Heat treatment of Polish flints

In Poland three types of flint (chocolate, spotted and banded) were intensively mined from the Terminal Palaeolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Although heating of flint to improve its flaking properties was practised across the world from ∼110,000 years ago to the recent, particularly in southwestern Europe, heat treatment of flint in Poland is known from only two sites.     

Semantics of learned quackery in the 17th and 18th centuries

In the 17th and 18th century republic of letters the problem of scientific fraud was met with a discourse of charlatanism. Departing from Johann Burchhard Menckes famous treatise on the Charlatanry of the learned the following essay traces how the accusations of academic and scientific misconduct put in terms of 'charlatanry' primarily helped to produce the new species of the erudite 'charlatan'. Facing a growing complexity of scientific culture this new frame of meaning, structured by numerous examples of scientific misconduct offered a new way of orientation in the world of learning. But besides its cognitive impacts the discourse of charlatanry allowed to create symbolic boundaries, which determined decisions upon the affiliation or non affiliation to the new forming scientific community by separating honourable from dishonourable scientific personae. Speaking of charlatanry therefore always implied a social distinction as much as a scientific. The discourses on charlatanry also mirror differentiations within the scientific field. At first dominated by a critique built on courteous or bourgeois values, the scientific field later on developed its own criteria of appraisal like authorship, originality, transparency etc. Attracting the attention of a further growing public sphere, the explicit verbalisation of claims not relating to the value system of a republic of letters primarily concerned with the production and distribution of knowledge finally led up to a more implicit moral economy of science. A change that at a large scale level can be described both as an internalisation of the values of scientific conduct and differentiation between justiciable and unjusticiable transgressions of the norms set up by the scientific community.     

Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language,Symbolism, and Music–An Alternative Multidisciplinary Perspective

In recent years, there has been a tendency to correlate the origin of modern culture and language with that of anatomically modern humans. Here we discuss this correlation in the light of results provided by our first hand analysis of ancient and recently discovered relevant archaeological and paleontological material from Africa and Europe. We focus in particular on the evolutionary significance of lithic and bone technology, the emergence of symbolism, Neandertal behavioral patterns, the identification of early mortuary practices, the anatomical evidence for the acquisition of language, the development of conscious symbolic storage, the emergence of musical traditions, and the archaeological evidence for the diversification of languages during the Upper Paleolithic. This critical reappraisal contradicts the hypothesis of a symbolic revolution coinciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago, but also highlights inconsistencies in the anatomically–culturally modern equation and the potential contribution of anatomically pre-modern human populations to the emergence of these abilities. No firm evidence of conscious symbolic storage and musical traditions are found before the Upper Paleolithic. However, the oldest known European objects that testify to these practices already show a high degree of complexity and geographic variability suggestive of possible earlier, and still unrecorded, phases of development.     

Gebel Ramlah—a Unique Newborns’ Cemetery of the Neolithic Sahara

Post-Pleistocene climatic improvement in the Northern Hemisphere after ca. 9550 BC allowed human populations to recolonize large parts of North Africa in what is today the Sahara Desert. In the Egyptian Western Desert, the beginnings of human occupation date as early as ca. 9300 BC. Occupation continued until the middle of the third millennium BC when final desertification of the area no longer afforded human occupation. The settlement of the Neolithic cattle and sheep/goat herders developed along with the rhythm of alternating wet and dry climatic oscillations. One of the areas occupied intensively during the early and middle Holocene was Gebel Ramlah. Pastoral populations established their settlements around the shores of a paleo-lake adjacent to a rocky massif, to exploit the local savannah environment. During most of the Neolithic, they buried their dead dispersed outside of their settlements. Only during the Final Neolithic (after ca. 4600 BC) did they place them exclusively in cemeteries. Of six Final Neolithic cemeteries investigated at Gebel Ramlah to date, one is entirely unprecedented, not only in North Africa but also globally at such an early date. For just under 200 years (ca. 4500–4300 BC), it served exclusively for the inhumation of infants who died around (perinate) or shortly after the time of birth (neonate). Thirty-two burial pits contained skeletal remains of 39 individuals, not only infants but also at least two adult females accompanied by perinates/neonates. Older children (>?3 years) were interred at a nearby cemetery that primarily comprised adults.     

Do the Buildings Really Matter? Czech,Polish and Slovak Museums and Centres of Contemporary Art in Adapted Buildings

This paper discusses the connection between museums and centres of contemporary art operating in adapted buildings, on the one hand, and on the other, the history of the place where the buildings are located. I discuss seven discrete case studies, representing a variety of approaches to buildings and the areas in which they operate, in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. My analysis of each case study covers four main subject areas: (1) discussions connecting the building’s history with its new role; (2) the architectural features and appearance of the building; (3) references3 to the history of the site in the institution’s programme and communication; and (4) efforts to build bonds with local communities. In my conclusions, I argue that the identity of the institution may either be rooted in the history of the place presented and discussed in its programme, or be independent of the history of the building but nonetheless connected to the area in which it is located.     

Optical dating and sedimentary record from the terrace depositional profile of the Warta River (Central Poland)

Results of OSL dating and sedimentary studies from the profile of the low alluvial terrace of the middle Warta River are presented. The samples were dated using the single-aliquot regenera-tive method. Dating was used to establish a timing of the Weichselian Late Glacial events in the river valley environment. Stable conditions on the floodplain are expressed by the deposition of organic-rich series radiocarbon dated at 12 900-12 600 cal BP and 11 600-10 770 cal BP. Samples for OSL dating were collected from the mineral material deposited during the intensification of flood events during the Weichselian decline. The results obtained for the alluvia range from 12.78 ± 0.62 ka b2k to 14.33 ± 0.74 ka b2k. Sedimentological criteria allowed to distinguish between particular flood events. Overestimation of OSL ages is probably a result of rapidity of environmental changes in that time.     

Estimation of OSL trap parameters by optical “cleaning” — a critical study

The so-called thermal “cleaning” applied in thermoluminescence analysis allows distinguishing TL signal originating from different traps of comparable thermal depths. Here, the detailed study on the suitability of a similar approach — which can be called optical “cleaning” — for the analysis of OSL process has been carried out by means of computer modelling. The optical “cleaning” is realized by short optical stimulation applied directly after irradiation. It turns out that this approach does not help to separate signals related to various traps having similar optical cross-section (OCS) values. For some sets of trap parameters, sufficiently good reconstruction of the trap optical cross-sections can be achieved by the analysis of the conventional OSL curve obtained directly after sample irradiation, while the OSL curve analysis after “cleaning” does not provide any additional data. For other cases the analysis of both curves with and without “cleaning” leads to optical cross-section values different from those assumed in the model, but just in such situations the optical “cleaning” can be helpful. The differences between the OSL components of the conventional curve and the one obtained after “cleaning” can be used as indicators of an incompatibility of the trap parameters obtained from the OSL analysis with their actual values.     

Landscape Sacralisation in Post-communist Poland

Landscape sacralisation is the process of filling the cultural landscape with religious phenomena and giving it a sacred character with elements of ritualised devotion. This paper examines this process in Poland during and since the communist era (1945–1989), and with a particular emphasis on late communist and post-communist times (1980–2013). It is argued that faith, politics, economy and religious ‘traditions of place’ are the most important factors shaping landscape sacralisation in Poland, particularly since 1980. Three types of landscape sacralisation are identified – architectural, linguistic and seasonal – and this paper discusses recent trends in these processes of landscape sacralisation with respect to their prevailing religious and non-religious dimensions. In recent decades, the Polish landscape has been filled with diverse religious objects and forms (churches, crosses, monuments, public processions, annual festivals and rural and urban nomenclature) associated chiefly with the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant denomination in the country. It is argued that scholarly appreciation of landscape sacralisation is a vital means of identifying the religiosity of Polish people during and since the communist era.     

THE IMPACT OF REMITTANCES ON REGIONAL CONSUMPTION AND INVESTMENT

This paper examines the effects of international remittances on regional economic development using spatial data from an original household survey carried out in the Republic of Moldova. I analyze remittance flows with a model that estimates regional (urban and rural) budget shares of consumption and investment expenditure categories for rural and urban households. An important contribution of the paper is that it analyzes the effect of remittances in the regions where spending takes place, which is not necessarily the same as the region where the households originating this spending reside. Using the multinomial logit approach, I control for potential selectivity and endogeneity biases of remittances. The results show that remittances lead to significantly increasing marginal productive investments in urban regions at the expense of rural regions. The fundamental finding of the study is that remittances influence the flight of productive capital out of rural areas into urban regions (a pattern similar to the crowding‐out effect of the Dutch Disease). The analysis carried out in this paper can be applied to other temporary income transfers and exogenous spending injected in the region that affect households' regional expenditure patterns.