The Brno Effect: From Culture to Mind

This paper connects to several of Andrew Sherratt??s abiding interests: grand narrative, general theory, Mitteleuropa, typology, the problems of comparative method, and, tangentially, the question of the origin and nature of the relationship between faith and reason. In addition, what I have to say builds strongly on the work of David Clarke, whose powerful influence was exerted on me principally via Andrew. The title reference is to the Middle Upper Palaeolithic mammoth ivory marionette of a male human figure from Brno, Czech Republic, which serves as a pivot for my argument (although the paper does not pretend to present a detailed and fully contextualised account). By building on observations and contentions concerning the unique life-world of humans, it is possible to argue that a recognizably modern form of human intelligence appeared (and perhaps could only have appeared) as a product of some essentially accidental, initially perhaps epiphenomenal, interactions between minds and material artefacts. I want to show that the familiar idea of a genetically-driven reorganisation of cognition, moving from mind to culture, in our genus, can be challenged by a reverse proposition, using a materiality perspective to work from culture to mind.     

Hemp in ancient rope and fabric from the Christmas Cave in Israel: talmudic background and DNA sequence identification

The “Christmas Cave”, a cave in the Qidron Valley near the Dead Sea and Qumran, has yielded a complex collection of plant-derived rope and fabric artifacts. Using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA of the samples, we estimated the sizes and determined restriction patterns and base sequences of chloroplast genes, primarily rbcL (gene for the large subunit of ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase). DNA was successfully extracted from all samples, but was limited to sizes of approximately 200–300 base pairs. As expected, the DNA extracted from the samples was identified as coming primarily from flax (Linum usitatissamum L.), but two samples had a significant fraction, and all samples had at least a trace, of hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) DNA. Artifacts from the Christmas Cave were thought to date from Roman times, but it was thought possible that some could be much older. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS)-based ¹⁴C dating confirmed that the samples contained representatives from both the Roman and Chalcolithic periods. This paper provides a synthesis of DNA, isotope, and literary analysis to illuminate textile history at the Christmas Cave site.     

Common Sense Community? The Climate Challenge Fund's Official and Tacit Community Construction

Abstract

The Climate Challenge Fund (CCF) is the Scottish Government's flagship initiative addressing the twenty-first century's core concern: environmental challenges. The CCF seeks to reduce carbon emissions explicitly through community. Building on community's long and strong social science heritage, this paper outlines the CCF's tacit and unspoken community assumptions. Through these assumptions, this policy (re)produces, prefigures and performs a particular form of community, this being community's elision with locality, and synonym for place, rurality or neighbourhood. Taking on these tacit assumptions is demonstrative of their belief in the effectiveness of such community. After exploring the CCF, its source and structure, the paper delves into empirical work situated at all levels of the CCF's funding chain. It then teases out how the assumptions around – and the need to demonstrate – community help determine the projects selected, and subsequently the vision of community chosen, enacted and mobilised. The CCF (re)produces a particular vision of community with implications for who receives funding, how environmental action is framed and also for the future of community in Scotland.     

Australia's diplomatic asylum initiative at the United Nations: comparing international law rhetoric with foreign policy practice

In 1974, Australia took the initiative to have an item on diplomatic asylum inscribed on the UN General Assembly's agenda for that year. Its original ambition was to procure an international treaty on the subject. This article traces the history of that initiative from its inception to the acknowledgement seven years later that it had come to nothing. It also investigates the impact that Australia's initiative at the UN had on its foreign policy practice in relation to diplomatic asylum through two administrations: the Whitlam government (5 December 1972–11 November 1975) and the Fraser government (11 November 1975–11 March 1983). It demonstrates that, while the initiative generated a great deal of bureaucratic work, it wrought no real change in Australia's practice on the ground.     

Digitisation,digital interaction and social media: embedded barriers to democratic heritage

Abstract

The democratisation of heritage through digital access is a well-documented aspiration. It has included innovative ways to manage interpretation, express heritage values, and create experiences through the ‘decoding’ of heritage. This decoding of heritage becomes democratised, more polyvocal than didactic exhibitions, and less dependent on experts. However, the decision of what ‘heritage’ is and what is commissioned for digitisation (the encoding) is not necessarily a part of this democratisation. This paper will consider how digitisation reinforces the Authorised Heritage Discourse through the lens of Stephen Lukes’ three (increasingly subtle) dimensions of power: conflict resolution, control of expression and shaping of preferences. All three dimensions have an impact on how public values are represented in heritage contexts, but the introduction of digitisation requires more resources, expertise and training within established professional discourse. Social media may have a positive impact on the first two dimensions, but can reinforce hegemony. Alternatives are subject to epistemic populism. The role of digitisation and social media in the democratisation of heritage needs to be better understood. Questions regarding the nature and process of digital interaction, in terms of whose heritage is accessible, affect the very issues of democratisation digitisation appears to promote.     

Kids,raccoons, and roos: awkward encounters and mixed affects

Within the Western cultural imaginary, child–animal relations are characteristically invoked with fond nostalgia and sentimentality. They are often represented as natural and innocent relations, thick with infantilizing and anthropomorphizing ‘cute’ emotions. Our multispecies ethnographic research – which is conducted in the everyday, lived common worlds of Australian and Canadian children and animals – reveals a very different political and emotional landscape. We find these embodied child–animal relations to be non-innocently entangled, fraught, and messy. In this article, we focus on some awkward encounters of mixed affect when kids and raccoons co-inhabit an urban forest setting in Vancouver, and when kids and kangaroos bodily encounter each other in a bush setting in Canberra. We trace the imbroglio of child–animal curiosities, warinesses, risks, inconveniences, revulsions, attachments, and confrontations at these sites as generative of new ethical logics.