Identification of metal residues associated with bit-use on prehistoric horse teeth by scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis

Our ability to identify evidence of the use of horses for transportation from archaeozoological remains is important for improving our understanding of the role of horses in socioeconomic changes throughout prehistory. When a horse is used with a bit, the bit can come into contact with the anterior (‘front’) surface of the lower second premolar (P₂). Here, results of X-ray microanalysis, undertaken in a variable pressure scanning electron microscope, of chemical elements on the anterior surface of four archaeological horse P₂ are presented. Analysis of dental materials (enamel and cementum) returned expected results, with calcium, phosphorous and oxygen dominating. Iron-rich residues are also identified on the front of two of the teeth, which are interpreted here as deriving from contact with iron bits. It is proposed that such analyses may provide a useful additional method for identifying bitting damage in archaeological horses or corroborating interpretations made from macroscopic examinations.     

Crafting Social Networks: the Production of Obsidian Stemmed Tools in the Willaumez Peninsula,Papua New Guinea

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - Widely held assumptions about static societies during the early-middle Holocene (c. 10,000–3300 BP) in the Willaumez Peninsula, Papua New Guinea...     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

Tourist territorialisation and geographies of opportunity at the edges of mass destinations

ABSTRACT

Geographies of tourism often highlight tourism's tendency to exclude or displace local economic actors. Tourism enclaves tend to be particularly exclusive at destination sites and urban centres. This study looks at the edge of a mass tourism town centre and investigates how landowners, entrepreneurs and employees retain a foothold in the face of tourism expansion. Conducted in 2014–2015, this microgeography of a tourist backstreet in Siem Reap, Cambodia comprises a survey of 73 of the occupants and over 40 follow-up interviews complemented by a photographic record of 135 premises. It found most local landowners retaining their properties, and only engaging strategically and selectively with the tourism economy. Entrepreneurial opportunities were initially taken by migrants from other provinces, and then, as tourism expanded, by foreigners and by local entrepreneurs with experience of employment in established tourism businesses. This study illustrates how tourism's territorialisation of back regions is quite different from that of front regions. Even in relatively impoverished settings, pre-tourism economic activities and business cultures may contribute to local actors being able to achieve relatively secure footholds in hybridised space at the edges tourism booms.     

The twenty‐second Katharine Briggs memorial lecture,November 2003

The elite theories of witchcraft in early modern Europe rested on the elaborate imaginary constructs of scholastic theologians, with their implications about a cosmic struggle between good and evil. These were reinforced by a range of popular beliefs and practices, and by the iconography of such artists as Bosch, Grien and Cranach. The imaginary world of witchcraft always tended towards a Manichean dualism that commanded widespread popular support, but aroused doubts among the elites. The fears on which it played, of sterility and dearth, bad mothers, and death, gave it an extraordinary imaginative appeal, which also helps to explain its reappearance in modern literature.     

Written on the heavens: Recent studies in archaeoastronomy

Aveni, Anthony F., ed. The Lines of Nazca. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1990. xii + 343 pp. including references, appendices, and index. $60.00 cloth.

Aveni, Anthony F., ed. World Archaeoastronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. xiii + 504 pp. including chapter references and index. $125.00 cloth.