Variation in human bone bioerosion during the Late Eneolithic/Bronze Age in Moravia (Czech Republic): A novel approach to BSE-SEM image quality and quantity assessment

Human bones from Late Eneolithic graves and Bronze Age settlement pits in Moravia (Czech Republic) were studied to reconstruct their post-mortem histories based on the distribution of their microbial destruction. Backscattered electrons in a scanning electron microscope (BSE-SEM) were used for visual assessment of bioerosion. Visual data from the histological analysis were transformed into quantitative data using the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA) toolkit. The results show that the presence of bioerosion is different between the two groups of samples. The bones from settlement pits display extensive bioerosion whereas the bones from graves display no or arrested bioerosion. The absence of bioerosion in graves is most probably linked with tomb burials of Corded Ware Culture. Given the tombs are frequently not preserved archaeologically, the state of bone bioerosion may serve as an indicator of their existence.     

Results of micrometallographic analysis of metalworking tools in graves of metallurgists in Moravia/Czech Republic

The number of finds relating to metalworking, without evidence of mining and processing facilities, is very limited. In Final Eneolith graves of specialized metallurgists that have occurred, they contain a metal-founding or metalsmithing toolkit, whose origins were from eastern Europe (the Maykop, Yamnaya Culture). Such metallurgical tools may have reached central Europe as part of the so-called Yamnaya Package before the onset of the Bee Beaker Culture (BBC); and unlike the Pontic region, these two types of metallurgy separated here. There are found an accumulation of metallurgists' graves in Moravia, where the complete metalworking toolkit is deposited in a predefined place in richly furnished male graves with a distinctive funerary architecture that exhibit a clear relationship to the grave goods. EDX-analysis detected a high content of metals (Cu, Ag, Au, Au–Ag alloy) on all working surfaces of stone tools, grinders, and boar tusks used for the final treatment of their metal products. This makes us believe that the used artefacts were laid as symbolical objects in the graves of these craftsmen who perfectly knew these advanced technologies. Due to their knowledge, their social significance gradually rose and finally reached the level of social elites, who were usually buried in a spectacular manner, including the quantity of grave goods (Überausstattung) and the pars pro toto deposition in one part of the finds.     

The Henrician legend revived: the Palatine couple and its public image in early Stuart England

By exploring the nature of the Palatine myth in Early Stuart England this article contributes to the debate on the religious and political polarisation in Europe in the decades before the Thirty Years War. In the battle of words that preceded the armed conflict of men, references to the national past and greatness were used and misused by the opposing sides as influential instruments of propaganda. The paper sets out to answer two basic questions. In what way was Frederick, the Palatine Elector, put within the context of English Protestant mythology? How did the public image of the Palatine Couple change after the disaster at the White Mountain?     

Environmental Justice and the Allocation Of Risk: The Case of Lead and Public Health

This paper examines conceptual and methodological issues in the analysis of environmental justice through use of the case of lead-exposure health risks. Researchers face important obstacles in measuring variable risks among population subgroups. The case of lead exposure, however, illustrates the dramatic potential where adequate data exist for identifying and correcting significant inequities in risk exposure. Despite sharp reductions in the general population's exposure to lead since the 1970s, substantial numbers of minority and low-income children continue to exhibit unacceptably high blood-lead levels due primarily to exposure to lead-based paint. Resolving environmental inequities in this and similar instances requires solid documentation of the risk and better integration of equity issues with other policy demands such as the call for cost-effective environmental policy.     

Sociology or social science?

Modern sociology has set itself up as a specialised discipline dissociating itself from the broad-ranging theories of development of the early sociologists and breaking the links with economics, social anthropology and politics which had formed such an exciting unity in their works or at least in their lives.