Trace element discriminants between Egyptian and Mesopotamian Late Bronze Age glasses

The origins of Late Bronze Age glass artefacts found throughout the Mediterranean and Near and Middle East remain controversial. Previous analyses of major and minor elements in both Egyptian and Mesopotamian glasses have proven equivocal, revealing no significant compositional differences between glasses from these two regions. Here we present new Laser ablation-ICPMS analyses of 32 trace elements in 54 samples of both Egyptian and Mesopotamian blue and colourless glasses. Our results show that there are consistent differences between these two suites, which are not related to the colorant and clearly indicate the use of different raw materials and/or manufacturing processes. Compositional variations are related to geological controls, hence this method holds promise for the development of a minimally destructive technique for discriminating between archaeological glasses of different provenance, which will be essential in the interpretation of ancient trade patterns and contacts.     

Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

This article investigates the expression of resistance to urban redevelopment in the authoritarian context of contemporary China. Where conventional channels of public expression are closed, the very space of urban transformation becomes an important medium of contestation. Through the practice of “spatial poetics”, residents manipulate the taken-for-granted meanings attached to urban space, challenging the spatial codes that authorise redevelopment. Working across four spatial dimensions—territory, place, scale, and network—these poetic manipulations allow residents to de-naturalise existing power structures, escape their effects, and re-code space with alternative meanings. The article illustrates the practice of spatial poetics through an analysis of Ciqikou, a historic district of Chongqing undergoing redevelopment. Residents expressed their resistance to redevelopment by writing slogans on buildings slated for demolition. By emphasising relationships of scale, network, and place, residents’ graffiti challenged the territorial basis of the Chinese party-state’s redevelopment project and revalorised the neighbourhood as worthy of preservation.     

The management and memory of fascist monumental art in postwar and contemporary Italy: the case of Luigi Montanarini’s Apotheosis of Fascism

In postwar Germany, the Allies and the German authorities moved quickly and systematically to destroy or physically remove all traces of Nazi art. No such process occurred in postwar Italy. This meant that hundreds of ideologically inspired statues, mosaics, murals and other artefacts survived into the republican period. This article uses Luigi Montanarini’s mural, the Apotheosis of Fascism, as a case study to examine the management, meaning and memory of fascist monumental art (and, more broadly, fascist monumental architecture) in postwar and contemporary Italy. To date, memory studies of fascism have largely overlooked the artistic and architectural legacies of the dictatorship. This article helps to address this historiographical lacuna and speaks to current debates and controversies in Italy surrounding the meaning and significance of historic fascism.     

Indonesian quarter-rudder mountings

Ten quarter-rudder arrangements found in Indonesia are described and illustrated with evidence for an 11th arrangement. Some types have been used on vessels of over 100 tons, while others occur on offshore fishing craft and outrigger canoes. The ethno-archaeological evidence gathered in the field is used as a basis for consideration of quarter-rudders used in the Classical and Medieval Mediterranean.     

Seizing the Future: The South, Sustainable Development and International Trade

The failure at Seattle to agree the mandate for a new round of trade negotiations represents a dual crisis, not only for the trade community, but also for those supporting a shift to sustainable development. At the root of the crisis lies the North-South faultline, with an embedded sense of inequity keeping developing countries forever wary of the industrialized countries, not least on linkages between trade and the environment. But Seattle also showed that the South's current non-strategy towards trade and environment-opposing any formal linkage within the WTO, for example-is flawed. As a result, the South is now seen as the global scapegoat for inaction on trade and environment, and has shut itself out of opportunities to shape the direction of the debate. Furthermore, trade and environmental factors are being progressively linked in the marketplace-not because of the WTO, but in spite of it. The challenge for the South is to take a more proactive approach, generating a positive agenda for change based on issues of sustainable livelihoods, environmental justice and sustainable development more broadly. One starting point is to test current policy positions against the alternative visions of the future-for example, through scenario planning-and to develop a robust 'no regrets' programme for engagement. The South has the most to gain from a world structured around the norms of sustainable development, and, as a result, it has the primary responsibility for reorienting the goals of trade away from the limited agenda of 'free trade', towards the more inclusive programme of 'sustainable trade'. Whether this reorientation takes place, and whether the South takes a hand in shaping this process, will be one of the central questions for the years ahead.     

Environmental changes in the Maryut lagoon (northwestern Nile delta) during the last ∼2000 years

Here, we interpret the evolution of Maryut lagoon (Egypt) during the past ∼2000 years. Chronostratigraphy and laboratory analyses have enabled us to identify four main phases since the 3rd century AD: (1) a fluvial-dominated lagoon between the 2nd–3rd and the 8–9th centuries cal. AD; (2) a gradual desiccation of the lagoon toward a sebkha-like environment from the 9–10th to the 13th centuries cal. AD; (3) a fluvial-dominated lagoon from the 13th century cal. AD; and (4) a second gradual desiccation between the 17th and the 18th centuries cal. AD. The general aridification trend described throughout the study period may be linked to the gradual decline of the Canopic branch, which supplied the Maryut lagoon with freshwater. Nonetheless, at shorter timescales, the different phases of lagoon aridification and flooding coincide with land abandonment and irrigation works in the region. It is suggested that the history of the Alexandria countryside has been a key driver in shaping the environmental history of the Maryut during the past ∼2000 years.     

Marx,Engels, and the Ethics of Violence in Revolt

Marx and Engels's thought—combined with the way in which it has been interpreted—has tended to militate against discussion of an ethics of violence in revolt. Along with Sorel and Fanon, their attitude towards violence is often seen simply as one where the ends justify the means and where violence in pursuit of a just society is necessarily defensible. However, we can (and should) look to certain sources within Marx and Engels for inspiration for an ethics of violence in revolt, which places emphasis on the humanizing aspects of their work, on the core ideas of freedom, moving beyond dehumanization and moving beyond violence. I argue that this approach suggests an abhorrence of any violence and can thus be combined with a pacifist-influenced approach to the ethics of violence in revolt. This is compatible with Ernst Bloch's interpretation of Marxism, which he describes as “concrete utopianism.” Classical Marxism can, then, offer fruitful pointers to an ethics of violence in political change, although Marx and Engels's texts must be used with considerable care and must be combined with the work of other thinkers, in particular those who display more explicit moral objection to violence of any kind.