Investigating the resetting of OSL signals in rock surfaces

There are many examples of buried rock surfaces whose age is of interest to geologists and archaeologists. Luminescence dating is a potential method which can be applied to dating such surfaces; as part of a research project which aims to develop such an approach, the degree of resetting of OSL signals in grains and slices from five different cobbles/boulders collected from a modern beach is investigated. All the rock surfaces are presumed to have been exposed to daylight for a prolonged period of time (weeks to years). Feldspar was identified as the preferred dosimeter because quartz extracts were insensitive. Dose recovery tests using solar simulator and IR diodes on both K-feldspar grains and solid slices taken from the inner parts of the rocks are discussed. Preheat plateau results using surface grains and slices show that significant thermal transfer in naturally bleached samples can be avoided by keeping preheat temperatures low. Equivalent doses from surface K-feldspar grains were highly scattered and much larger than expected (0.02 Gy to >100 Gy), while solid surface slices gave more reproducible small doses (mean = 0.17±0.02 Gy, n = 32). Neither crushing nor partial bleaching were found to be responsible for the large scattered doses from grains, nor did the inevitable contribution from Na-feldspar to the signal from solid slices explain the improved reproducibility in the slices. By modelling the increase of luminescence signal with distance into the rock surface, attenuation factors were derived for two samples. These indicate that, for instance, bleaching at a depth of 2 mm into these samples occurs at about ∼28% of the rate at the surface. We conclude that it should be possible to derive meaningful burial doses of >1 Gy from such cobbles; younger samples would probably require a correction for incomplete bleaching.     

Bridging the Knowledge-gap Between the Old and the New: Regional Marine Experience Production in Orust,Västra Götaland,Sweden

Abstract

Today many regions in the industrialized world have to deal with a transformation from traditional industry such as agriculture or manufacturing to service-oriented production such as tourism. Nevertheless, few studies highlight the possibilities and limitations of inter-sectoral knowledge sharing among stakeholders representing these sectors and hence there seem to be missed opportunities for mutual collaboration in the era of experience production. Using an evolutionary perspective, this article aims to analyse how the leisure boat manufacturing and the tourism sectors in the municipality of Orust on the Swedish west coast, combine knowledge from these two sectors as a way to spur innovation in experience production. The article shows how there are a number of limitations to sectoral knowledge interaction. Some of them can be linked to the conservative nature of the traditional industry, and to the immature nature of the tourism sector, others to the role of policy. However, at the same time as there being a number of obstacles for collaboration, the article reveals some interesting possibilities to form inter-sectoral knowledge sharing.     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

Legitimacy of Informal Strategic Urban Planning—Observations from Finland,Sweden and Norway

In Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian cities and urban regions, strategic approaches in urban planning have been developed by introducing different kinds of informal strategic plans. The means of improving the strategic quality of urban and regional planning have thus been searched from outside the statutory land use planning system, determined by the national planning laws. Similar development has also taken place elsewhere. When strategic plans are prepared outside the statutory planning system, these processes also lack the legal guarantee for openness, fairness and accountability. This is a serious legitimacy problem. In this article, the problem is examined theoretically and conceptually by combining democracy- and governance-theoretical perspectives. With this framework, four different approaches to legitimacy are derived: accountability, inclusiveness, liberty and fairness. The article concludes that strategic urban planning must find a balance between the four approaches to legitimacy. Concerning political processes, this requires agonistic acknowledgement of different democracy models, excluding neither deliberative nor liberalist arguments. Concerning administrative processes, it requires acknowledgement of the interdependence of statutory and informal planning instruments and the necessity of developing planning methods for their mutual complementarity—thus avoiding the detachment of informal strategic planning into a parallel planning “system”.     

One Size Fits All? Applying the Creative Class Thesis onto a Nordic Context

The creative class thesis put forward by Florida [(2002a) The Rise of the Creative Class and How it's transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books)] has in recent years been subject to vivid debate and criticism. This article applies the creative class thesis onto a Nordic context in order to examine whether Florida's theory proves fruitful in a context different from the US. Based on qualitative data, the paper analyses the role of people climate and business climate for the location of the creative class and firms in three different kinds of regions in four Nordic countries. The analyses demonstrate that the people climate tends to be of secondary importance to the business climate in explaining the location of the Nordic creative class. This should be seen as a result of the urban hierarchy within the Nordic countries as well as a strong welfare policy, which ensures an equal distribution of public provision and supports dual career households. Together, these factors diminish the role of people climate for location choices. The study also finds that the notion of people climate has different meanings in various places, and what attracts or repels the creative class depends on the life phases of the members of the creative class. The study raises concerns about the potential for applying the creative class approach beyond large city regions, which limits its usability in regional planning.     

The Black Death

The purpose of the present research is to examine various theories concerning the origin of the Black Death, to record its routes of dissemination in the Nordic countries and across the British Isles, and to compare the pattern of that dissemination with trade routes carrying grain throughout northern Europe in the period up to and including 1350.     

Welcome to Country … Not.

ABSTRACT It seems that every public function I attend includes a ‘welcome to country’ speech presented by a representative of a local Aboriginal group claiming traditional ownership of the land where the gathering is conducted. Indeed, while it was already becoming customary for white officials to acknowledge traditional Aboriginal ownership prior to introducing any kind of its own business in recent years, it seems to have become de rigueur since the 42nd Federal Parliament was opened with a ‘Welcome to Country’ speech from a Ngunnawal representative in February, 2008. As this paper demonstrates, welcome to country might be understood by whites as a ‘safe’ kind of inclusive gesture of recognition all the time knowing that such claims are not legally enforceable. But, as the two ethnographic examples I present in this article demonstrate, Indigenous agency, once acknowledged in performance, cannot be fully directed by the nation state to serve its own ends.     

位于尼姆鲁德遗址的亚述那西尔帕二世的卡拉克西北宫殿中的新亚述浅浮雕彩绘．慕尼黑的研究成果

路德维格一世在1825—1848年间任巴伐利亚的国王,1863年他从尼姆鲁德遗址获得了7个浅浮雕艺术品。最近进行的对这些浮雕作品的修复使得其上残留的原始彩绘重新被人们发现,本文讨论了对这些原始彩绘面貌进行重现的可能性及存在的相关问题。     

The application of 3D laser scanning technology to the assessment of ordinal and mechanical cortex quantification in lithic analysis

Recent studies make use of cortex proportion as a proxy measurement for the impact of artefact transport on assemblage formation. Cortex in these studies is measured on an ordinal scale and analysed in relation to mechanical measurements of artefact size. Here we report on the use of a 3D laser scanner to obtain precise measurements from experimental lithic reduction sets. High-resolution measurements of cortex area are compared to measurements obtained through ordinal approximations of cortex proportion and mechanical approximations of artefact size. While the ordinal and mechanical measurements result in considerable error for individual artefacts, estimates improve significantly as sample size increases.