Competition and conflict in the Upper Belize River Valley: Insights from the ancient Maya minor center of Callar Creek,Belize

Political relationships typically entail competition and conflict. Within the ancient Maya world, the Upper Belize River Valley (UBRV) offers one example of an arena of intense political contestation, and recent investigations at the minor center of Callar Creek offer insights into this complex and occasionally antagonistic political landscape. During the Late and Terminal Classic periods (a.d. 600–900), for example, those living at the Callar Creek center appear to have affiliated themselves with the larger center of Buenavista, but not to have developed political ties with those in surrounding hinterland communities. Indeed, Callar Creek provides an example in which the political fortunes of a minor center and its surrounding hinterlands followed divergent paths. Furthermore, a termination event suggests that part of the Callar Creek center was purposefully destroyed by adversaries in the Terminal Classic period, and that discordant relationships in the UBRV at times turned violent.     

Competition or cooperation? Jewish day schools,synagogues and the (re)construction of young people’s Jewish identities in England

Diasporic synagogues have historically provided a number of educational and social functions. However, the growing popularity of state-funded Jewish schools in England necessitates analysis of these institutions’ changing roles and their implications for performances of Jewishness. Drawing upon interviews with rabbis, and interviews and focus groups with parents and students at a Jewish school, this article demonstrates three challenges for synagogues associated with the recent growth in Jewish day schooling: the instigation of instrumental attendance at services in order to secure a school place; and the co-option of synagogues’ traditional functions as both education and social centres. In the process, it illustrates how conceptualisations of Jewish identity are contested, resulting in discrepant attitudes towards Jewish education. Consequently, the article contributes to understandings of the spaces in which young people practise their Jewishness, and highlights the challenges for community leaders in ensuring that Jewish schools and synagogues cooperate rather than compete.     

The Use of a Large-Scale Seismic Vulnerability Assessment Approach for Masonry Façade Walls as an Effective Tool for Evaluating,Managing and Mitigating Seismic Risk in Historical Centers

ABSTRACT

The vulnerability assessment of the building stock in a given territorial area, such as a city or an entire country, is a key prerequisite for evaluating risk, not only because of the potential physical consequences resulting from the occurrence of an event, but also because it is one of the few aspects in which engineering research can intervene. In fact, the rigorous vulnerability assessment of existing buildings followed by the implementation of appropriate retrofitting solutions can help to substantially reduce the levels of physical damage and economic impact of future events. Particularly regarding the seismic vulnerability assessment of historical centers, the amount of knowledge that has been accumulated over the past decades, together with the broad damage data obtained from post-earthquake damage surveys, provides a singular opportunity to develop and calibrate innovative large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment approaches, which can be used to outline and support risk mitigation and management strategies. This article addresses this issue by discussing the use of a large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment methodology for masonry façade walls as a tool for evaluating the potential benefit resulting from the application of different seismic retrofitting strategies, both considering their contribution to reduce post-event urban losses and accessibility.     

Changes in reindeer body part representation at Grotte XVI, Dordogne, France

Foraging theory models are used to examine changes in reindeer body part representation in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic ungulate assemblages at Grotte XVI (Dordogne, France). Previous research suggests that climate change resulted in progressive increases in reindeer abundances throughout the region. If increased forager encounter rates with reindeer resulted in decreased transport distances and search times, central-place forager models predict that field processing at the kill site will decline and reindeer body part transport will become less selective. This prediction is supported, and reindeer skeletal element abundances are shown to become increasingly even and incorporate higher frequencies of low utility elements through time. The progressive shift in reindeer transport strategies operates across technological and hominin species boundaries including the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition.     

Skeletal element abundances in archaeofaunal assemblages: economic utility,sample size,and assessment of carcass transport strategies

Economic utility indices provide a means of interpreting butchery and transport decisions reflected in the relative abundance of skeletal elements. Because of destructive taphonomic processes, interpreting skeletal element abundances in terms of carcass transport strategies requires that faunal analysts consider only those elements which accurately reflect their original abundances following human discard. In this study we use resampling techniques to examine the impact of sample size on correlations between high-survival skeletal element frequencies and economic utility in four simulated population assemblages reflecting distinct carcass transport strategies. Correlations alone do not accurately reflect the true relationship between bone abundance and economic utility as particular transport strategies have a tendency to generate high frequencies of Type II errors as sample size decreases. We show that the Shannon evenness index can be used as a quantitative means of distinguishing between bone assemblages characterized by subtle variations in skeletal element abundances. The evenness index can also be used to evaluate whether observed correlations reflect sampling error. Results from our simulations are applied to three published faunal assemblages to evaluate likely carcass transport strategies.     

Discursive Agency: (Re‐)Conceptualizing Actors and Practices in the Analysis of Discursive Policymaking

Interpretive discourse analysis commonly claims to address the interrelation between actors and discourses. However, the analytical focus of most approaches is on structures (discourses) while much less attention is paid to agency. This paper explicitly addresses discursive agency in two steps. First, we systematically review theoretical and analytical dimensions of agency in existing interpretive discourse analysis approaches. This review reveals a set of shared assumptions; most notably a concept of “trialectic” agency emphasizing the constitution of agency among the individual, the (discursive) structures, and the researcher's interpretation. Second, we propose an analytical heuristic, the Discursive Agency Approach, which is developed on the basis of the review and own empirical data. The proposed approach consists of four elements: (1) policy discourses, (2) political institutions, (3) agents defined via a set of characteristics, and (4) strategic practices. This approach is meant to facilitate a systematic exploration of agency under a discourse perspective, tackling the question of how a policy is constituted through the agency ascribed to its proponents in dynamic discursive processes, and how actors acquire political relevance through discursive means. To enable this goal, we propose distinct research steps and associated methods that link the approach to existing means of analysis.     

Carving out the nation with the enemy's kin: double strategy of boundary‐making in Transnistria and Abkhazia

The 1992–1993 civil wars in Moldova and in Georgia ended with a de facto separation of Transnistria and Abkhazia, respectively. These de facto states are both inhabited by the kin to the ‘enemy’ across the administrative border: Moldovans and Georgians/Mingrelians. How do the de facto authorities foster a collective identity in support of their claim for legitimacy and statehood? Engaging with Wimmer's taxonomy of boundary‐making, this article argues that nation‐building involves not only expansion but also, simultaneously, contraction. Transnistria constructs a higher‐level identity category and co‐opts and contracts the Moldovan category, separating it into ‘our’ and Bessarabian Moldovans in order to incorporate the former into the Transnistrian people. In Abkhazia, the nation‐building project establishes the Abkhazs as the titular nation allowing, however, for the construction of an Abkhazian people that would include minorities, with Gal/i Georgians said to be Mingrelians, distinct from Georgians. These cases show that elites combine different ethnic boundary‐making strategies in order to implement their favoured identity project and to legitimize the claimed statehood.     

旅游地生态位的概念、原理及优化策略研究

随着区域旅游开发的进展,一定空间范围的区域开始形成为一个开放的系统,并且该系统内各旅游地的"定位"及其内部功能结构上的相似性和差异性都会直接影响到区域空间竞争的态势。文章以研究区域内旅游地的系统空间关系和发展策略为目标,引入生态学中的生态位理论,在旅游地生态位的概念进行界定的基础上,阐述了旅游地生态位的竞争原理和演变规律,并对区域旅游在协调开发过程中应该采取的生态位策略进行了探讨。     

契约与民生:清代徽州棚民长期存在之反思

明代以来进入徽州地区的外地棚民,利用当地丰富的自然资源,进行各种经济活动.在当时的社会条件制约下,此类经济活动耗费了大量的资源,破坏了徽州农村的生态环境,损害了地方和国家的利益.虽然清代微州民间和官方采取了不同措施以遏制生态环境恶化,但棚民开发在清代却长期存在.文章从契约和民生的角度分析认为,政府对契约法律效率的承认,百姓的生存以及谋利的需要,是清代徽州棚民长期存在、难以驱禁的两大重要原因.     

Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of Cis-Baikal, Siberia: An overview for the new century

The paper examines Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies in the Baikal region of Siberia based on diverse data (radiocarbon, mortuary, geochemical, genetic, human osteological, and zooarchaeological) accumulated over the last 10–15 years. The new model emphasizes the cyclical nature of the long-term changes and recognizes similarities between the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age cultures. The overall impression seems to be that change in the region was rapid rather than gradual. A number of interesting correlations between various cultural and environmental variables have been identified. During the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Bronze Age, the spatial distributions of mortuary sites, open landscape, and good fisheries are all correlated and both intervals are coeval with periods of environmental stability. For the Early Neolithic two additional sets of correlated variables have been identified: (1) the uneven distribution of fish resources, uneven distribution of the human population, and cultural heterogeneity; and (2) poorer overall community health, more extensive male travel and heavier workloads, and higher reliance on fishing. For the Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the sets of correlated variables are somewhat different: (1) more even distribution of terrestrial game resources (herbivores), more even distribution of the human population, and cultural homogeneity; and (2) better overall community health, less travel and lighter workloads, more equitable distribution of labor between males and females, and higher reliance on game hunting. Viewed together, these patterns emphasize the much more dynamic pattern of hunter-gatherer cultural variability, temporally and spatially, compared to what was known before.