Reviews of books

Historical Archaeology -     

Geochemical evidence for the manufacture,logistics and supply‐chain management of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Army,China

Non‐invasive materials characterisation of reconstructed statues of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Army has revealed distinct micro‐geochemical patterning within the clay paste used in their manufacture. The significance of this is explored in terms of the production sequence, logistics and supply‐chain management involved in the construction of this enormous funerary assemblage. Of particular interest is a compositional distinction between figures marked with the names ‘Gong’ (宫) and ‘Xianyang’ (咸阳). These seem to represent the products of two workshops involved in the supply of ceramic objects for this ambitious, large‐scale building project undertaken by the Qin Empire during the third century bce .     

Inconsistent,downplayed, and pathologized: How mining's gendered impacts are considered in BC environmental assessment

To what extent do mining environmental assessments in British Columbia (BC) consider gendered impacts? How are they considered? And how are these considerations shaped during the environmental assessment process? To answer these questions we undertook a systematic review of all completed BC mining environmental assessments between 1995 and 2019 (n = 37). Through a careful reading of documentation archived in the BC Environmental Assessment Office registry, we found that 60% of projects did not consider the gendered impacts of mining development; the remaining 40% of projects inconsistently assessed gendered impacts. While noting an increase in gender considerations in environmental assessments since 1995, also quantified in our results is what has not changed. Even where gender is considered, the assessments often collapse this concern into one of “women's issues,” obscuring intersectional impacts and downplaying violence along racialized and gender diverse lines, including those experienced by Indigenous women, children, two-spirit, trans, queer and non-binary people. Environmental assessment is a regulatory tool designed to adjudicate the impacts of mining projects, yet our results lead us to conclude that it is also a tool of environmental injustice, compounding and further sedimenting heteropatriarchal and racialized patterns produced through generations of settler colonial resource extraction in BC.     

Reform of the structural funds after 1999

In efforts to promote cohesion in the EU, the structural funds are an important instrument. The current mandate for the funds comes to an end in 1999, and it mill have to be renegotiated shortly against a backdrop of the start of EMU and probable enlargement of the EU. This paper reviews the principles governing the structural funds and looks at the problems they face in practice. It then considers possible reforms to meet the obligations on, and expectations of, the EU in the years to come, and what these would imply for different regions as well as the potential new member states.     

Representative democracy and the ‘spirit of resistance’ from Constant to Tocqueville

ABSTRACT

The role of resistance in the politics of modern representative democracies is historically contested, and remains far from clear. This article seeks to explore historical thinking on this subject through a discussion of what Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville had to say about resistance and its relationship to ‘representative government’ and democracy. Neither thinker is usually seen as a significant contributor to ‘resistance theory’ as this category is conventionally understood. But, in addition to their more familiar preoccupations with securing limitations on the exercise of political authority and averting majority tyranny, both thinkers wrote extensively on the nature and meanings of resistance in ‘representative governments’ or democratic societies. Both thinkers are examined in the context of revolutionary and Napoleonic discussions about the legitimacy of resistance or ‘right to resist’ oppression, and against eighteenth-century discussions of the ‘spirit of resistance’ since Montesquieu. The article notes conceptual distinctions between resistance, revolution and insurrection in the period, and addresses the broader question of the extent to which early nineteenth-century French liberals sought to ‘institutionalise’ principles of resistance within modern constitutional frameworks.     

The Irish rent … and mended: transitional textual communities in nineteenth-century America

In this paper, traditional folkloric forms that were ritualised and practised in pre-Famine Ireland are examined. So, too, are the strategies that storytellers employed in disseminating the imaginative aspects of the oral tradition to their audiences. Following the disruption of the storytelling tradition precipitated by the Great Famine and emigration, the fabric of Irish storytelling lay threadbare, both in Ireland and abroad. Of interest is the fact that in America the less “heroic” and more subtle strands of Irish folklore resurfaced in the theatrical venues that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, namely, minstrelsy, Vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley. By the turn of twentieth century, the Irish were responding to other “heroic” depictions of themselves, not only with protestation but also with “tongue-in-cheek” laughter. Their grounding in a variety of folkloric texts in Ireland enabled them to transition to multiple kinds of accommodation and expressive resistance.     

Roman pottery production in Civitas Tungrorum,central Belgium,during the first–third centuries ce

Aspects of Roman pottery production at the workshops of Kontich, Tienen, Rumst, Grobbendonk and Clavier-Vervoz in the Civitas Tungrorum of central Belgium are explored. A total of 150 wasters from five sites were studied macroscopically, as well as via a combination of thin-section petrography, geochemistry and scanning electron microscopy, in order to gain insights into ceramic technology and aspects of the organization of production. Particular emphasis was given to the individual technological sequences and shared strategies of raw material selection, paste preparation and firing employed at the five adjacent sites. The integration of petrographic and geochemical data permitted the establishment of compositional reference groups for the Roman kiln sites of Civitas Tungrorum, which can be used to track their products within the surrounding landscape.