Diamond Mining in Canada's Northwest Territories: A Colonial Continuity

Abstract: The Canadian diamond industry has been lauded as a new approach to resource extraction, one whose institutions are characterized by a greater attention to Indigenous rights and the environment. However, an institutional analysis obfuscates the terrain of unequal relations that is the context for the Canadian diamond boom; an analysis of the effectiveness of social and environmental policies in relation to the extraction of diamonds in the Canadian North suggests that there is an intent on the part of those instigating this extraction (that is, the Canadian state, Canadian capitalist interests and international capitalist interests) to protect the Northern environment and to provide economic benefits to Northern Indigenous communities. This piece argues, instead, that this assumption is erroneous and that the Northern mining industry is part of Canada's project of internal colonization of Indigenous communities, a project that has intensified and expanded in the neoliberal era.     

Some Results and Prospects of Research on the Productivity of Forest Biogeocenoses

A review of Soviet research on the productivity of forest biogeocenoses finds confusion in terminology and urges general agreement on specific concepts and terms. Research has thus far been limited to the plant aspect of the forest communities, ignoring the animal and microbial communities. Changes in the amount of litter fall and phytomass from one natural zone to another are analyzed for spruce and oak communities and for forest biogeocenoses of various ages. A program for future research is outlined.     

Technology and the construction of oceanic space: Bathymetry and the Arctic continental shelf dispute

How did the Arctic seabed become a political space despite its almost complete inaccessibility to humans? While we can explain the causes of this in geopolitical and economic terms, theorizing the process is more difficult. This article argues that spatial constructions of the Arctic seabed emerge from the interaction among human actors, technologies, and the material environment. This interaction generates representations which are then fed into the overall process of spatializing the seabed. By highlighting the role of technology, this paper offers a way of relating human agency and materiality in the construction of oceanic space. The case study of bathymetry in the ongoing disputes over the Arctic continental shelf illustrates how technological and scientific advancements are embedded into global politics and themselves cause evolutions in the spatial construction of the seabed.     

Combined application of pansharpening and enhancement methods to improve archaeological cropmark visibility and identification in QuickBird imagery: two case studies from Apulia,Southern Italy

Launch of Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite sensors meant a significant evolution for Remote Sensing archaeological applications since data with high spatial resolution may be used to identify signals related to buried archaeological remains (e.g. cropmarks, soilmarks, dampmarks) in very extended territories. The aim of this work is to develop a suitable image processing workflow to improve the cropmark visibility in the VHR satellite images. The workflow implemented consists of two steps: first the panchromatic and multispectral images have been pansharpened in order to merge the two images, then some Enhancement methods have been applied on the pansharpened image. As a result of the several tested pansharpening techniques, the Principal Component Resolution Merge yields images of very good quality useful not only for visualization but also as input for further processing. Among the different enhancement methods taken into consideration, the Spatial Enhancement, carried out by applying the Wallis Adaptive filter further improve the visibility and recognition of the archaeological signals.     

Resurrection: a tale of two anthems sung by Serbs

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a comparative study of two key contenders for Serbian anthem‐hood, the royalist song ‘God of Justice’ and the pan‐Slavic hymn, ‘Hey Slavs’. Drawing on the theorising of nation and representation, as developed by Benedict Anderson, Michael Billig and others, the purpose of the study is to compare the self‐images these songs present to those they enjoin in unison, and to consider the role of those images and the identities they suggest in national/ist ideologies. Neither of the songs discussed in this paper was originally intended to be a national song. Both are in this sense ‘accidental anthems’. The paper will discuss the history of the accidents which have at various times given, and deprived, these songs of anthem status, in Serbia. ‘God of Justice’, originally a song in a patriotic stage play of the 1870s (commissioned to legitimise a young prince's accession to the Serbian throne), was the national song and later the official national anthem of the Principality of (later Kingdom of) Serbia from 1872 to 1919 and then, in a changed form, part of the national anthem of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1919 till 1941. It was resurrected in 2006, in a changed – republican – form to become the national anthem of the Republic of Serbia. The pan‐Slavic ‘Hey Slavs’, written in 1842, emerged, a century later, first as a national song of the Communist‐led resistance movement in Yugoslavia in 1942 and then became an unofficial national anthem of the Communist‐ruled Yugoslav federation; it survived the violent disintegration of that federation in 1991 to serve (once again unofficially) as an anthem of the rump Yugoslavia from 1992 to 2006. Why have these particular songs been chosen for the purpose of representing the Serbian nation to itself and to the world? How has each succeeded and failed in that task? The essay concludes with some speculation on these questions.     

Application of lipid biomarker analysis to evaluate the function of ‘slab-lined pits’ in Arctic Norway

Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and bulk carbon isotope determinations have been performed on samples (‘cemented organic residues’, charcoal, sediment and fire-cracked rock) excavated from 12 slab-lined pits from various locations in Arctic Norway to test the premise that these archaeological features were used for the extraction of oil from the blubber of marine mammals, such as seal, whale and walrus. A wide range of lipid compound classes were detected especially in the cemented organic residues and in the charcoal samples. The presence of long-chain unsaturated and isoprenoid fatty acids together with oxidation and thermal alteration products of unsaturated acids such as dicarboxylic acids, dihydroxyfatty acids and ω-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids suggests that these features were used for marine oil extraction at elevated temperatures. Notably the location of the hydroxyl groups in the dihydroxyfatty acids provides a record of the positional isomer of the precursor fatty acid and allows confirmation that 11-docosenoic (cetoleic) acid, the most abundant C_22:1 isomer in marine oil, was a major component of the original lipid. Further information was provided by the presence of long-chain fatty acyl moieties in surviving triacylglycerols and the presence of cholesterol. A fungal metabolite, mycose (trehalose), was found in all samples apart from a fire-cracked rock and points to microbiological activity in the pits. Bulk isotope analysis conducted on the ‘cemented organic residues’ is consistent with modern reference samples of blubber and oil from seal and whale. These data provide clear analytical evidence of the function of slab-lined pits in the archaeological record and suggest widespread exploitation of marine mammals for producing oil for heating, lighting and myriad other uses in the past.     

Differential Imagery Experience and Ut Pictura Poesis in the 18th-century

That the ability to visualise, to see with ‘the mind's eye’, varies between individuals has been known since Francis Galton reported on the results of his ‘Breakfast Table’ questionnaire in 1880. Research in the ensuing years has supported what Galton's surveys suggested: that the vividness of the population's mental imagery lies across a spectrum, with small percentages at the extremes being bereft of imagery or visualising with near percept-like quality. This paper explores what impact this factor of individual psychological difference had on the literary-theoretical debate over ut pictura poesis — whether poetry can or should emulate painting — as it culminated in the 18th-century. After making the case for personal experience of imagery being an influencing factor on the position that critics in the period took on ut pictura poesis, the paper concludes by engaging with the methodological and conceptual difficulties — for the philosophy of science as much as for literary theory and history — that the line of argument produces.     

A Clay source provenance survey in Northwest Alaska: Late Holocene ceramic production in the Arctic

Ceramic compositional analysis can contribute to the study of late Holocene Arctic hunter-gatherer social interaction through reconstruction of past ceramic distribution patterns. The results of an ethnographically informed clay source survey in Northwest Alaska are presented here. The survey provided contextual data on clay depositional environments, clay variability, and local environmental factors that influenced pre-contact clay availability. Geochemical analysis of clays and tempers clarified the location of ceramic production zones. Concurrence between survey results and ethnographic data highlights the persistence of clay knowledge despite post-contact absence of pottery making. This research demonstrates that ethnographically informed source survey can aid in interpreting ceramic geochemical data and yield important insights into pre-contact ceramic production processes.     

Sovetskaya Arktika journal as a source for the history of the Northern Sea Route

This paper is about reading and using the Soviet texts published in the 1930s on the Northern sea route (NSR) and the Arctic in general. The history of the NSR exploration and exploitation and its current potential as a round-the-year transportation waterway connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic is outlined. Specific features of the 1930s’ sources for the study of the NSR are explored using the example of the journal Sovetskaya Arktika (The Soviet Arctic), published between 1935 and 1941. The representation of the Northern Sea Route in this journal is described from two perspectives: what was presented (and what wasn't) and how it was presented. Special characteristics of the language used are considered to be interesting examples of the Soviet version of “totalitarian language” (newspeak, langue de bois). Historical sources written in this kind of language require special skills and special caution to read, interpret, and use.