Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City: Issues of Scale,Integration and Complexity

Historical archaeologists have advocated the need to explore the archaeology of the modern city using several different scales or frames of reference—the household and the district being the most common. In this paper, we discuss the value of comparisons at larger scales, for example between cities or countries, as a basis for understanding archaeology of the modern western city. We argue that patterns of similarity and dissimilarity detected at these larger scales can (and should) become part of our interpretive and explanatory armoury, when it comes to understanding patterns and processes at smaller scales. However, we also believe that these larger scale enquiries do not by any means exhaust (or diminish the importance of) the site- or household-specific questions that continue to demand adequate answers. By reporting some of the thinking behind the work that has been done in Melbourne, Sydney and shortly to begin in London, we seek to more clearly establish the value of this broader comparative agenda in urban historical archaeology.     

In Search of Free Spaces to Breathe: Turkey's United June Movement,Social Uprising,and Spatial Maintainability

This study examines the socio-spatial practices of the United June Movement (UJM), a grassroots movement that drew inspiration from the neighbourhood forums of the Gezi Park protests. We argue that the counter-sites of politicisation and symbolic places engraved on the social movements’ memory formed the socio-spatial base of solidarity networks and the long-term political organising of UJM. Secondly, we suggest that in an authoritarian context, activist organisations nourishing from full-scale protests such as UJM need to form, reshape, and sustain free spaces where they feel protected. For testing these arguments, we designed fieldwork around UJM with an ethnographic approach. We concluded that the desire for social change has the potential of generating alternative visions in a spatiotemporal context, but in the medium term, it can turn into a feeling of self-enclosure or being besieged. Even so, such attempts leave a perpetual legacy, tagged to certain spaces and geographies.     

History perceptions and national identity among Latvian youth: Entrapped between narratives of Latvia and Russia?

This article examines the extent to which history forms national identity among Latvian youth. Being a multiethnic country, Latvia provides a unique opportunity to study the role of history in nation-building among dominant and minority ethnic groups. The majority of Latvia's ethnic minorities are Russian-speaking; therefore, a peculiarity of the Latvian case is the influence of the historical narratives promoted by Russia. The research problem of the paper is the formation of national identity when a foreign country promotes distorted historical narratives to discredit a state. The empirical findings are based on 30 in-depth interviews with young people. The main conclusion is that history plays a rather limited direct role in forming national identity among youth in Latvia. The influence of Russia's historical narratives is observable but not as strong as expected in the context of Russia's influence activities.     

The international transfer of creative industries as a policy idea

This article examines the transfer of creative industries as a policy idea to Lithuania. Tracing the stages of the transfer and analysing its consequences in the local cultural policy field, this paper argues for the importance of studying cultural policy process. The findings reveal that the process of the international transfer of creative industries mattered, because it generated wider transformations in cultural policy field by having ambiguous effects on local power relations. The policy idea of creative industries opened the cultural policy field to new actors. As a result, competition for scarce state funding increased, but cultural organisations gained access to the European Union structural funds. In all, creative industries as a policy idea significantly transformed Lithuanian state cultural policy, in that it led to a reassessment of both the practices and identities of cultural organisations.     

Medieval shipbuilding in Catalonia,Spain (13th–15th centuries): one principle,different processes

Late medieval shipbuilding in Catalonia followed the Mediterranean trend in adopting a frame‐first shipbuilding principle with planking placed edge‐to‐edge. The predetermination of frame shapes using moulds had modified the construction process, as seen in the 11th‐century Serçe Liman? vessel with the use of a series of moulds, and 13th‐century Culip VI, with the use of a master mould, rising square and rule. Between the 13th and 15th centuries all known Mediterranean shipwrecks were built using the master‐mould method, but other factors caused variation in the construction process—not the principle—as exemplified by the 14th‐century Les Sorres X built with two overlain keel timbers.     

The Holy War in Syria: Cemal Pasha and the Ottoman Plan to conquer Egypt in the First World War

This article aims to analyse the importance of the Egyptian campaign to Ottoman policy in the First World War. It seeks to add to our knowledge of the Ottoman war experience by putting the focus on the empire’s preparations for conquering Egypt and by giving priority to understand the aims of the expedition. The expedition itself is placed within the context of the jihad policy adopted at the beginning of the war and which sought to put an end to the Entente’s colonial domination of Muslim countries. The Ottomans’ propaganda initiatives in support of the measures were meant to motivate support among the Syrian population through the idea of holy war.     

More than trees: The challenges of creating a geodatabase to capture the complexity of forest history

European forests have been copiously documented for centuries. However, forest-related archival sources were rarely utilised to their full potential, mainly because of the difficulties in producing compatible data from large amounts of very different sources. Furthermore, analysing such data for larger areas in high resolution was hardly possible prior to the emergence of historical GIS. This paper presents the geodatabase of the LONGWOOD project, which includes tens of thousands of pieces of information on forest history from the 11^th to the 20^th century for 3,567 townships in the eastern Czech Republic (c. 27,000 km²). The paper describes the challenges we met, briefly summarizes the results, evaluates the database in a worldwide context and introduces possible directions for future research.     

Population and forest dynamics during the Central European Eneolithic (4500–2000 BC)

The population boom-and-bust during the European Neolithic (7000–2000 BC) has been the subject of lively discussion for the past decade. Most of the research on this topic was carried out with help of summed radiocarbon probability distributions. We aim to reconstruct population dynamics within the catchment of a medium sized lake on the basis of information on the presence of all known past human activities. We calculated a human activity model based on Monte Carlo simulations. The model showed the lowest level of human activity between 4000 and 3000 BC. For a better understanding of long-term socio-environmental dynamics, we also used the results of a pollen-based quantitative vegetation model, as well as a local macrophysical climate model. The beginning of the decline of archaeologically visible human activities corresponds with climatic changes and an increase in secondary forest taxa probably indicating more extensive land use. In addition, social and technological innovations are important, such as the introduction of the ard, wheel, animal traction and metallurgy, as well as changes in social hierarchy characterizing the same period.