Hispania and the Atlantic Route in Roman Times: new Approaches to Ports and Trade

This paper explores the role of Hispania in the Atlantic route in Roman times. We analyse the different Atlantic Iberian territories along this route, based on recent archaeological advances and discoveries related to trade as well as the shipping infrastructure. The aim is to explain the origin and evolution of a new maritime area that was completely integrated with the political and commercial structure of the Empire, with trade routes that followed the coastal areas of the Iberian Peninsula all the way to the Mediterranean.     

Taphonomy of ungulate ribs and the consumption of meat and bone by 1.2-million-year-old hominins at Olduvai Gorge,Tanzania

The phenomenon of equifinality complicates behavioral interpretations of faunal assemblages from contexts in which Pleistocene hominins are suspected bone accumulators. Stone tool butchery marks on ungulate fossils are diagnostic of hominin activities, but debate continues over the higher-order implications of butchered bones for the foraging capabilities of hominins. Additionally, tooth marks imparted on bones by hominins overlap in morphology and dimensions with those created by some non-hominin carnivores, further confounding our view of early hominins as meat-eating hunters, scavengers or both. We report on the manual/oral peeling of cortical layers of ungulate ribs as taphonomically diagnostic of hominoid/hominin meat- and bone-eating behavior that indicates access to large herbivore carcasses by hominins at the site of BK, Olduvai. Supporting these inferences, we show that certain types of rib peeling damage are very rare or completely unknown in faunas created by modern carnivores and African porcupines, but common in faunas modified by the butchery and/or consumption activities of modern humans and chimpanzees, during which these hominoids often grasp ribs with their hands, and then used their teeth to peel strips of cortex from raggedly chewed ends of the ribs. Carnivores consume ungulate ribcage tissues soon after kills, so diagnostic traces of hominin butchery/consumption on ribs (i.e., peeling and butchery marks) indicate early access to ungulate carcasses by BK hominins. Tooth marks associated with the peeling and butchery marks are probably hominin-derived, and may indicate that it was not uncommon for our ancestors to use their teeth to strip meat from and to consume portions of ribs. Recognition of rib peeling as a diagnostic signature of hominoid/hominin behavior may also aid the search for pre-archaeological traces of hominin meat-eating.     

The in-between lives of Japanese immigrants in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,Spain

Over the past 20 years, the theoretical frameworks of population mobility studies have undergone profound changes. The redefinition of the term diaspora, the rise of transnational analysis, the formulation of the embodied experiences of migration, the increasing interest in migrants' attachment to places, gendered expectations and transcultural processes have coalesced to enrich knowledge. This article explores the culturally mediated experiences of migration and the individual change processes among the members of the Japanese community that from the 1960s onwards settled in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), a meeting point for East and West in the Mid-Atlantic. In spite of its small size, this community displays some characteristics that afford new conceptual insights into cultural in-betweenness. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning literature on migrants' sense and ways of being and belonging and on their experience of return, within the analytical framework of diaspora and transnationalism. This article makes use of an interpretative approach, and contrasts relevant local news items and biographical interviews with Japanese residents with the narrative texts of three returnees. This contrapuntal focus reveals their ambivalent sense of belonging ‘here and there’, their in-betweenness or their lives in aidagara.     

Media,Language Policy and Cultural Change in Tatarstan: Historic vs. Pragmatic Claims to Nationhood

Abstract. The politics of national identity in the Republic of Tatarstan are complex and often contradictory. Although sometimes posed in terms of an historical legacy, claims to nationhood are also strongly shaped by more pragmatic contemporary concerns. In addition to more conventional forms of political mobilisation, national identity is also contested in cultural arenas. Examining policies on language reform and media development, for example, sheds light on the processes through which a sense of national identity is currently being renegotiated in Tatarstan. The Republic's official multicultural policy is situated in the context of a range of distinct conceptions of Tatarstan's identity, from radical Islamic nationalism to a view of the republic as a Russian province.     

A taphonomic study of the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus)

Carnivore taphonomy has been traditionally used for the interpretation of archaeological sites in order to discriminate human-generated or modified from non-anthropic bone assemblages. In most of this actualistic research, the focus has mainly been placed on hyenas and felids, neglecting other carnivores. This paper analyzes the taphonomic impact of the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) on equid bones and compares it with the bone modification patterns produced by other canids, such as wolves (Canis lupus) in order to compare medium-/large-sized canid variability on bone modification patterns and elaborate a referential framework which could be feasibly applied to the zooarchaeological record to detect canid intervention on archaeological assemblages in the past.     

A taphonomic study of a carcass consumed by griffon vultures (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Gyps fulvus</Emphasis>) and its relevance for the interpretation of bone surface modifications

Vultures are ubiquitous taphonomic agents in most biomes. However, taphonomic studies of vultures are scarce and very little is known of the damage they cause to bone surfaces when consuming carcasses. This study presents the results of a taphonomic analysis of bones modified by griffon vultures. Although some marks created by these agents are diagnostically unique, others are extremely similar to modifications caused by other biostratinomic processes. This renders interpretations of marks on bones very problematic when these modifications are considered in isolation rather than at the assemblage and contextual levels.     

NAFTA's Impact on Business Environmental Decision Making

Signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) liberalized trade policy and reduced tariffs between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, but activists opposed to the treaty predicted an environmental disaster. This article seeks to analyze the dynamics of environmental spending and changes in companies' profiles following NAFTA. Our results suggest that these predictions have not come true. Through an econometric model, we explore how 2,438 industries in the 1994–2002 period made environmental decisions and how much they spent on cleanup. Estimates were made with a dynamic panel model using the generalized method of moments (GMM) method. Our results suggest that environmental investment decisions depended on business size, their technological capabilities, sales performance, and the need to comply with the standards required by customers in the international market. The last section explores policies to improve compliance with Mexico's environmental regulations and to develop sustainable, eco‐friendly manufacturing.     

Aroche (Huelva,Andalucía): a new Neolithic axehead of Alpine jade in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula

The discovery of a Neolithic Alpine jade axehead in Aroche, in the southwest of Spain, revives the question of long-distance exchange between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe. This polished blade belongs to a typological model quite characteristic of Alpine production during the second half of the 5th millennium B.C. Different mineralogical approaches (macroscopic features examination, specific gravity, direct XRD, non-destructive μXRF spectroscopy, optical stereomicroscopy, magnetic susceptibility determination and microprobe analysis) have identified the rock as an omphacitic jadeitite (mixed jade) with some tiny garnets and a weak retromorphosis. This analysis and the comparison of the rock structure with the referential JADE of Alpine natural jade samples, as well as the extraction modalities and shaping of the axe, provide strong arguments to assign the Aroche axe to a production of Mont Viso: the origin of thousands of axes that circulated in Europe between Ireland and Sicily. The Aroche axe, discovered not far from the variscite mines of Encinasola, could be considered as part of a possible exchange system between the Iberian Peninsula and the Gulf of Morbihan, in Brittany.