Evidence of contact between New and Old World: paleoparasitological and food remains study in the Tagus river population of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo,Portugal)

The period of European maritime expansion that started in the fifteenth century had a great impact on trading, on human migrations and consequently in the dispersion of infectious diseases. Portugal was at the core of this expansion; however, studies about parasitic infections, especially helminths, are lacking. This study aims to help reduce this gap presenting the results of microscopic analysis of soil sediments collected from the São Jorge churchyard of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo). Consecrated in the fourteenth century AD, it remained as a burial ground until the nineteenth century. Soil samples collected from the pelvic girdle of five adult individuals and samples taken as control were analysed under the microscope after current conventional methodological procedures were undertaken. Eggs from Ascaris lumbricoides were identified. Also eggs of trichostrongyle type species were identified in two individuals and may represent the first report in archaeological European samples. Food remains include potato and rice starches, muscle fibres, bivalves, pollen grains and fungi spores. The stratigraphy interpretation together with potato findings put the oldest skeletons to a chronology around the sixteenth century AD. These results are consistent with historical sources that documented the prominence of Tagus river nearby villages in maritime expansion.     

(Un)Inventing America: the transpacific Indies in Oviedo and Gómara

In this article, I analyze the so-called ‘discovery of the Pacific’ and its implications for Spanish understanding of global geography, in two of the most important early histories of the early encounter with the New World: the works of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and Francisco López de Gómara. Their general histories of the Indies tackle the Pacific in their accounts of the various expeditions that Spain sent to the Moluccas and Philippines between 1519 and 1542. There we see how both historians struggle to contain the discovery that the Pacific was much broader and emptier than anyone had expected it to be, and thereby prevent it from becoming, in the Spanish imagination, an insurmountable barrier that decisively separated America from Asia. Oviedo is committed to the idea that the Indies are a single tropical expanse that can be successfully spanned by Spanish military might and navigational skill, no matter how large an ocean it contains. Gómara gives up on the unified Indies, embraces the ‘invention of America,’ but miniaturizes the Pacific in order to keep Spain's South Sea ambitions alive. Each in his own way thereby articulates the New World with broader geographies and expansive horizons.     

Ria de Aveiro A: a shipwreck from Portugal dating to the mid-15th century; a preliminary report

The remains of a coasting vessel were found in a lagoon close to the coast. Four radiocarbon determinations provided a date in the mid-15th century and it has been the subject of several seasons of excavation of CNANS. The excavation strategy is described, as are its surviving constructional details which are analysed with reference to early sources for Portuguese naval architecture. This coaster has constructional features found in ocean-going ships of the Iberian-Atlantic tradition. Its cargo of pottery is one of the most extensive and closely dated from the Age of Discovery and includes 18 forms.     

Surviving in the margins of a genocide case in the making: recognizing the economy of testimony at stake in research on political violence

ABSTRACT

In this article, we aim to draw attention to the hopes, frustrations and disillusions that so-called ‘transitional justice’ projects produce in drastically poor, war-torn, historically marginalized but politicized Indigenous communities. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research we conducted separately between 1982 and 2010 in Guatemala and Mexico, we describe the ways in which the world came to know about Finca San Francisco’s massacre, committed by the Guatemalan army on 17 July 1982, as part of its scorched earth policy. We then look at the various forms of reparations its survivors have been the subject of. In so doing, we focus more specifically on how the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), the non-governmental human rights organization that was behind the Ríos Montt genocide case, mobilized Finca San Francisco’s massacre survivors to become participants in the trial. After examining how the survivors of Finca San Francisco responded to CALDH’s mobilization efforts, we reflect on the kind of ‘gift’ these survivors expected in return for their stories of annihilation and destruction. Our goal is to bring to light the ‘economy of testimony’ that human rights activists, journalists or social scientists become entangled in once they ask genocide survivors to testify about the brutal deaths of their loved ones.     

Critical Assessment of Intensity Measures for Seismic Response of Italian RC Bridge Portfolios

The seismic assessment of a road network depends largely on the characterization of the fragility of its bridge components. The accuracy of bridge seismic demand estimates and the use of proper intensity measures (IM) will significantly influence such task. The available literature has mainly focused on buildings or a limited number of bridge configurations and IMs, which may not be representative for bridge portfolio assessment studies. In this paper, the correlation quality between a larger pool of traditional and innovative IMs and the nonlinear dynamic response of typical Italian RC bridges is investigated to identify the best-performing IMs.     

Late Triassic (Carnian) corals from Timor-Leste (East Timor): their identity,setting, and biogeography

Four scleractinian coral taxa are described from limestones within a sandstone-shale séquence correlated with the Late Triassic Babulu Formation, Manatuto township, on the northern coast of Timor-Leste (East Timor). The coral fauna consists of three phaceloid taxa, Paravolzeia tìmorìca gen. et sp. nov., Craspedophyll ramosa sp. nov., Margarosmilia confluens (Münster), and a generically indeterminate solitary taxon attributed to the family Margarophylliidae. Ali four corals are related at various taxonomie levels to Carnian faunas from the Dolomites of northern Italy. Previously, only Norian coral faunas were known from the Triassic of Timor. The fauna exhibits both similarities to and differences from Carnian faunas of the Dolomites and helps confirm palaeogeographic affinities with the western Tethys, although during Late Triassic time Timor lay in the distant southeastern portai of the Tethys. Despite isolation from the western Tethys, the presence of two species foundalso in the Dolomites indicates that larvai dispersai occurred between the two areas.     

Liquefaction-Induced Lateral Load on Pile in a Medium Dr Sand Layer

One-g shake-table experiments are conducted to explore the response of single piles due to liquefaction-induced lateral soil flow. The piles are embedded in saturated Medium Relative Density (Dr) sand strata 1.7–5.0 m in thickness. Peak lateral pile displacements and bending moments are recorded and analyzed by uniform and triangular pressure distributions. On this basis, the observed levels of pile bending moment upon liquefaction suggest a hydrostatic lateral pressure approximately equal to that due to the total overburden stress. Using the experimental data, comparisons with current recommendations are made, and the Showa Bridge case history is briefly assessed.     

First dendroarchaeological dates of prehistoric contexts in South America: chullpas in the Central Andes

Despite the existence of long-lived tree species with excellent tree-ring characteristics, the use of dendrochronological techniques for dating archaeological contexts has been very limited in South America. Recent research in the Bolivian Altiplano of the Central Andes has yielded a network of Polylepis tarapacana chronologies that goes back to the 13th century. This species was regularly used by local populations since pre-Columbian times as raw material for beams, lintels, hooks and other architectural features in houses, storage chambers, and sepulchers. The aim of this study is to argue in favor of the potential of P. tarapacana for providing high resolution dates of significant archaeological events during the pre-Columbian era. The chronology of chullpas (burial towers and storage chambers) in the southern Andean Altiplano is used as a case study. Growth rings from P. tarapacana have provided several centennial-length dendrochronological records including a reference regional chronology covering the last 786 years in the Central Andean highlands. Based on this long reference chronology calendar years were assigned to woody pieces from pre-Hispanic chullpas. Dendroarchaeological results are consistent with contextual evidence and most radiocarbon dates from woody samples and related archaeological items. Our results indicate that P. tarapacana has a high potential for providing annually-resolved tree-ring dates for archaeological contexts in the Altiplano since the early 13th century.