Visibly Mute: Ethical Sociality and the Everyday Exurban

In this paper, we argue for an ethical understanding of exurban environments, which we propose as symptomatic spaces of neoliberalization. We outline the idea that civility within public places is a mode of moral communication grounded in everyday encounters and embedded in the ordinary places in which they are enacted. We also advance the argument that exurban environments, as properties of neoliberal capital, employ distinct strategies to monopolize the use of space and encourage its inattentive occupation. We illustrate this through our case study in the North of England, a business and retail park which we suggest as typical of spaces produced through wider processes of neoliberalization. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the writers and theories explored throughout the piece for a critical understanding of place, one that is premised on the importance of a quotidian understanding of the social, an everyday morality.     

Taxonomic, anatomical, and spatio-temporal variations in the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions of plants from an African savanna

Stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope ratios are commonly used to reconstruct palaeodiets and palaeoenvironments. The method is based on our knowledge of isotopic patterns in plants, which are subject to taxonomic and environmental variability. While previous researchers have addressed isotopic variability amongst plants, no studies have looked extensively at a broad suite of taxa over multiple temporal scales from within the savanna biome so as to provide baseline data for palaeodietary and palaeoenvironmental studies. Here we document variations in the isotopic compositions of plants collected over two years from the Kruger National Park, South Africa, with respect to species and anatomical differences, and the influences of geological substrate and spatio-temporal shifts in climate. Results show that environmentally-induced carbon isotopic variations in plants within this region are generally smaller than 2‰, which is lower than what has been previously reported for plants compared across multiple habitat-types. These data suggest that δ¹³C differences of 2‰ or more (or 1‰ if the diet is predominantly C₄) between animals from a given area reliably indicate real dietary differences. Plant δ¹⁵N values vary greatly between different microhabitats (by up to 4‰), responding to a range of environmental influences that may, in turn, significantly influence variation in animal δ¹⁵N values.     

Sails Set in Stone: A Technological Analysis of Non-indigenous Watercraft Rock Art Paintings in North Western Arnhem Land

In 2008 researchers from the Australian National University??s Archaeology and Natural History Department and Flinders University??s Program in Maritime Archaeology recorded nine non-Indigenous watercraft rock art images in a rock-shelter in the Wellington Range of north western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. During the project it was recognised that one of the missing elements of interpreting watercraft in rock art was a comprehensive analytical framework that can be tested and reproduced. The development of such a framework can be used by future researchers to begin addressing the larger issues and considerations represented in non-Indigenous watercraft depictions across Australia.     

Prior to Peat: Assessing the Hiatus between Mesolithic Activity and Peat Inception on the Southern Pennine Moors

Palaeoecological investigation of soils exposed by eroding peat haggs on the moors above Tintwistle (Derbyshire) suggests that Mesolithic impact on upland soils between c. 360–500 m OD was not as dramatic, nor as long-lasting, as has sometimes been suggested. Despite evident erosion prior to peat inception, patterning has survived within Mesolithic scatters of artefacts. Neolithic activity is attested by both artefacts and charcoal-rich horizons suggesting intermittent burning of vegetation. Peat finally blanketed these uplands around the start of the second millennium cal. BC.

These results demonstrate radically different scenarios at different altitudes within relatively small distances across the southern Pennines, shifting our appreciation of the chronology of changes in vegetation and erosion, as well as contributing to wider debate on the causes of moorland development, which can inform future land management.     

For our common cause: Sexuality and left politics in South Wales, 1967–1985

Following the passage of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which partially legalised homosexuality in England and Wales, the campaign for equal rights gained organisational strength across the country, with branches of the Gay Liberation Front and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality being formed in major cities and university towns. This coincided with a decade of radicalism, particularly in the coalfields, where education programmes and a renewed belief in the validity of class action provided the organisational and ideological basis for left campaigns. These two movements coalesced in the 1984–1985 miners’ strike, when an alliance was struck between the mining communities of South Wales and the London-based Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners support group. This alliance would prove the most remarkable of all the support groups set-up during the 1984–1985 miners’ strike, and a turning point in the integration of equal rights for gay and lesbian people into the campaigns of the labour movement.