Atlantic salmon, archaeology and climate change in New England

A paucity of archaeological remains of Atlantic salmon in Northeast North America has been cited as evidence that the species may have been present in the region only during and after the Little Ice Age (ca. 1450–1850 AD), one of coldest periods of the Holocene. However, significant problems of preservation, recovery and identification remain. Here, improved methods of identification use vertebra structure to distinguish salmon from trout, and strontium/calcium ratios to differentiate sea-run from landlocked salmon. In addition to the Little Ice Age, Atlantic salmon is identified in tightly dated contexts at 7000–6500 and 3500–3000 calendar years BP, during climate periods that were comparatively warm and wet.     

Approximate Methods for Estimating Hysteretic Energy Demand on Plan-Asymmetric Buildings

The first step in a hysteretic energy-based design approach of performance-based design is the estimation of hysteretic energy demand in the structure. A nonlinear response-history analysis of the multi-degree of freedom model gives an accurate estimation, but it is not suitable for adopting in design. Two alternative methods, based on the concepts of modal pushover analysis (MPA) and 2D-MPA, are proposed in this article for uniaxial plan-asymmetric structures. Application studies show that both methods are efficient. While the 2D-MPA-based method is more accurate, the MPA-based method is more suitable for design adoption. Significant conclusions are given for prospective application of these methods.     

Annual Report of the Committee and Accounts for the Year 1981

Superstitious Beliefs and Practices of the Finns. I. Those relating to Hunting and Trapping. (Sttomen kansan mtiinaisia taikoja. I. Metsastys taikoja). Helsingfors, 1891, pp. 243.By John Abercromby.     

The Chronicle of Ireland: then and now

This is the first systematic analysis of the contents of the earliest monastic chronicle in the Latin west, the so‐called Chronicle of Ireland, which spans the years 431/2–911. It aims to establish the reasons for which the Chronicle was compiled, unravel the process of compilation, and challenge the generic classification of the Chronicle and other European chronicles of this kind as works of historiography. As an alternative, it is proposed that the Chronicle might have been compiled with an eschatological objective in mind. The present investigation is shown to have implications for our understanding of early medieval chronicling more generally.     

Avenging ‘Bridget’: Irish domestic servants and middle-class America in the short stories of Maeve Brennan

This article will examine the representation of Irish women servants in Maeve Brennan's short stories, first published in The New Yorker in the 1950s, and collected in The Rose Garden (2001). The Irish ‘Bridget’, the most publicly visible, if troubling, image of Irish womanhood in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, has received much-needed attention from historians and social scientists in the last decade, and is a central figure in discussions of Irish women and diasporic identity in the American context. Drawing on this body of work, and focusing in detail on key stories from the collection, including ‘The Bride’, ‘The View from the Kitchen’, ‘The Anachronism’, ‘The Divine Fireplace’, and ‘The Servants’ Dance', I argue that Brennan's reimagining of the Irish Bridget can be approached as a form of feminist revisionism, as Brennan's stories enter into a charged dialogue with the history of imagining the Irish woman servant as an undesirable but necessary presence in middle-class American domestic culture. Brennan's self-reflexive reworking of this paradigm is informed by her work as a satirist for The New Yorker, and proves an effective means of writing back to this problematic history, as she takes up recognisable tropes and motifs from earlier representations of Bridget in popular and literary culture, and alters them in knowing and subversive ways.