Chronostratigraphy of an Eroding Complex Atlantic Round House,Baile Sear,Scotland

A high-resolution chronostratigraphy has been established for an eroding Atlantic round house at Sloc Sàbhaidh (North Uist, Scotland), combining detailed OSL profiling and dating of sediments encompassing the main bracketing events associated with the monument, radiocarbon AMS dates on bone recovered from excavated features and fills within it, and TL dates on pottery and burnt clay. Concordant OSL and radiocarbon evidence place construction of the wheelhouse in the first to second centuries AD, contemporary with dates from the primary occupation. Beneath the wheelhouse, clay deposits containing burnt material, attest to cultural activity in vicinity to the monument in the preceding second to first centuries BC. At a later date, the southern wall collapsed, was rebuilt, and the interior spaces to the monument re-structured. The chronology for the later horizons identified from the sediment luminescence dates extends to the second half of the first millennium AD, which goes beyond the range of the radiocarbon dates obtained. The data from ceramics encompass both periods. The juxtaposition of the dating evidence is discussed relative to short and longer chronologies for this Iron Age monument. Corollaries of this research are the implications that based on the long chronology, some of the ecofacts (bone) appear to be residual, and that the temporal duration of Hebridean Coarse Ware may extend into the second half of the first millennium AD.     

Recent discoveries at Ely Cathedral,Cambridgeshire: Aetheldreda’s Gate,the church of Holy Cross and the possible boundary of the Anglo-Saxon monastery

Recent fieldwork ahead of construction in Ely Cathedral precinct has identified two documented but ‘lost’ medieval buildings, in addition to a large boundary ditch and other deposits which potentially relate to the monastery founded by St Aetheldreda in the late seventh century. The excavations provide an opportunity to review the currently limited state of knowledge regarding the location and layout of the Anglo-Saxon monastery at Ely and to put forward some models to be tested through future fieldwork.     

The Precarity of Young People’s Housing Experiences in a Rural Context

Young people’s housing, economic and labour market circumstances have become increasingly insecure due to the combined effects of the 2007/2008 economic crisis, neoliberal welfare reforms, rising costs of higher education and the shortage of affordable housing. Discussions of young peoples’ experiences in these domains have largely neglected their spatial variability but evidence suggests that young people living in rural parts of the UK have distinctive experiences of housing, which are closely connected to labour markets and educational opportunities. By drawing on qualitative data from young people and housing professionals, this article explores some of these rural distinctions and frames them within theoretical debates about the ‘precariat’. It argues for a more theoretically informed and geographically nuanced understanding of contemporary housing issues as rural youth potentially face greater precarity than their urban peers.     

Morgawr: an experimental Bronze Age‐type sewn‐plank craft based on the Ferriby boats

This paper reports on the construction of a full‐scale Bronze Age‐type sewn‐plank boat based on the Ferriby boats. The boat, which was named Morgawr, was constructed in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, England, during 2012 and the first months of 2013, as part of a larger exhibition in the museum. This paper provides the background and context of the project, describes the process of building the craft, and reflects in particular on differences between Morgawr and the ‘hypothetical reconstruction of a complete sewn‐plank boat’ published in 1990 by Ted Wright and John Coates which formed the basis for this project.     

Remembrance as a Tool for Reflecting a National Identity: A Cuban Punk Approach

This paper takes several examples from the work of one Cuban punk band – Porno Para Ricardo – to assess the use of memory as a tool for reflecting fragments of a national identity which is both quotidian and contemporary. This singular case study is chosen not for their pertinence within Cuban culture, or even within Cuban alternative music, but rather as an exemplar of the assertion that popular music, rather than changing identities, often reflects aspects of identity and how they manifest in the everyday. Porno Para Ricardo are one such point of reflection. However, their remembrances often stray into areas too traumatic or politically admonished to be ‘remembered’ as part of a more rigid revolutionary history. By remembering the cultural (and thus, vicariously, the political) legacy of the Soviet Union within Cuba, and by re-personalising (or personifying) the traumas of mass generational exodus experiences in the early 90s, Porno Para Ricardo both augment the space of collective Cuban memory, and thus identity, but also attempt to reconnect the slabs of Cuban history often cleaved into evental epochs after which a ‘new way of being’ is constructed, as a means to better make sense of, and better reflect, contemporary Cuban identity.     

Reduction Factors for Seismic Design Spectra for Structures with Viscous Energy Dampers

A simple mathematical expression is proposed to estimate spectra reduction damping factors for seismic design of systems with viscous dampers. The expression is obtained from the ratios between ordinates of uniform hazard spectra associated with two different return intervals (50 and 125 years), corresponding to sites with different types of soil within the Valley of Mexico. The expression proposed depends on the dominant period of the soil, and on both the vibration period and damping ratio of the structural system. Values of the damping factors proposed here are comparable to those recommended by different authors and seismic design building codes.     

Primitive Accumulation and the Production of Abstract Space: Nineteenth‐century Mire Reclamation on Gotland

In Henri Lefebvre's work, abstract space entails qualitatively new ways of envisioning and strategically arranging the sites within which capital accumulation and everyday life are to unfold. This paper sets out to delineate how this premise can be profitably used to decipher contested tactics of primitive accumulation. Arguing from a particular case—nineteenth‐century reclamation of mires on the island of Gotland, Sweden—the paper explores how primitive accumulation was made possible through the conjunction of three spatialities, representing three key lines of struggle over abstract space. The abstraction and avowed homogeneity of space was produced and regulated by concurrent ideological maneuvers against customary practice, leveled by scientific discourse, and pursued through a legally endorsed material transformation of nature.