The relative effects of core surface morphology on flake shape and other attributes

It is long been thought that many flake attributes, including both size and shape, are largely due to the morphology of a core’s flaking surface, yet this has never been tested under strictly controlled conditions. Using molded glass cores with surface morphologies that highly resemble prehistoric ones, this experiment demonstrates that while core surface morphology does exhibit some influence on flake size and shape, a high degree of variation in flakes produced with the same core surface morphology shows that the effects of other independent variables, such as exterior platform angle and platform depth, have an even stronger effect. A major implication of these results is that current approaches to reconstruct prehistoric knapping strategies are overlooking significant sources of variation.     

Petrodatabase: an on-line database for thin section ceramic petrography

This paper presents an on-line database for the petrographic analysis of pottery and other ceramic artefacts (www.petrodatabase.com). It outlines how the system can be used by the archaeological community and anticipates its potential for greater comparability in thin section ceramic petrography.     

Taking Space: Moments of Rupture and Everyday Life in Occupy London

Taking space has been a common feature of recent social movements worldwide, and was a defining act of the Occupy movement. This article examines the taking of two spaces by Occupy London in October 2011, and argues that there was a tension between taking space as a moment of rupture, lived space‐times of intensity that provide an opening to new possibilities, and everyday life, the routines and rhythms through which social life is reproduced. My argument builds on the work of Lefebvre, bringing together his conceptualisation of “moments” and everyday life, and his radical theory of the production of space. I argue that examining the tensions over taking space provides a useful angle to explore some of the challenges faced by the Occupy movement, such as an unequal division of labour on camp, and may help in negotiating them.     

Art as research: an interview with Liliane Lijn by Barry Miles

ABSTRACT

In conversation with the biographer and author Barry Miles, the artist and poet Liliane Lijn talks about her early influences as a young American artist living and working in Paris, Athens and New York and the development of her practice between 1959 and 1970. She recalls her encounters with prominent surrealists, poets and artists of the Beat generation: André Breton, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and her enduring friendship with Greek sculptor Takis. Inspired by the experimental nature of their works, Lijn explains how her own work focused on research and invention. She describes her Poem Machines as ‘seeing sound’ and explains her growing interest in science and, in particular, light. Lijn details the long and complex gestation of Liquid Reflections, her most well-known cosmic work of the late 1960s, and how working with industry and technology allowed her to increase both the scale and complexity of her oeuvre.     

Good Iranian,Bad Iranian: Representations of Iran and Iranians in Time and Newsweek (1998–2009)

This article analyzes the ways in which Iran and Iranians are represented in Western news media sources. Through detailed textual analysis of articles in Time and Newsweek between 1998 and 2009, it demonstrates that journalistic representations of Iran and Iranians are not simply efforts aimed at describing the real Iran, but rather form the basis of what Said refers to as a powerful “community of interpretation” that often reflects and reproduces certain xenophobic stereotypes of non-Western foreign subjects. While some shifts in Western media representations of Iranians have occurred in the thirty years since the revolution, the underlying ontological assumptions of these representations have remained remarkably durable. That is to say, the dominant representational discourse found in these newsmagazines depicts the political behavior of Iranians on the basis of essentialized notions of Persian and/or Islamic civilization, while very often emphasizing the taken for granted superiority of the West. Earlier Orientalist discourses focus on the difference of non-Western foreign subjects by denigrating them as fundamentally anti-modern and incapable of political, cultural and economic development without Western intervention. This article presents an unmistakable discursive pattern in American journalism whereby certain Iranians are incorporated into Western civilization by virtue of their embrace of a Western modernity.