring chronology shows very low increments for years 1974, 1976 and 1992. After 1992, there is a sharp rise in increments with a climax in 1997. Afterwards, increments gradually decrease, reaching minima in 2003 and 2008. The years with low increments were also confirmed by the analysis of negative pointer years when over 80% of the analysed trees responded by a sharp decrease in increment, mainly in years 1976 and 1992. We can usually find values of monthly precipitation or monthly temperature average which can explain or help explain these falls in the radial growth. The correlations of diameter increments with average monthly precipitation gain only positive statistically significant values, namely for the months of May, June, July and August of the particular year. The correlations of diameter increments with average monthly temperatures gain only negative statistically significant values, namely for the months of June, July and September of the previous year and January and August of the particular year. In the examined area there is a significant negative correlation between average temperatures and monthly precipitation in July, August and September. The results of the habitual diagnostics show that with respect to the climatic conditions the health condition of the monitored stands is relatively good. On average, the defoliation does not exceed the values ascertained in different territories of the Czech Republic.     

Cuba's Cinematic Élan Vital: Cubanidad and Cubanía as Citizenship and Sentiment

This article focuses on the current shifts in expressions of Cuban national identity by considering the articulations of cubanidad and cubanía in recent documentary films from Cuba's Muestra joven. Rather than suggesting a disappearance or deterioration of national identity, these three examples of contemporary Cuban cinema evidence a more fluid, sentiment-based articulation of Cubanness that can be considered the island's élan vital. This analysis of representations of the ongoing transformation of Cuba deploys theories and terms conceptualised by Georg Sorenson in The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (2004) in order to posit how cubanidad is aligned with the modes of citizenship (the official), which is a sense of Cubanness defined by a rationality that may be imposed, while cubanía is affined with a sentiment fuelled by intuition (the personal). Thus we propose that just as the Muestra joven embodies the current vacillation and movement of Cuban cinema between citizenship and sentiment, so deMoler (Muestra 2004), Model Town (Muestra 2007) and La Época, el Encanto y Fin de Siglo (Muestra 2000) indicate a process of reinterpretation and rupture in a context of flux instead of rigidity.     

The Cold War's cultural ecosystem: angry young men in British and Soviet cinema, 1953–1968

Using examples from postwar British and Soviet cinema, this article interprets European Cold War culture within the framework of a shared cultural ecosystem. The case study of reformist movements in 1950s and 1960s British and Soviet cinema makes clear that analogous sociopolitical and economic developments across postwar Europe inspired film heroes, narratives, and aesthetics that transcended national and ideological borders. The concept of a continent-wide cultural ecosystem elucidates how and why specific cultural phenomena—such as the figure of the “angry young man”—reflect an existence of a dynamic trans-systemic Cold War culture.