New World States and Empires: Politics, Religion, and Urbanism

The past decade has seen a veritable explosion in archaeological research on complex societies in Latin America. In 1993, Smith published an overview of research to that date; this article is one of two bringing that summary up to the present. Our first article, New World states and empires: Economic and social organization (Smith and Schreiber, 2005), dealt with issues regarding economic and social organization. The present article tackles political organization and dynamics, religion, urbanism, and settlement patterns. We also review recent research in the context of various theoretical perspectives, some traditional, some more contemporary, including approaches to history and process, cultural evolution, agency-based models, linguistic prehistory, migration theory, and the relationship between environmental change and cultural events. Our discussion blends empirical findings, methodological advances, and theoretical perspectives.     

Allrounder braucht das (Entwicklungs-)Land Geographinnen und Geographen als Consultants in Entwicklungsl?ndern

Das Aufgabenfeld von Geographinnen und Geographen als Consultants in Entwicklungsl?ndern ist breit gef?chert: Die L?nder bieten dabei ein gro?es Einsatzgebiet und fordern andererseits enorme Einsatzbereitschaft. Eine Befragung von acht Personen sowie eine Analyse der Anforderungsprofile von im Consulting t?tigen Organisationen ergaben, dass Geographinnen und Geographen entscheidende Voraussetzungen für eine beratende T?tigkeit in Entwicklungsl?ndern erfüllen. W?hrend der geographischen Ausbildung erworbene Schlüsselqualifikationen sind unter anderem Kenntnisse verschiedener entscheidender Teildisziplinen und die F?higkeit zu interdisziplin?rem Denken und Handeln. Die Arbeit als Consultant in Entwicklungsl?ndern stellt somit für Geographieabsolventen eine interessante M?glichkeit und Chance auf dem Arbeitsmarkt dar.     

Planning Sustainability: Intergenerational and Intragenerational Justice in Spatial Planning Strategies

Abstract: Subsequent to the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our Common Future), sustainability has been set up in many countries as a mission statement of cross‐sectoral policies. Sustainable development carries the normative notions of equity, empowerment and environmentally sensitive economic development. Thus, it seems to suggest a fundamentally different vision to neoliberal dogma, which is at the same time described as dominating all socio‐political processes. This paper intends to explore the relation between these two discursive framings of contemporary policies through the example of German spatial planning guidelines. More precisely, it addresses social justice as one pillar of sustainability and how it is operationalised in spatial planning policies in Germany. This may exemplify how the seemingly opposing discourses interact in policy practices. The empirical analysis suggests that the ways in which the German spatial planning report focused on social space in territorial terms promotes an economistic and truncated view of social justice, one which fosters the neoliberal idea of regional competition for global capital and reduces socio‐spatial justice to territorially equally distributed economic inclusion.     

The violence of spectacle: Statist schemes to green the desert and constructing Astana and Ashgabat as urban oases

Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have been home to the most impressive urban development projects in the entire post-Soviet world. Their capitals, Astana and Ashgabat, now boast uniquely monumental architecture and local leaders have invested heavily in ‘green belt’ projects to surround the cities with lush vegetation, as well as developing green and water-laden public spaces. In doing so, elites have drawn on Soviet-era ‘garden city’ idealism, as well as more recent environmental sustainability narratives. Yet these schemes are anything but sustainable. Unfolding on the arid Central Asian steppe, they depend on heavy irrigation, with water diverted from rivers that already fail to meet regional demands. Employing a comparative approach, I ask why and with what effect state planners have sought to craft Astana and Ashgabat as spectacularly green ‘urban oases,’ when their local climates should defy the logic of sustainability. In so doing, I consider urban greening in the two countries as part of a wider phenomenon of statist schemes to green the desert, which have a long and diverse history. Extending the literature on desert greening, I argue that the structural violence they manifest and perpetuate is best understood by attending to how they operate as a form of spectacle.     

Management skills for artists: ‘learning by doing’?

Although artists must usually be self‐reliant when managing their business, an artist’s education typically concentrates on artistic skills rather than managerial knowledge. This paper analyses the current curricula of 154 art institutions (public and private), focussing on the so‐called DACH countries (Austria, Germany and Switzerland). The results show a deficit in the implementation of economic and, especially, business‐related topics in the education of artists at art universities and institutions. A glimpse at Anglo‐American countries shows that, unlike in Europe, art schools are more open‐minded about implementing economic content into their curricula.     

Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin

The European Union (EU) has in recent years propagated an approach to ‘culture’ that pulls together support for the creative and cultural industries with diversity-sensitive immigration and integration strategies, drawing on popular policy visions of the ‘creative’ and ‘intercultural’ city. This approach emphasizes the role that the diversity of culture, as personal resource, can play in enhancing economic competitiveness. The article examines its logic and possible effects through an analysis of EU documents and policy in Berlin. Berlin intersects with the EU’s agenda, using EU structural funds and participating in the European program ‘Intercultural Cities’. It is shown that the attempt to use ‘culture for competitiveness’ equates support-worthy ‘diversity’ with forms of culture that conform to (neo)liberal values and priorities. The attempt to shape a cosmopolitan place attractive for investment and the high-skilled feeds into gentrification processes that create ‘diverse’ neighborhoods where ‘difference’ has no place.     

From dates to demography in later prehistoric Ireland? Experimental approaches to the meta-analysis of large C data-sets

We present a series of iterative methods to examine the problems associated with summed probability functions (SPFs) based on archaeological radiocarbon data. As a case study we use an SPF generated from a substantial radiocarbon data-set from the Irish Later Bronze and Iron Ages. We use simple numerical methods to show that real patterns can be deciphered from SPFs that can be used to trace and evaluate patterns of change. However, our results suggest that SPFs should not be used as a simple index of past human activity.     

From aisling to chora: female allegories of the nation in contemporary Irish women's poetry

Contemporary Irish women poets use female tropes of Irish nationalism as a potent site for revising traditional conceptions of femininity, maternity, and cultural identity. Arguably, female tropes of aisling poetry inhabit the same cultural location that anchors the societal role of motherhood as theorised by Julia Kristeva. Kristeva's work highlights mothers' important function in regulating the drives and preparing children for entrance into the symbolic order of society, in relation to which mothers remain structurally liminal. The Platonic chora, an amorphous receptacle from which forms emerge, symbolises this position at the threshold. This essay shows that Irish women poets revise female allegories of the nation either by aligning them with women's lived experience, as Eavan Boland has done, or by re-evaluating them from within their liminality, through stylistic experimentation or irony, which the analysis of poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Rita Ann Higgins demonstrates.     

Introduction

The city has been ubiquitous in cultural analysis of the Victorian period and continues to provide the impetus for some of the most exciting and innovative work in nineteenth-century studies across a range of disciplines. While showing how new work is building on earlier studies and theoretical models, this Introduction demonstrates the emergence of a new agenda characterized by three fresh emphases: on demographic mobility, on material culture and everyday life, and on social networks. Accordingly, the essays in this collection have identified new sources: archaeological excavations of household objects, unpublished diaries, tracts and archival records of late-nineteenth-century missions, articles published in the periodical press and cartographic material, as well as literary texts. All of the essays in this collection concentrate on London, but London now is construed as a meeting point or intersection in a web of national and international relations. The city is newly conceptualized as a hub in wider networks of exchange and communication, and the critical attention moves between the local and its relationship to the transnational. There is a fresh attention to scale, as the minutiae of everyday life reveal stories of much larger significance.     

Holocene vegetation of the Eastern Sahara: charcoal from prehistoric sites

This paper is dedicated to Prof. Dr K. U. Leistikow on the occasion of his 60th birthday.The investigation of 320 charcoal samples from prehistoric sites in the Eastern Sahara furnishes evidence for a fundamental change of vegetation during the early and middle Holocene. Two ecological regions can be distinguished. In Egypt desert formations prevailed, consisting of the same vegetation elements as today though with a wider distribution, while in the Sudan tropical savannas occurred. Around 7000 bp the Sahelian vegetation zones were 500–600 km north of their present range, and 300–400 km around 5700 bp. The Sudanian flora of Fachi-Dogonboulo in Niger, datedca 7000 bp, points to a simultaneous shift of the vegetation zones in the Eastern and in the Central Sahara. With increasing desiccation from 5200 bp onwards, the savanna formations retreated to the south until their present position was reached by 3300 bp.

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Résumé L'étude de 320 échantillons de charbons de bois provenants de sites préhistoriques du Sahara Oriental, met en évidence un changement important dans la végétation au cours de l'Holocène ancien et moyen. Deux régions écologiques peuvent être distinguées: en Egypte les formations désertiques étaient prédominantes, comprenant les mêmes éléments qu'aujourd'hui mais avec une plus large extension. A la même époche le Soudan connaissait une végétation de savanes tropicales. Autour de 7000 ans bp, la zone de végétation sahélienne se situait à 500–600 km plus au nord de sa limite actuelle, et vers 5700 ans bp elle était encore à 300–400 km. La flore soudanienne de Fachi-Dogonboulo, Niger, datée de 7000 ans bp, indique un déplacement simultané des zones de végétation au Sahara Oriental et Central. Sous l'effet d'un assèchement croissant à partir de 5200 ans bp, les formations de savane se sont retirées vers le sud, jusqu'à atteindre leur situation actuelle vers 3300 ans bp.