There's more to landscape than meets the eye: towards inclusive landscape assessment in resource and environmental management

Consideration of aesthetic values in resource and environmental management in North America emerged in the 1960s. It soon became enshrined as 'visual resource management', which emphasized a singular visual notion of aesthetics and an expert‐based approach to assessment. This paper challenges this dominant view. An empirical research study is presented in which a broader conceptualization of the landscape aesthetic and a participatory methodology for assessment were developed and used to explore the landscape experiences of inhabitants of the Cariboo region of British Columbia. Themes, categories and ideas of landscape experience grounded in participant perspectives revealed a richness of landscape and can be seen as an opportunity to supplement and enrich current landscape assessment and 'visual' management. More importantly, this conceptual and methodological reorientation in understanding landscape aesthetic sensibilities both reflects and supports the shift in current thinking within resource and environmental management more generally, from technocratic, state‐centred, expert‐based approaches to locally responsive (place‐based), participatory and inclusive approaches for dealing with environmental concerns and resource‐development issues .     

Archaeology as a Means for Peace or a Source of Violence? An Introduction

The papers in this theme issue derive from a session held at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, in April 2007. I discuss the main goals of the session, issues raised by these papers, as well as some facets of the organizational challenges and conduct of the session that add further insight into the themes of politics and ethics that we wished to raise.     

Imperial Inspections: Archaeology,War and Violence

The political-ethical complexities of archaeological work have led to this publication of a theme issue that attempts to critically consider our privileged positions as scholars, but also the limitations of our work in the context of violent conflicts. At the same time these papers show how practical remedial initiatives sought for distressing situations in which archaeologists may find themselves can often only intensify the problems.     

Palynology and archaeological inference: bridging the gap between pollen washes and past behavior

Credible interpretation of pollen recovered from archaeological sites hinges upon understanding how pollen becomes deposited by both the environment and human behavior. The environmental role has been studied to some extent, but how the activities of people have formed the pollen assemblages at archaeological sites is usually just assumed rather than considered explicitly. Moreover, the complexity involved in the interaction between human behavior and pollen ecology is seldom considered. An archaeological case study of grinding tool pollen washes highlights the ambiguities of standard practice because the results confound common assumptions about pollen washes. A series of experimental seed and grinding tool washes designed to test the relationships between the processing of seeds and the deposition of pollen help explain why, for most situations, artifact pollen washes do not provide direct or even faithful records of plant processing. These results highlight the need for further experimental research with pollen so that we are warranted in making behavioral inferences from palynology. This conclusion is easily extended to other microbotanical data classes that archaeologists regularly employ.     

Probing dietary change of the Kwädąy Dän Ts'ìnchį individual,an ancient glacier body from British Columbia: I. Complementary use of marine lipid biomarker and carbon isotope signatures as novel indicators of a marine diet

The remains of the preserved ice body from the Kwäd?y Dän Ts'ìnch? discovery were recovered from a retreating glacier in the Tatshenshini-Alsek Park, British Columbia in August 1999. Despite the remote location 80 km inland, bone collagen stable isotope analysis indicated that the individual spent much of his life in a region rich in marine foods (δ¹³C −13.7‰ and δ¹⁵N +17.9‰). Since finds of such bodies are exceptionally rare we undertook detailed lipid analyses in order to assess their preservation and determine whether they might provide new insights into the individual’s dietary life history. Molecular fingerprinting and compound-specific carbon isotope analysis were performed on individual lipids extracted from his bone (turnover approximately ≥1 year) and skin (turnover approximately several weeks). A considerable abundance was observed of C_12:0, C_14:0, C_16:0, C_16:1, C_18:0 and C_18:1 fatty acids (FAs), cholesterol and hydroxy FAs (the latter being decay products). Most unusual was the presence of long-chain hydroxy FAs (LCHFAs), 10- and 12-hydroxyeicosanoic acid and 10- and 12-hydroxydocosanoic acid, in the bone. The latter components are most likely the products of microbially mediated hydration of the double-bonds of C_20:1 and C_22:1 FAs, the latter almost certainly originating from the consumption of a largely marine-based diet. A suite of three isoprenoidal lipids, phytanic acid, pristanic acid and 4,8,12-trimethyltetradecanoic (TMTD) acid, was also detected supporting the notion of a significant marine component of the diet for a substantial part of his life. In contrast, the skin lipid composition was dominated by C_{16:0 FA}, with lower abundances being observed of the marine LCHFAs and isoprenoidal compounds, suggesting reduced reliance on coastal marine foods in the last period of life. This interpretation is supported by the enhanced marine dietary signal observed in the bone than skin FA δ¹³C values.     

Nonsense and possibility: ambiguity,rupture and reproduction in children’s play/ful narratives

ABSTRACT

Play has been widely acknowledged as a site of important processes in children’s lives, ranging from socialisation to subjectification. Little empirical work, however, has focused on the particular features of play that mobilise criticality and contestation, or that alternately enable the micro-politics of exclusion. This article draws on school-based research in the west of Ireland with young children from migrant and non-migrant backgrounds. Centring on understandings of generational, gendered and raced belongings, it examines children’s narratives of play and playful narratives that de/reconstruct positionings in peer contexts and in broader societal spaces. More specifically, it explores how the in-between and ambiguous character of children’s play practices and playful speech contribute to such multiple sites of becoming. It concludes with a suggestion for further adult engagement with these play/ful political practices, and for consideration of potential links to ‘large p’ politics in children’s lives.