The Santa María pottery of El Bolsón valley (Catamarca,Argentina): Compositional characterization and implications on the elaboration processes,ca. 1000–1600 ce

The results obtained from the multi-analytic compositional characterization of ceramic pastes and paints of the Santa María style, from the El Bolsón valley (Belén Department, Catamarca Province, Argentina), are presented here. This pottery style had a wide regional distribution in Northwestern Argentina between ca. 1000 and1600 ce and is characterized by its complex iconography painted in black, cream and red. The analyses show that the containers correspond to the technical tradition of using grog temper and suggest that its manufacture involved a double firing process. This reveals a new practice for the time.     

Inter- and intraregional inequality in a spatial economy

In this paper, we develop a three-region economic geography model with workers of heterogeneous skills and mobility rates to consider how first-nature, regional differences impact both inter- and intraregional inequality. In our model, the skill premium within a region summarizes both the degree of intraregional inequality between mobile, skilled workers and immobile, unskilled workers and the interregional inequality through differences in the welfare of unskilled workers across regions. Regions with the highest skill premium have the greatest degree of intraregional inequality and provide the lowest level of welfare to unskilled workers, relative to other regions. We find that the skill premium will be higher in regions with a greater supply of unskilled labor, lower supply of housing, or are more remote. An increase in a region's housing supply or centrality will lower intraregional inequality and raise the welfare of the local, unskilled workforce. However, the magnitude of these changes are declining in the initial number of skilled workers in the region. The model is extended to consider imperfectly elastic housing supply. The larger the price elasticity of housing, the larger the range of values, such that more populated regions will host a disproportionate share of skilled workers, have lower levels of intraregional inequality, and provide higher levels of welfare for unskilled workers.     

Re-evaluating the Neolithic: The Impact and the Consolidation of Farming Practices in the Cantabrian Region (Northern Spain)

Research projects undertaken in the Cantabrian region since 1980 have produced new, high-quality information about the neolithisation process(es) in this area. It is now necessary to review this archaeological information and test the main hypotheses put forward to explain it. This paper presents an update on the archaeological evidence (sites, chronological dates, archaeozoological, archaeobotanical and technological information) for the early Neolithic in the Cantabrian region. It summarizes recent research on neolithisation in the region, and assesses the impact of this process during the early Neolithic, and its later consolidation. Although the available information is still incomplete, it is now possible to identify the focal point of the introduction of elements characteristic of the Neolithic way of life in the region. Current evidence suggests that it is in the eastern sector, where the earliest arrival of domesticates and new technologies such as pottery has been attested. The existence of continuities—such as sustained reliance on hunting and gathering and the coexistence of old and new funerary rites—suggests the persistence of native populations, which gradually participated in the neolithisation process after an ‘availability phase’.     

A love story: for ‘Buddy System’ research in the academy

This article makes a case for a ‘buddy system’ approach to research and scholarship, or a kind of ‘caring with’ our colleagues, as feminist praxis and as an intentional, politicized response to the neoliberalization of the academy. Through autoethnographic writing on our travels together into farmed animal auction yards, we explain the buddy system as a mode of caring, solidarity, and love that differs from collaborative research, focused as it is on caring for and about our colleagues and their research even (or especially) when we have no direct stakes in the research being conducted. We contribute to three feminist conversations with this approach: feminist care ethics in geography; emotional geographies; and critical perspectives on the neoliberalization of the academy. We advocate the buddy system as an extension of feminist care ethics, enriching how feminists think about ‘doing’ research. We draw on feminist geographies of emotion and our own emotions (grief especially) experienced while witnessing processes of nonhuman animal commodification to politicize the act of researching and to develop a more caring way of inhabiting the academy. This is particularly important, we argue, in the context of deepening neoliberal logics that turn the academy into a place where care and love become radical acts of resistance and transformation.     

The voices of female pilgrims in medieval wills. The Jacobean devotion in Apulia (Italy)

The main topic of this study is to contribute to the study of female sacred mobility in the Middle Ages by proposing a new approach for the analysis of historical sources (wills and bequests), combining quantitative and qualitative methodology. We have set three aims: (1) Reinforcing the female presence within historical documents through their empirical analysis; (2) Reflecting upon female participation in the public sphere; (3) Investigating women’s agency in religious terms. Concerning the geographical context of the research, the historical sources have been retrieved from the Historical Archives of the Italian Region of Apulia (Italy); where we have studied the above mentioned topics in relation to the devotion to St. James (Spain). The first part of the article introduces female mobility to the city of Santiago de Compostela; then, it moves to the forms of devotion to the Apostle St. James the Greater and female pilgrims in Apulia. The present empirical study has the differential to propose a transversal interpretation of the selected historical texts according to the following criteria: (1) Devotion to the Apostle St. James the Greater (2) Female devotion. As well as reinforcing the use of these historical documents to investigate female social behaviour, the research contributes to the study of the female role within the geography of pilgrimage in the following terms: sacred mobility; territorial history and experiential and devotional value.     

Neanderthal use of plants and past vegetation reconstruction at the Middle Paleolithic site of Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva,Valencia, Spain)

Despite phytoliths having been used to understand past human use of plants and palaeoenvironment in Middle Paleolithic sites, little is known on this aspect in the well-documented central region of Mediterranean Iberia. This paper presents the first phytolith and mineralogical study conducted at Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva, Valencia). Forty-one samples were analyzed through phytoliths and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) from different areas, stratigraphic levels, and archeological contexts (hearth, hearth-related, and non-hearth-related sediments) of the shelter. The results obtained point towards a different pattern of preservation in the site depending firstly on the stratigraphy and secondly on the area where the samples were collected. Postdepositional processes that may have chemically affected phytolith preservation are discussed. Grasses are the main plant component identified in all the samples while woody plants are scarce. The abundance of grasses in the non-hearth-related sediments might be related, at least partially, to the dispersion of ashes from hearths, as indicated by the FTIR results. The results are indicative of an occupation of the site during the spring-autumn season. At this time, the area would be dominated by a semi-open environment with supramediterranean vegetation.     

ON SPATIAL DYNAMICS*

ABSTRACT It has long been recognized that the forces that lead to the agglomeration of economic activity and to aggregate growth are similar. Unfortunately, few formal frameworks have been advanced to explore this link. We critically discuss the literature and present a simple framework that can circumvent some of the main obstacles we identify. We discuss the main characteristics of an equilibrium allocation in this dynamic spatial framework, present a numerical example to illustrate the forces at work, and provide some supporting empirical evidence.     

Humans and marine resource interaction reappraised: Archaeofauna remains during the late Pleistocene and Holocene in Cantabrian Spain

The exploitation of marine resources in Prehistory has traditionally been regarded as insignificant, at least until the late Upper Pleistocene. However, in recent years the systematic study of archaeofaunal remains with a marine origin has widened our knowledge of the role they played among groups of hunter–gatherers in Europe. This paper analyses the available data about the evidence for the exploitation of the different marine resources (molluscs, birds, mammals, crustaceans, echinoderms and fish) that have been recorded at archaeological sites in Cantabrian Spain in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.With the information currently available, it is clear that although it is in the Mesolithic when archaeozoological remains with a marine origin are found most often, the exploitation of these resources in the region began in the Early Upper Palaeolithic.     

From a White Desert to the Largest World Deposit of Lithium: Symbolic Meanings and Materialities of the Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia

The Uyuni salt flat (Salar de Uyuni) in Bolivia possesses the largest lithium deposit in the world. Over the past 40 years, this location has been commodified and radically transformed. This paper examines how a landscape, understood from its material attributes and qualities, shapes and is shaped by social relations unfolding in a process of commodification and mining expansion. Based on primary qualitative data, the paper explores two elements: (1) how the symbolic meaning of this landscape has changed over time for the surrounding indigenous communities; and (2) how the different materialities of the salt flat as landscape, as ulexite and as lithium allow understanding of the drivers of socio‐environmental change and conflict in this region. The paper argues that social relations and governance frameworks are interlinked with changing symbolic meanings and the different materialities of the Uyuni salt flat.