The diversity continuum: Blurring the boundaries between internal and external others among Italian children of migrants

In recent years, studies on nations and nationalism have experienced a rapid growth prompted by the so-called ‘new nationalism’, which has been interpreted, in the Western world, as the product of white majorities and their anxiety towards a demographic change caused by international migration. This article switches focus and explores the impact of demographic change on the nation from the perspective of its non-white population. Using Italy as a case study, the article relies on the voices and online comments of young Italian adults with foreign backgrounds who, like their parents, are often perceived by the white nationalist rhetoric as in need of integration or assimilation. Data rely on 38 individual semi-structured interviews with representatives of ‘second generation’ associations (ReteG2, Associna, Giovani Musulmani d’Italia and Yallaitalia), as well as forums, blogs and videos posted on the webpages of these associations since their creation until June 2015. The article reveals how the existence of an internal other (the Southerner) is discursively mobilised by these young adults to question the ethno-racial unity of the nation and to draw a diversity continuum between their ascribed foreignness and the internal other. This discursive move allows children of migrants to justify their national belonging and to re-write the nation in relation rather than in opposition to alterity. The relevance of these findings is discussed in terms of the re-making of the nation in times of demographic change and the decline of white majorities.     

Botanical,malacological and archaeological zonation of settlement deposits at Gomolava

A 2 × 2 m column was excavated within the large-scale excavation carried out by a Jugoslav team at tell Gomolava, Hrtkovci, Jugoslavia, occupied from Vinc?a (c. 5000 BC) to post-Roman times. The archaeological zonation of the column's material is briefly outlined to provide the background to the detailed palaeobotanical, palynological and malacological study. The results of this study are used to aid the reconstruction of the palaeoenvironment of the tell. They indicate that the earliest agrobotanical zone, in which most of the cultigens were already present, but which is characterized by a very low count of charred seeds, persists throughout the Vinc?a, Baden and most of the Kostolac layers of the tell. A marked increase in charred seeds, without the appearance of new species, occurs in the next zone (Bronze and Iron Age). In zone 3 (Iron Age and Roman), Triticum dicoccum, Triticum aestivum and Lens culinaris attain significant levels.An interesting correlation between an increase in shade-loving snail species (zone B) and increase in building activity in the same level needs to be verified by further similar studies. This level is approximately that of the end of the Vinc?a occupation, but does not precisely correlate with an archaeological transition, suggesting that new building styles may have ante-dated the full development of the Baden cultural group on the site. During the third malaco zone (zone C) most shade loving snail species decrease abruptly to make place for open country species. The spread of these species could have been caused by the partial or total abandonment of the tell. Aquatic snails, which had first appeared in the lowest habitation layers of the tell become rare towards the subsequent bronze and iron age occupation of the tell, indicating that hardly any riverine clay was used for the construction of houses within these periods. The final malaco zone, representing the disturbed iron, roman and medieval periods indicates that again open grassy slopes must have occurred on or around the tell.     

Shell beads from Mississippian sites in the northern Yazoo Basin,Mississippi

ABSTRACT

In this paper, which focuses on the Mississippian period in the northern Yazoo Basin, Mississippi, I present some interesting findings from research done over the past century. In this area, most shell beads come from surface collections, or from excavated burials in cemeteries or ossuaries. Burial styles include extended, flexed, semi-flexed, and bundles, with very few cremations having been encountered. Bead burials also seem to reflect both common and elite people, and there are some interesting discoveries concerning association of shell beads. I will use 33 archaeologically investigated major sites as examples to illustrate an unexpected paucity of shell beads and other shell ornaments at some of the most heavily populated Mississippian sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Two other sites with shell beads in the uplands will be used for comparison.     

A preliminary study on the photo - degradation of printing pigments on banknotes issued during the period of the Republic of China北大核心

为了初步评价光照对民国纸币的影响,为博物馆纸币文物的展陈照明和保存提供建议,本研究选取了八枚纸币分别进行LED灯和自然光老化实验,并通过拉曼光谱仪和X射线荧光光谱仪确定了纸币样品颜料的主要成分——合成有机颜料红49:1、普鲁士蓝、铬酸铅和炭黑。通过老化前后的色差分析可知,纸币红色颜料变化最大,其他颜色变化相对较小。因此,对于民国纸币类文物,尤其是含有红色合成有机颜料的纸币文物,需要控制其光照条件以防止老化变色。     

Extraordinary Creatures: The Role of Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia

ABSTRACT

Depictions of birds are overrepresented in the Dolenjska Hallstatt culture, and appear on over a quarter of artefacts depicting animals. A wide variety of artefacts with birds have been found primarily in graves, and crosscut gender, status, and age. However, poor preservation of zooarchaeological remains has made reconstructions of lived human-bird interactions difficult. This study uses ecological and ethological data, combined with local imagery, to provide insight into prehistoric human-bird interfaces in this area, and the cultural conceptions surrounding these interactions. Birds would have been a constant presence in the lives of Dolenjska Hallstatt people; however, human relationships with them were based more on observation than direct interaction. Birds were ubiquitous in imagery, and it is proposed that this stemmed from Dolenjska Hallstatt conceptions of birds as important observers of human actions, ritual mediators, and possibly guides or guardians. Their differences from humans and other animals distinguished them – they were set apart, and depictions highlighted non-normative behaviours. Birds in the Dolenjska Hallstatt worldview were more than animals, ascribed extraordinary capabilities that made them ritually potent and richly symbolic creatures.     

Complicating Decolonisation: Mozambican Indian Experiences in the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT

This article explores repercussions of independence movements and global decolonisation processes. It argues that an analysis of such processes needs to take into account not only the bilateral dealings between coloniser and colonised, but also needs to include other, perhaps less obvious, actors. Decolonisation involved a power game not only among European powers striving to keep their empires intact at the time, but also between erstwhile empires and emerging nation-states, between statesmen, political activists, and local populations. Through the analysis of Indian experiences in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique after Goa's inclusion in the Indian Union in 1961, this paper illustrates how different parts of the world were interlinked by complex cross-currents during the decolonisation period, and how their connected histories played out in the unfolding of events between the 1950s and 1970s, as well as their ongoing legacy.     

Seeking politically compatible neighbors? The role of neighborhood partisan composition in residential sorting

High rates of internal migration throughout the United States offer opportunities to examine the factors underlying residential selection and neighborhood choice. We devise a survey experiment where respondents are shown photographs of properties and information about the local socioeconomic environment. By providing and varying additional information about the neighborhood partisan composition, our survey experiment explores how political information affects property evaluation. We find that the same property will be evaluated more favorably by partisans when they learn that it is situated in a predominantly co-partisan neighborhood. A second experiment examines how people make judgments about neighborhood partisan composition in the absence of readily available information. We learn that correct inferences about the politics of a locale can be drawn from non-political information about it, even without exposure to direct information about its partisan balance.     

Analog flows in digital worlds: ‘Migration multiples’ and digital heterotopias in Greek territory

Migrants' engagement with Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) reveals a wide spectrum of resistance practices that enact “heterotopias” (Foucault, 1967) that extend from the human body to transnational landscapes (Gillespie et al., 2016). This paper enhances the theoretical debate on migration with new ways of understanding borders and space as fluid, autonomous, and provisional linkages between humans and nonhumans. Based on findings from field research conducted in Greece, it aims to discuss how migrants' digital practices generate new spaces and materialities. Attending to the making of migrants’-ICTs intertwining it examines the emergence of unbordering practices, the creation of crucial solidarity networks and the risks and limitations that emerge when using ICTs. Finally, the paper highlights the recent migratory influx not simply as a result of neoliberal doctrines, but (also) as an act of disobedience to fortress Europe through the creation of digital-urban heterotopias through the lenses of Migration Studies, Science and Technology Studies and Critical spatial theory.     

春秋战国书法论略

春秋战国时期的书法呈现出地域性、多样化、崇美性和变异性的显著特点，在书法史上是一个充满矛盾和裂变，由篆变隶的动态变异时期。