Subprime Housing Goes South: Constructing Securitized Mortgages for the Poor in Mexico

Mexico represents the largest market for residential mortgage‐backed securitization (RMBS) in Latin America. Despite its significance to questions of development, there has been no critical analysis on the social implications and power dimensions of RMBS with regard to low‐income housing in Mexico. This essay fills this gap by demystifying the technical and thus apolitical nature of RMBS as well as by explaining how and why state‐sponsored securitization schemes subsidize financial and construction interests in the name of expanding home ownership for the poor. In so doing, the analysis employs a historical materialist approach that, first, places RMBS within the contradictory nature of capital accumulation processes in Mexico and relations of class‐based power therein, and second, views RMBS as an integral feature of housing policy that is inextricably linked to the nerve centre of capital accumulation, namely: the credit system.     

Cesium magnetometer surveys at a Pithouse Site near Silver City,New Mexico

The La Gila Encantada Site is located on an isolated ridge top north of Silver City, New Mexico in an area defined culturally as the Mimbres Mogollon region. The 180 m × 80 m (14400 m²) sized site was originally recorded as a dense scatter of ceramics, lithics, and ground stone along with a number of surface depressions that appear to represent pithouses. Cesium magnetometer surveys were conducted to identify hearths, pithouse boundaries, and activity areas outside of pithouses in support of archaeological investigations, and to test this instrument's ability to image these features. This paper presents a characterization of the magnetic signature of a pithouse as a magnetic high in the center caused by the central hearth, low magnetic variability along the floor of the house, and then increased magnetic variability at the pithouse boundary. This characterization was successfully confirmed for three pithouses using cesium magnetometery and archaeological excavation.     

New radiometric dating of water management features at the prehistoric Purrón Dam Complex,Tehuacán Valley,Puebla, México

Recent investigations at the prehistoric Purrón Dam Complex in the Tehuacán Valley of southern Puebla, México applied radiometric dating to more securely date the complex. Ceramic-based dating in the 1960′s placed the Dam's origin to the Formative Period. While Formative Period origins are widely accepted, the chronology lacks resolution and direct dates. Samples from impounded sediments behind the dam and from prehistoric canal fill were dated through Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) as well as both standard ¹⁴C and accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) assays. These samples directly date the functioning of the water management features within the complex. The results confirm the Formative Period origins of the Purrón Dam, and offer new insights into the construction and functioning of the dam and irrigation system.     

Romita pottery revisited: a reassessment of the provenance of ceramics from Colonial Mexico by LA-MC-ICP-MS

The origin of Romita pottery has been a controversial topic during the last three decades of Colonial Mexico archaeological studies. Lead isotopic analyses of glaze coatings of Spanish and Mexican pottery, and Romita ceramics unearthed from the archaeological site of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City provide evidence that support a Mexican origin.     

Rock Art and Ritual: An Archaeological Analysis of Rock Art in Arid Central Australia

Rock art researchers throughout the world have explicitly or implicitly invoked ritual as an activity associated with the production of rock art but the articulation between the structure and composition of rock art assemblages and ritual behaviour remains poorly understood. Anthropologist, Roy Rappaport (1999) argued that all ritual, whatever the content or focus, has a universal structure. We review this proposition in the context of ritual studies and propose a method aimed at assessing the potential for identifying ritual structure in rock art assemblages. We discuss an archaeological analysis undertaken on the rock art assemblages in arid Central Australia, which aimed at distinguishing such a ritual structure among engraved assemblages, likely to have a Pleistocene origin, as well as more recent painted, stencilled and drawn assemblages. This analysis, despite its limitations, provides the foundation for developing a model, which will enhance the understanding of the relationship between the production of rock art and ritual.     

The center and the edge: Archaeology in Belize, 1809–1992

The archaeological history of Belize now spans, in a sense, 183 years. For all but the past quarter-century of that time, research in the country has ranged from sporadic to nonexistent. In recent years, however, forces both internal and external to Belize have brought about an explosion of fieldwork and reporting, as well as wide-ranging analyses, problem-focused studies, and the beginnings of placement of Belize in a theoretical frame. Review of the development of archaeological research in the country establishes a base on which to rest discussion of themes in current work, as well as the impact of Belizean data as regards changes in our assessment of Maya prehistory as a whole.     

Southwest and northwest: Recent research at the juncture of the United States and Mexico

Research within the last 3 to 5 years is summarized for the southern part of the southwestern United States and adjacent northwest Mexico. In an effort to identify important new sources of information, the literature of contract archaeology is cited, along with more widely available journal and book publications. Topics considered include Late Archaic farmers, early ceramic villages, subsistence and agricultural technology, settlement stability and residential mobility, community organization, and developments of the late prehistoric period sociopolitical complexity.     

Late Preceramic Peru

This paper presents a synthesis of current knowledge of Late Preceramic Peru (ca. 4450–3800 B.P.), a field of study that is less than 50 years old. A brief history of investigations and discussion of chronological systems are presented. A review of Late Preceramic achievements concentrating on subsistence economies and technology is followed by discussion of the social world of Late Preceramic Peru and current consensus and disputes regarding culture processes. Extensive long-distance exchange, farming, and social complexity are first clearly seen in the archaeological record during this time period. Nevertheless, the significance of this evidence with regard to the nature and intensity of the culture practices and processes that they represent is currently under investigation and in contention.     

A Geography of Blood Meridian: Primitive accumulation on the frontier of space

The attempted extirpation of Indigenous populations has been an enduring condition of the ‘idyllic proceedings’ of primitive accumulation. For Marx, such acts of evisceration characterised the dawn of the era of capitalist production. Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness of the West, is read here as one such ‘annal of mankind’ written in ‘letters of blood and fire’. More pointedly, by contributing to an interdisciplinary approach to world literature covering literary studies, geographical studies and political economy, it is argued that Blood Meridian should be considered a quintessential novel of the racial and historical geography of the frontier economy and its spatial expansion within the uneven conditions of capitalist development. This is evidenced through the real spaces and historical occurrences that shaped capitalist expansion recounted in the novel. The latter include the racialised acts of scalping Native Americans licensed by the state between the 1840s and 1850s in Mexico through the actions of the Glanton Gang; the slaughtering of the buffalo that reached its peak in the 1870s marked in the novel by bonepickers that trawl the calcined architecture for skeletons to turn into commodities for the West; and the systematic mapping and simplifying practices conducted through outposts of appropriation on the frontier, such as Fort Griffin, which signal the barbed-wire fencing of rangeland into ranches. The meridian of bloodiness marked by these racialised acts is therefore revealed as an intrinsic aspect of the literary economy of primitive accumulation.     

美国中央情报局对中国西藏的准军事行动(1949-1969)

1949至1969年间美国中央情报局向西藏分裂势力提供了一系列准军事援助。该援助行动的实质是为美国远东战略利益服务,其目标是利用西藏分裂势力遏制与分裂中国,具体内容主要包括：为西藏叛乱分子提供情报和准军事训练技术;在西藏实施公路袭扰和破坏行动;为达赖集团提供军事物资和活动经费;与印度情报机构开展针对中国的情报合作等等。