The Archaeology of the Battle of Vuelta de Obligado,Buenos Aires Province,Argentina

Abstract

This paper presents the results of research carried out for more than a decade at Vuelta de Obligado, San Pedro, north-east of Buenos Aires province. The objectives were to understand the dynamics of the strategy followed on the 1845 battlefield by the two groups who fought (Anglo-French and Argentine), and to assess the impact of formation processes on the results produced. This has been achieved through the use of several sources of information: the archaeological record, written documents, Argentine and European plans and sketches, as well as data provided by the current population.     

Mapping anomalous democracies during the Cold War

During the Cold War, a number of societies established stable democracies despite having low levels of modernisation and relatively few democratic neighbours. Threshold levels of modernisation and neighbouring democratic societies are consistently related to the endurance of democracy. Meanwhile, the Cold War superpowers often supported autocracies, making it even more difficult to maintain democracy. Analysing these stable but ‘deviant’ democracies provides an opportunity to examine how domestic factors influence regime stability. In particular, such historical cases advance understanding of contemporary patterns of democratic stability. Previous research has not systematically identified deviant democracies before 1989. This research note does so using a large-N analysis of 125 societies during the first phase of the third wave of democratisation, from 1975 to 1988. It identifies 11 deviant democracies, including Bolivia, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkey.

冷战期间,若干社会建立了稳定的民主体制,尽管它们现代化的程度较低,左邻右舍民主化的不多。民主的持久与否一向与一个国家的现代化基础水平、也与左邻右舍是否为民主政体有关。而冷战期间超级大国往往支持独裁政权,这又使得民主更难维持。分析那些稳定却并非标准的民主国家,使我们得以了解国内因素如何影响政体的稳定性。这些历史的案例增强了我们对当代民主稳定模式的理解。以往的研究没有系统地确认1989年以前的非标准民主国家。本文对第三次民主浪潮第一期125个国家包括玻利维亚、博茨瓦纳、哥伦比亚、科斯特黎加、多米尼加、洪都拉斯、印度、牙买加、毛里求斯、特立尼达和多巴哥、土耳其等做了大量案例分析。     

Articulating minority nationhood: cultural and political dimensions in Québec's reasonable accommodation debate

Given their precarious position within larger states, national minorities cannot rely on federal governments to affirm their nationhood. Moreover, insofar as nationhood is predicated on a shared history, language and culture, immigrants place additional strains on the maintenance of national distinctiveness and the political claims that derive from it. In 2006–2007, following a series of confrontations over religious practices in the public sphere, Québec's provincial government appointed the Bouchard–Taylor Commission to investigate avenues for the accommodation of immigrant‐related cultural and religious differences. While it failed to generate policy, the commission did provide a discursive space for the (re)assertion of Québécois nationhood. Analysing the production of national identity in newspaper debates of the Bouchard–Taylor report, we offer an alternative to the ethnic–civic paradigm in nationalism theory. Rather than treat ethnic and civic as two separate ends of a single continuum, we conceptualise a relationship between two dimensions: one of culture and one of politics. We show that in contemporary articulations of Québec national identity, the prerequisites of political membership derive their meaning from a productive tension between blood‐based and adoptive conceptions of national culture.     

The success–failure dichotomy revisited: young adults' motives to return to their rural home region

Researchers are increasingly aware that nonlinear perspectives of the transition into adulthood and non-economic motives, such as family and friends, may help to improve our understanding of young adults' migration decisions. This paper combines these new insights with the traditional economic success–failure arguments in order to explain young adults' return migration to their rural home region. We present four orientations in return motives: the social, family, functional and partner orientation. They consist of different combinations of the stereotypical success–failure arguments with non-serial transitional stages, and with different attachments to the home region. They also show that in some cases, return migration should actually be interpreted as staying in the home region, because the young adult returnees had not mentally left the region. We therefore state that our results provide a solid argument for reinterpreting the out-migration of young people from rural areas.     

Characteristics of Oman's archaeological resource: a preliminary review of management prospects

This paper is a preliminary overview of the main characteristics of the archaeological resource of Oman from a management perspective. It looks at the resource in terms of form, space and time. It covers a pilot statistical analysis of the archaeological data so far input into the proposed National Archaeological Database of Oman (NADO). The main findings of this analysis show that the management of Omani archaeological resource lacks a well‐defined strategic research plan, and that there are large research gaps in many geographical and chronological areas. It also shows that the governmental organisations responsible for the management of the country's archaeological resource are not taking into consideration the potential benefits of archaeological records in their management practices.     

Three Twentieth-Century Multiauthored Neurological Handbooks – A Historical Analysis and Bibliometric Comparison

The emergence of neurology as a separate specialty from internal medicine and psychiatry took several decades, starting at the end of the nineteenth century. This can be adequately reconstructed by focusing on the establishment of specialized journals, societies, university chairs, the invention and application of specific instruments, medical practices, and certainly also the publication of pivotal textbooks in the field. Particularly around 1900, the German-speaking countries played an integral role in this process. In this article, one aspect is extensively explored, notably the publication (in the twentieth century) of three comprehensive and influential multivolume and multiauthor handbooks entirely devoted to neurology. All available volumes of Max Lewandowsky's Handbuch der Neurologie (1910–1914) and the Handbuch der Neurologie (1935–1937) of Oswald Bumke and Otfrid Foerster were analyzed. The handbooks were then compared with Pierre Vinken's and George Bruyn's Handbook of Clinical Neurology (1968–2002).

Over the span of nearly a century these publications became ever more comprehensive and developed into a global, encompassing project as is reflected in the increasing number of foreign authors. Whereas the first two handbooks were published mainly in German, “Vinken & Bruyn” was eventually published entirely in English, indicating the general changes in the scientific language of neurology after World War II. Distinctions include the uniformity of the series, manner of editorial involvement, thematic comprehensiveness, inclusion of volume editors in “Vinken & Bruyn,” and the provision of index volumes. The increasing use of authorities in various neurological subspecialties is an important factor by which these handbooks contrast with many compact neurological textbooks that were available at the time.

For historiographical purposes, the three neurological handbooks considered here were important sources for the general study of the history of medicine and science and the history of neurology in particular. Moreover, they served as important catalyzers of the emergence of neurology as a new clinical specialty during the first decades of the twentieth century.     

Crustcrumbs in the carriage: a cognitive reading of Leopold Bloom in the “Hades” episode of Ulysses

This article investigates a commonly held critical conception of Leopold Bloom by questioning where his cognitive processes are situated. It argues that throughout Joyce's “Hades” episode, Bloom's mind seeps out into the storyworld, offloading onto his material setting. Bloom reflects on his dilemmas using different cognitive markers throughout his environment. As representational cues, they allow him to process his insecurities about his paternal and conjugal roles. A cognitive frame reveals how Bloom's kind acts often originate from his personal and familial preoccupations rather than what has been previously represented as genuine human sympathies. It shows Bloom as even more purposefully strategic than the Homeric parallels identified by most critics have traditionally conceived. Not only do we gain a greater depth of understanding about Bloom's character through an analysis of the situated mind; we also see thematic threads unfolding through objects and characters in ways previous scholarship has not seen. These thematic threads constitute substrata that further disclose the complexity and depth not only to Bloom's character but also Ulysses as a whole.     

Contesting Marshall Sahlins on Kinship

In a recent two‐part article on the nature of kinship, Marshall Sahlins maintains that performative criteria for kin‐reckoning are at least as salient as procreative ones, and that, at conception, an individual is endowed with a wide circle of kin, including the ancestral dead. For both reasons, he argues, there is no warrant for granting privileged status to what anthropologists have called ‘primary’ kinship. The contentions here are that performative criteria are modeled upon procreative ones; that ties to ancestral figures are seen as antithetical to procreative ties; and that, therefore, all kinship constructs are derived from nuclear family relationships. Evidence in support of these contentions is provided from the Mae Enga, Fiji, the Trobriands, and Aboriginal Australia.     

Experiments with Lithic Tools: Understanding Starch Residues from Crop Harvesting

Stone knives were used widely in Neolithic East Asia, presumably in the harvesting of grain crops, but their function has not been clearly understood due to the lack of study of residues from these tools. To address this issue, starch grain analysis was employed to study the residues on the surface of ancient stone knives and large amounts of starches were recovered. The sources of these starches, however, were not well understood, because harvesting of crops involves the cutting of stems rather than direct contact with starchy seeds. To determine whether harvesting could deposit these types of residues, we designed a simulation experiment using stone flakes to harvest ears of wheat, rice and foxtail millet, then analysed the residues on both the flakes and in the plant tissues. A large number of starch grains were found in the stems, including both typical morphotypes from seeds and newly described types that occur only in stems, which can be used as indicators of harvesting. Our study demonstrates that starch grains from residues on the surfaces of archaeological stone knives can indicate not only that the tools were used to harvest ears, but also the type of crops harvested.