Fingerprint identification on a bog body (650 BC)

Two thousand and six hundred fifty years after the death of the “Girl of the Uchter Moor”, it was still possible to secure good-quality fingerprints from the right hand of this bog body by using photographic methods followed by image enhancement with an Automated Fingerprint Identification System. A detailed fingerprint analysis was performed, and all five fingers of “Moora's” right hand exhibited ulnar loops. Even today, this is still the most common fingerprint pattern type in Europe. It was also possible to find enough minutiae on the right thumb for secure dactyloscopic identification after more than 2,000 years. The example of “Moora" therefore demonstrates new possibilities for future fingerprint examinations of ancient bodies in archaeological as well as forensic casework.     

The Tasks of Rational Utilization of Land Resources

A review of the use of energy and mass budget studies of natural landscapes discusses some limitations of the approach, related partly to a lack of detailed knowledge about the structure of landscape and the inadequacy of the balance technique for describing indirect linkages within the landscape and the impact of outside regulatory influences. The various balance equations for describing the mass and energy exchange in landscape are described and systematized. The use of heat-balance and plant-mass balance relationships for a classification of natural areal complexes is illustrated with reference to the north-facing and south-facing sides of a gully, the gully bottom and the surrounding watershed area in a meadow-steppe landscape of the Central Chenozem Region. Other possible applications of the balance technique in mass and energy research are suggested. (For background, see A Survey Course: The Energy and Mass Budget at the Surface of the Earth, by David H. Miller. Association of American Geographers, Commission on College Geography, Publication No. 7, 1968.)     

Futurology in Soviet Geography

A review article of recent Soviet futurological articles in the geographical literature, suggesting the increased activity of Soviet geographers in the prognostication of the environmental effects of human activity. Several of the papers under review appeared in Soviet Geography: Review and Translation.     

Riot and Respectability: The Shifting Terrain of Class Language and Status in Baltimore during the Great Strike of 1877

This essay focuses on people negotiating class boundaries and identities in Baltimore through the revealing prism of the riot that occurred there during the Great Strike of 1877, in order to understand the multiple meanings of class for urban Americans after the Civil War. While working-class consciousness motivated some to support the railroad strikers, the riot illuminates how other participants were situated astride and moved across porous class boundaries, and how vague languages of class lacked the accuracy to describe the social landscape of the Gilded Age. The shifting terrain of class language and status allowed Baltimoreans to contest and shape the meaning of terms like ‘respectability’ by, for instance, wearing ready-made clothing. Yet these unstable categories placed others in uncomfortable positions between working and elite classes in society and between crowd and militia on the streets, threatening their well-being and the ideological fabric of a nation enamored of the virtuous producer-citizen.