THE PROVENANCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF NEAR EASTERN GLASS: OXYGEN ISOTOPES BY LASER FLUORINATION AS A COMPLEMENT TO STRONTIUM*

The ability to make rapid measurements on small samples using laser fluorination enhances the potential of oxygen isotopes in the investigation of early inorganic materials and technologies. δ¹⁸O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values are presented for glass from two primary production sites, four secondary production sites and a consumer site in the Near East, dating from Late Antiquity to the medieval period. δ¹⁸O is in general slightly less effective than ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr in discriminating between sources, as the spread of measured values from a single source is somewhat broader relative to the available range. However, while ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr is derived predominantly from either the lime‐bearing fraction of the glass‐making sand or the plant ash used as a source of alkali, δ¹⁸O derives mainly from the silica. Thus the two measurements can provide complementary information. A comparison of δ¹⁸O for late Roman – Islamic glasses made on the coast of Syria–Palestine with those of previously analysed glasses from Roman Europe suggests that the European glasses are relatively enriched in ¹⁸O. This appears to contradict the view that most Roman glass was made using Levantine sand and possible interpretations are discussed.     

Capacity for Freedom – Using a New Poverty Measure to Look at Regional Differences in Living Standards within Australia

Using a recently developed measure of multidimensional poverty, the Freedom Poverty Measure, the difference in poverty rates of major cities, inner regional, and other areas have been compared. The population living in ‘other areas’ had the highest proportion of individuals living in freedom poverty. Those in inner regional areas (P = 0.0303) and those in major cities (P < 0.0001) were significantly less likely to be in freedom poverty than those in ‘other areas’. However, when breaking the analysis down to look at the different poverty rates for different age groups across the three regional classifications, it was found that there was no difference in the likelihood of being in freedom poverty between children in inner regional and other areas, adults in inner regional and other areas, and older people in inner regional and other areas. This may indicate that the disadvantage experienced by those living in regional centres has been overlooked in the past and is an emerging contemporary issue for health and education equity as well as economic equality.     

The last north American indian ethnography

Locating the proper relationship between material and cultural aspects of human life has been an enduring, discipline-defining, and divisive problem in anthropology. Recent studies of the local effects of globalization have exacerbated the divide. Although case studies seem to have lost their luster for many anthropologists, the renewed ethnography considered in this review demonstrates that local research can clarify international economic processes. When people choose to make foreign commodities part of their lives, the results are neither inevitable nor predetermined. Local and global, cultural and material, never totally subsume each other.     

Between Worlds: Considering Celtic feminine identities in The Secret of Roan Inish

This article explores the ways in which Celtic oral traditions concerning the 'place' of women are replayed within a contemporary textual form, namely the 1995 film, The Secret of Roan Inish. Through an examination of the representation of gender relations within the film, we address how the incorporation of mythic elements is intended to provide a sense of female 'empowerment'. While the film has been praised for its positive portrayal of Irish Celtic women, we suggest that the various qualities of strength associated with the female lead characters are expressed within the context of a discursive framework that valorizes certain roles and behavior as 'natural' at the expense of other modes of life, and, further, ties the construction of subject identities into a fixed, or essentialist, notion of 'place'. Rather than presume that this filmic vision of Irish Celtic feminine identities is intrinsically regressive, however, we note that in our act of viewing Roan Inish those identities are recontextualized further in, we hope, a progressive, post-structuralist manner.     

“Know Who You Are and Where You Come From”: Ties of Kin,Clan, and Homeland in Southwestern Indian Identity

Gordon R. Willey, ed. Excavations at Seibal. Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1975. Number 1 : Introduction: The Site and Its Setting. Gordon R. Willey, A. Ledyard Smith, Gair Tourtellot III, and Ian Graham, xvi + 56 pp. Number 2: Ceramics. Jeremy A. Sabloff. viii + 253 pp. Figures, maps, appendix, bibliography. $35.00.     

Experiences of ‘Community’ in a Gated Residential Estate

Gated residential estates have become common features of the landscapes of cities around the world. The proliferation of these estates has attracted significant critical attention from urban scholars who have focused in particular on their contribution to urban segregation. Many commentators also question the possibility and existence of the neighbourhood‐based community that is promised to potential residents by estates developers. They argue that it cannot be delivered primarily because meaningful community does not form in circumstances of privatism. In this paper, we examine what community means to the residents of Macquarie Links, a gated residential estate in the Australian city of Sydney. To this end, the paper traces the interplay of contradictions that define the expectation and experience of community and argues that rather than being in conflict, the experience of community for many in this gated estate is actually underpinned by the structures of private governance that define the estate. In other words, not only is community said to exist in this neighbourhood, but also it is not homogeneity and everyday neighbouring that are pivotal but the governance structure of the estate.