Expanding the utility of Uranium-series dating of speleothems for archaeological and palaeontological applications

Uranium-series (U-series) dating of speleothems is frequently used for palaeoclimate studies but its archaeological and palaeontological applications are limited to stratigraphically significant speleothem formations, such as flowstones, to provide maximum and minimum temporal points. This study targeted soda straw stalactites for U-series dating. In contrast to other speleothem formations, soda straw stalactites are fragile, have typically short life spans (usually only years but rarely up to a few hundred years) and are frequently incorporated into cave deposits. Results of thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (TIMS) U-series dating of soda straw stalactites from palaeontological excavations at Blanche Cave, South Australia, show that small, dense, clean straws tend to yield ages closest to the time of stratigraphic deposition. A correlation between soda straw U-series ages and radiocarbon ages of charcoal from the site is shown. Multiple soda straw age determinations for a single stratigraphic unit are required in order to verify age concordance. In conjunction with other dating methods, U-series dating of soda straw stalactites may help to significantly constrain the age of stratigraphic units and associated archaeological and palaeontological deposits in order to provide more robust chronologies. Here we advocate the collection of soda straw stalactites at future excavations of limestone cave sites.     

Quasi in domo propria sub securitate sanaretur: a peace agreement between King Swein Forkbeard and Duke Richard II of Normandy

In his Gesta Normannorum Ducum, William of Jumièges related that the Danish king Swein Forkbeard, at the outset of his conquest of England, came to Rouen and met Richard II. Both leaders negotiated a peace agreement that authorized the Danes to sell their booty in Normandy and provided them with assistance and security. This article examines the circumstances and the clauses of the agreement and its place in the narrative of the Gesta. The author linked the circumstances of the agreement to the St Brice’s Day massacre, which provided him with the opportunity to present a very negative portrait of King Æthelred II. While one should be very careful about the author's claims and chronology, a comparison with other similar agreements renders the terms of the treaty, as related by William, plausible.     

L'impensé du marché

The historiography of the United States in the xviii^th and beginning of the xix^th centuries stresses the key role of market development in the economic growth of the area. Various historical schools argue over the role of moral or household economic attitudes, and over the rhythm and extent of market integration. But because of the peculiar chronology of the economic development of the United States, compared to Great-Britain, it has long been assumed that this market integration, more than any technological progress, has been at the root of the industrial revolution and of industrial capitalism. The concept of market, however, has never been itself criticized and historicized. This paper offers a historically relevant modelization of merchant activity, and offers some hypotheses on the transition from this model to industrial capitalism.     

The institutionalisation of ‘colonial geography’ in France, 1880-1940

Between 1880 and 1900, the conjunction of the development of higher education in France with the renewal of colonial expansion resulted in the creation of the ‘colonial sciences’. ‘Colonial geography’ played a key role in the development of these new disciplines, alongside ‘colonial history’, ‘ethnology’, ‘colonial economics and legislation’ and ‘colonial psychology’. This paper considers the social history of this field and of the institutions in which colonial geography was formed. This involves examination of the study of the teaching of ‘colonial geography’ in the universities and French grandes écoles, the gradual professionalisation of scholarship, and the increase in the number of doctoral theses and book publications, which all serve to demonstrate the vigour of the subdiscipline, leading to the emergence of a veritable research community. Under the Third Republic, ‘colonial geography’ in the universities was characterised by great diversity, irreducible to a single or homogenous ‘colonial discourse’.     

Geostatistical Analysis of County-Level Lung Cancer Mortality Rates in the Southeastern United States

The analysis of health data and putative covariates, such as environmental, socioeconomic, demographic, behavioral, or occupational factors, is a promising application for geostatistics. Transferring methods originally developed for the analysis of earth properties to health science, however, presents several methodological and technical challenges. These arise because health data are typically aggregated over irregular spatial supports (e.g., counties) and consist of a numerator and a denominator (i.e., rates). This article provides an overview of geostatistical methods tailored specifically to the characteristics of areal health data, with an application to lung cancer mortality rates in 688 U.S. counties of the southeast (1970–1994). Factorial Poisson kriging can filter short-scale variation and noise, which can be large in sparsely populated counties, to reveal similar regional patterns for male and female cancer mortality that correlate well with proximity to shipyards. Rate uncertainty was transferred through local cluster analysis using stochastic simulation, allowing the computation of the likelihood of clusters of low or high cancer mortality. Accounting for population size and rate uncertainty led to the detection of new clusters of high mortality around Oak Ridge National Laboratory for both sexes, in counties with high concentrations of pig farms and paper mill industries for males (occupational exposure) and in the vicinity of Atlanta for females.