Reconstructing site organization in the eastern Aleutian Islands,Alaska using multi-element chemical analysis of soils

This study presents the results of multi-element analysis of weak-acid extractions of 953 soil samples collected by coring on and around pre-historic village sites on two islands, Sanak and Amaknak, in the eastern Aleutians. Concentrations of aluminum (Al), barium (Ba), calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), phosphorus (P), strontium (Sr), titanium (Ti), and zinc (Zn) were determined using an inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). Resultant elemental signatures allow the identification of site features and organization in the absence of large-scale excavation. All the archeological sites showed similar and distinct chemical signatures regardless of the several thousand year date range of the sites or the length of time a site was occupied. However, intensity of occupation does appear to affect concentrations of elements. Site features such as houses, house berms, house floors and middens had distinct anthropogenic signatures and could be distinguished from one another. This approach may be used to identify sites that do not have distinct surface features and to target areas for excavation.     

Local press,dispersal and community in the construction of asylum debates

How has the prominent and contentious international issue of asylum been debated at a local level; what local variations are there and why? This paper presents analysis of local newspapers and interviews with press workers for Cardiff and Leeds, two UK case study locations that have received asylum seekers through the dispersal policy. The case studies show that asylum is framed and constructed differently by the local press in different places with implications for reactions to asylum seekers and community cohesion. The relations between local press and community are explored as explanations for varying discourses. It is found that the way the local press represents and constructs local identity sets the framework for reactions to dispersal; and that the operation of the local press within local networks of power and information shapes the extent to which established discourses can be challenged. For Cardiff, the localising of asylum through the dispersal policy created an opportunity for local negotiation of difference in the context of the national moral panic on asylum.     

Narratives and Bodies: Culture beyond the Cultural Turn

This article offers a fresh assessment of the current condition of ‘culturalist’ international history, exploring its achievements and limitations, taxonomising its key threads and charting an agenda for the future. It argues that at its heart lie two core concerns, one with narratives and the other with bodies. Thinking in this way allows us both to tie together work which initially appears disparate – endowing a bewilderingly diverse mass of scholarship with coherence and shape – and to better grasp the project's current trajectory. It analyses how these two issues rose to prominence, discussing not only the merits and failings of previous ‘culturalist’ work but also linkages with shifting debates in historical theory in the aftermath of the ‘postmodern’ turn. It explores the contours of the important work currently being conducted under these rubrics, drawing attention where appropriate to cognate scholarship in the discipline of International Relations with which international historians might profitably engage. Understanding the significance of these two core concepts provides vital orientation in contemporary intellectual debates within international history and enables us to push them on further.     

Brave New World? Ruminations on Race in the Twenty‐first Century

What if we “renovated” race as a concept to reflect new configurations, possibilities and disruptions? In this essay, I consider how we might “do” race differently in our theorizing and praxis by interrogating the framings and the language we use to understand and engage race in all its permutations. I encourage us to see “informal moments of intervention” in the public sphere as resilience central to informing our theory. By engaging multiple sites of production and placing our intellectual and creative selves at the center of those relationships, we can potentially uncover/discover/recover race as an emergent concept that more accurately depicts and articulates where and who we are in the present.     

THE EFFECT OF URBANIZATION ON LABOR TURNOVER*

ABSTRACT The paper empirically examines labor market matching as a source of urban agglomeration economies. We work from the hypothesis that job turnover leads to tighter labor matches and estimate the relationship between urbanization and the job mobility of young men. Using a panel from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find evidence that young men change jobs more frequently in their early career if they live in larger or in more educated urban areas. The sensitivity of the results to whether the young men were “movers” or “stayers” suggests the possible endogeneity of location.