Adulteration and Food Law, 1899-1939

Contemporary concerns about food safety and regulation haveimportant historical antecedents in the Victorian debate aboutfood adulteration which led to the 1875 Sale of Food and DrugsAct, the basis of British food law until 1955. This articlereconsiders the optimistic historiographical view of the Victorianfood legislation, emphasizing its limited impact on the generalprocess of food production and distribution before the SecondWorld War. In the 1930s adulteration was still a significantcommercial ploy. The analysis centres on State-business relations,drawing comparative perspectives from the manner in which bigfood companies shaped the regulatory framework in the USA. InBritain the government assumed a limited regulatory role, persuadedin the 1920s and 1930s that market forces and the commitmentof large producers to quality and scientific research were betterguarantees of safety than statutory legislation. But this wasa risky strategy: big producers were only responsible for aminority of overall output, and the State made no effort toexamine wider manufacturing conditions. ^*This article has been written with the assistance of a grantfrom the Leverhulme Trust.     

DESSICATION AND DESTRUCTION: THE IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF DE-WATERING AT ETTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE

This paper presents the first results of a long-term project to monitor changes in ground water conditions in parts of the East Anglian Fenland. So far the project has been concerned with two sites immediately north of Peterborough, at Borough Fen and Etton. The Borough Fen data are still being assessed, but Etton has provided results which warrant prompt publication.
The water levels were monitored in a series of boreholes across the Etton Neolithic enclosure for a period of two years (1982–4), to study the effects of the variation in the local groundwater table on the waterlogged contents of the enclosure ditch.
The first part of the paper (CF) assesses the results of this programme. The ambient water table remained at or above the level of the primary and lower secondary deposits in the ditch, thus accounting for the excellent preservation of botanical remains. Within one month of the adjacent quarry pumps being turned on the water table had fallen by up to one metre below the lowest archaeological deposits, and has not recovered since, to the almost immediate detriment of the botanical record.
The second part of the paper (MT) discusses the observed variation in the preservation of wood in particular, and describes the effects of de-watering on the deposits of wood in the enclosure ditch.     

'You Cannot Hate the Bastard Who is Trying to Kill You...'Combat and Ideology in the British Army in the War Against Germany, 1939-45

During the Second World War the British Army faced a difficulttask when it tried to transform recruits who were mostly peace-lovingcivilians, into men prepared to kill. This article examineshow it went about doing so and how front-line soldiers respondedto the demand that they kill their German (and Italian) oppositenumbers. It also analyses the extent to which front-line soldiersin the British Army retained a sense of a shared common humanitywith their enemies that transended the political divisions ofthe war. It does so by analysing the ways in which they treatedtheir enemies when they were completely at their mercy, eitheras prisoners of war or as civilians in occupied territory. ¹N.McCallum, Journey with a Pistol (London,1959), 105.     

INAA OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SAMPLES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

INAA at Manchester began almost by chance, and amid scepticism, with a request for help from the university's Department of Archaeology in the early 1970s. Over the years, the method of selecting pottery to be sampled was refined from the simple assumption that sherds found at a site were typical of those made there, to a greater focus on kiln sites and wasters. An important element in Manchester's approach was that this was a teaching department: in the quarter‐century during which the laboratory practised INAA over 6000 samples were analysed in a wide range of projects by postdoctoral researchers, Ph.D. students and even final‐year undergraduates. Although there were sometimes problems of comprehension on both sides, close collaboration with archaeologists encouraged methodological comparisons, and often INAA was seen as an additional weapon in the archaeologists’ arsenal as much as a developing scientific technique. The university's place as the inventor of the computer encouraged the development of statistical programs, which in turn facilitated ready collaboration and exchange of information with other laboratories, such as those at Bonn and Berkeley.     

London-Bahrain Archaeological Expedition excavations at Saar: 1993 season

During 1993, the London-Bahrain Archaeological Expedition conducted a fourth season of excavations at the early second millennium settlement of Saar, Bahrain. A lower level of the temple was cleared, and a range of buildings to its north-west discovered. A new street was found opposite the temple entrance, and several of the buildings along the main street were further investigated. Further environmental research included a new programme of micromorphology and the start of research into the fish remains.