SOLDERING WITH GOLD ALLOYS IN ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA: EXAMINATION OF TWO SMALL GOLD STUDS FROM ECUADOR

This paper presents the results of electron microprobe analysis of two gold studs, and their associated gold alloy solders. from La Tolita in Ecuador. Metallographic and compositional data are presented and the types of solders used are discussed.     

2. STORYTELLING

Natalie Davis is a quintessential storyteller in the way theorized by Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Michel de Certeau. Her work decenters history not simply because it grants agency and so historical visibility to those who have been hidden from history or left on its margins, but also because her stories reveal the complexities of human experience and so challenge the received categories with which we are accustomed to thinking about the world.     

The Agency of Dolphins: Towards Inter‐species Embassies as Sites of Engagement with ‘Significant Otherness’

Cetacean–human interaction, at sites where free‐ranging dolphins approach humans, is occurring more than ever before. Management policies and strategies, and their underlying research, intended to protect both dolphins and humans during these interactive events, affect the quality and nature of interactivity. The agency of the dolphins, and its representation in management schemes, is analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis of selected texts from the discourse of Dolphin–Human Interaction Management (DHIM). Analysis suggests a prevailing discourse of protectionism but also reveals the possibility for a new kind of management scheme based upon an acceptance of the ‘significant otherness’ of non‐human species. This can be achieved by means of inter‐species etiquette, acknowledging the choices made by non‐humans to interact with humans. An inter‐species etiquette, coupled with multi‐species education (education across species boundaries, designed and delivered so as to enable mutually beneficial interaction), offers those non‐human animals widely referred to as ‘ambassadors’ safe places in which to be encountered. This new form of inter‐species interaction space is named an ‘embassy’.     

The Islamic State lexical battleground: US foreign policy and the abstraction of threat

This article suggests that President Obama's consistent references to the extremist Sunni group as ‘ISIL’ (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is not a trivial matter of nomenclature. Instead, the Obama administration's deliberate usage of the ISIL acronym (as opposed to other commonly‐used terms such as ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ or ‘ISIS’, ‘Islamic State’, ‘IS’, ‘so‐called Islamic State’ and ‘Daesh’) frames the public perception of the threat to avoid engagement with the requirements of strategy and operations. Both the labelling and the approach could be defended as a response to the unique challenge of a transnational group claiming religious and political legitimacy. However, we suggest that the labelling is an evasion of the necessary response, reflecting instead a lack of coherence in strategy and operations—in particular after the Islamic State's lightning offensive in Iraq and expansion in Syria in mid‐2014. This tension between rhetoric, strategy and operations means that ‘ISIL’ does not provide a stable depiction of the Islamic State. While it may draw upon the post‐9/11 depiction of ‘terrorism’, the tag leads to dissonance between official and media representations. The administration's depiction of a considered approach leading to victory has been undermined by the abstraction of ‘ISIL’, which in turn produced strategic ambiguity about the prospect of any political, economic or military challenge to the Islamic State.