Strengthening Minds and Bodies Within the French School System. Physical Education for Boys and Girls Between 1936 and 1950

Physical education has been compulsory in France since 1880. Between 1936 and 1950, expansion intensified and extensive changes were made to course content. This article assesses the ramifications of these choices through an in-depth study of four variables that defined its instruction. Even if priority was given to generalisation and equal access to knowledge, research revealed an upsurge in the fight against real or presumed student vulnerability. At the time, a strong consensus emerged with the commitment to fight frailty. This was all the more the case for young girls as they belonged to a specific group with respect to their physical make-up. The school system stressed the relevance of instruction adapted to girls even if emphasis was placed on the cultural aspect of sport content. The pedagogical programmes put into effect for youths based on these guidelines confirmed this trend. This situation raised concerns as to the role of the school system in the development of social stereotypes through a discipline that would become the focus of the French education system.     

The Cold War and environmental history: complementary fields

The Cold War was not only for the hearts and minds of people, it was also for their mouths and bellies, that is, for food, energy and raw materials. This signified a global power struggle over the control of natural resources. In addition to the increasing consumption of natural resources and resulting pollution, the destructive capacity of the weapons of mass destruction compelled human beings to recognise that their activities could ultimately endanger the planet earth. The Cold War was a propagator and framework for the birth of global catastrophism and also for the emergence of a global environmental awareness. Nature, its exploitation and also gradually its protection, opened up yet another front in the Cold War. Yet the relationship between the Cold War and the environment was reciprocal. On the one hand, concerns over environmental contamination or destruction called into question the meaningfulness of the Cold War itself. On the other hand, the specific sociopolitical structures of the Cold War deeply affected the emergence of environmental ideas, ideals, organisations and activities in different continents.     

Dogs,jaws, and other stories: Two symbolic objects made of dog mandibles from southeastern Europe

The relationship between people and dogs has its beginnings in the Palaeolithic and extends to contemporary times. This paper explores the role of dogs in Eneolithic communities from the Balkans, with a particular focus on two dog mandibles which were discovered in House No. 14 at Sultana-Malu Ro?u (ca. 4600?–?3950 b.c.) in Romania. The two artifacts belong to different excavation levels. The first mandible was identified in the foundation trench which marks the beginning of the house's lifecycle; the second was found in the abandonment level of the house, marking the end of its lifecycle. Archaeozoological, technological and functional analyses demonstrate the unique character of these prehistoric artifacts, telling the stories of those who used, sacrificed and abandoned them.     

Early Neolithic funerary diversity and mitochondrial variability of two Iberian sites

An analysis of the burial characteristics of the individuals recovered from two Early Neolithic sites in Navarre (Los Cascajos and Paternanbidea), in the Spanish Basque Country, revealed a complex funerary ritual. The individuals recovered from the Paternanbidea site were distributed in three double graves and a multiple one, while the individuals from Los Cascajos were buried in individual pit-shaped tombs; furthermore, the tombs had a variety of cultural and funerary features. The aim of this study is to evaluate the burial ritual by means of mitochondrial DNA data and the funerary characteristics of 36 individuals recovered from these two sites. The results show that the diversity of these Early Neolithic burial practices from the northern Iberian Peninsula cannot be explained by means of maternal kinship relationships.     

Microanalytical study of copper ores from the Chalcolithic settlement of São Pedro (Portugal): Copper production in the south-western Iberian Peninsula

Copper ores recovered at the third millennium bce settlement of São Pedro, Portugal, were characterized by micro-Raman spectroscopy, micro-energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (micro-EDXRF) and micro-particle-induced X-ray emission spectrometry (micro-PIXE). The collection shows the common presence of secondary copper minerals (malachite, pseudomalachite and libethenite) combined with iron oxyhydroxides (hematite and goethite), while arsenic-rich minerals are absent and, therefore, can be excluded as the source of arsenical copper. Overall, these copper ores suggest a primitive technology involving the exploitation of the superficial zone of ore bodies and reliant on the fortuitous finding of arsenic-rich sources to produce the arsenical copper alloy frequently present among metallic collections of the Iberian Peninsula.     

Revisiting interregional wage differentials: New evidence from Spain with matched employer-employee data

This article examines wage differences across Spain's NUTS-2 regions along the entire wage distribution based on matched employer-employee microdata from 2006 to 2014. Unlike previous related studies, we properly control for differences in regional purchasing power parities, which are very large in practice. Although part of the raw regional wage differences observed is explained by differences between regions in productive structures, and, to a much lesser extent, in labor forces, noteworthy, very similar throughout the wage distribution regional differences net of composition effects arise even after controlling for a broad set of individual and firm characteristics.