Modelling land use around an early Neolithic timber ‘hall’ in north east Scotland from high spatial resolution pollen analyses

A methodology is described by which spatial patterns of land use were reconstructed from pollen analyses on anthropogenic sediments at a recently excavated early Neolithic timber ‘hall’ in north east Scotland. The anthropogenic sediments were from a deep, small diameter pit within the building. They present numerous taphonomic and interpretative challenges to the analyst, but from this type of deposit, the power to estimate quantitatively the vegetation structure around the archaeological site makes such difficult deposits very significant. A rigorous methodology is firstly described, therefore, by which confidence in ecological interpretation can be established. Secondly, the source of pollen in the deposit is evaluated. Thirdly, the possible pollen source area and structure of the surrounding vegetation are estimated by quantitative simulation modelling. Finally, these analyses are compared with region-scale pollen analyses from nearby conventional wetland deposits with much larger pollen source areas. The pollen assemblages recovered probably reflect land uses adjacent to the ‘hall’ and up to 2.5 km around. Cereal cultivation was the most important land use immediately around the ‘hall’, possibly grown between stands of scrub Corylus (hazel) woodland. These intensive but local-scale land uses cannot be discerned in region-scale pollen analyses.     

A good social work: women's clubs, libraries, and the construction of a secular society in Utah, 1890-1920

After the renunciation of polygamy, Mormon women formed secular women's clubs as a means of collaborating with non-Mormon women in the construction of a shared secular society. Their common goal was the establishment and maintenance of the mainstream American social order. Activity in these clubs extended women's sphere into the public realm through socially acceptable public activities such as the temperance cause, civic improvements, political reform movements, and child welfare. The women campaigned for public support of libraries as institutions that would construct, preserve, and transmit American culture, educate the young, strengthen the home and family, and reform society.     

From ‘Landsman’ to ‘Seaman’? Colonial discipline,organisation and resistance in the Royal Indian Navy, 1946

In February 1946, 20,000 sailors of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) mutinied over a number of grievances, from the poor quality of their food to demands for an independent India. Drawing on archival research in the UK and India, this paper uses this event, together with an examination of life in the RIN more generally, to explore how colonial discipline was organised and resisted in specifically maritime ways. By examining the practices and organisational structures of the RIN which attempted to discipline sailors, and in turn how these were resisted and negotiated, it is argued that the spatial politics of life in the Navy created distinctly maritime social and cultural relations. These maritime, naval understandings of space and place add to our understandings of the ways in which colonialism worked in practice. The paper therefore not only adds to work about colonialism's attempts to discipline and order its subjects but also contributes to debates on the geographies of the sea.     

The evolution of the cultural policy regime in the Anglophone Caribbean

This paper addresses the complexities involved in developing cultural policies in the Anglophone Caribbean. The first section examines the evolution of the cultural policy agenda in the 40‐odd years since the independence era. It traces and analyses the policy trajectory from one that sought to promote the intrinsic values of culture, to one that currently espouses the more instrumental value of the cultural industries. The next section analyses the efficacy of the policy path by examining a regional cultural policy initiative, the Caribbean Festival for the Arts (CARIFESTA). The paper suggests that the Caribbean cultural policies have under performed because of critical disjunctures. These generally involve the imposition of a nationalistic policy framework on the transnational structure of the Caribbean cultural sector. The paper concludes by suggesting a regional cultural approach to policy formulation can provide a more effective mechanism to encourage and harness the cultural wealth of the Anglophone Caribbean.     

Charmers and Charming in England and Wales from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

Charmers have long been recognised as an important aspect of folk medicine. Unfortunately, however, they have usually been conflated with cunning-folk and consequently the welldefined tradition of charming has been rather obscured. Charmers were quite a diverse group of healers but, in general, they all shared several characteristics that separated them from other practitioners of folk medicine. Popular faith in charmers was undoubtedly very strong, and several traditional forms of charming have continued up till recently. The present article not only examines the question of who the charmers were, but also explores their practices and their place in a wider religious and medical context. It is a companion-piece to the author's previous article published in Folklore 107 (1990):19–31.     

The Nightmare Experience,Sleep Paralysis,and Witchcraft Accusations

Witch-trial records, and other early-modern writings on witchcraft, reveal that in various European societies people complained of being physically oppressed at night by witches and other supernatural beings, the victims of these nocturnal assaults describing a similar set of symptoms. Contemporary English authors termed the experience the "mare" or "nightmare." In the twentieth century, it has been identified as a manifestation of "sleep paralysis." Medical studies and surveys of the condition help us make better sense of the historical accounts, while an awareness of the historical evidence illuminates modern reports of sleep paralysis experiences. [1]     

Débats autour de l'école

Altschull, E., Le Voile contre l'école (Seuil, 1995), 278 pp., 110F., ISBN 2 02 022748 7 Soubré, L, l‘Ecole sous pressions (Stock, 1995) 241 pp., 110F, ISBN 2 234 04508 8.     

Ichnofacies of the Stairway Sandstone fish-fossil beds (Middle Ordovician,Northern Territory,Australia)

The Stairway Sandstone is a 30–560 m thick succession of Middle Ordovician siliciclastic sedimentary rocks within the Amadeus Basin of central Australia, deposited in the epeiric Larapintine Sea of northern peri-Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone is significant as one of only two known Gondwanan successions to yield articulated arandaspid (pteraspidomorph agnathan) fish. Herein we use the ichnology of the Stairway Sandstone to reveal insights into the shallow marine habitat of these early vertebrates, and compare it with that of other known pteraspidomorph-bearing localities from across Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone contains a diverse Ordovician ichnofauna including 22 ichnotaxa of Arenicolites, Arthrophycus, Asterosoma, Cruziana, Didymaulichnus, Diplichnites, Diplocraterion, ?Gordia, Lockeia, Monocraterion, Monomorphichnus, Phycodes, Planolites, Rusophycus, Skolithos and Uchirites. These ichnofauna provide a well-preserved example of a typical Ordovician epeiric sea assemblage, recording the diverse ethologies of tracemakers in a very shallow marine environment of flashy sediment accumulation and regularly shifting sandy substrates. New conodont data refine the age of the Stairway Sandstone to the early Darriwilian, with ichnostratigraphic implications for the Cruziana rugosa group and Arthrophycus alleghaniensis.