Creating an Imperial Frontier: Archaeology of the Formation of Rome’s Danube Borderland

For investigating the formation of frontier zones, study of changes in small communities that constituted the majority of earlier populations provides a different perspective from a focus on major centers. A network model applied to settlement and cemetery sites on Romes Danube River frontier in Bavaria, Germany, shows that many communities, through participation in regional and long-distance circulation systems, played significant roles in creating the dynamic and culturally heterogeneous character of that landscape. This approach offers a model applicable to analysis of the formation and functioning of frontier regions in all cultural contexts.     

SPATIAL HETEROGENEITY AND THE WAGE CURVE REVISITED*

ABSTRACT Most “wage curve” studies ignore the geography of local labor markets. However, when a local labor market is in close proximity of other labor markets, a local shock that increases unemployment may not lead to lower pay rates if employers fear outward migration of their workers. Hence, the unemployment elasticity of pay will be greater, the more isolated the local labor market is. Wages are also expected to be higher in regions that interact strongly with other regions. These hypotheses are confirmed by means of an estimation of wage curves with data for 327 regions of western Germany over the period 1990–1997.     

Africa's earliest bananas?

The recent discovery of banana phytoliths dating to the first millennium BC in Cameroon has ignited debate about the timing of the introduction of this important food crop to Africa. This paper presents new phytolith evidence obtained from one of three sediment cores from a swamp at Munsa, Uganda, that appears to indicate the presence of bananas (Musa) at this site during the fourth millennium BC. This discovery is evaluated in the light of existing knowledge of phytolith taphonomy, the history of Musa, ancient Indian Ocean trade and African prehistory.     

A new Palaeolithic discovery: tar-hafted stone tools in a European Mid-Pleistocene bone-bearing bed

Two stone flakes partly covered in birch-bark-tar and a third without tar on it were discovered in fluvial gravel and clay in central Italy, in association with the bones of a young adult female Elephas (Palaeoloxondon) antiquus and several micromammals. The probable chronology of the stone flakes is compatible with the late Middle Pleistocene suggested by the site's small mammals and geological context. The fauna indicates a cool stadial episode before isotope stage 6. That age means the flakes are the oldest ever found hafted with tar and indicate a greater capacity for late Middle Pleistocene hominins to utilize raw materials available during cold phases.     

"The orang lives almost next door" the correspondence between John Fulton (New Haven) and Willem Verhaart (Java)

Between 1937 and 1959 John Fulton (1899-1960), Sterling Professor of Physiology at Yale University (New Haven) and Willem Verhaart (1889-1983), neuropsychiatrist at Batavia Medical School (Java, Dutch East Indies) corresponded on neuroanatomical topics. Verhaart had easy access to primate brains in Batavia and stayed at Fulton's lab as a Rockefeller fellow (1938-1939), learning techniques of surgery and histology of the primate brain in order to apply it in his own lab. The correspondence relates of their undertakings in research, the preparations for Verhaart's stay in New Haven, the failure of subsequent research plans because of World War II, the camp experiences in Asia by Verhaart, the period of restoration after the war, helped by Fulton, and the political changes (independence) in Indonesia that finally lead to Verhaart's return to the Netherlands in 1950, where he became professor of histology and Director of the Neurological Institute at Leiden University. The correspondence shows how neuroscientists from different parts of the world cooperated. Moreover it is an example of the gradual change from a German (like his teacher Winkler) to an Anglo-American orientation in medical science that started in the beginning of the nineteenth century.     

Landscapes, Houses, Bodies, Things: “Place” and the Archaeology of Inuit Imaginaries

Although the dichotomization of space and place has spawned a lively archaeological discussion, it threatens to devolve into a troublesome binary like sex/gender. Local place-making and universalizing spatial science are not so neatly segregated. Rather than dividing and bounding the notion of an investment of locations with meaning, it can be extended to describe the intricate topologies of bodies and things, as well as landscapes. Places emerge as sites of the hybrid articulation of representations, practices, and things, as spatialized imaginaries. The notion of imaginaries and the rethinking of place are illustrated with Inuit archaeological and ethnographic examples.     

Ambivalent patriotism: Jacob Aall and Dano‐Norwegian identity before 1814

Abstract. Like many Norwegian elite, Jacob Aall (1773–1844) lived between two national identities – Norwegian and Danish. On the one hand, he was a subject of the Danish crown, educated in Denmark in the refinements of European knowledge and high culture; on the other he was a loyal provincial son of Norway, engaged in building the political and economic autonomy of his homeland. This article examines the two sides of national identity in Jacob Aall's life and work by focusing on the evolution in his understanding of the concept of the Norwegian nation. It argues that the patriotism central to Aall's understanding of modernity and the coming‐to‐age of Norway contains two disparate, but equally necessary sides. The one is characterised by an abiding sentiment of national romantic cultural belonging, the other is a learned commitment to the Enlightenment utilitarian principles that gave force to the Norwegian national movement.