Burial offerings in intramural tombs at Middle Bronze Age Megiddo

Tel Megiddo is a major type-site for the Middle Bronze in the Levant. During this period a new burial custom appeared in which the dead were interred beneath occupied houses. This tradition is well attested in Area K at the site. Area H, near the palatial complex, revealed a monumental masonry-constructed chamber tomb. This article presents the results of residue analysis conducted on ceramic vessels placed in these tombs as burial offerings. Hundreds of intramural Middle Bronze tombs with ceramic offerings were excavated in the Levant, but this is the first time the content of the vessels is revealed.     

The Gender,Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Gentrification,assassination and forgetting in Mexico: a feminist Marxist tale

In this article, I employ feminist and Marxist tools to expose the struggles over the constant plunder and expansion of global capitalism along Mexico's northern border, specifically in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. In particular, I examine how an official politics – promoted by the Mexican and US governments – for forgetting the economic and social devastation of a transcontinental drug war contributes to the mechanisms for further exploiting the working poor. By combining a feminist focus on the daily struggle of social reproduction with a Marxist emphasis on accumulation by dispossession, I show how this official ‘forgetting’ segues with an international gentrification plan in downtown Ciudad Juárez that seeks to expand the rent gap by denying place, legitimacy and legal status to the working women and their families who have made this border city famous as a hub of global manufacturing. As such, I argue that the social struggles against the official forgetting are struggles against a violent political economy that generates value via a devaluation of the spaces of the working poor, even of the spaces of their literal existence.     

ASEAN as a “Rules-based Community”: Business as Usual

Abstract

In establishing the ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN political elites emphasised their commitment to the rule of law. The definition of the rule of law adopted in the ASEAN Charter mirrored UN reforms that recognised the rule of law as interlinked with democracy and human rights. This commitment raises questions, given the various tactics employed by the grouping’s authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes to silence dissent. This article critically assesses this apparent shift in regional governance. It first maps the inclusion of rule of law rhetoric in agreements since ASEAN’s foundation, and then examines the form and implementation of dispute settlement mechanisms. It finds that dispute settlement mechanisms have consistently retained the scope for protracted political and bureaucratic negotiation between disputing parties, and “opt out” clauses that enable their contingent application. These findings undermine claims regarding the development of a “rules-based community”, and indicate the continuation of rule by law rather than rule of law. The emphasis placed on ASEAN’s rule of law reforms by elites suggests, then, the rebranding of this political project in support of the ASEAN Economic Community so as to create confidence for investors in the region’s juridical environment.     

Competing Visions of the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia: Power,Rhetoric and Governance

Abstract

This article introduces a special issue on the emergent relationship between the rhetoric and implementation of the rule of law concept in Southeast Asia. It thematically introduces four country case studies (Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam), and the case of ASEAN’s adoption of the rule of law in region-building, which are included in this special issue. We highlight how ideals that are arguably central to the “tradition” of the rule of law are being excised, marginalised, defended and/or undermined in Southeast Asian contexts. We emphasise how the very concept is deeply contested and far from neutral – at stake is the very notion of “law” for whom, and for what. The article offers insight into the social dynamics affecting how the rule of law is being interpreted by political actors and how it is being contested and consolidated via governance practices in the region, and proposes new avenues for research in assessing how the rule of law is operating in transitional and authoritarian state settings.     

Late Holocene Historical Ecology: The Timing of Vertebrate Extirpation on Crooked Island,Commonwealth of The Bahamas

We report eight new accelerator-mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates performed directly on individual bones of extirpated species from Crooked Island, The Bahamas. Three dates from the hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami), recovered from a culturally derived bone assemblage in McKay's Bluff Cave (site CR-5), all broadly overlap from AD 1450 to 1620, which encompasses the time of first European contact with the Lucayan on Crooked Island (AD 1492). Marine fish and hutia dominate the bone assemblage at McKay's Bluff Cave, shedding light on vertebrate consumption by the Lucayans just before their demise. A fourth AMS ¹⁴C date on a hutia bone, from a non-cultural surface context in Crossbed Cave (site CR-25), is similar (AD 1465 to 1645) to those from McKay's Bluff Cave. From Pittstown Landing (site CR-14), an open coastal archaeological site, a femur of the Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) yielded an AMS ¹⁴C date of AD ～1050–1250, which is early in the Lucayan cultural sequence. From a humerus in a non-cultural surface context in 1702 Cave (site CR-26), we document survival of the Cuban crocodile on Crooked Island until AD ～1300–1400, which is several hundred years later than the well-documented extinction of Cuban crocodiles on Abaco in the northern Bahamas. We lack a clear explanation of why Cuban crocodiles likely survived longer on Crooked Island than on a larger Bahamian island such as Abaco. One AMS ¹⁴C date on Crooked Island's extinct, undescribed species of tortoise (Chelonoidis sp.) from 1702 Cave is BC 790 to 540 (2740 to 2490 cal BP), which is ～1500–1700 years prior to human arrival. A second AMS ¹⁴C date, on a fibula of this tortoise from McKay's Bluff Cave, is AD 1025 to 1165, thereby demonstrating survival of this extinct species into the period of human occupation.     

Resisting the sacred canopy over U.S. ways of war

This article explores the “omnipotent sacrificial sacred canopy” in US war-culture. I argue that sacrificial linguistic habits and patterns of logic in the US successfully discipline citizens, such that the violence of our current wars remains mystified, and clear analysis of the wars' true costs is disabled. Rather than attempt to arrive at one universal theory of sacrifice to analyze and better understand sacrificial US war-culture, I demonstrate that diverse theoretical methods of analysis better help us to understand the pluralistic nuances and permutations of these smothering dynamics. I further argue that increased awareness of the sacrificial sacred canopy over war and militarism in the US finally must lead to self-examination on the part of Christians regarding the way in which sacrificial civil religious admonishments regarding war merge with and are mutually reinforced by theological and ecclesial soteriological habits of Christians in the US Lastly, I advocate a two-fold approach for addressing this disturbing and destructive reality in the nation.     

Interest Groups,Federalism, and Water Quality in the Great Lakes: Chasing a Moving Target

Federalism often creates additional decisions for interest groups in determining how best to advocate for their policy recommendations in the legislative process. Should they focus their advocacy at the local, state, or national level of government? This article examines interest group behaviors in water quality policy in the Great Lakes region from 1960 to 2000. I evaluate the reasons for interest group decisions about which level of government to target, using historical analysis of Great Lakes water quality policy in the United States and Canada. The results of this analysis show that in many cases groups are influenced in their decision-making based on the level of government that has the greatest jurisdiction over the policy, supporting a neoinstitutional argument.