REPLY TO J.T. SMITH'S SUGGESTED RE-INTERPRETATION OF BARNSLEY PARK VILLA

Summary. A different interpretation of the social significance of the excavation evidence from Barnsley Park has been advanced by Mr J. T. Smith, and the excavators now compare this with the conclusions at which they themselves arrived. They ask to what extent archaeological evidence is capable of settling a hypothesis about social structure, and proceed to re-examine the evidence for the house and for the paved and stone-walled area immediately surrounding it to see which alternative is less strained. Doubt is expressed about seeing many of the very minor nearby structures as other than animal pens. The house is re-examined for original occupation by more than one household, in response to Mr Smith's main point. Multiple occupation is perceived in its later history, but not at the commencement. The excavators conclude that their interpretation is clearer as a result of this very useful reconsideration, but essentially unchanged. Barnsley Park does not provide support for Mr Smith's suggestion of kin-groups in Romano-British villas.     

The Eelam endgame?

The ceasefire agreement signed in 2002 between the LTTE/Tamil Tigers and the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) now lies in complete disarray. The civil war has restarted; at least 3,500 lives have been lost in 2006 as a result and ‘disappearances’ are also increasing. This is a particularly difficult time for the civilian population trapped between the two sides. It is not clear whether or not either side has taken clear‐cut strategic decisions or know what they hope to achieve during this unfortunate chapter in the civil war. Does the LTTE regard this phase as a prelude to somethingbigger, seeking to demoralize and weaken the GoSL security forces prior to a major offensive? Or is this a frustrated reaction to a failed peace process and a major split in the LTTE ranks? What aims are the GoSL seeking to achieve by paying so little attention to the impact of their assaultson innocent civilians in the north and east? Moreover, where does the international community turnnext? If there is to be a signi. cant victory by either side, the major obstacle and challenge in the future will be legitimacy on the one hand and governance on the other.     

‘Tangled up in Blue’: The Death,Dress and Identity of an Early Viking-Age Female Settler from Ketilsstaðir,Iceland

IN 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland. Recently, her physical remains and associated funerary goods were re-examined by an international, interdisciplinary team and formed the basis for an exhibition at the National Museum of Iceland in 2015. This paper focuses on the items of dress that accompanied the woman — born in the British Isles, but who migrated to Iceland at a very young age — to gain insights into the ways her cultural identity was expressed at the time of her death. Here we explore the roles played by material culture in signaling her identity, and the technologies and trade networks through which she was connected, visually, to Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the Viking world at large.     

Geomorphology of snow avalanche impact landforms in the southern Canadian Cordillera

Snow avalanche impact landforms (SAILs) are typically elliptical-shaped depressions bounded by an arcuate ridge located at the base of avalanche paths. The geomorphology of these features is controlled by the topography of the avalanche path, the availability of unconsolidated debris in the impact area and the ability of the avalanche impacts to displace the available debris in the direction of avalanche flow. Ground-based snow avalanches move debris by bulldozing, and airborne snow avalanches move sediment by excavation on impact .
This paper reports on the geomorphology, and surface age and stability of three SAILs in the southern Canadian Cordillera. Dendrochronology and lichenometry were used to date geomorphic activity at the sites. Evidence of present SAIL stability suggests they result from episodic, high-magnitude avalanche impact events over many hundreds of years. All three landforms share common morphologies: a water-filled bowl-shaped depression distally bounded by an arcuate ridge-oriented transverse to the avalanche path. Despite sharing many attributes, field investigations revealed that the origin of each SAIL was a function of the local variations in snow avalanche path topography and availability of unconsolidated debris in the impact area. The snow avalanche path associated with the Blackhorn site has a gentle gradient, which suggests that this SAIL is a result of ground-based avalanches. The SAIL at Spoon Lake appears to be a consequence of a resistant geologic feature that focuses snow avalanches in the impact area and results in explosive excavation. The morphology of the snow avalanche track at Peyto Lake causes large snow avalanches to become airborne prior to impacting and excavating an impact pool. All three SAILs examined in this paper are historically persistent landforms and these observations support previous findings indicating that SAILs require hundreds of years to develop .     

The commentariat and discourse failure: language and atrocity in Cool Britannia

Recent terrorist events in the UK, such as the security alerts at British airports in August 2006 and the London bombings of July 2005 gained extensive media and academic analysis. This study contends, however, that much of the commentary demonstrated a wide degree of failure among government agencies, academic and analytic experts and the wider media, about the nature of the threat and continues to distort comprehension of the extant danger. The principal failure, this argument maintains, was, and continues to be, one of an asymmetry of comprehension that mistakes the still relatively limited means of violent jihadist radicals with limited political ends. The misapprehension often stems from the language that surrounds the idea of 'terrorism', which increasingly restricts debate to an intellectually redundant search for the 'root causes' that give rise to the politics of com placency. In recent times this outlook has consistently underestimated the level of the threat to the security of the UK. This article argues that a more realistic appreciation of the current security condition requires abandoning the prevailing view that the domestic threat is best prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy. It demands instead a total strategy to deal with a totalizing threat. The empirical evidence demonstrates the existence of a physical threat, not merely the political fear of threat. The implementation of a coherent set of social policies for confronting the threat at home recognizes that securing state borders and maintaining internal stability are the fi rst tasks of government. Fundamentally, this requires a return to an understanding of the Hobbesian conditions for sovereignty, which, despite the delusions of post-Cold War cosmopolitan multiculturalism, never went away.     

‘Set in the silver sea’: English national identity and European integration

ABSTRACT. Although many short‐term reasons for a specifically English Euro‐scepticism have been proposed, a long‐term perspective is required to provide a fuller and more rounded treatment of this important and topical political issue. It needs to be grasped in terms of cultural, political and religious factors in English history, specifically, the antiquity and political character of a sense of English national identity, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the nature and impact of Protestant covenantalism. Among the factors that have shaped a sense of English national identity are its insular, geopolitical situation, the early development of a centralised English state, and the concomitant growth of a unified English legal system. To the existing sense of national identity under the Tudors was added a strong current of religious separatism, manifested first through Henry VIII's break with Rome and his vindication of monarchical supremacy in a national church, and second through the Puritan return to the idea of election modelled on the Old Testament narrative of the Exodus and Covenant of the Israelites. These currents have lent to the sense of English national identity a strong oppositional character, in contrast to the transterritorialism of Christendom characteristic of the leading Roman Catholic powers. This can be seen both by comparing English with French historical trajectories, and more recently, in terms of the separate, but allied, position of England in relation to European integration.