Funerary practices and kinship in an Early Bronze Age society: a Bayesian approach applied to the radiocarbon dating of Argaric double tombs

The main aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis on kinship relations (affinity/marriage vs descent/consanguinity, and matrilocality) expressed in the funerary record of the El Argar Bronze Age society (South-east Iberia, 2200–1550 cal BCE), taking into account the absolute chronological dimension of double adult tombs. A set of 23 double tombs having radiocarbon dates for both skeletons were selected, and radiocarbon calibration and Bayesian probability analysis was conducted. The results support the ‘descent’ hypothesis, since for most of the cases the chronological distance between individuals buried together was larger than two decades. Finally, several guidelines for future research are suggested in order to overcome shortages in current chronological and archaeological data.     

The role of arsenic in Chalcolithic copper artefacts – insights from Vila Nova de São Pedro (Portugal)

The Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro (VNSP) is an emblematic settlement located at Azambuja, Portuguese Estremadura. It was occupied during the third and second millennia BC, predominantly during the Chalcolithic period. A diversified collection of 53 copper-based artefacts (most part in a fragmentary condition), belonging to an extensive metallic collection recovered during excavations carried out in VNSP, was studied using micro-EDXRF spectrometry, optical microscopy and SEM-EDS. Additionally, Vickers microhardness measurements were performed to establish the effectiveness of the thermomechanical treatment in the hardness of the artefacts. Results show that the Largo do Carmo, artefact collection is mainly composed of copper or arsenical copper, being 37% of the artefacts made of copper alloyed with arsenic (As > 2%). A statistically significant association was found between copper alloyed with arsenic and artefacts classified as tools/weapons (arrowheads, daggers and knives). In several cases, the presence of arsenic rich phases in the microstructure, resulting from an inverse segregation phenomenon, shows no evidence of chemical homogeneity control during the artefact manufacture. Microstructural analyses also show that the majority of this group (73%) was shaped with forging plus annealing operation cycles and 23% of the artefacts received a final cold hammering after the forging and annealing. An association between the presence of a final forging treatment and artefacts presenting higher arsenic contents was also identified. Nevertheless, no direct correlation was found between the arsenic content of the alloy and its hardness. Also no direct correlation was found between the hardness and a final forging operation. However, it was observed that a harder forging was applied to the cutting edge of the artefacts and consequently a high hardness in this area was obtained despite the arsenic content of the alloy. Concerning arsenical copper alloys, all evidences point out that the potential for obtaining a harder material was not recognized by the ancient metallurgists and the selection of the alloy was possibly made based on colour.     

The Henequen Ports of Yucatan’s Gilded Age

Over the last two centuries, the coast has played a major role in the economy of Yucatán, and has served as a key venue in its growing engagement in the global economy. A prominent chapter in this history took place during the Gilded Age (1860–1915), which saw the emergence of a powerful plantation class whose wealth was based on meeting international demand for the fiber of the agave, or henequen plant, which was used to manufacture rope, cordage, and twine. The cultivation of this plant gave rise to hundreds of plantations, and an accompanying infrastructure of haciendas, fiber processing plants, and an extensive regional network of railways for transporting henequen to the port of Progreso, from whence it was exported to North America and Europe. As part of this infrastructure, several plantation owners laid rail lines from their haciendas to the coast and built small ports for shipping their henequen to Progreso. These ports, which are documented in these pages, represented a substantial capital outlay, and were built under the shadow of the gathering clouds of the Mexican Revolution. Viewed in retrospect, they offer an insightful perspective on the economic outlook of the Yucatecan elites in the dawn of the modern age.     

Reasons for Clustering of Creative Industries in Italy and Spain

Creative industries and creative employment tend to concentrate around medium and large cities, forming creative local systems. We follow a multidisciplinary approach, based on cultural and creative economics, evolutionary geography and urban economics, in order to analyse the forces behind the clustering of employment in creative industries in a comparative analysis of Italy and Spain. The results show different patterns of clustering of creative employment in both countries. The historical and cultural endowments, the average size of creative industries, the size of the place, the productive diversity, and the concentration of human capital and creative class have been determined to be common factors leading to a concentration of creative firms and creative employment in both countries.     

Comparing Outsourcing Patterns in Domestic and FDI Manufacturing Plants: Empirical Evidence from Spain

To fully understand the local linkages of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) plants, we argue it would be useful to analyze the outsourcing patterns of such plants in comparison to domestic plants. Consequently, we examined 1031 industrial plants, both domestic and foreign, located in Spain. The FDI plants show patterns similar to those of domestic plants with regard to the level of outsourcing, the incidence of outsourced production on the companies’ total sales and the economic content of outsourcing relationships. Further, our results show that levels of embeddedness in the local and regional economy of FDI plants are not significantly different from domestic plants. However, FDI plants are highly concentrated spatially in the largest industrial agglomerations. For such plants, Barcelona not only seems a preferred site for location but also for contracting manufacturing tasks.     

Paleoenvironmental catastrophies on the Peruvian coast revealed in lagoon sediment cores from Pachacamac

Paleoenvironmental reconstruction combining data from diatom, pollen, macrophytic, and archaeological analyses had not been attempted previously for coastal Peru. We analyzed two radiocarbon-dated sediment cores extracted from the “sacred” Urpi Kocha Lagoon at the pre-Hispanic religious center of Pachacamac (ca. AD 350-1533), near Lima, to characterize the paleoenvironment of the site. The data reveal an environmental history characterized by alternating periods of severe drought and catastrophic flood. Recurrent pulses with distinctive sediment, diatom, pollen, and macrophytic characteristics reflecting variations in water depth, substrate, turbidity and salinity, usually contain a thick basal sandy storm deposit overlain by thin organic accumulations of peat, gyttja, and snails. The most intense of these disturbance pulses, when correlated with pollen, plant macrofossils, radiocarbon dates, and regional proxy data, provide local evidence of four major floods associated with sustained, catastrophic El Niño events, tsunamis and/or severe storms in the Andean highlands over the last 2000 years.     

Institutional Change in Land Planning: Two Cases from Galicia

Why do societies implement land policies? A number of arguments have been put forward in the literature, ranging from economic conceptions based on market failure and the problem of negative externalities to a more social conception based on welfare distribution and collaborative planning. However, neither all societies with similar market failures or negative externalities develop and implement land planning nor implemented land planning always results from collaborative planning. The arguments found in the literature seem not to fit the reality and, in most cases, cannot explain why societies create or undertake innovations in land planning. Within the framework of institutional change theory and based on the analysis of the emergence of two land planning devices—a land use law and a land banking law—in Galicia, Northwest Spain, this paper argues that land planning is developed to tackle negative outcomes of former institutional setups. However, the negativity of such outcomes is measured not in terms of economic performance, but in terms of social acceptance. The search for a workable definition of property within the Galician society seems to be the main driver of institutional change in land use planning analysed in this paper.     

Slave Communities and Pottery Variability in Western Brazil: The Plantations of Chapada dos Guimarães

In the region of Chapada dos Guimarães, Western Brazil, planters relied heavily on slave labor during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this article, we examine the locally produced pottery found on slaves contexts in five rural sites of this region. Based in data from probate inventories and the pottery decorative variability we suggest that slaves used decorated pottery to express cultural and social differences.     

A Typology of Spatial and Temporal Scale Relations

A simple typology of relations between any two geographical scales is established by qualitatively comparing their respective grains and extents. This typology is applied to spatial, temporal, and spatiotemporal scales. It describes seven relations between any two scales in either space or time. These basic relations yield a set of 169 qualitatively different spatiotemporal scale relations, a subset of which is portrayed dia‐grammatically. If it is possible to transform processes or patterns from one scale in the relation to the other, up to four scaling methods may need to be simultaneously applied, depending on the relation. Scaling methods might be classified as forms of grain generalization, grain decomposition, extent extrapolation, or extent selection. This typology may also provide a framework for investigations of dependencies between scales, as well as a reference scheme for observations of scale nonstationarity. The possibility is offered that any relation that forms a nonintersecting hierarchy in either space or time is a relation between essentially independent scales. However, the use of this typology is contingent on a number of factors, and it is offered as a tool, rather than a solution, for problems of scale.     

War and city size: The asymmetric effects of the Spanish Civil War

Populations are affected by shocks of different kinds, and wars, a priori, may be among the most prominent. This article studies the effect of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) shock on the distribution of population, especially on cities. One of the main contributions of this study is that it underlines the importance of distinguishing between winning and losing sides, an aspect which until now has been largely overlooked. While previous research on war shocks has also tended to be concerned with inter-state wars, this paper concentrates on a civil war. We take advantage of a new, long-term, annual data set. Our results show that, overall, the Spanish Civil War did not have a significant effect on city growth. However, we also find a significant and negative effect in the growth of cities that aligned themselves with the losing side. These results are robust to heterogeneity in the effect of the war shock, measured as war severity and duration. Although short lived, the temporary effect on growth results in a permanent effect on the size of cities on the losing side.