Early prehistoric sedentism and seasonal animal exploitation in the Caribbean lowlands of Colombia

San Jacinto 1 represents a special-purpose settlement that was used by late Archaic foraging groups who logistically moved from base camps to special-purpose camps in order to collect and process subsistence resources at the onset of the dry season in the Caribbean savannas of northern Colombia. Situated in an optimal location for permanent water and seasonal concentrations of dry season subsistence items, the site’s location was part of a logistic strategy in which specific task groups were moved to resources during a short season of availability. Preserved vertebrate and invertebrate faunas at San Jacinto conform to expectations about assemblage ubiquity, richness, and evenness or equitability within the early occupational strata at the site. Specific animals including turtles and fish were pursued, and may have been processed with C3 plants and grasses in ubiquitous earth ovens. Certain local aquatic invertebrates were also procured along with the collection of specific extra-local gastropods.     

Applying the Strategic‐Relational Approach to Urban Political Ecology: The Water Management Problems of the Baixada Fluminense,Rio de Janeiro,Brazil

Abstract: The complexity of water management requires an explanatory framework that is able to capture the multidimensionality of the relations between nature and society increasingly mediated by the state. The evolution of water problems in the Baixada Fluminense, a wetland area situated to the north of Rio de Janeiro, provides a paradigmatic example of how water management becomes incorporated into the fluid politics between state, nature and society. The local experience is examined by making use of the strategic‐relational approach (after Bob Jessop) expanded to urban political ecology. The concept of “trialectics” is proposed as an ontological representation of the interconnections between the state apparatus, class‐based relations and the socionatural elements of the water cycle. The empirical results show that, in a situation of precarious water supply, regular flooding and severe river degradation, state interventions have tended to favour certain groups and areas, which only intensifies the politicisation of water management.     

What kind of region reaps the benefits of a currency union?

What is the economic impact of joining a currency union? Is this impact heterogeneous across regions? And how does it change in case of a recession? We answer these questions by investigating the economic impact of joining the euro area for the latecomers, that is, the eastern European countries that adopted the euro after 2002. Differently from previous literature, we use NUTS-2 regions as units of analysis. This novelty allows us to investigate the theoretical predictions of a currency union impact at a more appropriate geographical level. Using a recently developed counterfactual approach, we estimate the overall as well as the disaggregated impact of joining the euro area. We find that the adoption of the euro brought about a small positive effect, which was, however, dampened by the Great Recession. Individual regional estimates suggest heterogeneous returns with benefits accruing mostly to core regions.     

Evidence of contact between New and Old World: paleoparasitological and food remains study in the Tagus river population of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo,Portugal)

The period of European maritime expansion that started in the fifteenth century had a great impact on trading, on human migrations and consequently in the dispersion of infectious diseases. Portugal was at the core of this expansion; however, studies about parasitic infections, especially helminths, are lacking. This study aims to help reduce this gap presenting the results of microscopic analysis of soil sediments collected from the São Jorge churchyard of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo). Consecrated in the fourteenth century AD, it remained as a burial ground until the nineteenth century. Soil samples collected from the pelvic girdle of five adult individuals and samples taken as control were analysed under the microscope after current conventional methodological procedures were undertaken. Eggs from Ascaris lumbricoides were identified. Also eggs of trichostrongyle type species were identified in two individuals and may represent the first report in archaeological European samples. Food remains include potato and rice starches, muscle fibres, bivalves, pollen grains and fungi spores. The stratigraphy interpretation together with potato findings put the oldest skeletons to a chronology around the sixteenth century AD. These results are consistent with historical sources that documented the prominence of Tagus river nearby villages in maritime expansion.     

Are we spending too much to grow? The case of Structural Funds

We evaluate whether the impact of EU Structural and Cohesion Funds (EUF) on Member States’ regional economic growth depends on the intensity of treatment, measured by the normalized amount of funds distributed in each region. We use an original data set that covers all the main sources of EUF and extend the regression discontinuity design to the case of continuous treatment. The results suggest an average positive effect on regional growth. The estimated conditional intensity‐growth function is concave and presents a maximum value. Therefore, the exceeding funds could have been allocated to other lagging regions without reducing the effect on growth.     

Ductility-Equivalent Viscous Damping Relationships for Beam-to-Column Partial-Strength Steel Joints

This paper seeks to contribute to the development and improvement of displacement-based design procedures, proposing improved ductility-equivalent viscous damping relationships for steel moment-resisting framed structures with dissipative beam-to-column partial-strength joints. These relationships can be used directly in procedures like the Direct Displacement-Based Seismic Design (DDBD) that uses effective stiffness, ductility-equivalent viscous damping relationships, and period-displacement relationships in a performance-based design approach. To this end, a finite element model of a steel beam-to-column sub-assemblage, characterized by an extended end-plate, is developed in ABAQUS. The model, which is validated against monotonic and cyclic experimental data obtained in previous research, is employed to carry out non-linear time-history (NLTH) analyses, using real records scaled to target several levels of ductility demand. A procedure is then proposed and applied to determine the ductility-equivalent viscous damping relationships of the sub-assemblages. The equivalent linearization technique is applied to the non-linear responses obtained in the NLTH analyses, using an elastic single degree of freedom structure and the elastic displacement spectra. The influence of joints mechanisms and of the dynamic characteristics of the structure in the equivalent viscous damping is investigated, and an expression for ductility-equivalent viscous damping is proposed. The proposed expression represents a clear improvement in relation to the existing expressions available in literature.     

The study of collector variability in the transition to sedentary food producers in northern Colombia

Human adaptation to the tropics by populations of collectors has been a longtanding issue of debate, especially with regard to the role that collectors may have played in pathways toward sedentism and food production. In this essay, I examine significant differences in strategies developed for estuarine environments versus the inland environments of the transitional savannas of northern Colombia to analyze how these two adaptations articulate with the processes which led toward sedentism and food production in neotropical northern Colombia. Contrary to the received wisdom, I argue that the exploitation of rich estuarine environments is not necessarily a prelude to food production; seed exploitation early in the sixth millennium B.P. in the northern Colombian transitional savanna zone provides a second and arguably more probable model.     

The neoliberalization of water in Lima,Peru

Neoliberalization of the water sector in Lima, Peru, is analyzed using an innovative conceptual framework with three interrelated dimensions: techno-environmental improvements, the monetization of water services and the search for political legitimacy. Application of this conceptual framework to the recent reforms of the public water services of Lima, a city historically fraught with social inequalities and water management problems, shows that there have been two distinctive phases: firstly, emphasis on techno-environmental improvements and monetization in the 1990s (when the privatization of the local water utility was the ultimate, but unfulfilled, goal); secondly, a focus on monetization and legitimization in the 2000s (marked by more flexible mechanisms of private sector involvement). Fieldwork in Lima reveals that positive results from increased investment in water services have been undermined by the discriminatory and short-term basis of neoliberalization of water. Problems of debt financing, neglect of equity of access to services and weak environmental sustainability threaten the long-term future.