Political and Socioeconomic Indicators of State Restrictiveness Toward Abortion

We compare the relative impacts of political and socioeconomic factors on state restrictiveness toward abortion during the pre-Roe, pre-Webster and post-Webster time frames. This analysis tests the value of cycle theory, where shifting epochs dominated by liberalism and conservatism enhance the role of political variables in shaping policy formation. It also tests the explanatory value of public opinion theory which holds that bimodal issues which cut across party lines accentuate the role of socioeconomic variables in shaping issue evolution. The results of this analysis lend support to cycle theory and public opinion theory, although public opinion theory receives stronger support. When socioeconomic independent variables are regressed against our dichotomous measures of state restrictiveness toward abortion, they explain more variance than political independent variables. Political variables were more important in the conservative era (1989) than in the liberal era (1972).     

Containers and mobility in West Africa

In West Africa, containment practices have long been localized in their production, moulded by environmental forces, and scaled to the human body. In the twentieth century, fossil fuels have changed how people keep and carry things. But newer technologies have tended to alter, rather than eliminate, older forms of storage.     

Women’s Costume and Feminine Civic Morality in Augustan Rome

Augustus claimed that the moral decay of the Roman Republic was especially due to Roman women who had forsaken their traditional role of custos domi (‘preserver of the house/hold’). In reforming feminine morality, Augustus created a new pictorial language that troped the feminine body as a ‘moral sign’ of civic morality and authorized a distinctive costume for women. Sebesta investigates the relationship between women’s garments, the female body and the Roman concept of feminine civic morality.     

The Ideology of the Eunuch Priest

Roller explores the evidence for eunuch priests who castrated themselves to honour the Great Mother Goddess Cybele. While the custom of sacred eunuchism originated in Phrygia (in central Turkey), such priests are best attested in Greek and Roman society, where they were viewed with disgust and loathing because of their asexual condition and because they adopted the dress, hairstyles and mannerisms of women. The negative reactions to the eunuch priest rest on an unspoken assumption of the superiority of masculine appearance and of the inviolability of appropriate gender roles for men and women.     

Nineteenth-century ceramics and consumer behavior among the “mountain folk” of the Upper Cumberland Plateau,Tennessee

The Massengale site near Rugby, Tennessee was the nineteenth-century residence of one of the earliest white settler families to the Upper Cumberland Plateau of north central Tennessee, the Massengales. Archaeological excavations at their home site and historical document research into the family provided an opportunity to study their lifeways in this remote region. Initially, the Massengale ceramic assemblage appeared unusual, as a vast majority of their ceramics were undecorated. This study includes a comparison of the Massengale’s ceramic assemblage with those from four nearby, contemporary sites. Results indicate that the Massengale’s ceramic assemblage was not as unique as originally believed, and is representative of Appalachian farming families in this part of the Cumberland Plateau. Rather than attributing the lack of decorated ceramics simply to socioeconomic status, this paper examines a number of other factors that likely influenced their choice of ceramics.