The Process of Policy Innovation: Prison Sitings in Rural North Carolina

We gauge the relative impact of economics, demographics, and politics on the decisions of 79 rural North Carolina counties whether to site a prison in the period 1970–2000. The results of this model demonstrate that, contrary to the expectation that counties site prisons in response to economic distress, the demographic characteristics of each county affect the relative likelihood of a prison siting more than its economics does. The influential demographic predictors are those inextricably bound up with development options—the education levels of its citizens—and those that limit its ability to pursue controversial projects—its not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) constituencies—rather than those that measure its racial diversity. Therefore, prison siting is neither a simple story of economic determinism nor one of environmental racism. We use a proportional hazards regression to model this innovation adoption in response to the challenge to select methods that take the potential time dependence of adoptions into account. A duration model is also particularly suitable for cases such as this one for which the innovation adoption is better understood as a process than as an event.     

A first note on the excavations at UAQ38, a new Neolithic site in the Emirate of Umm al-Quwain

At the end of 2018, the first season of excavation was carried out at the shell midden site of UAQ38. The site occupies the top of a sand dune not far from UAQ36 and UAQ2, two other recently investigated Neolithic shell middens. Several well-stratified anthropogenic levels were excavated at UAQ38, which can be dated mainly to the 5th millennium BC, although the recorded artefacts suggest a possible older date for the lowest levels. Food waste, post-holes, fireplaces, and burnt shell dumpings attest to human activities that took place at the site over a rather long period of time. Here the stratigraphic sequence will be presented, together with a first overview of the artefactual assemblage. The collected data will be concisely discussed in order to fit the site within the typology of Neolithic settlements that can be proposed for the area. UAQ38 is so far the only Neolithic site along the northeastern coast of the UAE for which stratified charcoal is available for dating.     

About two seal-impressed jars from Tell Abraq (Emirate of Umm al-Quwain). New evidence for intercultural networks in the lower Arabian Gulf in the late 2nd – beginning of the 1st millennium BC

Ongoing excavations at Tell Abraq (Emirate of Umm al-Quwain, U.A.E.) are revealing new aspects of this multiperiod site, which was occupied from c. 2500 BC to 300 AD. Together with substantial architecture dated to the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, relevant assemblages of archaeological materials are being collected and dated to different phases of the site’s life. Among this material, exceptional is the discovery of two jars bearing the impression of two different cylinder seals, which will be presented here. Seal impressions on any media are extremely rare in the whole of south-eastern Arabia and strongly indicate a foreign provenance for the jars. Their iconographic study, the fabric and morphological parallels for the jars, and probable chronology will be discussed, as this can highlight transmarine connections during the late 2nd-first half of the 1st millennium BC, as well as provide new data to address chronological issues in south-eastern Iran itself.     

Audit Bodies: Embodied Participation,Disability Universalism,and Accessibility in India

Abstract: In this article we think critically about the role of the “access audit” in creating new forms of embodied participation, experiential and technical expertise, and imaginaries of what the modern Indian city should be. We analyze how disability activists make claims about the relationship between subjective bodily experiences and bodies of objective knowledge. We also explore the emergence of a professional access audit apparatus focused on technical standards. As neither volunteer nor professional access audits result in significant architectural or structural changes, we are interested in what other effects and affects these audits produce and what discursive authority claims of inaccessibility have. This article analyzes the practice of conducting “access audits” by lay and professional disability rights activists and organizations in urban India. We argue that access audits are overly focused and that they have limited impact. In overly focusing on physical and technical access, auditors miss the importance of programmatic and policy interventions as well as the need for a more collective contentious politics. Our research illustrates that the contested field of access auditing appears to prevent a unified disability coalition from forming. In addition, it is important for auditors to think critically about the concept of “access” and ask what social, economic, and political processes are embedded within the concept.     

Tales from the old guards: Bithnah Fort, Fujairah, United Arab Emirates

This article examines the historical site of Bithnah fort, United Arab Emirates. Relevant historical sources were investigated, which highlighted the strategic importance of Bithnah's location in the Wadi Ham. A theoretical date was proposed for the site based on these historical references. The architectural features and material culture were combined with ethnographic information. This combination of sources allowed for a much clearer understanding of the fort's layout and interior use of space. It also provided a context for the village and agricultural space that surround the fortification of Bithnah.     

Production and use of birch bark tar at the Neolithic pile-dwelling of Palù di Livenza (North-Eastern Italy) revealed by X-ray computed micro-tomography and synchrotron Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy

Recent excavations at Palù di Livenza (northeastern Italy) revealed a multiphase Neolithic pile dwelling dated between ca. 4,300/4200 and 3,600 cal BC. Three lumps with teeth imprints and a larger amorphous piece from the Late Neolithic layers have been studied by X-ray computed micro-tomography (microCT) and synchrotron Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). FTIR spectra match well that of birch bark tar and microCT of the larger piece has revealed a rolled-up structure likely corresponding to bark rolls. The lumps of birch pitch were probably chewed to soften the tar prior to be used as hafting adhesive or therapeutic substance. The rolled-up inner structure of the larger piece and the remains of birch bark tar and abundant charcoals on its surface suggest it probably corresponds to a rare waste product from allothermic tar production.     

Rosa e Ballo and German literature in Italy: the genesis of an intellectual network and the production of a new repertoire in the field of theatre

Between 1944 and 1950 the publishing house Rosa e Ballo renewed the Italian repertoire of German dramatic literature by collecting translations from Büchner, Wedekind, Toller, Kaiser and Brecht in the book series ‘Teatro/Teatro moderno’. The series was designed by Paolo Grassi, who was then struggling to legitimize the teatro di regia (director’s theatre) against the dominant teatro del grande attore (lead actor’s theatre), a revolution he would accomplish after WWII by establishing the Piccolo teatro in Milan. The company and the network of collaborators set up in Turin and Milan by the editor-in-chief Ferdinando Ballo provided Grassi with an ideal instrument for his subversion in the field of theatre. In turn, Grassi’s networking in Rome, where the most recognized men of theatre were based, brought to Rosa e Ballo its most successful book series and finally a position within the field of publishing. By joining forces, newcomers in two different fields mutually contributed to their primary accumulation of symbolic capital.     

Sins of memory: reflections on the lack of an Italian Nuremberg and the administration of international justice after 1945

This article reconstructs the history of the major trial that the Allies planned to institute against the entire military command of the Nazi armies operating in Italy from 1943 to 1945. The trial was prepared on the same juridical and technical bases as the Nuremberg Tribunal, but it never took place. The reason was that it would have jeopardized the re-integration of the Federal Republic in the European community, and would also have risked placing the Italian government in the embarrassing position of having the Italian army prosecuted for crimes committed in the countries occupied by the Rome?–?Berlin axis. For those reasons, the trial was abandoned and instead only legal proceedings were taken only for some marginal cases, creating the impression that these were simply isolated cases of individual responsibility. The enigma of this missing trial and an explanation of the limits of international justice can only be understood in terms of the political situation in post-war Europe, the relations between Italy and the Allies and the double game played by the Italian government. These events served, however, to give rise to highly selective memories of totalitarianism and the war.