A place in the sun: the British housing market’s (de)construction of Andalusia

Abstract

Andalusia has become one of the main destinations for British residential tourists, attracted by leisure, a mild climate and the search for a better lifestyle. Prompted by its interest in selling houses, the real estate industry has devised an image of the Andalusian landscape that is, to all intents and purposes, partial and biased. The purpose of this research is to assess the importance of the elements and features that characterise this particular vision of this Spanish region, paying particular attention to more rural inland areas. For this, an empirical study has been conducted based on content analysis of real estate websites targeting British buyers. This study has revealed that: (i) the misrepresented and romantic projection of the image of Andalusia still persists to a certain extent. Among the main elements and attributes that characterise the landscape are all those that emphasise the region’s sublime, picturesque and exotic nature; other main landscape qualities and unique areas, specifically, any that today enjoy natural or cultural legal protection due to their heritage value, are less important in this cultural construction; (ii) the various parts of Andalusia are treated unequally. Malaga province and the rest of the Baetic Mountains are much better represented than other areas (the Guadalquivir Valley and the Sierra Morena mountains). This imbalance sometimes results in a distorted construction of the territory. This way of conceiving Andalusia puts Malaga at the heart of the region, and the further from the Costa del Sol, the more peripheral the regions become; (iii) the complexity of the landscape as a cultural expression is reduced to a set of simplified features that can be easily digested by a social group focused not on experiencing, but on consuming the landscape.     

Nunc autem a Gothis subversa: the province of Alicante and the Spanish Mediterranean towns between the Byzantine and Visigothic periods

The transition between the sixth and the seventh centuries in the towns of Iberia has been a matter of much discussion, leading to the development of the ‘urban renewal’ model, by which the Visigothic process of state formation generated a new urban munificence. A similar process can be seen in the towns of the Byzantine area, and our aim is to discuss the evolution of the urban settlements of the modern province of Alicante, reassessing the available evidence and comparing it with the models proposed for the Byzantine and Visigothic areas.     

The Port‐Vendres 4 Shipwreck Cargo: evidence of the Roman wine trade in the western Mediterranean

The Port‐Vendres 4 shipwreck is evidence of coastal export trade between Hispania Citerior and Narbonne in 40/30 BC. The cargo is made up of a particular assemblage of Roman wine amphoras (Pascual 1, Dressel 1B and Lamboglia 2) destined for Gallic markets. Archaeological and archaeometric analyses conducted on a selection of the amphoras allowed the provenance of the cargo to be identified as Hispania Citerior and the central‐southern Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. Iluro and/or Baetulo are proposed as the ports of departure, enabling the reconstruction of the trade route and the historical and economic significance of this shipwreck.     

Physical Properties of Cement-Based Paste and Mortar With Dehydrated Cacti Additions

This article presents results for the physical characterization of mortar cubes fabricated with botanical (green) dehydrated additions such as nopal (Opuntia ficus indica) and aloe vera. A total of 84 mortar cubes were fabricated with and without these natural additions and tested for a period up to 900 days. Mortar without such additions served as controls. The natural dehydrated additions, nopal and aloe vera, were mixed with CPO cement (the name used in Mexico for type I Portland cement) at different percent replacements (0%, 1%, 2%, and 4%). To characterize physical properties of such mixtures, four tests were performed at ?900 days: total void content, compressive strength, ultrasound wave propagation, and wet electrical resistivity. Marginal improvements were observed within the dehydrated aloe vera replacement mixtures. Dehydrated nopal additions did increase the physical performance of the mortar with time.     

Fought under the walls of Bergida: KOCOA analysis of the Roman attack on the Cantabrian oppidum of Monte Bernorio (Spain)

As conflict archaeology has matured as a discipline, there have been calls for more unified analytical techniques. Several researchers advocate the adoption of codified analytical and planning concepts used by the United States Army. One of these concepts, KOCOA Terrain Analysis, shows promise as a locational and analytical aid in archaeological contexts. Defining terrain features are identified and categorized according to well-defined terminology, allowing for a detailed analysis of the effects of terrain on military operations. KOCOA’s structure and codification render the concept transferable between researchers and diachronically across different site types. KOCOA has only rarely been utilized outside the United States and only on historical battlefields. The ongoing archaeological research at the Monte Bernorio oppidum (Palencia, Spain) provides an opportunity to utilize KOCOA in a classical, proto-historical archaeological context.     

The potential of paleoethnobotanical evidence for the study of Teotihuacan foodways

Macro- and microscopic plant remains recovered from excavations at Teotihuacan over several decades contribute to an understanding of the subsistence resources available to the city’s inhabitants. However, associated contextual evidence may be inconclusive regarding the specific uses of the plants in question and, particularly, whether their presence or relative abundance indicates processing and consumption or the consequence of depositional processes. While the analysis of archeological plant remains is necessarily an interdisciplinary endeavor, involving aspects of botany, ecology, ethnography and history among other disciplines, contextual archeological evidence provides the matrix for interpretation. In this paper, we explore direct archeological evidence for plant use, considering the significance of appropriate contextual evidence (e.g., activity areas, associated ceramics, lithics, etc.) and the potential complementary role of analytical techniques such as residue analyses, and carbon isotope signatures in faunal and human osteological remains as well as stratigraphic sediments.     

The Nice Musical Chairs Model: Exploring the Role of Competition and Cooperation Between Farming and Herding in the Formation of Land Use Patterns in Arid Afro-Eurasia

Following a strictly theory-building approach, we developed an agent-based simulation model, the Nice Musical Chairs model, to represent the competition between groups of stakeholders of farming and herding activities in the arid Afro-Eurasia. The model deepens the questions raised by the results of our former model, the Musical Chairs model, and further introduces three socio-economic mechanisms, which modulate the behavior and performance of stakeholders and their groups. First, we define land use pairing as the awarding, regarding productivity, of any direct cooperation between farming and herding within a group. Second, group management is modeled as the prerogative of a group leadership to manage stakeholders to pursue a particular proportion between farming and herding. Third, we introduce restricted access to pasture as the engagement in territorial control of rangelands in opposition to an open access regime. An exhaustive exploration of scenarios and parameters placed the control over rangelands as the most significant factor in the formation of land use patterns, followed by land use management. While the effect of land use pairing is mild in comparison, it is still a significant factor in group selection and thus in the persistence of particular land use patterns in the long run.     

First Evidence of Collective Human Inhumation from the Cardial Neolithic (Cova Bonica,Barcelona, NE Iberian Peninsula)

Excavations at Cova Bonica (Barcelona, Spain) have revealed 98 human remains, grouped into five age clusters and corresponding to a minimum of six non-articulated individuals. The remains are clearly associated with Cardial pottery, lithic artifacts, and ornaments suggesting an Early Neolithic horizon. The radiocarbon dating of three human individuals provides a reliable attribution to this period, with a range between ca. 5470 and 5220 cal b.c., identifying it as one of the few assemblages of human remains directly dated from this period. These remains correspond to a rare collective human inhumation and join a growing body of samples from the Cardial Neolithic, which is providing some of the important sites for the study of population movement and the spread of Neolithization along the western Mediterranean coast.