MEGALITH SIZE AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR OUR UNDERSTANDING OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY,WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO CUMBRIA,NORTH‐WEST ENGLAND

The possibility that a comparison of the size of all stones in megalithic monuments might contribute to an understanding of the societies which built them is explored. Although a number of interpretational problems are recognized, the results appear meaningful. They show that there is no simple relationship between the diameter of a stone circle and the numbers of people involved in its construction, and that larger numbers contributed to the erection of some individual standing stones. Previous suggestions that individual families consisted of four to five active adults are supported.     

MINERALOGICAL AND PETROLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF EARLY BRONZE AGE COPPER‐SMELTING REMAINS FROM THE KIECHLBERG (TYROL,AUSTRIA)

The prehistoric settlement on the Kiechlberg hilltop is located a few kilometres to the north‐east of Innsbruck, in the Tyrolean Inn Valley. Despite its rather isolated location, a multiphase settlement between the fifth and the second millennium bc was confirmed by archaeological investigations in 2007 and 2008. Metallurgical artefacts, such as copper ore fragments, copper slag and raw copper, as well as finished copper and bronze artefacts, are concentrated mainly in Late Copper Age to Middle Bronze Age layers. The chemical compositions of the slag and raw metals confirm Fe—Zn tetrahedrite–tennantite (fahlore) smelting. The ore was most probably imported from the 30–50 km distant copper ore deposits (mainly fahlore) of Schwaz–Brixlegg, in the Lower Inn Valley. The small amount of slag and the presence of slagged and thermally altered ceramic fragments suggest copper production in small‐scale workshops. Most probably, sulphide‐rich ores were smelted in crucibles in a hearth fire. The process was relatively reducing below the 2Sb + 1.5O₂ → Sb₂O₃ reaction (?8.5 log fO₂ at 1100°C), producing Sb‐rich (>10 wt% Sb in metal) raw copper. Inhomogeneous slag remains containing high amounts of sulphide and metal inclusions suggest a poor separation of the metal, matte (copper sulphide) and silicate/oxide melt during the smelting process.     

DETECTING AND QUANTIFYING HEAT TREATMENT OF FLINT AND OTHER SILICA ROCKS: A NEW NON‐DESTRUCTIVE METHOD APPLIED TO HEAT‐TREATED FLINT FROM THE NEOLITHIC CHASSEY CULTURE,SOUTHERN FRANCE

Heat treatment of lithic raw material is known from the Middle Stone Age to the Neolithic. These findings require archaeometric techniques and methods for detecting the heat‐induced effects within lithic artefacts. However, the existing methods are often cost‐intensive and time‐consuming, and most of them are destructive. Here, we present a new method using the infrared spectroscopic measurement of the strength of H‐bonds formed between surface silanole groups (SiOH) and H₂O molecules held in open pores of the samples. The reduction of H‐bond strength in chalcedony is shown to be strongly correlated with the loss of open pores induced by heat treatment. Hence, the method is based on measuring one of the transformations aimed for by the instigators of the heat treatment: the reduction of porosity that modifies the rock's mechanical properties. A first application to heat‐treated material from the Neolithic Chassey culture (southern France) shows that flint was heated to temperatures between 200°C and 250°C in this period. This has important implications for the study of the procedures used and the heating environments. Our new method is non‐destructive, rapid, cost‐effective and allows for detection of the used annealing temperatures.     

SENSITIVITY OF PARAMETERS FOR PROBABILISTIC SEISMIC HAZARD ANALYSIS USING A LOGIC TREE APPROACH

The sensitivity of different parameters used in probabilistic seismic hazard calculation is investigated by different logic tree runs with alternative magnitude sets, source zone models and attenuation relations, and with different sets of values for the seismicity parameters and the <r-value. Also the influence from the different parameters on the hazard uncertainty, represented by fractiles, is investigated. The calculations are made for peak ground acceleration at a site near Aachen in the Lower Rhine Embayment. The model where the site is located in a larger source zone gives lower hazard values. This is typical for the case where the seismicity near the site is high relative to its surrounding. The hazard curves for the different attenuation functions are similar, an effect of the similarity of the functions themselves. However, a large sensitivity of this parameter is indicated for small mean return periods. An increased α-value implies a moderate increase of the hazard at long mean return periods. The hazard is increasing for decreased focal depth, decreased β-value and increased maximum expected magnitude, respectively. However, the effects are noteworthy only at low hazard levels for variations in the focal depth and to some extent in the maximum expected magnitude. Finally, decreasing the minimum magnitude thought to be of engineering relevance causes a drastic increase of the hazard at small mean return periods.     

Dynamics of Value Chain Governance: Increasing Supplier Competence and Changing Power Relations in the Periphery of Automotive Production—Evidence from Bursa,Turkey

Adopting a global value chain (GVC) approach, this paper focuses on the ways in which global automotive transnational corporations coordinate their value chains with suppliers in the periphery of automotive production. In particular, it directs attention to particular forms of chain relations established by lead firms with suppliers in Turkey and the ways in which these chains are coordinated. Findings indicate that as component suppliers in the periphery of automotive production, such as those in Bursa, have gained the competencies not only to manufacture to the cost, quality and flexibility specifications required by their customers but also of design and product development, lead firms in the automotive industry have turned to modular value chains, where competent suppliers provide a range of services with less dependence on their customers, as a way of sourcing from these suppliers. I use this evidence to argue that GVC governance is dynamic and suppliers in the periphery have some room for breaking power asymmetries associated with specific modes of governance in GVCs.     

Two Early Archaic Shipwrecks at Kekova Adası and Kepçe Burnu,Turkey

During its annual surveys of the Turkish coast in the 1970s and 1980s, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology discovered two early Archaic (7th‐ to early‐6th‐century BC) shipwrecks at Kekova Adas? (Antalya region) and Kepçe Burnu (Mu?la region); Dokuz Eylül University's Institute of Marine Science and Technology is currently involved in survey of the region. The wrecks, marked by a primary cargo of basket‐handle amphoras, indicate exchange between Cyprus and the cities of coastal Asia Minor and Corinth. Such Iron Age internationalism may have been driven by an interest in processed agricultural goods such as olive oil. © 2010 The Authors     

5. TIME GARDENS: HISTORICAL CONCEPTS IN MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY

This article argues for the analysis of temporal concepts such as “age,” “century,” and “epoch,” “past,” “present,” and “future,” formed during the Enlightenment, as an approach to the study of the history of modern historiography. Starting from the basic distinction of “empty” and “embodied” time in Leibniz's and Newton's dispute of 1715 about the philosophical nature of time, it traces the episteme of the eighteenth century using the metaphor of a “time garden” for describing some basic features of enlightened historiography. Finally, the paper discusses the consequences of the increasing employment of concepts of embodied time for the future development of the historical sciences.     

SWEDEN AND THE LONG ‘1968’: BREAK OR CONTINUITY?

The first part gives a chronological overview of the Swedish ‘1968’, in this article defined as a phenomenon with its roots in the late 1950s and it's end around 1980. Three phases are identified: a ‘liberal’ until 1965, a ‘red’ in the late 1960s and the ‘diversified’ 1970s. Underlying this time schedule are two characteristics of the Swedish ‘1968’ in its extended form: the role of the social movements and the interaction between old and new movements; and the unique role of the intellectuals. The second part discusses the (late and limited) research so far on this topic in Sweden. The academic works are still few and the critical debate little developed. One of the topics discussed is to what extent ‘1968’ was something fundamentally new and to what extent it was influenced by older social movements.     

Goodbye to all that (again)? The Fischer thesis,the new revisionism and the meaning of the First World War

What is the truth about the nature of the First World War and why have historians been unable to agree on its origins? The interpretation that no one country was to blame prevailed until the 1960s when a bitter international controversy, sparked by the work of the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer, arrived at the consensus that the Great War had been a ‘bid for world power’ by imperial Germany and therefore a conflict in which Britain had necessarily and justly engaged. But in this centennial year Fischer's conclusions have in turn been challenged by historians claiming that Europe's leaders all ‘sleepwalked’ into the catastrophe. This article, the text of the Martin Wight Memorial Lecture held at the University of Sussex in November 2014, explores the archival discoveries which underpinned the Fischer thesis of the 1960s and subsequent research, and asks with what justification such evidence is now being set aside by the new revisionism.