Explaining Shell-Tempered Pottery in Prehistoric Eastern North America

Explanations for the rise in frequency of shell-tempered pottery in the Eastern United States have vacillated between historical and functional accounts. Using evolutionary theory, the historical records of first appearance and diffusion are woven with physical properties of shell-tempered pottery that may have led to its selection. An appreciation of the scale at which change occurs and the units of analysis most appropriate for understanding that change is necessary for an explanation that can account for the widespread use of shell-tempering and the more-or-less coincident rise in its frequency. A hypothesis with empirical consequences is offered as a starting point for understanding this phenomenon.     

What else? some more ways of thinking and doing ‘Children's Geographies’

‘Children's Geographies’ could do more. In this paper we present a succession of key ideas currently arising in and of new and emergent theoretical, philosophical and conceptual work in the Social Sciences. We invite reflection upon each of these ideas in turn, with a mind, specifically, to ‘Children's Geographies’. In so doing, we make two broad claims. First, that greater engagement with some or all of these ideas might prove useful, enabling, thought-provoking, profound, constructive, challenging, telling, or interesting to ‘Children's Geographers’. Second, that—particularly given the nature of its extant concerns and efforts— ‘Children's Geographies’ could do much more to speak back to (these) wider contemporary lines of thought.     

Chlorine stable isotope ratios as tracer for pore‐water advection rates in a submarine gas‐hydrate field: implication for hydrate concentration

At Ocean Drilling Program Site 997 in Blake Ridge gas‐hydrate field in West Atlantic, pore‐water studies revealed a pronounced downward depletion of the heavy chlorine isotope to nearly ?4‰δ³⁷Cl at approximately 750 m below sea floor (mbsf) associated with a 10% downward chlorinity decrease. This is one of the stronger ³⁷Cl depletions hitherto reported for marine pore waters. Chlorinity reductions in hydrate‐bearing sediments commonly result from fresh‐water release by hydrate melting. However, in situ measurements at Site 997 suggest that >50% of the chlorinity reduction occurred prior to hydrate dissociation. Modeling the chlorinity profile shows that advection of a strongly ³⁷Cl‐depleted, low‐chlorinity water (506 mm ) from below the drilled sequence can explain the reduction prior to sampling. Fitting the model to the δ³⁷Cl curve yielded an advection rate of 0.18 mm year^?1. Diffusive mixing with near‐0‰‐δ³⁷Cl paleo‐seawater with maximum chlorinity at shallow subsurface depths (561 mm at approximately 20 mbsf) produced the smooth, steady trend. Separating that part of the freshening caused by advection and diffusion from that due to hydrate dissociation allowed estimation of average hydrate concentrations of 3.8% of the pore space (up to 24.5% in hydrate‐rich layers; near‐100% in rare massive hydrate layers). The deep‐seated source of the ³⁷Cl‐depleted, low‐chlorinity water remains unknown and might be located below the sedimentary section in the oceanic basement.     

Not just growing up,but going on: Materials,Spacings, Bodies,Situations

This paper argues that non-representational theories, relating to materialities, spacings, embodiments and events, are important to children's geographies. In so doing, it suggests in particular that we might engage with the becoming-ness of children's geographies in a number of new ways. This point is made via four (ostensibly banal, everyday) examples: wearing glasses; visiting the local park; being clumsy; and one's first day in school. Through this juxtaposition, the paper insists that children's geographies are and can be complex, mundane, unsettling and thoroughly material-spatial-embodied-evental. In other words, there is more to children's geographies than purely representational or symbolic notions of Growing Up. Rather, it is argued that there is always-already-all-sorts-going-on-…     

Is Greener Whiter Yet? The Sustainable Slopes Program after Five Years

This study focuses on two basic questions: Are voluntary programs effective in promoting higher environmental performance by participant firms? If so, which distinct areas of environmental performance are more likely to be improved by firms joining a voluntary environmental program? We address these questions by assessing the environmental effectiveness of the ski industry’s Sustainable Slopes Program in the western United States between 2001 and 2005. We found no evidence in our five-year analysis to conclude that ski areas adopting the SSP displayed superior performance levels than nonparticipants for the following areas of environmental protection: overall environmental performance, expansion management, pollution management, and wildlife and habitat management. SSP participants only appear to show a statistically significant correlation with higher natural resource conservation performance rates. For policymakers, these results suggest that caution is needed before a priori assuming that strictly voluntary programs can be effective in promoting comprehensive superior environmental performance.