Tocqueville: Democratic Politics and the Modern Soul. Introduction

Abstract

This paper explores Prince Hal's relationships with his great friend Falstaff and his great enemy Hotspur, who dominate the young prince's life as he prepares to rule England and conquer France. Hotspur and Falstaff could not be more different, and seem deliberately drawn by Shakespeare to represent distinctive and opposing points of view: Hotspur is an honor-loving and courageous warrior who covets danger and fame, Falstaff a selfish and dishonorable rationalist who has no regard for danger or fame. I will argue that the lessons Hal learns from Hotspur and Falstaff, especially concerning honor, are the key to his stunning political success. While Hal seems to stand somewhere between these two extremes, and so might be characterized as moderately attached to honor, I will question this conclusion and suggest another.     

Taphonomic observations on eastern Australian Cretaceous sauropods

Cretaceous (Albian–Cenomanian) sauropod body fossils are known from the Eromanga Basin of central Queensland and Surat Basin of northern New South Wales/southeastern Queensland. Most bones are uncrushed and undistorted. Associated components of the caudal and forelimb skeleton are dominant in current collections and probably derived from more complete skeletons now lost to erosion, or yet to be exposed. Dorsal and cervical vertebrae have rarely been reported and no cranial material has yet been found. None of the Australian sauropod remains shows evidence of predation or scavenging, but at least two specimens of Wintonotitan wattsi were intimately associated with plant macrofossils allowing limited inference of their postmortem environments.     

GIS and the application of a model of pollen deposition and dispersal: a new approach to testing landscape hypotheses using the POLLANDCAL models

The recent advances in computer-based modelling of pollen dispersal and deposition through the POLLANDCAL (POLlen-LANDscape CALibration) network have enabled landscape simulations to be constructed and tested, both to validate the theoretical models, and to validate modelled landscapes using empirical data. This paper presents the first attempt to develop simulations based on real landscapes, by placing distinct vegetation communities using reclassified digital elevation models (combined slope and altitude data). The approach is tested by modelling a palynological signature for the expansion of mixed agriculture into an upland margin, and the results for 49 simulated pollen deposition sites, across an altitudinal range for a series of landscape scenarios, is compared with existing empirical data. The broad trends within the two data sets are in general accordance, and variation between them is attributed to local variation in vegetation heterogeneity. The results show that the POLLANDCAL models offer a new and exciting method by which sub-fossil pollen assemblages can be examined, theoretical models of landscape use tested, and will offer a significant tool in the interpretation of environmental data in archaeology, in particular when combined with GIS-based models of the physical environment.     

Characterising the late prehistoric, ‘Romano-British’ and medieval landscape, and dating the emergence of a regionally distinct agricultural system in South West Britain

Palaeoenvironmental evidence for the character of lowland cultural landscapes during the last 2500 years in Britain is poorly understood, owing to a combination of an over-reliance on data from upland sequences, and because lowland mires are typically located in positions marginal to areas of settlement and agriculture. This paper presents an attempt to derive environmental evidence for this time period from a lowland context in order to characterise the key periods of change and continuity in the lowlands. The study focuses on mid-Devon, in South West Britain, and uses small pollen sites which are embedded within the historic landscape. The South West is a particularly poor region for lowland environmental data, and has until now been reliant on upland sequences. The results show that continuity, rather than abrupt change, has characterised the landscape from the later Iron Age to the early medieval period (around cal AD 800). There is no palynologically distinct Roman period in the data, contrary to evidence from the high uplands of Exmoor that suggests a decline of the agricultural system during the immediate post-Roman period. Around cal AD 800 there is a change in the agricultural system from predominantly pastoral activities to one that led to relatively high proportions of cereal pollen appearing in the sequences, which is interpreted here as marking the onset of convertible husbandry, a regionally distinct agricultural system which is recorded from AD 1350, but whose origins are not documented. This agricultural system remained in place until the post-medieval period, when the predominant agricultural regime returned to pastoralism around AD 1750. The data clearly show discrepancies between the high uplands and the lowlands, demonstrating the potential hazards of extrapolating upland sequences to lowlands environments.     

Clearing the Fog of War: public versus official sources and geopolitical storylines in the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Abstract

Military action undertaken by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in 2014 has had enormous geopolitical ramifications. This resulted in what is almost certainly a permanent change in sovereign territory, with the former gaining and the latter losing the strategic Crimean peninsula. But Russia’s moves also set in motion a violent conflict in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Although the United States and the NATO alliance have advocated a geopolitical storyline that attributes blame for this to Russia, close scrutiny of the evidence they have adduced in this regard fails to establish this culpability conclusively. However, by utilizing data collected and analyzed in the public realm, it is possible to determine with more certainty that, in certain places and at given times, Russia was indeed the aggressor. The rapidly increasing amount of public-sourced information globally and the growing sophistication of analytical methods by non-governmental groups presages more complete understanding of such conflicts without reliance on official information.