New Research on the Late Prehistoric Coastal Polities of Northern Peru

Previously, the Chimú empire was thought to have dominated the north coast of Peru during the Late Intermediate period, virtually to the exclusion of other polities. However, new research on sites from this period has not only changed perspectives on the Chimú, but also shed light on two other important coastal polities: the Lambayeque/Sicán and the Casma, providing insights with the potential to reshape our understanding of the development of urbanism and the Andean state. This article presents a critical summary of recent literature, fieldwork, and discoveries. Analyses of these new data address a wide range of topics that can be loosely grouped into four major areas: complexity in political organization and the geopolitical landscape, variations in the urban environment, the intensification of trade and exchange, and dynamic expressions of religion and ideology. The latest interpretation of the north coast Late Intermediate period is a story of three major, competing polities that were eventually subsumed under one.     

Gendering the city: the lived experience of transforming cities,urban cultures and spaces of belonging

Debates centred on ‘planetary urbanisation’ have raised questions over the adequacy of existing theories and epistemologies to explain the quantitative and qualitative transformations of cities. However, this theorization of the urban has met with opposition from post-colonial and feminist researchers amongst others. The comparative, empirical research in this collection, from Bolivia, India and Turkey, highlights that the city remains an important analytical and concrete framework, demarcated by contingency and cultural change through which residents must navigate. In particular we focus on the specificity of women’s lives and their capacity to problematise universalist theory, documenting their interrogation of simplistic binaries such as modern/traditional; their innovative approaches to informal settlement, housing and markets; their production of urban knowledge in order to negotiate the city; and processes and practices of mobility, experimentation, risk taking and aspiration that contest or support a myriad of urban imaginaries. Whilst not rejecting the need for theories that allow comparative perspectives on cities, our conclusions underscore the importance of recognising the multiple logics that generate city space and urban cultures, and the consequent need to parochialise the empirical basis of theories that claim to be global in outreach.     

Consequences of conquest? The analysis and interpretation of subadult trauma at Puruchuco-Huaquerones, Peru

This paper examines bioarchaeological evidence of violence and traumatic injury on subadult skeletal remains from two Late Horizon (A.D. 1470-1540) cemeteries within the archaeological zone of Puruchuco-Huaquerones, Peru. Here we present the frequency and types of traumatic lesions on the 242 subadults analyzed. We observed significant increases in the frequency of subadult trauma, particularly among the burials associated with Spanish Conquest. Specifically, we noted a statistically significant increase in the frequency of cranial trauma in a subsample of individuals from one of two cemeteries at the site, 57AS03. These perimortem cranial injuries suggest an intensification of violence and lethality that may have affected the children from this community. We then discuss the biocultural implications of this analysis within the context of Spanish invasion and conquest.     

Dietary analysis of Piraino 1, Sicily,Italy: the role of archaeopalynology in forensic science

Pollen from intestinal contents of mummies, backed by macrofloral analysis, provides important clues to diet, medicines, and season of death. Intestinal contents were recovered from the Piraino 1 mummy from the “Sepulcher of the Priests”, Piraino Mother Church, in the province of Messina, Sicily. Using standard palynological methods and pollen concentration technique, we quantified the numbers of pollen grains per gram of coprolite. The pollen spectrum was dominated by Polygalaceae, the Milkwort Family. Polygalaceae pollen is rarely found in archaeological sites. Based on comparison to published keys, we determined that the pollen came from a species of Polygala. Polygala contains species with medicinal value. We found nine other pollen types. Traces of Potamogeton (pondweed) was observed in preliminary scans. Multiple grains of Brassicaceae (mustard family), cereal (cultivated grains), Typha (cattail) and Cheno-am were found. Single grains of Castanea (chestnut), Fabaceae (bean family), Salix (willow), and Solanaceae (tomato family) were found. The preservation of the pollen was poor except for Polygala and the cereal pollen. Brassicaceae and Cheno-am have been part of the natural pollen spectrum in Sicily since ancient times. Cereal grains were consumed with prepared food. Importantly, background arboreal pollen was nearly absent. This indicates that Piraino 1 died during months of low pollination. The absence of olive pollen is important since this plant in Sicily reaches its maximum pollination in May and June and tapers off rapidly by mid-June. Therefore, absence of the key warm season airborne pollen type suggests a post-June death. Macrofossils, especially residue from grape pulp, indicates a death in September to November. His cause of death was likely a result of multiple myeloma. The methodological differences between archaeopalynology and forensic palynology are summarized. We suggest that the palynological methods presented here should be adopted for human remains analysis in forensic palynology.     

Introduction: Canada–US Relations under Obama: Continuity or Change? ACSUS Enders Symposium,Carleton University, 24 October 2008

The Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS) organizes the biennial ACSUS Enders Symposium as a way of promoting understanding of the evolution of Canada–US relations. The symposium also honors the work of Thomas O. Enders, who served as US ambassador to Canada from 1976 to 1979, and his work in promoting the relationship between the two countries. In other years, the symposium was held in Washington DC at the Woodrow Wilson Center, but the ACSUS board decided to move the event to Canada in 2008 in order to expand its audience and bring in new actors. Carleton University (with its Centre on North American Politics and Society and its School of Canadian Studies) and the Canada–Fulbright Foundation were brought in as partners, and the sixth biennial symposium was held 24 October 2008 at Carleton University in Ottawa. Several papers of the symposium appear here in a special issue of the American Review of Canadian Studies.     

Policy Coherence and Component-Driven Policymaking: Arctic Policy in Canada and the United States

This research extends theorizing about the implications of political environments to the content of policy areas. We consider the case of Arctic policy in Canada and the United States as an example of what we label as component-driven policymaking. We show how the lack of a clear constituency and the lack of a stable policy subsystem for the Arctic create a policy environment for which the politics of particular issues dominate Arctic policymaking. The result is a policy space labeled Arctic policy that lacks policy coherence. We suggest that similar features of component-based policymaking help explain limited policy coherence for a variety of policy areas such as policies for children, families, rural areas, urban areas, and women in the United States.     

Adolescent Latina Bodyspaces: Making Homegirls, Homebodies and Homeplaces

This essay examines the local, everyday practices of heteropatriarchal power—dominating and resisting power, through which young Latina women negotiate teenage, sexual and gender subjectivity and spatial ordering of young heterosexual bodies. Their negotiations are shaped by and give shape to the material, discursive and representational social spaces of Los Angeles, worsening "landscapes of neglect" attributable to the changing geographies of private and public investment. Their narratives convey and construct a visceral experience of being tied, materially and discursively, to homely spaces as young carers, and their struggle to untie their competencies to the private, domestic sphere, or "inside," and their vulnerabilities to the public sphere, or "outside." In their struggle, the young Latinas variously reproduce, rework and resist the dominant norms and materiality of local places and their dispositionality in bodily terms.