A benign bone-forming tumour (osteoma) on the skull of a fossil balaenopterid whale from the Pliocene of Chile

Hampe, O., Witzmann, F. & Asbach, P., 2014. A benign bone-forming tumour (osteoma) on the skull of a fossil balaenopterid whale from the Pliocene of Chile. Alcheringa 38, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311–5518.

A pathology of the fossil baleen whale ‘Megaptera’ hubachi from the early Pliocene of Chile is described. It is a bony outgrowth on the left side of the supraoccipital, which is interpreted as a benign bone-forming tumour (osteoma). This diagnosis is based on X-ray imaging and CT scans of the abnormal bone, revealing a homogeneously dense internal structure with no evidence for lytic areas. The osteoma described here in ‘Megaptera’ hubachi is the first unequivocal evidence of a bone tumour in a cetacean, fossil or extant.

Oliver Hampe [oliver.hampe@mfn-berlin.de] and Florian Witzmann [florian.witzmann@mfn-berlin.de], Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung, Invalidenstraße 43, D-10115 Berlin, Germany; Patrick Asbach [patrick.asbach@charite.de], Institut für Radiologie, Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Charitéplatz 1, D-10117 Berlin, Germany. Received 28.8.2013, revised 7.11.2013, accepted 12.11.2013.     

The House that Poison Built: Customary Marine Property Rights and the Live Food Fish Trade in the Kei Islands,Southeast Maluku

The use of cyanide to stun and capture live food fish for export first appeared in the Philippines during the mid‐1970s. Today, this technology has spread throughout Southeast Asia and the Indo‐Pacific region, causing widespread damage to coral reef ecosystems. This study examines the local political and economic changes that have resulted since this destructive trade arrived in the Kei Archipelago of the Southeast Maluku District in Indonesia. District and provincial fisheries and law enforcement officials turn a blind eye, and evidence suggests complicity by some members of the military. Many local fishermen attempt to resist, motivated more by vestigial concepts of communal village rights and rules governing access to coral reef territories and resources, than by some intrinsic sense of environmental conservation. The article challenges the romantic predisposition of indigenous knowledge systems scholarship that characterizes local knowledge and practices as inherently eco‐friendly and socially just, and argues for closer examination of the dynamics involved when local practices and institutions are integrated into larger circuits of production and trade.     

Children as urbanites: mapping the affordances and behavior settings of urban environments for Finnish and Japanese children

Increasingly, children are residing in urban environments, yet little is known about the urban affordances for children. A place-based approach was employed to map the urban experiences of over 1300 children residing in Helsinki (Finland) and in Tokyo (Japan) in terms of meaningful places (affordances), travel mode and accompaniment to these places. Shared affordances were considered behavior settings, and audited on-site by trained experts for their main function, land use, openness, and communality. Significant differences were found between countries for all affordance categories. Although differences in behavior settings were observed between countries, a number of patterns emerged: outdoor settings and those with shared communality were the most prevalent behavior settings, traffic settings were predominantly evaluated negatively and commercial and indoor settings most positively. Findings suggest that although the context is important, independent mobility and the possibility to actualize environmental affordances seem to be fundamental in both contexts as the key criteria for environmental child-friendliness.     

Three Methods for Detecting Past Groupings: Cultural Space and Group Identity

Grouping techniques employ similarities within data to create new entities, which lend themselves to the interpretation process. This article presents three different grouping approaches, each originally developed independently, and applied to a common dataset of archaeological finds. The aim is not to search for the right approach or results, in a competing way, but rather to present the methods as complementary. It is also our intention to stress that a tight connection between theory and statistical modelling is indispensable. Indeed, the use of a particular methodology must be supported by an adapted theory; similarly, a theory without a proper methodological realisation will often not have any actual utility. The integration of theory and method is exemplified in the three case methods. The first method uses metal objects as cultural indicators. The study area is divided into a set of identical geographical units, characterized according to the type and proportions of indicators and grouped using hierarchical clustering. The second approach deals with cultures as standardisations between individuals, using ‘Typenspektrum’ as significant data for identifying different cultures. Groups are defined through kernel density estimation and a cluster analysis, followed by internal and external validation techniques. A third method characterizes the funerary ritual and grave-goods, using a similarity algorithm coupled with clustering procedures to compare the graves with one another. The outcome is validated with exploratory methods and compared to patterns from different contexts. The complementarity of the results shows that each approach sheds light on a certain facet of the same whole.     

Birmingham Bog outdoor laboratory: potentials and possibilities for embedding field-based teaching within the undergraduate classroom

Providing cost-effective, hands-on field-based experiences to large cohorts of undergraduate students provides a core challenge for effective teaching and learning. This grand challenge is tackled through the construction of an exemplar outdoor learning environment within the Environmental Change Outdoor Laboratory (ECOLAB): Birmingham Bog (BB). Adjacent to the Geography building, the facility aims to produce a seamless, interconnected learning environment (in both space and time) that brings inaccessible fieldwork activities direct to the classroom at the time and frequency appropriate to the learning objectives. With the integration of this facility within a 3rd year undergraduate module, we explore through group interviews the ways in which BB adapted and influenced students’ engagement with lecture material, and the extent to which the approach can complement or replace current field based teaching activities. The group interviews identified how BB was considered an example of “effective learning” within the context of the wider degree programme. However, if confirmed, the value placed on residential field courses cannot be met by such campus experiences. Despite this, BB represents an increasingly fertile space for deeper stimulation and innovative ways of learning; diversifying pedagogical techniques and enabling students to re-engage with lecture content.     

Iron Age Burial in Wales: Patterns,Practices and Problems

Until the latter part of the twentieth century, Iron Age burial in Britain was thought to be largely archaeologically invisible. However, over the last 40 years the recovery of large assemblages of human remains, often from pits and ditches rather than beneath monumental structures, has changed our understanding of Iron Age funerary practices. The problem, though, is that the majority of this material derives from core areas of study, particularly southern England and Yorkshire. Our knowledge of burial in the more peripheral areas of Britain, such as Wales, is much more poorly understood. The perceived paucity of burials from such regions is often still interpreted as resulting from the practice of archaeologically invisible disposal methods such as excarnation or the scattering of cremated remains. This paper presents a comprehensive review and analysis of Iron Age human remains in Wales. Although the resource for study is relatively small, a variety of practices, disposal methods and treatments of bodies can be recognized which challenge our current narratives. The scarcity of burials when compared to other parts of Britain, such as Wessex, is suggested to be a result of both poor preservation and bias in archaeological research strategies, rather than the dominance of an ‘invisible’ burial rite.