The Role of Metallurgy in Transforming Global Forests.

Forest degradation—both past and present—has been a significant research focus of many disciplines in recent decades, and it is an area in which the multidisciplinarity and long-term perspectives of archaeological endeavour has the potential to make a particularly valuable contribution. One of the past craft activities that has long been linked to significant socio-economic change and associated accelerations in forest cover reduction and environmental decline is the intensification of early iron production—an industry reliant on the consumption of charcoal as fuel for much of its history. However, the impact of iron production on the transformation of woodlands is dependent on a suite of interrelated factors—climatic, ecological, technological and cultural—only some of which have so far been adequately scrutinised. This paper explores the theoretical context that links iron production with deforestation in academic and popular cultures, examining the role that archaeology can play in investigating this association, before reviewing recent methodological approaches that aim to interrogate the relationship between metallurgy and the environment in archaeological settings.     

Feeling,caring, measuring,knowing: the relational co-construction of parenting knowledges

Parenting practices, including the maintenance of a child with a healthy body weight are subject to normative and institutional regulation. This paper explores the specific practices of parenting in line with this regulation in relation to the creation and maintenance of knowledge, focussing on how parents come to know their child as healthy. Drawing on examples in which parents discussed their experiences of parenting in light of their understandings of ‘obesity’, these illustrate differentially constituted parenting ontologies which challenge the idea of a singular correct way to parent. This paper foregrounds the ways in which embodied knowledge may be constituted and enacted not only in and of a parent's own body but also through, alongside, and together with, the bodies of their child(ren). This is not to move away from embodied knowledge that centres on the self, but to highlight the relational and co-constitutive characteristics of embodied knowledges that arise through parenting.     

“Obra de arte yo too”: Eduardo Mendicutti on soccer,glamour, and the “Beckham effect”

ABSTRACT

La Susi en el vestuario blanco (2003) is a fictional chronicle of life in the Real Madrid locker room, a privileged insight into the sanctum sanctorum of the world's richest soccer team. The hiring of Susi as glamour coach ostensibly aims to boost the competitive advantage of the galácticos in foreign as well as local markets (reflecting the reality of the club at the time). In Mendicutti's homoeroticizing gaze, it also serves to uncover the homophobic substrate reportedly still common in male team sports and teases at the anxieties of the players. This article explores the peculiar function of Susi as she sets the comic tone of the work and engages with the varied virilities before her. It examines the notions of “glamour” and “identification” both as tongue-in-cheek team objectives and as phenomena with wider relevance for the way spectators relate to sport and players relate to the world around them.     

Book reviews

CHINA

LOWELL DITTMER. Liu Shaoqi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, revised edition. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. US$68.95, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

HARRIET EVANS. Women and Sexuality in China: female Sexuality and Gender Since 1949. New York: Continuum, 1997. 270 pp. US$49.50, hardcover.

TONY GALLAGHER. In Their Own Words: profiles of Today's Chinese Students. San Francisco: China Books, 1998. 214 pp. A$24.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

JOHN PRICE. Japan Works: power and Paradox in Postwar Industrial Relations. Ithaca and London: ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 1997. 315 pp. US$45.00, hardcover; US$17.95, paper.

SOUTH ASIA

JEFFREY J. KRIPAL. Kali's Child: the Mystical and the Erotic in the Life of Ramakrishna. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition, 1998. 386 pp. $US19.00, paper.

D. A. LOW and HOWARD BRASTED (eds). Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998. ix, 237 pp. Rs 350, hardcover; Rs 195, paper.

MARTHA ALTER CHEN (ed). Widows in India: social Neglect and Public Action. New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage Publications, 1998. 456 pp. £29.00, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

C. F. YONG. The Origins of Malayan Communism. Singapore: South Seas Society, 1997. xvi, 312 pp. Preface, tables, plates, abbreviations, introduction, index. No price given, paper.

DAMIEN KINGSBURY. The Politics of Indonesia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998. ix, 286 pp. 1 map. A$29.95, paper.

R. WILLIAM LIDDLE. Leadership and Culture in Indonesian Politics. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, for the Asian Studies Association of Australia (Southeast Asia Publication Series no. 29), 1996. 314 pp. A$35.00, paper.

NICHOLAS TARLING. Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. x, 504 pp. Preface, abbreviations, maps, personalia, notes, bibliography, index. A$80.00, hardcover.

GENERAL ASIA

DAVID MARTIN JONES. Political Development in Pacific Asia. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997. 235 pp. US$57.95, hardcover; US$26.95, paper.

JAMES J. FOX (ed). The Poetic Power of Place: comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality. Canberra: Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1997. vi, 204 pp. Maps, references, index. A$30.00 (surface mail) or A$38.00 (air mail), paper.     

Evaluating bone collagen extraction methods for stable isotope analysis in dietary studies

The specific purpose of this study was to compare three different collagen extraction methods commonly used in isotope laboratories conducting dietary studies. We evaluated their resultant differences in δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N, collagen quality and collagen yield. Our study was based on well-preserved skeletal material from the medieval period in Denmark. Our study shows that there is a systematic significant difference in the yield and the δ¹³C values between the three methods. Using the method of DeNiro and Epstein [DeNiro, M.J., Epstein, S., 1981. Influence of diet on the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in animals. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 45, 341–351] with NaOH as cleaning agent, will, according to our study, give δ¹³C values that are on average ±0.32‰ more positive than using the ultra-filtration method [Brown, T.A., Nelson, D.E., Vogel, J.S., Southon, J.R., 1988. Improved collagen extraction by modified Longin method. Radiocarbon 30 (2), 171–177, modified in Richards, M.P., Hedges R.E.M., 1999. Stable isotope evidence for similarities in the types of marine foods used by late Mesolithic humans at sites along the Atlantic coast of Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science 26, 717–722]. The third method, which is a modified version of the second method, excluded the ultra-filtration step. This method seems to give δ¹³C values that lie in between the other methods. Our study did not show any significant difference in δ¹⁵N values. Although the differences between the methods are very small, we conclude that the use of stable isotope analysis in food determination studies requires adherence to routine methods for preparing and measuring samples.     

Hillslope Runoff and Soil Erosion Following Reforestation in the Copper Basin,Tennessee, USA

The landscape of the 130 km² Copper Basin, in the southeastern USA, became extremely degraded during more than a century of logging, mining, acidification, grazing, and fire. In the twentieth century, the Copper Basin became the focus of a series of reforestation programs and is now largely tree‐covered again. To investigate the effects of over 50 years of reforestation efforts, we developed a space‐for‐time substitution and conducted rainfall simulation experiments in ‘forest’ patches of various ages, at sites remaining unvegetated, and at forested reference sites outside the basin. At 59 sites, we monitored surface runoff and sediment detachment rates during 30‐minute rainfall simulation experiments; and at 54 of those sites, we determined soil organic matter content. Then, we measured litter and observed soils at 25 of the sites, and measured soil respiration at a site in each age zone. The results demonstrate that soil erosion by sediment detachment decreases within a decade following reforestation. Recently reforested sites have soils with significantly less organic matter and have higher runoff rates than forests more than 50 years old. The long‐term persistence of low infiltration rates suggests that, at sites where the A and B soil horizons and the biological health of the soil have been lost, restoration of the hydrologic function of a landscape by reforestation may require centuries.