Relative frequency of butchering cutmarks produced by obsidian and flint: an experimental approach

An experimental approach was used to determine how stone tool materials affect the frequency of observed cutmarks. Five whitetail deer were butchered by an expert butcher using flint and obsidian tools and the skeletons were prepared and analyzed. The authors found that the deer butchered with obsidian tools generally displayed fewer incidents of cutmarks than their flint-butchered counterparts. Consideration of this variable may prove to be important to archaeologists attempting to answer questions of specialization or when making comparisons of cutmark data between sites.     

Elites and masses: the prevalence of economics and culture in nineteenth-century American party platforms

Scholarship on political party development in nineteenth-century America has focused on the relationship between elites and voters on the influence of policy proposals. The question is how elite perception of voter demands influenced parties’ ideological development. This study addresses this question by assessing the dynamic between cultural and socioeconomic concerns in party ideological formation and policy articulation. A content analysis of national and state party platforms from 1840 through 1896 sheds light on this dynamic. Ultimately, party leaders set the political agenda by referencing economic concerns to a greater degree than cultural concerns in their platforms.     

Mourning the Un-mournable? Political Theology Between Refugees and Religion

Since the arrival, or the attempted arrival, of millions of refugees in Europe, the performances of the Center for Political Beauty – a Berlin-based collective of artists and activists – have had a huge impact on public and political debates about Germany's migration policies. In this paper, I analyze the performance “The Dead Are Coming” in which the artists buried refugees who drowned in their attempt to enter the European Union. Drawing on Judith Butler's political philosophy of performativity, I assess “The Dead Are Coming” as a “doing” rather than a “describing” of dignity. I argue that the integration of God into the practices of mourning enables both the activists and the audience to resist the differential distribution of dignity in Europe's migration policy. Ultimately, I advocate a re-thinking of political theology in which art learns from theology and theology learns from art in order to promote dignity under de-dignifying conditions.     

Orme Sargent,Ernest Bevin and British Policy Towards Europe, 1946–1949

Upon his appointment as Foreign Secretary in July 1945, it was widely expected that Ernest Bevin would make a clean sweep of the permanent officials in the Foreign Office. However, Bevin decided against staffing changes and eventually came to trust and even like these officials. This paper explores the relationship between Bevin and his Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office between 1946 and 1949, Sir Orme Sargent. Despite their initial concerns about one another in 1945, this relationship turned into one of mutual friendship by the time of Sargent's retirement in 1949. Both were driven by similar motivations in their conception of British foreign policy. They both believed that Britain was a Great Power and had a place in Europe. The congruence of views between them is clear in the examination of Anglo-French relations (culminating in the Anglo-French Treaty of 1947) and in the signature of the Brussels Treaty. This paper will show that while Bevin had a policy, so did his most senior advisor, and that the Foreign Secretary was not adverse to taking advice either. Beyond high policy, a close working and personal relationship developed between the two men.     

Free and Happy Bonds: Loving v. Virginia's Nineteenth-Century Precedent on Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness

Loving v. Virginia declares that marriage contributes to the pursuit of happiness. It supports this claim by citing 19^th century precedent, precedent which itself drew upon a longstanding view of marriage and happiness's pursuit. This article examines that view in state and federal opinions from the decades surrounding 14^th Amendment ratification. The courts saw marriage as fulfilling the human need for community, thereby aiding in the private happiness of those marrying and the public happiness of the political society. Marriage supported private happiness by forming a bond that provided for physical, material, and emotional needs. Courts sought to aid these goals while also protecting spouses' rights. Marriage supported public happiness through creating and educating future citizens as well as cultivating virtuous habits among those married—goals which the courts also sought to protect. The article concludes by discussing the continuity and discontinuity between these 19^th century cases, Loving, and Obergefell.     

Coordinated Strategic Voting in the 2008 Federal Election

Citizenship and Immigration Canada's new citizenship guide, Discover Canada, received significant coverage in the national media and among popular bloggers when it was released in late 2009. Among the more controversial responses were allegations that the guide served a partisan political purpose. It was “an incremental step in the rebranding of Canada into a conservative country, full of people more inclined to vote Conservative.” This paper investigates the veracity of this claim by documenting the historical evolution of Canada's citizenship guides. It finds that while Discover Canada departs notably from its immediate, Liberal-sponsored, predecessors, it is not so different from the initial documentation produced under the Liberal governments of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. To suggest that the new guide has fundamentally altered the national image is therefore a profound exaggeration.     

Peculiarities of sedimentation conditions in the oxbow lakes of Dubysa River (Lithuania)

Abundant wood remains and buried trees have been found in the western part of Lithuania near Zakeli?kiai and Lyduv?nai on Dubysa River (a tributary of Nemunas River) where deposits are rich in organic remnants and buried soils. In Zakeli?kiai and Skiru?iai sections of Dubysa River oxbow sediments were investigated by various methods (dendrochronological, carbonate, granulometric, pollen and mollusc fauna analysis). In addition, these sections were dated using the radiocarbon method. Samples were collected from deposits of Dubysa River outcrops. The studied oxbow lakes have existed for more than 5 thousand years (from ca. 4300 BC to 1000 AD). During this period organic rich deposits with trees and branches were formed in the oxbow lake. This indicates that at the end of Atlantic, during Subboreal and in the early Subatlantic periods there was a forest growing that contained mainly oaks which were falling down into an oxbow lake and later were covered by sandy and silty deposits. The granulometry of alluvial deposits, as well as the mixture of medium-grained sand and silt show different stages of Dubysa River palaeochannel formation: riverbed and oxbow lakes. Three climate warming cycles were revealed according to carbonate analysis data in all investigated sections. The rheophile thermophilous Holocene age molluscs species Bithynia tentaculata L., Unio cf. crassus Philipsson, Pisidium amnicum (Müller), Theodoxus fluviatilis (Linnaeus) have been found. The pollen composition and sequences have been divided into five local pollen assemblage zones (LPAZ) and described according to pollen spectra in each zone. In this way it is possible restore palaeoclimatic coherent evolution, trends and cyclical change.     

Carbon and nitrogen isotope signals in eel bone collagen from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe

Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis was undertaken on collagen extracted from eel bone from six Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe. The results were compared with data obtained on other archaeological fish remains and modern eel caught in fresh and brackish water and from the sea. The possibility of discriminating between freshwater, brackish and marine signals in archaeological eel bone is evaluated and the implications for archaeology discussed. Our data suggest that eel found at coastal Mesolithic and Neolithic sites have carbon isotope signals consistent with a marine origin with no evidence of freshwater residency. The sample of eel bone from one inland site is small but indicates carbon isotope values more consistent with freshwater residency or at least values intermediate between freshwater and marine carbon pools.