Ancient Maritime Fish-Traps of Brittany (France): A Reappraisal of the Relationship Between Human and Coastal Environment During the Holocene

The present-day maritime landscape of Western France forms the geographical framework for a recent research project dedicated to the archaeological study of ancient fish-traps, combining regional-scale and site-scale investigations. Based on the compilation and exploitation of a large unpublished dataset including more than 550 sites, a preliminary synthetic study allows us to present some examples of synchronic and thematic approaches, and propose a morphological classification of the weirs. These encouraging first results open up new perspectives on fish-trap chronology closely linked to wider studies on Holocene sea-level changes.     

The Long Sunset of Strategic Partnership: Russia's Evolving China Policy

The strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing is arguably the greatest Russian foreign policy achievement of the post-Soviet period. In just over a decade, the relationship has grown from a barely civil interaction to one of political and strategic convergence and flourishing economic cooperation. Once divisive issues such as border demarcation and Chinese 'illegal migration' into the Russian Far East have been largely defused, while bilateral trade has tripled during the past four years. Nevertheless, despite these successes, the strategic partnership remains fragile and vulnerable to bilateral and international developments. A negative historical legacy, enduring cultural prejudices and strategic suspicions, and even commercial disagreements threaten, over time, to undermine many of the gains of the recent past. In the transformed global environment after 9/11 there are signs that Moscow is rethinking its approach towards China as part of a more general evolution in Russian strategic calculus in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. China's emergence as the next super-power, the spectre of increased Sino-American tensions, the changing balance of power between Moscow and Beijing, and rival agendas in Central Asia all have the potential to rekindle once dormant political differences and security fears. Although the breadth of common interests means there is no early prospect of confrontation, the much-vaunted Russia–China strategic partnership may be giving way to a growing strategic divergence.     

En route to New York: diasporic networks and the reconfiguration of female entrepreneurship in Senegal

This article examines the influence of migration and transnational social networks on female entrepreneurship. It interrogates shifting patterns of market development, juxtaposed to the lure of new economic opportunities for women entrepreneurs located at the periphery, Senegal. I critically analyse how a distinct and classed category of Senegalese women entrepreneurs navigates international spaces and legal restrictions in attempts to launch profitable economic ventures in metropolitan centres such as New York City and negotiate new forms of representation and agency in contentious socio-economic spaces. By interrogating the complex interplay between women entrepreneurs and diasporic communities, I weave an often-missing gender perspective into the analysis of the emergence of female transnational entrepreneurship and diasporic social networks. This article demonstrates that diasporic social networks, transnational markets and spatial interconnections, while contributing to market revitalisation and expansion, are nonetheless fraught with tension. Diasporic social networks embody paradoxical positions. They represent an enabling economic transactional space, while embodying an informal social space that nonetheless remains sites of power struggles deeply embedded in gendered, sociocultural and economic dynamics that transfer from local to transnational contexts.     

Potentialities of X-ray fluorescence analysis in numismatics: the case study of pre-Roman coins from Cisalpine Gaul

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is a well-known technique for the analysis of ancient metals. Thanks to the availability of portable instruments (p-XRF), it is extensively used for the chemical characterization of coins directly in museums. In this work, the potentialities of the technique have been investigated, through its application to a case study concerning the Cisalpine Gaul coinage. More than 200 drachmas have been analysed to discriminate different productions on the base of minor elements. Major elements, on the other hand, have been used to trace alloy changes through the centuries. As concerns the quantification of the silver content (fineness), XRF and neutron diffraction results have been compared, in order to check the presence of surface-enriched layers.     

Study of the Technique and of the Materials of a 19th‐Century Polychrome Wood Mask from Papua New Guinea

This paper presents the results of the analysis carried out on a polychrome wood mask from Papua New Guinea during conservation work at Pigorini Museum's restoration laboratory. The significance of this study is that no prior work has characterized the painting materials of Papua New Guinea masks both with spectroscopic and internal microstratigraphic analysis. In fact, these objects were studied especially from an anthropological or conservative point of view and the wood was wrongly defined by its visual appearance. Microstratigraphic and spectroscopic investigations discovered a refined execution technique that up to now has not been demonstrated. The stratigraphy of the painted layers demonstrates a deep knowledge of the materials and of the application techniques on the part of the Papua New Guinea people, together with the ability to foresee the aesthetic result for the artefact. The analysis of the constitutive materials and of the stylistic features supplied valid results in favour of provenance of the mask from Papua New Guinea.     

Biotechnology and Governance in Australia and Sweden: Path Dependency or Institutional Convergence?

The development of new generic technologies occurs within traditional structures of industry-government interaction, but also unleashes a process of 'creative destruction' generating new institutional patterns. This article, focusing on biotechnology, describes and compares policy processes and institutional arrangements in Australia and Sweden. The Swedish biotechnology sector displays a pattern of fragmentation and relatively weak state steering. Australia, by contrast, has implemented a set of comparatively coordinated regulatory and other measures to foster the growth of biotechnology. This observation contradicts the characterisation of Sweden as a 'strong state' economy, and challenges the depiction of Australia as lacking in state steering capacity. The relative open-endedness of the search in these countries for a mode of regulation of biotechnology suggests that the role of the state in economic restructuring today is fundamentally distinct from that of earlier periods.     

Protocol for lapis lazuli provenance determination: evidence for an Afghan origin of the stones used for ancient carved artefacts kept at the Egyptian Museum of Florence (Italy)

Despite that the Badakhshan Province (Afghanistan) remains the most plausible hypothesis for the lapis lazuli used in antiquity, alternatives proposed in literature are worth to study to confirm or disprove their historical reliability. In this work, a protocol for determining the provenance of lapis lazuli rocks used for carved artefacts is described. Markers for the univocal attribution of the raw material to a source were identified analysing 45 rocks of known provenance (among which 15 georeferenced) from 4 quarry districts. To the best of our knowledge, this reference database is the widest in provenance studies on lapis lazuli. All the markers are recognisable by means of Ion Beam Analysis (IBA) techniques, in particular micro-proton-induced x-ray emission (PIXE) and micro-ionoluminescence (IL). These techniques are non-invasive and applicable in air, allowing to analyse artworks and rocks of practically any shape and dimension without sample preparation.The protocol was applied to determine the provenance of raw material used for carved lapis lazuli artefacts kept at the Egyptian Museum of Florence, the second most important Egyptian museum in Italy, second only to the museum of Turin. The collection in Florence has a great historical value and includes several lapis lazuli pendants, scarabs, small statuettes and amulets ascribable mainly to the first millennium BC. Following the protocol, 11 of these artefacts were analysed by means of IBA techniques. Results ascribe the raw material to the Afghan quarry district.