Investigating foetal and perinatal mortality in prehistoric skeletal samples: a case study from a 3000-year-old Pacific Island cemetery site

The Teouma skeletal sample from Vanuatu represents one of the few truly colonising populations in the Pacific Islands. Therefore, investigating the factors that may have affected foetal/infant mortality in this population is potentially important for understanding the success of settlement in this region of the world. We investigate whether stable isotope analyses of carbon and nitrogen in conjunction with skeletal ageing techniques, can aid in identifying whether the subadults from Teouma died before or after birth in an attempt to understand the potential threats to foetal and infant survival. Multiple skeletal ageing methods using diaphyseal lengths were used to age the young subadults (n = 7). Using regression-based skeletal ageing methods, four of the individuals were aged at around full-term gestation (37–42 weeks gestation), while the remaining three individuals died preterm. The isotope analyses did not assist in identifying the individuals that survived post-birth because none of the subadults displayed the 2–3‰ trophic increase in δ¹⁵N values expected for a breastfed infant, probably as a result of their young age. However, all of the foetal/perinatal individuals exhibited higher δ¹⁵N values in their bone collagen compared with the adult females of the sample, with two of the individuals demonstrating unusually high δ¹⁵N values. The δ¹³C values of the foetuses/perinates did not exhibit the same variation. We explore a number of possible explanations for this elevation of perinatal/foetal δ¹⁵N values and tentatively suggest that this is a result of in utero stress as a consequence of chronic maternal ill-health. The osteological and palaeodemographic evidence supports the assertion that females, foetuses and perinates were susceptible to environmental stress within this colonising population, resulting in early death of the perinatal individuals in addition to early terminations of pregnancy or premature birth possibly caused by infectious and/or metabolic diseases.     

Intellectuals and politics

ABSTRACT. By imagining their audiences, intellectuals invented and constructed the collective identities of nations and transnational communities like Europe or humankind. Four ideal types of intellectuals are outlined by describing them in their relation to politics: the intellectual as cosmopolitan ascetic; the intellectual as enlightened legislator; the intellectual as revolutionary; and the intellectual as the voice of a traumatic memory. These ideal types change over time in response to their focus of attention and their mode of communication. Because of changes in their media (from handwritten to printed books) and changes in their written language (from Latin to French and Italian, and further to vernacular languages), intellectuals were able to change views on past, present and future times. Today, they are involved in (civic) resistance but rarely in politics per se. By renewing the tension of the sacred and profane – the so‐called axial‐age revolution – contemporary intellectuals in Eastern Europe are decoupled from direct political power.     

THE GHOST OF DARWIN'S ANIMALS: PRESENCE AND THE RETURN OF THE REAL

This essay takes its point of departure from the emergence of the concept of presence in the field of history and theory. The essay suggests that the emergence of presence is related to the events of September 11 and signals a weariness of the postmodern condition and a longing for the real. Advocates of presence, the essay argues, have stressed how the material traces of the past move us in the present, and in doing so have played down the problematic relationship between past experience and historical representation, which was a concern of the linguistic turn. The essay argues that this interest in the trace points to a shift away from the meaning‐making of symbolic practices and toward the moment when the master signifier enables (symbolic) meaning to occur. This indicates that there is a desire for the real at play in the move toward presence. Through an analysis of Eelco Runia's concept of presence, the essay argues that this desire for the real is related to a repression of Darwin's evolutionary framework, which has been considered bad taste in the social sciences and humanities since the end of the Second World War.     

Coming to terms with a difficult past: the trauma of the assassination of Hrant Dink and its repercussions on Turkish national identity

This paper takes as its subject the question of why some nations are less willing to acknowledge past atrocities. To answer that question, it focuses on the assassination of Hrant Dink – a Turkish‐Armenian journalist – and its repercussions on Turkish national identity. Scrutinising newspaper articles written before and after the assassination (2004–2007), it casts a detailed glance at the struggle between two carrier groups – pro‐ and anti‐acknowledgement groups – and argues that the assassination increased the likelihood of the acknowledgement of the mass killing of Armenians in 1915 by creating a cultural trauma informed by collective guilt. However, the relief generated by the funeral, combined with the strength of the master commemorative narrative regarding the mass killings, decreased that likelihood, and despite the huge public reaction created by the assassination there was no attempt at acknowledgement. As such, the paper contributes to our understanding of the trauma of perpetrators and claims that, in addition to other factors listed by earlier studies, cultural trauma is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for coming to terms with difficult pasts.