Diversification,Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

Journal of World Prehistory - Many societal and environmental changes occurred between the 2nd millennium BC and the middle of the 2nd millennium AD in western Africa. Key amongst these were...     

Lightening Europe: Establishing the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) was the first collaborative synchrotron radiation facility in Europe. This article chronicles and analyzes decisive events during ESRF’s foundation phase from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s and sheds light on the politics that mattered for its realization as a scientific collaboration in Europe. As part of a broader effort to chronicle the history of the ESRF, this article contributes to an enriched understanding of intergovernmental scientific cooperation in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century by drawing on so far unexplored material from the French National Archives and the German National Archive.     

Middle Stone Age Bifacial Technology and Pressure Flaking at the MIS 3 Site of Toumboura III,Eastern Senegal

African Archaeological Review - Over the past decade, the increasing wealth of new archaeological data on the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in Senegal and Mali has broadened our understanding of...     

Obsidian hydration dating on the South Coast of Peru

We compare over 230 obsidian hydration readings from 30 individual site components from the Southern Nasca Region (SNR) with independent age estimates based on radiocarbon dates and temporally diagnostic artifacts. Although there are problems with small sample sizes, and readings must be adjusted for elevation, a very strong relationship accounting for nearly 90% of the total variation in the data set is found. This suggests that obsidian hydration dating (OHD) works in the SNR and is a viable means of independently estimating age. Residual values from our regression suggest that hydration age estimates are usually within 15% of the radiocarbon estimates. Finally, we present an equation other scholars can use to estimate age for Quispisisa obsidian in the SNR.     

Circulation as a Visual Practice**

This special issue looks at some of the ways that images are adopted, co-opted, and adapted in the life sciences and beyond. It brings together papers that investigate the role of visualization in scientific knowledge-production with contributions that focus on the distribution and dissemination of knowledge to a broader audience. A commentary provides a critical perspective. In this editorial we introduce circulation as a practice to better understand scientific images. Along two themes, we highlight connections across the papers. First, the social life of scientific representation follows the contexts, settings, and spaces through which images circulate. Second, authorship, expertise, and trust inform the capacity and the failure of images to circulate. Altogether, this volume raises a set of new questions about circulation as practice in the historiography of images in the life sciences.