Slag inclusions in iron objects and the quest for provenance: an experiment and a case study

Slag inclusions are found within most archaeological bloomery iron artefacts and are remainders of slag created during the smelting and smithing processes. Although they are widely believed to provide data with the potential for provenancing iron artefacts, previous slag inclusion studies have mostly proven inconclusive. The main aim of the work reported here is to analyse experimental smelting and smithing assemblages (including ore, furnace lining, fuel and slag), to compare these to slag inclusions in the resulting bloom and worked objects, and then explore the relationships between ore, slag and slag inclusions. This study has revealed that the composition of slag inclusions most closely relates to the smelting slag produced, whereas provenance to a specific ore would be difficult due to the chemical variability derived from furnace lining, fuel and any fluxes used. Some compounds in the slag inclusions are particularly affected during smithing of the artefact, i.e. those present in the sand flux and fuel used. However, trends are observed in the K₂O/MgO, MnO/SiO₂, Al₂O₃/SiO₂, Al₂O₃/MgO, Al₂O₃/K₂O and Al₂O₃/CaO ratios that allow comparison between slag inclusions and smelting slag in these experiments, and may therefore be used during other provenancing attempts. The knowledge gained from the experimental assemblages was subsequently applied to an archaeological case study, examining objects from the 900 Cal BC smithing site of Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel and the 930 Cal BC smelting site of Tell Hammeh, Jordan. The analyses suggest that none of the artefacts examined derived from the Hammeh smelting system.     

Governmental mobility: The power effects of the movement of detained asylum seekers around Britain's detention estate

This paper explores the ways in which mobility can have governmental effects in the context of the management of asylum seekers awaiting deportation from the UK. Drawing upon the case of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, a facility for the incarceration of immigration deportees near Oxford, the paper makes the case that the way asylum seekers are moved between detention centres within the UK has implications for the way they are represented to both asylum activists and asylum sector employees, causing them to choose to use their influence differently by with-holding the support that they might otherwise provide. The constant moving and repositioning of asylum seekers means that they are depicted as transitory, fleeting and depersonalised to those actors with the greatest degree of influence over them. The subjection not only of asylum seekers through forceful, blunt forms of power, but also of more powerful asylum sector actors through subtler, governmental techniques, has significant material implications for the incarcerated asylum seeking community that populates Britain's detention estate.     

Negotiating Difference through Everyday Encounters: The Case of Sexual Orientation and Religion and Belief

Abstract: This paper argues for geographers to be more attentive to the potentially competing values, interests, and rights of the equality strands (race, gender, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation, age). We focus on two that are most commonly assumed to experience tensions: religion/belief and sexual orientation. Drawing on focus groups with heterosexual Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus and lesbian and gay people of faith we explore the attitudes of heterosexual people of faith towards homosexuality. These findings suggest that tensions should be emerging between these groups in public space. However, we then demonstrate that these anticipated conflicts are not emerging because of the strategies people employ for separating their beliefs from their everyday conduct. In such ways, our findings demonstrate how the “what is” (ie personal experience) for both heterosexual and lesbian and gay people of faith is prioritised over theological or institutional perspectives of “what ought to be”.     

What Use Are Units? Critical Geographies of Alcohol Policy

Abstract: This paper interrogates the multiple spatialities bound up with the consumption of units as the dominant means of diagnosing “health‐related” alcohol problems and measuring “drunkenness” in international alcohol policy and research. In order to question the power afforded to units, we work at the intersection of theoretical debates concerning biopower and governmentality; emotional, embodied and affective geographies and actor network theory. Presenting empirical research from the UK we contribute to geographical agendas that seek to consider the ontological and epistemological understandings of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. The paper concludes by calling for dialogue between social, health and medical scientists in order to develop more pertinent ways of understanding and representing the risks and benefits of alcohol consumption.     

Palaeodiet at Eton College Rowing Course, Buckinghamshire: isotopic changes in human diet in the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman periods throughout the British Isles

Through isotopic investigations of directly dated human remains recovered from the Eton College Rowing Course, we examine changes in diet from the Neolithic to the Roman period. The human isotope signatures point to a diet based on C₃ terrestrial resources. A significant correlation is visible between human ??¹³C values and time, but no such trend is observed in ??¹⁵N. The animal isotope data from Eton are unevenly distributed, making it difficult to determine if the human values mirror the animal values. To assess whether the results from Eton are typical, we compare our results to isotope data from other British sites dating from the Neolithic to the Roman period. Across this time period, we see a strong correlation between the mean ??¹⁵N of the humans and that of the main domesticated herbivores, with an offset of ??4.5?? between the two. Thus, the changes in the human isotope values are likely linked to changes in the isotopic signatures of the herbivores rather than changes in the protein composition of human diets. By contrast, no clear temporal relationship is observed between the mean ??¹³C of the humans and that of the main domesticated herbivores, with an offset of ??1.4?? between the two. There is, however, a weak correlation observed between the mean ??¹³C of the humans and that of the cattle, which may account for some of the variation in human ??¹³C values between sites. The absence of a strong correlation between mean human and animal ??¹³C suggests that the primary factor influencing human ??¹³C values between sites is dietary composition. The lack of co-variation between ??¹³C and ??¹⁵N is likely to reflect the different representation of dietary macronutrients. Given that the nitrogen results suggest that the animal protein consumption patterns are similar across sites, the human ??¹³C variation between sites is likely to reflect the plant portion of the diet.     

Libya and the state of intervention

The international response to the crisis in Libya has been remarkably quick and decisive. Where many other cases of mass atrocity crimes have failed to generate sufficient and timely political will to protect civilians at risk, the early response to Libya in 2011 has shown that the United Nations Security Council is able to give effect to the ‘responsibility to protect’ norm. While not an implementing party in a legal sense, the Australian government has taken a forward-leaning diplomatic stance in helping to mobilise broad support for addressing this crisis. In light of the ongoing political controversy over armed humanitarian intervention, the Libya case shows that state-based advocacy for R2P matters, given the on-going need to bolster the legitimacy of the principle. A discussion of Canberra's diplomatic activity is a prelude to an examination of the proceedings of the UN Security Council and the two key resolutions, the second of which gave effect to the forcible action. The article then considers three dimensions of the Security Council's implementation of the responsibility to protect: the language of the resolutions and the intriguing absence of a textual reference to the international community's responsibility to act; the expansive mandate for civilian protection in Security Council resolution 1973; and the first unanimous referral to the International Criminal Court, with novel support from the United States of America.     

Towards an understanding of local protest: hospital closure and community resistance

The aim of this paper is to suggest an analytical framework through which the complex question of hospital closure and local protest can be further explored. The significance of this area of study lies with the extraordinary events that surrounded a campaign to save the Kidderminster General Hospital from downsizing. Whilst the hospital was not saved, the local campaign committee organizing the protest took their fight into the political arena and were successful in gaining a parliamentary voice in the 2001 general elections. Such an achievement has had considerable political implications, however, the question asked here is how might we begin to interpret the events that took place. To this end, the paper draws on current geographical literature in an attempt to construct a framework that accounts for both national policy debates and the local context within which such campaigns emerge.     

Editorial

Abstract

A recent online article in The Daily Beast listed archaeology as one of the thirteen most useless undergraduate degrees. The article failed to identify transferable job skills gained while engaged in archaeological work. Further, archaeological field programmes and labs offer an alternative learning environment that benefits some students. This article reviews two archaeological projects that used archaeology as a form of social activism to provide employment and education to an under-served community as a fundamental aspect of its goals. The Hopedale Archaeology Project is an archaeology field project based in a north-east Canadian community that provides education and work opportunities for Inuit students. The Veterans Curation Program based in the United States provides temporary employment to recently discharged military veterans in an archaeological and archival curation lab. These programmes assist individuals to re-establish themselves within the workforce and add to their academic and professional growth, as well as incorporate a public outreach component that makes archaeology and history more accessible to the public.     

Reconnecting with darkness: gloomy landscapes,lightless places

This paper investigates the effects and affects of darkness, a condition that is progressively becoming less familiar for those of us in the over-illuminated West. In countering the prevailing cultural understanding that darkness is a negative condition, I draw attention to other historical and cultural ways of positively valuing darkness. Subsequently, in drawing on two sites, a gloomy landscape at a dark sky park in South Scotland, and a tourist attraction in which a simulation of New York is experienced in a completely dark environment, I explore the multivalent qualities of darkness. In foregrounding the becoming of sensory experience in gloomy space, I highlight the mobilisation of alternative modes of visual perception in as well as the emergence of non-visual apprehensions, and suggest that the potentialities of darkness might foster progressive forms of conviviality, communication and imagination.