Collapsing Commodities or Lavish Offerings? Understanding Massive Metalwork Deposition at Langton Matravers,Dorset During the Bronze Age–Iron Age Transition

The discovery of 373 intact and broken tin‐bronze socketed axes accompanied by 404 fragments in four pits at Langton Matravers collectively represents one of the largest hoards found to date in prehistoric Britain and Ireland. They were very probably never meant to be used as axes as the very high levels of tin they contain would have made them brittle. Many were poorly finished, with the majority still containing their casting cores. The axes are typologically dated to the Llyn Fawr metalwork phase (c.800–600 BC) and span the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition, when the production, circulation and deposition of bronze appear to have been substantially reduced throughout north‐west Europe. By placing the Langton Matravers hoard(s) in a broader metallurgical, material and archaeological context, existing theories for this phenomenon, such as the preference for iron, a collapse in bronze supply, or the sharp devaluation of a social or ritual ‘bronze standard’, are evaluated. It is proposed that the Langton Matravers axes belong to a short phase in the centuries‐long processes underlying the changing roles of bronze and iron.     

The Rolt Memorial Lecture 2017: Conserving the Waterways Heritage

ABSTRACT

This article describes the work of the Canal & River Trust in managing and conserving the heritage assets and the wider historic environment of the Trust's waterways in England and Wales. Various types of heritage assets are described, and the ways in which these assets are managed, including via archaeological recording, along with conservation-led repairs to historic engineering structures and other historic waterway-related buildings, are considered. New directions that offer effective and efficient ways of dealing with heritage assets are examined.     

The automatic production of space

This paper is concerned with the changing nature of space. More and more of the spaces of everyday life come loaded up with software, lines of code that are installing a new kind of automatically reproduced background and whose nature is only now starting to become clear. This paper is an attempt to map out this background. The paper begins by considering the nature of software. Subsequently, a simple audit is undertaken of where software is chiefly to be found in the spaces of everyday life. The next part of the paper notes the way in which more and more of this software is written to mimic corporeal intelligence, so as to produce a better and more unobtrusive fit with habitation. The paper then sets out three different geographies of software and the way in which they are implicated in the reproduction of everyday life before concluding with a consideration of the degree to which we might consider the rise of software as an epochal event or something much more modest.     

‘A “Special Relationship” sometimes in spite of ourselves’: Britain and Jordan, 1957–73

In view of Britain's role in the creation and development of Jordan, bilateral relations in the wake of the Suez crisis are an important test case of its continuing engagement, not only in the Levant, but in the Middle East as a whole. This article shows that despite the far-reaching changes which took place in British foreign policy between 1957 and 1973, Britain retained a significant bilateral relationship with the Hashemite Kingdom. Through a comparison of the role of the Western powers in the 1958 and 1970 crises, and through an analysis of the key events of the intervening years, including the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, this article explores the dynamics of this persisting relationship. It shows that the initiative often came from the Jordanian side, with King Hussein particularly keen to involve both Britain and the United States in the September 1970 crisis as witnesses to his dealings with Israel.     

The Newport Medieval Ship,Wales, United Kingdom

The Newport Ship is the most substantial late medieval vessel excavated and recovered in Britain in recent years. It was abandoned after extensive salvage, possibly following attempts at repairs to the hull. More than 23 m of the clinker‐built ship were recovered, along with significant artefact and environmental assemblages. Finds point to strong Iberian connections during the active life of the ship, which arrived in Newport in the Severn Estuary, after the spring of AD 1468. The dismantling and recovery of the ship has enabled detailed recording using innovative 3D digital techniques and approaches to hypothetical reconstruction. Publication includes a digital archive hosted by the Archaeological Data Service, a substantial report and this article.     

A past and a future for diversification on farms? Some evidence from large-scale,commercial farms in South East England

Diversification has been identified as a common response to the agricultural crisis of the 1980s and to the changing ethos of agricultural policy in the closing decade of the twentieth century. In particular, farmers operating large-scale farms have been prominent in adopting this approach, just as they were innovative across a range of farming practices in the expansion and modernisation of their agricultural production in earlier decades. Can we identify serial diversifiers within this sector of the farming community, who are disposed to react in an entrepreneurial fashion to the changing fortunes of agriculture? The paper draws on results from a survey of large-scale commercial farmers in South East England and, by examining the sequence in which various forms of diversification were adopted, identifies a temporal pattern as farmers responded to the fluctuating fortunes of the agricultural industry over the past thirty years. But has the potential for diversification been exhausted? The paper also considers future prospects for diversification within the large-scale, commercially oriented sector of the agricultural industry.     

Development of the former Radcliffe Infirmary,Oxford, 1770–1900

Summary: Archaeological excavations on the site of Oxford’s first ‘modern’ hospital, the Radcliffe Infirmary, uncovered evidence for its use after its completion in 1770 and subsequent 19th-century expansions. Providing insights into the ancillary buildings, drainage and water supply structures located to the rear of the Infirmary, among the features excavated was a stone-built soakaway serving the first laundry complex. Upon the building being rebuilt as a fever ward in 1824, the soakaway became a receptacle for unwanted pottery, glass and other finds. The composition of this assemblage provides a glimpse of the material culture of a hospital during this period.     

What Happened to the “Promised Land”? A Fanonian Perspective on Post‐Apartheid South Africa

Abstract: This paper reviews post‐apartheid South Africa through Fanon's critical analysis of decolonization. Since, for Fanon, apartheid represented the purest form of the Manichean politics of space that characterizes colonialism, a Fanonian perspective on South Africa asks to what extent has the geographical layout of apartheid been remapped? Addressing this question necessitates shifting the “geography of reason” from technical discourses of policy‐makers to the lived reality of the “damned of the earth”. From this perspective, Fanon's critique becomes relevant in two ways, first as a prism to understand the rise of xenophobic violence as a symptom of the degeneration of the idea of South Africa's “promised land” and second as a way to listen to a new grassroots shack dweller movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, that is challenging both neoliberal and progressive assumptions by advocating a quite different geographic layout for a “truly democratic” society.