Deciphering the inorganic chemical record of ancient human activity using ICP-MS: a reconnaissance study of late Classic soil floors at Cancuén,Guatemala

Inorganic chemical analysis of soil floors using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was undertaken to provide information on the nature and location of past human activity in the ancient Maya city of Cancuén, Guatemala. The use of ICP-MS to detect trace and ultra-trace elemental enrichment of two excavated soil floors from the late Classic period is the first study of its kind in Mesoamerican archaeology. Geochemical background of the site was established by the analysis of palaeosols and nearby undisturbed ‘off-site’ soil profiles. Robust statistical methods used in the study clearly distinguished the level of anthropogenic enrichment across the former floors. Many elements measured showed only minor departures (10–20%) from the site's background soil chemistry. The greatest levels of elemental enrichment were detected in the rare earth elements, mercury, and gold. The latter is of particular interest considering the consensus that gold was absent from the world of the Classic-period Maya. Comparisons of the spatial pattern of mercury enrichment with lithic and archaeological data show strong linkages to past industrial and ritual activities. Elevated rare earth element concentrations were recorded broadly across both soil floors and are considered to be related to concentrated human occupation in antiquity.     

Negotiating Green Space with Landed Interests: The Urban Political Ecology of Greenway in the Pearl River Delta,China

Land‐centred urbanisation has precipitated shortage of green space in Chinese cities. However, in the Pearl River Delta, an ambitious greenway system has recently managed to flourish. It is intriguing to ask how this has become possible. Informed by the perspective of urban political ecology, this paper finds that the greenway project in the Pearl River Delta represents a set of politically realistic endeavours to alleviate urban green space shortage by adapting to, rather than challenging, powerful landed interests. Three interlocking dimensions about land—municipal land quota, rural land use claims, and real estate development—have influenced why, where and how greenways have been created. Based on these findings, we argue that research on China's politics of urban sustainability necessarily needs to understand the country's land politics.     

Reassessing the ROK-US alliance: Transformation challenges and the consequences of South Korea's choices

Changing political attitudes in South Korea, and the appearance of some divergence of view between Washington and Seoul on the nature of the threat posed by North Korea are impelling a re-examination of the US-South Korea alliance. At the same time, although still concerned with deterring an invasion from Pyongyang, the alliance must now also deal with the possible conse quences of a catastrophic collapse of the North Korean state. Changing threat perceptions, developments in military technology and doctrine associated with the 'revolution in military affairs', as well as the emergence of new issues such as terrorism, all require a redefinition of the alliance. While the changing geo-strategic environment and the wider regional role of the alliance will all be factors in the modifications made to the Washington-Seoul security relationship, the key to South Korea's future alliance choices will be the nature of the path taken to eventual Korean unification.     

Spatial Dimensions of the Easterlin Hypothesis: Fertility Variations in Italy

The paper re–evaluates the Easterlin hypothesis in a multiregional context by conceptually and methodologically accounting for two processes of spatial interdependence in an open subnational demo–economic system: diffusion of fertility norms and values across space, and movements between labor markets. The empirical analysis estimates pooled cross–sectional, time–series models using data for 18 Italian regions from 1952 to 1995. The results suggest that accounting for spatial interdependencies is necessary to avoid model misspecifications. Moreover, the models lead to space–time landscapes of fertility elasticities that suggest, for the majority of space–time units, an inverse Easterlin effect for the diffusion component but support of the Easterlin hypothesis due to labor movements across space.     

Her(media)land ? Nouveaux espaces militants par et pour les lesbiennes en France au XXIème siècle

ABSTRACT

Moins visible et moins flamboyante que la vie culturelle médiatisée des gays, celle des lesbiennes françaises n’en est pas moins riche et variée, surtout depuis les années 2010, malgré une diffusion moindre.

En 2014, le magazine Well Well Well revue au format mook (mi-magazine, mi-book) sort son premier numéro à l’automne avec Céline Sciamma en couverture. Au même moment, la journaliste Anne Delabre crée l’association « Le 7e Genre », qui propose un ciné-club mensuel dans le but de « décrypter les représentations des questions LGBT au cinéma ». Plus récemment encore, les lesbiennes s’invitent à la radio en contribuant une fois par mois aux émissions d’Homo-micro sous le titre « Gouinement lundi ».

Cet article s’intéressera à ces nouvelles formes de militantisme lesbien, en s’interrogeant sur la manière dont elles s’inscrivent dans un continuum d’activisme LGBT tout en générant leurs propres singularités. Il analysera les publics lesbiens visés par ces démarches et la manière dont ces médias lesbiens du second millénaire intègrent et s’adressent à « toutes ces femmes qui viennent d’horizons si différents et qui n’ont en commun qu’une orientation sexuelle » comme l’écrit Marie Kirschen.     

湖南七星墩遗址中红烧土建筑材料的科学分析

新石器时代中期,中国先民将制陶技术运用于房屋建筑中,发展了一系列强度与耐水性能显著提升的烧土建筑材料,极大地改善了居住环境。长江中下游地区新石器时代房屋建筑发展脉络清晰,广泛利用红烧土材料。采用XRD法、XRF法、磁化率法和色度法从物相组成、元素成分、磁化率、色度等方面对湖南七星墩遗址出土的不同文化时期的烧土样品进行综合分析。结果表明,6件红烧土样品应均为就地取土,并在泥料中加入了稻壳和稻草等植物残骸作为羼和料,经人工烘烤而成的建筑材料,等效烧成温度区间为550～700℃。研究结果可丰富史前建筑史的研究,磁化率测温法为未烧制黏土考古材料的烧成温度研究提供了一种科学有效的方法,进一步可尝试应用于早期陶器(尤其低温陶器)的烧成温度研究。     

Rethinking the value of unpaid care work: lessons from participatory visual research in central Tanzania

Abstract

The contemporary international development agenda addresses several important gender issues, including the contribution of unpaid care work (UCW) to human well-being. The inclusion of UCW into the mainstream policy debate is undoubtedly a major milestone in the history of feminist scholarship and activism. However, we argue that the universalistic and capitalocentric assumptions laden in the dominant policy discourse belie the diversity of the lived experiences and subjective meanings of UCW often performed by women and girls in different cultural and geographical contexts, particularly in the predominantly agrarian global South. We draw on participatory and visual ethnographic fieldwork to show that rural women in Tanzania perceive UCW as an experience that entails not only physical toil and drudgery, but also positive emotions of joy, satisfaction, and fulfilment, which are integral to affirming their self-perceived identities and roles as farmers and mothers in their communities. These material, affective, and symbolic dimensions of UCW emerge from agrarian women’s situated knowledges and experiences of ensuring household social reproduction on and with the land, as well as the gender relations and seasonal dynamics that shape the organization of work tasks in agrarian landscapes. To achieve transnational gender justice, we suggest that a more fine-tuned and nuanced approach to understanding the variability and complexity of care work as practiced and perceived by heterogeneous groups of women (and men) in particular places and times is needed.