Conversion,Autobiography and Richard Baxter’s Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696)

This article juxtaposes two of Richard Baxter’s autobiographical accounts written 5 years apart but along very different lines. In the final chapter of A Holy Commonwealth (1659), Baxter confidently asserted the rightness of Parliament’s cause in the civil wars; for Baxter, it is a strikingly optimistic, triumphalist and providentialist account. In the Reliquiae Baxterianae, which he began to write in 1664, he explicitly distanced himself from any such claims about the wars and he wrote in a more chastened fashion. The former account, and the kind of autobiography it intimates, brings Baxter’s purposes in writing the Reliquiae more clearly into focus. The article advances on recent scholarship by Kathleen Lynch while investigating the nature of autobiography. The iterations of Baxter’s autobiography demonstrate that such accounts are first a story that the author tells himself or herself. If events negate that story, it is never told.     

The European Union and Major Infrastructure Policies: The Reforms of the Trans-European Networks Programmes and the Implications for Spatial Planning

The European Union (EU) has been involved in influencing major infrastructure in the fields of transport and energy mainly by means of the Trans-European Networks (TENs) programme begun in the 1990s. Other macro-planning and wider spatial planning exercises, including the European Spatial Development Perspective, made reference to such infrastructure systems, particularly in relation to the need for connectivity and mobility, but normally did not attempt to intervene in an area seen as one of the prerogatives of national states. Much more important have been the wider programmes of liberalization pressed by the EU since the 1980s, but these have had no specific geographical content. A revision of the TENs programmes since 2008 has led to proposals to increase the role of the EU, by drawing up continent wide schemas indicating needs for future investment in many fields of both transport and energy, and introducing new procedures to streamline decision-making by designating projects as of European interest. The initiatives in transport and energy are described here, including the two Regulations currently under discussion within the EU institutions. These include major proposals for cross-European multi-modal transport corridors within an EU core network, and regional schemas for energy drawn up primarily by energy industries and government counterparts. Both are likely to be of real significance for spatial planners throughout the continent, and have major impacts on the shapes of future infrastructure networks. These proposals are analysed, as cases of the rescaling and re-ordering of government, giving more force to the EU in these fields, and reinforcing sectoral- or silo-based decision-making. It is argued that somewhat different outcomes will result in the few areas, such as the Baltic, where long-term macro-regional collaboration has been present, from the rest of Europe, where these sectoral programmes may complicate further the mix of planning impacting on each region, making even more confused the accountability of governance. Suggestions are made for the careful assessment of these schemas by national and regional governments, and for the creation of some spatial planning analytical capability at the EU level, which could examine this type of proposals, with powerful spatial impacts.     

Deconstructing the Lapita Cultural Complex in the Bismarck Archipelago

Within the Pacific Islands, the archaeological phenomenon called the Lapita Cultural Complex is widely regarded as first appearing in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea and then spreading southward. This complex supposedly represents the sudden arrival of migrants from Island Southeast Asia with new technologies, foreign languages, and a different worldview. We question these interpretations and the assumptions behind them and suggest instead that current evidence supports the introduction of new cultural traits over several centuries, rather than the sudden intrusion of foreign migrants.     

The Preservation and Interpretation of δ34S Values in Charred Archaeobotanical Remains

The measurement of sulphur isotope (δ³⁴S) values in charred plant remains has the potential to inform understanding of the spatial configuration and ecology of crop production. We investigated the effects of charring, manuring, oxidation and anaerobic soil conditions on modern cereal grain/pulse seed δ³⁴S values, and assessed the effect of chemical pre‐treatment on charred modern and archaeobotanical grain/seed δ³⁴S values. We used these results to interpret δ³⁴S values in archaeobotanical material from Neolithic Çatalhöyük. Our results suggest that δ³⁴S values can be reliably preserved in charred grain/seeds but are subject to influence by anaerobic soil conditions, the effect depending on the timing of flooding in relation to S assimilation.     

Comments on Christopher Tilley: The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg, 2004.

In response to a hydroelectric dam and power‐plant construction project in the inner Sognefjord mountain region, archaeological investigations have been carried out since 1981. Investigation results include localization of extensive Stone Age and Bronze Age/Pre‐Roman Iron Age sites at great distance from lakesides, where such sites traditionally have been found. Intensified utilization of the area, from 500 BC until the Viking Period 1050 AD seems to be related to a general settlement expansion in this period and thereto related demands for mountain pastures.