Late Mesolithic burials at Casa Corona (Villena,Spain): direct radiocarbon and palaeodietary evidence of the last forager populations in Eastern Iberia

Current knowledge about the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the Central and Western Mediterranean European regions is deeply limited by the paucity of Late Mesolithic human osteological data and the presence of chronological gaps covering several centuries between the last foragers and the first archaeological evidence of farming peoples. In this work, we present new data to fill these gaps. We provide direct AMS radiocarbon dating and carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) stable isotope analysis were carried out on bone collagen samples of two single burials from the recently discovered open-air Late Mesolithic site of Casa Corona (Villena, Spain). The results shed new light on the chronology and subsistence patterns of the last Mesolithic communities in the Central Mediterranean region of the Iberian Peninsula. Radiocarbon results date the human remains and funerary activity of the site to 6059–5849 cal BC, statistically different from other Late Mesolithic sites and the earliest Neolithic contexts, and bridging the 500 yrs chronological gap of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition from the area. Isotopic evidence shows that diet was based on terrestrial resources despite the proximity to the site of lagoon and marine ecosystems. This and previous isotope studies from the region suggest a lower reliance upon marine resources than for Atlantic and Cantabrian sites, although intra-regional patterns of neighbouring Mesolithic populations exhibit both fully terrestrial diets and diets with significant amounts of aquatic resources in them. We hypothesize that in the Central Mediterranean region of Spain the Late Mesolithic dietary adaptations imposed structural limits on demographic growth of the last foragers and favoured rapid assimilation by the earliest Neolithic populations.     

Scottish national identities among inter-war migrants in North America and Australasia

Interpretations of Scottish identities have for too long been immersed in an inward-looking or domestic perspective. Where constructions of migrant identities exist they too have been influenced by developments about identity within Scotland, specifically a focus on Highlandism, by a disproportionate concentration on the Scots in Canada, and by exclusion of the twentieth-century migrant experience. This article examines the personal testimonies of Scots in several destinations and argues that they manifested a striking range of external and internal manifestations of their national identities. Unlike Irish migrants, however, whose cultural institutions served a dual purpose, allowing their identities to be proclaimed and engaging in active pursuit of political objectives, the major construction of Scottishness was internalised. Furthermore, visible expressions of Scottish identities did not generate disapproval from the public at large that the assertion of Irish identities occasionally excited. Despite its relative invisibility this sense of being Scottish was powerful and dynamic and shows a Scottish world coexisting within a British one.     

First fossil pollen record of Auriculiidites Elsik, 1964 in Australia

Macphail, M.K. & Partridge, A.D., June 2012. First fossil pollen record of Auriculiidites Elsik, 1964 Elsik, W. C. 1964. A new sporomorph genus from eastern Peru. Pollen et Spores, 6: 601–604.  [Google Scholar] in Australia. Alcheringa 36, 283–286. ISSN 0311-5518.

Fossil auriculate pollen assigned to Auriculiidites Elsik is preserved in middle early Eocene estuarine facies near Strahan, on the west coast of Tasmania. This is the first record of this otherwise Late Cretaceous–Paleocene morphogenus in Australia and possibly the Southern Hemisphere. Auriculiidites is one of several, now tropical, taxa found at Strahan and underscores the area's importance in understanding the impact of early Eocene global warming at high latitudes.

Mike Macphail [mike.macphail@anu.edu.au], Department of Archaeology & Natural History, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, ACT 0200, Australia; Alan D. Partridge, Biostrata Pty. Ltd. 302 Waiora Rd., Macleod, Victoria 3085, Australia. Received 28.8.2011, revised 5.2.2012, accepted 16.2.2012.     

Transient dwelling: trains as places of identification for the floating population of China

China has experienced massive rural–urban migration, producing the huge so-called ‘floating population’ (liudong renkou). This article attends to what it means to be thus between places by focusing on the embodied and emotional experience of migrant travel. Each year sees the Spring Festival rush (Chun Yun) with the largest annual movement of people as millions of these rural migrant laborers (nongmingong) return to their homes for the holidays. The Spring Festival rush is marked by huge crowds queuing overnight for train tickets, with throngs of migrants carrying woven bags of belongings and gifts on their shoulders, who end up standing in the overcrowded ‘hard-seat’ carriages of trains. By closely reading some of the poems from the emerging genre of ‘Hired laborers literature,’ this article explores migrants' affective and emotional journeys. It argues that this transit experience is one of the key shared sites of common identification for a migrant population whose mode of inhabitation is through circulation and mobility. It also argues that mobility creates shared experiences characterized by specific corporealities, material cultures, and senses of social stratification.     

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Historical Development of Modern Psychopharmacology

In the middle of the twentieth century psychiatry underwent a transition that is often referred to as the “psychopharmacology revolution.” Implicit in the term revolution is the idea that a paradigm shift occurred. Specifically, it has been argued that psychiatry abandoned the psychoanalytic paradigm in favor of a qualitatively distinct conceptual system based on brain chemistry. The validity of this view requires that psychoanalysis had the status of a paradigm. This paper presents evidence that psychoanalysis did not constitute a paradigm and that the advent of psychopharmacology was not, technically, a scientific revolution. Instead, the rise of modern psychopharmacology was the culmination of a linear growth of biological knowledge that began to develop in the nineteenth century.     

Re-thinking threats to architectural heritage

This paper proposes the need for heritage strategies and policies to engage with the psychological literature on risk perception because current heritage processes exclude many groups of people due to the psychological processes that are favoured in current procedures. Risk perception research has affected mitigation strategies in the realms of natural disaster planning (for example, earthquake preparedness) and, more recently, climate change mitigation. The paper outlines relevant psychological research and highlights areas that have the potential to inform heritage loss mitigation.     

Enlivened Geographies of Volunteering: Situated,Embodied and Emotional Practices of Voluntary Action

Abstract

Examining the everyday practices and feelings of volunteering, in particular their situated, emotional and embodied nature, serves to place the experiences of volunteers centrally in accounts of what matters in the doing of volunteering and goes beyond service provision or active citizenship. Using qualitative evidence from three collaborative research projects, we present enlivened geographies of volunteering which focus on: the situatedness of formal volunteering in place and the negotiation of local ‘moral economies’ of norms and expectations surrounding access to volunteering opportunities and the practices of volunteering; complex positionings of informal volunteering in biographies of social participation; and intersections of embodiment and emotions in experiences among environmental volunteers. We contribute to the development of social geographies which are ‘more-than-representational’ and argue that connecting insights on everyday practices of volunteering with wider policy and practice agendas requires a focus on the enduring, but also emergent and excessive nature of the spaces of doing volunteering, on the relational nature of volunteering, and on opening up debates in the networks of research-policy-practice which understand spaces of volunteering as entailing more than volunteering.     

Theatre sports in the Southern Ocean: engagement options for Australia in whale research protest action

In the great whaling debate, fuelled twice yearly by the annual International Whaling Commission meeting and the departure of the Japanese research fleet for the Southern Ocean, silliness knows no bounds. 2008 was no exception, as the Southern Ocean again became the location of protest action (sometimes provocative and potentially life-threatening) against Japanese scientific research vessels. The Japanese are accused of ‘whaling’ in a whale sanctuary off the Australian Antarctic Territory, yet this claim to sovereignty is not legally proven and therefore not universally accepted. The Rudd Labor Government bowed to significant pressure and sent its Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking, to spy on the Japanese fleet and gather evidence for a possible ‘world court’ action. This paper examines what options were available to Australia to intervene in the protest action, to monitor the Japanese research and to take legal action in an international forum within the constraints of internationally defined diplomatic and legal boundaries. It concludes that the risk of attracting the wrath of the Japanese government and other Antarctic Treaty countries is great indeed and the Australian government must be careful not to step too far outside these boundaries.     

Screw Threads on the SS Xantho Engine: a Case of Standardisation in 19th Century Britain

A former RN gunboat horizontal trunk engine taken from the SS Xantho (1848–1872) in 1985 was totally disassembled by May 2004. All the threads on the engine were examined and the majority were found to be British Standard Whitworth (BSW). This provides material evidence of the spread of standardisation at a time when the Royal Navy commissioned the first mass-produced marine engines and fitted them to the 'Crimean War Gunboat' types. The study also provides a pointer to the use of screw threads as a diagnostic tool in maritime archaeology.
© 2004 The Nautical Archaeology Society