The Lower Paleolithic of Spain and Portugal

To most English readers the Lower Paleolithic of the Iberian peninsula is known mainly through a few sites such as Torralba and Ambrona, whose age and behavioral significance remain controversial. In fact, the archaeological data base for this period and region is much larger and more varied than is generally appreciated and includes primary-context sites such as Aridos that have provided unique combinations of evidence on hominid exploitation of elephant carcasses. This paper is both a comprehensive synthesis of our current knowledge and a first attempt to see patterns in the data. Every major occurrence is presented in its regional and geochronological framework; each is critically assessed for data quality and behavioral significance. Major issues addressed in this paper include the working out of regional sequences and intersite correlation, the age and significance of the oldest occurrences, the density and preferred areas of settlement within each region, temporal variation within the Acheulean, and the strength and weaknesses of the data and of our approaches to it.M.S. is responsible for the research and form of this paper; P.V. is responsible for translating, editing, and revising certain sections in consultation with the senior author.     

Blade technology and tool forms in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa: the Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort at Rose Cottage Cave

It has been suggested that between 80 and 35 ka the Middle Stone Age record of South Africa reveals episodes of inventiveness and innovation, punctuated by apparent returns to more conventional technologies. One such episode is the Howiesons Poort (HP). The appearance of a range of small geometric forms, apparently used as insets in multi-component tools, has been considered as evidence of improved hunting weapons, with possible social and symbolic connotations. On the basis of evidence such as backed tool production, small blade technology, the occurrence of typical end-scrapers and burins similar to those encountered in the European Upper Paleolithic, long-distance transport of fine-grained raw materials, and non-lithic novelties, the HP is associated with increased levels of technological efficiency and with behavioral innovations that could have allowed the expansion of African populations to other regions. Yet our knowledge of HP technology and tool production is limited to the analysis of Klasies River Main site by Singer and Wymer and Sarah Wurz, and a few preliminary reports from other sites. This is why we present here a detailed technological and typological analysis of several HP and post-HP assemblages from the well-excavated, well-dated and well-stratified site of Rose Cottage. Our analysis shows: (a) that the HP blade production was a real technical innovation, but was not based on indirect percussion, as often suggested; (b) that blade production was based on the use of marginal percussion which does not occur in the blade production of the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic; (c) that the tool kit was dominated by backed pieces, but not all can be considered as hunting weapons; (d) that neither end-scrapers nor burins are typical of this industry and are no more an antecedent to the European Upper Paleolithic than the end-scrapers and burins of the Middle Paleolithic; (e) that patterns of raw material procurement do not conform to models based on evidence from Klasies; (f) that diachronic changes within the Rose Cottage sequence indicate slow, gradual abandonment of the technological style of the HP; (g) that the post-HP assemblages are of MSA character and are typologically and technologically quite similar to the European Middle Paleolithic; (h) that the lack of persistence of the HP innovations is in need of an explanation. The HP is not a monolithic entity. Implications for the symbolic interpretations of the HP phenomenon are discussed.     

Thinking Transition ‘From the Outside’: An Analysis of the Film De L’argentine by Werner Schroeter

The present article concentrates on the analysis of the film De l’Argentine/De la Argentina/For example Argentina (Werner Schroeter, France/Argentina, 1983–1985) as a way of access to a number of specific problems concerning the process of Argentinean democratic consolidation. It is a film that was only screened in Argentina for the first time in 2013, after a copy was found at the French Cinémathèque. Like other films produced in the context of dictatorship and democratic transition, Schroeter’s film has tended to think Argentina ‘from the outside’, that is, with a view marked by strangeness. These are documentaries which reflect upon physical and temporal distances, but, not the least, through cultural and ideological remoteness. On the basis of an analysis framed within Documentary Theory and the Sociology of Culture, this article seeks to make a contribution by way of an original perspective on a political film which, as far as we know, has not been addressed yet by Film Studies.     

The Still Bay points of Blombos Cave (South Africa)

We present the results of a technological and morphometric analysis of all the Still Bay points (n = 371) recovered from the 1993 to 2004 excavations at Blombos Cave. We have been able to reconstruct the manufacturing sequence of the bifacial points from initial shaping, by direct internal percussion, to finished morphology, by direct marginal percussion. Identifications of impact fractures and manufacturing breaks are based on comparisons with experimental and archaeological bifacial points of verified function, i.e. Paleoindian points from bison kill sites, replicates of Solutrean points mounted as spear-heads or arrowheads and shot into adult cattle, and experimental replication on local raw materials. Our analysis shows that: (a) only a minority of the points are finished forms, and that a large number of pieces are production failures, a situation known at bifacial point production sites of later ages; (b) morphometric and impact scar analyses should take into account this process and distinguish finished points from preforms and unfinished points; (c) there were at least three different kinds of raw material sources and that there is a marked increase in the frequencies of silcrete with respect to the M2 and M3 phases at Blombos; (d) three kinds of evidence prove that some of the points were hafted axially and used as spear tips; (e) production of bifacial points was a primary activity at the site but the hypothesis of intergroup exchange of Still Bay points cannot be sustained on the basis of present evidence; and (f) the Still Bay phase appears to initiate a trend to relatively rapid changes in specialized hunting weaponry and that this innovation is congruent with other innovations such as bone tools, shell beads and engraved ochre of the M1 and M2 phases at Blombos.     

Stone tools for the hunt: points with impact scars from a Middle Paleolithic site in southern Italy

We present the find of impact scars on six Middle Paleolithic points from the rock shelter site of Oscurusciuto in southern Italy, dated to MIS 3. We review our knowledge of hunting weapons in the European Middle Paleolithic, the available evidence for the use of Mousterian points as spear tips and the interpretations of impact scars. Our identifications are based on comparisons to similar scars observed on experimental material and archaeological material of known function, made of the same raw materials (cryptocrystalline varieties of silica) as the points from the Oscurusciuto site. The scarce evidence available prior to our work suggested that at least some Mousterian points were used to tip hand-delivered spears already by MIS 6 (i.e. between 186 and 127 ka). The evidence from Oscurusciuto confirm that Neanderthals in Western Europe sometimes used Mousterian points to tip spears to hunt large and medium size mammals, like the fauna present at the Oscurusciuto site. The significance of this sample is not diminished by its small size, as indicated by a discussion of the factors that influence the frequencies of impact scars in different archaeological samples and a review of comparable evidence from residential sites of similar and younger ages.     

Training and Maritime Archaeology in a University Context

This paper draws on experience gained by Bournemouth University to consider undergraduate education in maritime archaeology. At Bournemouth maritime archaeology is taught firmly in the context of a broader archaeological education. Archaeological programmes vary with the institutions within which they are taught, each programme thus having an individual character that separates it from that of other institutions and further enriches the subject through the breadth of this education. At Bournemouth the value of teaching archaeology with a high component of practical experience has been long understood. This does not mean that archaeology is taught as a purely practical subject but as one within which experience in the field is seen as a worthwhile focus. Bournemouth’s programme therefore recognises the value of field research projects as learning environments for undergraduates studying maritime archaeology. The programme is subject to a number of constraints, notably the size of the archaeological employment market, levels of pay within that market, questions of ongoing professional development after graduation, and the requirements of other employment markets into which archaeological graduates enter. This paper argues that research project-based learning, and in particular, involvement with amateur groups, provides a way to balance these constraints and supports development of both technical and transferable ‘soft’ skills.

Banal and everyday (inter)nationalism: French and Italian anarchist exiles in London, 1870s–1914

This article explores the anarchists' multilayered theoretical and practical engagement with the concepts and performance of nations, nationalism and national belonging, by applying the frameworks of banal nationalism (understood as an ideology) and everyday nationhood (the daily practices in which nation and nationhood are enacted) as analytical categories, to investigate the Italian and French anarchist exile groups in London between 1870 and 1914. Adopting these theoretical categories proves fruitful in probing the anarchists' perception and enactment of the idea of nation and national belonging, contributing to the literature on the relationship between pre-1914 socialist movements and (inter)nationalism and highlighting the specificity of anarchism therein. Using Fox and Miller-Idriss's four categories of everyday nationhood, we show that while the anarchists explicitly subverted the everyday performance of nationhood, redeploying it along internationalist lines, some forms of attachment to the national did endure and were in fact not always contradictory with anarchist internationalism. Looking at the exilic rituals of this intensely diasporic group thus complicates the simplistic but still pervasive view of a monolithic ideological internationalism and rejection of the national on the part of anarchists.     

Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of the Urban Building Environment in Nablus,Palestine

ABSTRACT

This article describes a specifically developed framework to produce a seismic physical vulnerability model of residential buildings in Nablus (Palestine) within the European project SASPARM2.0. Based on the structural taxonomy of the territory, two different forms were defined to collect geometrical and structural data of buildings by different stakeholders (citizens and practitioners). This data was then employed to produce fragility curves using the mechanics-based procedure SP-BELA. To estimate seismic risk, the developed fragility model was combined with a hazard curve for the corresponding location. The described procedure is implemented in a WebGIS platform that allows to georeference and assess the surveyed buildings and define retrofitting strategies. Finally, the article carries out a comparison between the fragility curves of buildings in Nablus and the ones calculated for similar building typologies within a UNDP Jordan project aiming at the integrated risk assessment in Wadi Musa and surroundings.