Identifying pre-Hispanic water storages in agricultural areas of south-central Andes through diatom evidence

In the Andes, there are several pre-Hispanic irrigation networks with structures destined for water storage. However, it has not been widely discussed in archaeological research. This is probably due to their being difficult to identify. The aim of this study is to explore the use of diatom assemblage analysis as a methodological tool suitable to help in the identification and characterization of these ancient hydraulic structures. We analyzed two archaeological structures interpreted as water reservoirs from north-western Argentina (EH1 in Antofagasta de la Sierra and U-88R1 in Yocavil) and compared them to current reservoirs. The diatom species composition and the changes in the dominant ecological groups in the studied structures highlight different periods of hydraulic behavior. EH1 contained and stored water, but there were periods of time in which there was a lack of use or abandonment of the structure. However, the U88-R1 structure does not have diatom evidence of containing standing water for a prolonged time but presence of wet soils. Thus, the structure could have been used for other water management strategies. The results show that diatom analysis is a methodological tool with a high potential to study ancestral hydrotechnologies.     

Capitalist Formations of Enclosure: Space and the Extinction of the Commons

Despite their theoretical and political potential, recent debates on enclosure usually lack an effective consideration of how space is mobilized in the process of dispossession. This article connects the analysis of enclosure's general spatial rationality to a range of illustrations of its particular formations and procedures. Enclosure is understood as one of capitalism's “universal territorial equivalents”, a polymorphous technique with variegated expressions in time but also with a consistent logic that uses the spatial erosion of the commons to subsume non‐commodified, self‐managed social spaces. In response to the ever‐changing nature of commoning, successive regimes of enclosure reshape the morphologies of deprivation and their articulation to other state and market apparatuses in order to meet shifting strategies of capital accumulation and social reproduction. Through a spatially nuanced account of these phenomena, I outline a tentative genealogy of enclosure formations that allows tracking diverse geographies of dispossession across different scales and regulatory contexts in various historical stages of capitalist development.     

Raw stone material supply for Upper Pleistocene settlements in Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos,Spain): flint characterization using petrographic and geochemical techniques

Microscopy, mass spectrometry and X-ray diffraction methods were used to analyse 415 samples of natural and archaeological flint from Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) in order to define the different types from Neogene and Cretaceous formations in the study area, infer their genetic context and ascertain the supply sources used by hunter-gatherers who exploited this area in the Upper Pleistocene. A statistical classification model was also designed using linear discriminatory analysis and support vector machines which permitted the differentiation of the flint on an age basis.     

Hallucinations and pathological visual perceptions in Maupassant's fantastical short stories--a neurological approach

Maupassant excelled as a realist writer of the nineteenth century, with fantastical short stories being an outstanding example of his literary genius. We have analysed four of his fantastical stories from a neurological point of view. In "Le Horla," his masterpiece, we have found nightmares, sleep paralysis, a hemianopic pattern of loss and recovery of vision, and palinopsia. In "Qui sait" and in "La main" there is also an illusory movement of the objects in the visual field, although in a dreamlike complex pattern. In "Lui," autoscopy and hypnagogic hallucinations emerge as fantastical key elements. The writer suffered from severe migraine and neurosyphilis involving the optic nerve, which led to his death by general paralysis of the insane (GPI). Visual loss and visual hallucinations affected the author in his last years, before a delirant state confined him to a nursing home. Our original hypothesis, which stated that he could have translated his sensorial experiences coming from this source to his works, had to be revised by analyzing some of his earliest works, notably "Le Docteur Héraclius Gloss" and "La main d'écorché" (1875). We found hallucinatory symptoms, adopting the form of autoscopy and other elaborated visual misperceptions, in stories written at age 25, when Maupassant was allegedly healthy. Therefore, we hypothesize that they may be related to his hypersensitive disposition, assuming that no pathology is necessary to experience such vivid experiences. In addition, Maupassant's abuse of drugs, as illustrated in "Rêves," could have provided an additional element to outline his painstaking visual depictions. All these factors, in addition to his up-to-date neurological knowledge and attendance at Charcot's lectures at "La Salpêtrière," armed the author for repetitive and enriched hallucinatory experiences, which were transferred relentlessly into his works from the beginning of his career.     

The First Human Occupation of the Basque Crossroads

In the last 15?years, knowledge of the first human occupation of the Basque area has undergone important advances due to the excavation of new deposits and the application of new methodological approaches to previously known sequences. In this paper we present the state of knowledge of the Lower Palaeolithic in this region, outlining the difficulties encountered and the advances made in the last two decades.     

Central Park against the streets: the enclosure of public space cultures in mid-nineteenth century New York

The industrialization of New York and its rise to economic dominance brought about a major restructuring of street life and unleashed an array of contradictory everyday urban cultures. In a still under-regulated environment, the commoning of public space became a key sociospatial capital that helped the working classes resolve their reproduction in a way the elite found disturbing and far removed from the civic order they were trying to instil. This article draws on recent theorizations of the commons/enclosure dialectic to develop a comparative analysis of the cultures of public space use vis-à-vis the practices prescribed by Central Park in its attempt to reform everyday spatialities. The park is understood here as an early episode in the project of imposing new social relations through the enclosure of public conduct—a first effort to tame the urban commons and prevent the subaltern appropriation of public space. Following a preliminary discussion of the economic and social determinants and configuration of the material cultures of public space use in Manhattan, the article studies the park's strategies as a special type of enclosure, consisting not of the usurping of common land for private profit but of the mobilization of public space to shift behaviors from one regime of publicity to another.     

Urban Regeneration in the Brazilian urban policy agenda

This article aims to highlight the main arguments that sought to justify the incorporation and legitimization of Urban Regeneration in the urban policy agenda in Brazil. It shows how the convergence between different and even conflicting propositions related to urban development provided ideological support to the construction of discourses in which urban regeneration is portrayed as beneficial to society as a whole, and how recent international ideas on urban development were incorporated in urban policies of contemporary Brazil, considering our local socio-economic and political environment, planning tradition and regulatory frameworks. The focus will be on Rio de Janeiro and particularly São Paulo given the key role these two cities play in defining urban policy paradigms, guiding government agendas and exporting regulatory models to other parts of Brazil.     

Territory and the governmentalisation of social reproduction: parliamentary enclosure and spatial rationalities in the transition from feudalism to capitalism

Recent applications of Foucauldian categories in geography, spatial history and the history of town planning have opened up interesting new perspectives, with respect to both the evolution of spatial knowledge and the genealogy of territorial techniques and their relation to larger socio-political projects, that would be enriched if combined with other discursive traditions. This article proposes to conceptualise English parliamentary enclosure–a favourite episode for Marxist historiography, frequently read in a strictly materialist fashion–as a precedent of a new form of sociospatial governmentality, a political technology that inaugurates a strategic manipulation of territory for social change on the threshold between feudal and capitalist spatial rationalities. I analyse the sociospatial dimensions of parliamentary enclosure’s technical and legal innovations and compare them to the forms of communal self-regulation of land use customs and everyday regionalisations that preceded it. Through a systematic, replicable mechanism of reterritorialisation, enclosure acts normalised spatial regulations, blurred regional differences in the social organisation of agriculture and erased the modes of autonomous social reproduction linked to common land. Their exercise of dispossession of material resources, social capital and community representations is interpreted therefore as an inaugural logic that would pervade the emergent spatial rationality later known as planning.