A Bronze Age Round Barrow Cemetery,Pit Alignments,Iron Age Burials,Iron Age Copper Working,and Later Activity at Four Crosses,Llandysilio, Powys

Excavation undertaken at the Upper Severn valley round barrow cemetery at Four Crosses, Llandysilio, Powys, between 2004 and 2006 has increased the known barrows and ring ditches to some twenty-seven monuments within this complex, and revealed additional burials. Based on limited dating evidence, and the data from earlier excavations, the majority of the barrows are thought to be constructed in the Bronze Age. The barrows are considered part of a larger linear cemetery. The landscape setting and wider significance of this linear barrow cemetery are explored within this report. Dating suggests two barrows were later, Iron Age additions. The excavation also investigated Iron Age and undated pit alignments, Middle Iron Age copper working and a small Romano-British inhumation cemetery and field systems. Much of this evidence reflects the continuing importance of the site for ritual and funerary activity.     

Seismic Retrofitting Techniques for Historic Adobe Buildings

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the techniques available for the seismic retrofitting of adobe buildings. It analyzes these techniques’ viability from a structural engineering standpoint and evaluates their suitability in the context of historic preservation. Analysis was based on an exhaustive review of studies addressing retrofitting techniques of earthen structures, as well as consultation with field experts. The guiding principles of conservation relating to the structural reinforcement of monuments were taken into account. Traditional techniques that enhance the stability of the building, such as wooden ring beams, wooden ties interconnecting parallel walls, corner keys, and the addition of buttresses were found to be effective solutions since they employ compatible and low-cost materials such as earth and wood. When these techniques prove insufficient, minimally invasive measures such as introducing a plywood diaphragm, horizontal steel rods, a geomesh covered with mud rendering or a strapping system can be appropriate.     

Commuter lives: a review symposium on David Bissell's Transit Life

This article presents a series of commentaries on Transit Life: How Commuting is Transforming Our Cities, published by MIT Press in 2018. Centring on an in—depth case study of Sydney, the book argues the need to attend carefully to the fine—grained detail of the commuting experience. In all sorts of ways, Transit Life presents a way of thinking about urban transportation radically different from that used by mainstream transport planners and geographers. Geographical Research asked six researchers—Tim Edensor, Michele Lobo, Debbie Hopkins, Helen Fitt, Juliana Mansvelt, and Donald McNeill—to reflect on what kind of research vistas might be opened up bring the tools of cultural geography and mobility research to the world of commuting. Here are their responses, rounded out by a reply by David Bissell, Transit Life's author.     

State policy and contraceptive choices: evidence from China 1979–2012

This study examines the relationship between China’s contraception policy and married women’s (20–49 years) choice between long-acting and short-acting contraceptive methods during two periods–1980–1994 and 1995–2012. The aim is to examine the link between strictness of the contraception policy and married women’s contraceptive choice. Using data from the 1988 and the 2006 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Surveys, we estimated the effect of contraception policy in the tightened and the loosened policy periods using a permutation test. The results show that while contraception policy promoted long-acting contraceptive methods, many married women themselves preferred short-acting contraceptive methods. During the tightened policy period, we found married women on average were 2.7 times more likely to use long-acting methods. The effect was only 1.7 times during the loosened policy period. The effect was also parity dependent. The more stringent the contraception policy was, the more likely married women used a long-acting contraceptive method. This study provides the first ever proper estimation of China’s contraception policy effects during the two periods.     

What is 'Australian'? Knowledge and Among a Gallery of Contemporary Australians

Recent discussions of Australian national identity have focused on official discourses or media representations, or have involved expert readings of popular texts. We know remarkably little about how 'ordinary' Australians (we use this term with considerable reservation) think about their nation. This issue was addressed using focus group methodology with recruitment according to demographic and regional criteria. Groups were asked to identify 'Australian' people, groups, places, activities, events and values. Whilst it was predicted that there would be great variability over the groups, we found remarkable homogeneity. Participants consistently recognised and endorsed traditional, older, past-oriented symbols and images of Australia as predicted in the Australian Studies literature. Progressive, abstract and inclusive concepts of the nation, such as those recently advanced by governmental agencies, were notably absent from discussion. These findings suggest popular concepts of the Australian are robust and have a relative autonomy from the alternative models and discourses proposed by Australia's contending elites.     

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism

The fate of East Timor provides a barometer for how far the normative structure of international society has been transformed since the end of the Cold War. In 1975, the East Timorese were abandoned by a Western bloc that placed accommodating the Indonesian invasion of the island before the protection of human rights. Twenty‐five years later, it was the protection of the civilian population on the island that loomed large in the calculations of these same states. Australia, which had sacrificed the rights of the people of East Timor on the altar of good relations with Indonesia, found itself leading an intervention force that challenged the old certainties of its ‘Jakarta first’ policy. The article charts the interplay of domestic and international factors that made this normative transformation possible. The authors examine the political and economic factors that led to the agreement in May 1999 between Portugal, Indonesia and the UN to hold a referendum on the future political status of East Timor. A key question is whether the international community should have done more to assure the security of the ballot process. The authors argue that while more could have been done by Australia, the United States and officials in the UN Secretariat to place this issue on the Security Council's agenda, it is highly unlikely that the international community would have proved capable of mobilizing the political will necessary to coerce Indonesia into accepting a peacekeeping force. The second part of the article looks at how the outbreak of the violence in early September 1999 fundamentally changed these political assumptions. The authors argue that it became politically possible to employ coercion against Indonesian sovereignty in a context in which the Habibie government was viewed as having failed to exercise sovereignty with responsibility. By focusing on the economic and military sanctions employed by Western states, the pressures exerted by the international financial institutions and the intense diplomatic activity at the UN and in Jakarta, the authors show how Indonesian political and military leaders were prevailed upon to accept an international force. At the same time, Australian reporting of the atrocities and how this prompted the Howard government to an intervention that challenged traditional conceptionsof Australia's vital interests, is considered. The conclusion reflects on how thiscase supports the claim that traditional notions of sovereignty are increasinglyconstrained by norms of humanitarian responsibility.