Tracing population mobility in the Aegean using isotope geochemistry: a first map of local biologically available Sr/Sr signatures

Strontium isotope ratio (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) analysis of archaeological human skeletal remains is an efficient method of investigating past population movement and residential mobility by determining probable geographical origins for the individuals examined. For this to be achieved, however, a map of biologically available ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signatures across the region investigated is needed. This paper presents a first such map for the Aegean, based on ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values recovered mainly from archaeological animal dental enamel and modern snail shells from sites largely distributed in the southern part of this region. Although not exhaustive, this comprehensive dataset of local biologically available ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signatures shows a marked difference between Mainland sites of the Pindos and Parnassos zones and the islands of south-eastern Aegean crossed by the Sub-Pelagonian zone (0.70808–0.70869), and sites in the central Cyclades and the north-eastern Aegean islands falling into the Attic-Cycladic metamorphic belt and the Vardar zone, respectively (0.70926–0.71187). Biologically available ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values from sites on central Euboea in the Pelagonian zone, south-eastern Attica and the western Cyclades in the Attic-Cycladic metamorphic belt, and on Crete in the Gavrovo zone are also relatively high (0.70853–0.70931), but lower than those recorded for the central Cyclades and the north-eastern Aegean.     

“It will kill your dreams,your goals,your everything”—Humanitarian migrants,governance through containment and the Italian accommodation system

While asylum seekers await the outcome of their claims to protection in Italy, they are dispersed to accommodation centers administered by subcontracted non-governmental agencies where they receive reception and integration services. In addition, in line with guidelines from the regional government, social operators regulate migrant behavior and mobility through the use of the use of behavioral regulation, deployed temporalities, and various forms of surveillance. Using the lens of migration governmentality and specifically, containment (Tazzioli and Garelli, 2018), this research explores the impact of these forms of governance on migrant settlement outcomes. I do so through a case study of accommodation centers and migrant experiences within accommodation centers in Turin (Italy) conducted in the winter of 2018 and 2019. Findings suggest that migrants are infantilized through the process, one which provides few opportunities to exert autonomy over self-direction and preferred settlement outcomes. Contained within reception centers without opportunities for external engagement, migrants are prevented from developing social ties or place attachment more generally. Migrants reject their subordinated status, and, exhibit a familiar form of autonomy in the post-reception period—migration, including circular and cross border mobility.     

Keeping migrants at the margins. Governing through ambiguity and the politics of discretion in the post-2015 EUropean migration and border regime

This article deals with the roles of ambiguity and discretion in the governing of migration and how they contribute to the marginalisation of migrants at the borders of EUrope. Building on ethnographic research and interviews conducted in Sicily, it connects legal-institutional ambiguities of two recent policy interventions in the field of migration governance in Italy – the Security Decree-Law and the Hotspot Approach – to the discretionary practices by public officials tasked with their implementation. By theoretically and empirically tracing the co-constitutive relationship of ambiguity and discretion, the article draws on and contributes to recent inquiries into grey areas of governance, particularly in the field of (critical) border regime studies. Based on two distinct cases, it analyses how ambiguity and discretionary local practices are related both to each other and to the contemporary fragmentary reconfiguration processes of the EUropean Migration and Border Regime, and shows how they intersect to form spatio-juridical grey areas that foster the spatial and social marginalisation of migrants in EUrope.     

Ground‐Penetrating Radar Velocity Determination and Precision Estimates Using Common‐Midpoint (CMP) Collection with Hand‐Picking,Semblance Analysis and Cross‐Correlation Analysis: A Case Study and Tutorial for Archaeologists

The most crucial parameter to be determined in an archaeological ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) survey is the velocity of the subsurface material. Precision velocity estimates comprise the basis for depth estimation, topographic correction and migration, and can therefore be the difference between spurious interpretations and/or efficient GPR‐guided excavation with sound archaeological interpretation of the GPR results. Here, we examine the options available for determining the GPR velocity and for assessing the precision of velocity estimates from GPR data, using data collected at a small‐scale iron‐working site in Rhode Island, United States. In the case study, the initial velocity analysis of common‐offset GPR profile data, using the popular method of hyperbola fitting, produced some unexpectedly high subsurface signal velocity estimates, while analysis of common midpoint (CMP) GPR data yielded a more reasonable subsurface signal velocity estimate. Several reflection analysis procedures for CMP data, including hand and automated signal picking using cross‐correlation and semblance analysis, are used and discussed here in terms of efficiency of processing and yielded results. The case study demonstrates that CMP data may offer more accurate and precise velocity estimates than hyperbola fitting under certain field conditions, and that semblance analysis, though faster than hand‐picking or cross‐correlation, offers less precision.     

Historical duty,palimpsestic time and migration in the Decade of Centenaries

Abstract

This article analyses Sonya Kelly’s How to Keep an Alien (Dublin Tiger Fringe, 2014) and ANU Production’s Vardo (Dublin Theatre Festival, 2014) in relationship to the performative backdrop of the Irish Decade of Centenaries (2012–22) and a series of key extra-theatrical political events have that featured asylum seekers and migrants prominently in Ireland and to a limited extent in Europe at large from 2012 to 2015. Both theatrical productions centrally engage tropes of Irish national memory vis-à-vis engagement with migration through a primary focus on women’s stories and premiered against the backdrop of the Decade of Centenaries. How to Keep an Alien and Vardo’s embrace of what M. Jacqui Alexander terms “palimpsestic time” and their critical focus on gender during this moment of the Decade of Centenaries models a theatrical dramaturgy that aids in reading key theatrical and extra-theatrical events featuring asylum seekers and migrants against one another. These works reveal the relationship between these events and the ongoing redefinition of Irish national memory and political community, a process thrown into sharp relief by the present commemorative mode. They insist that a turn to the past is inseparable from querying the lived political structures of the present, structures that have repeatedly displaced as well as instrumentalised the bodies of migrant women from the post-inward migration of the mid-1990s onwards.     

Dietary life histories in Stone Age Northern Europe

We present here a framework for using stable isotope analysis of bone and teeth to study individual life history. A sampling strategy and analytical approach for stable carbon and nitrogen analysis of bone and dentine collagen optimised for intra-individual purposes is put forward. The rationale behind this strategy, various requirements and constrains, and recommendations on how to modify it according to variations in material and analytical instrumentation, are discussed and explained in detail. Based on intra-individual data for 131 human individuals from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in Northern Europe, we consider the sources and various kinds of variation one is likely to find, and how the data can be explained and transformed into an archaeologically meaningful interpretation. It is concluded that the use of stable isotope analysis to trace individual life history is not limited to carefully excavated, neatly preserved, single burials with articulate skeletal remains. Even collective burials, disturbed graves, disarticulated human remains in cultural layers, or other depositions that deviate from what is often considered as a “proper burial”, offer the possibility to look at individual life biographies.     

Reconstructing Middle Horizon mobility patterns on the coast of Peru through strontium isotope analysis

The pre-Columbian coastal site of Ancón, Peru frequently has been interpreted as an important outpost of the highland Wari Empire, inhabited by individuals from the sierra and the coast. In order to test this hypothesis, bone–tooth pairs from 35 Middle Horizon (550 AD–1000 AD) Ancón skeletons were analyzed for strontium isotopes, which vary by geologic provenance. Results indicate that 34 of the 35 individuals have ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr enamel and bone values higher than Ancón's biologically available strontium isotope range. Nitrogen and carbon isotope data from a subset of the Ancón skeletons suggest that the higher than expected ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values among the Ancón sample likely reflects a diet rich in marine resources rather than migratory activity, and highlight the need to use multiple lines of evidence to track residence change at sites where individuals relied on resources other than locally grown terrestrial foods. The one remaining individual, a young female of elite status, has an enamel strontium isotope signature much lower than the available data for local fauna and soil indicating that she was not raised locally. Her enamel ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio fits well within the range of strontium isotope values established for the inland Wari site of Conchopata [Tung, T.A., Knudson, K.J. Social identities and geographical origins of Wari trophy heads from Conchopata, Peru. Current Anthropology, in press.], and suggests that highland, Wari immigrants may have been present at Ancón during the Middle Horizon.     

Variation in strontium isotope ratios of archaeological fauna in the Midwestern United States: a preliminary study

Strontium isotope values (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) in bone and tooth enamel have been used increasingly to identify non-local individuals within prehistoric human populations worldwide. Archaeological research in the Midwestern United States has increasingly highlighted the role of population movement in affecting interregional cultural change. However, the comparatively low level of geologic variation in the Midwestern United States might suggest a corresponding low level of strontium variation, and calls into question the sensitivity of strontium isotopes to identify non-local individuals in this region. Using strontium isotopes of archaeological fauna, we explore the degree of variability in strontium ratios across this region. Our results demonstrate measurable variation in strontium ratios and indicate the potential of strontium analysis for addressing questions of origin and population movement in the Midwestern United States.     

清代移民开发边疆与少数民族关系--以台湾为例

清代移民向台湾的迁徙属于汉人向边疆地区的拓展,移民在台湾的开拓就是汉族与少数民族相互接触、冲突、融合的过程。由于台湾少数民族与汉族接触的历史较短,双方的摩擦比较尖锐,但移民经过相当长时间与少数民族的接触交往,彼此间逐渐认同乃至融合,在这一过程中,官方的政策也起到了不容忽视的作用。     

“Mycenaean” political domination of Knossos following the Late Minoan IB destructions on Crete: negative evidence from strontium isotope ratio analysis (Sr/Sr)

Strontium isotope ratio analysis of human dental enamel and bone is applied to investigate a highly debated question of population movement and cultural discontinuity in Prehistoric Aegean Archaeology. The Late Minoan IB (ca. 1490/1470 BC) destructions on Crete are succeeded by cultural upheaval. The novel cultural features that appear at Knossos (Crete) in this period have forerunners in the Mainland. In Cretan context, the Linear B writing system, the funerary architecture and burial practices of the Mainland style are interpreted as evidence of an actual “Mycenaean” long-term settlement and political domination of Knossos. Human skeletal material from tombs that are associated with non-locals from the Mainland based upon the material culture is analysed to measure ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr. The results of the analysis show that all the examined individuals from the Knossos tombs were born locally.