Parliamentarizing the Estate Diet

This article examines the transformation of estate assemblies into parliaments by analysing the case of the late 19th-century Diet of Finland. Furthermore, it positions the procedural discussions of the peripheral Finnish Diet within a wider European debate on parliaments and parliamentarism. While parliamentary government and the dissolution of Europe’s last four-estate representation were largely out of the question in the Finnish Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, revisions and innovations on Diet rules and practices formed an essential means to introduce elements of modern parliaments within the obsolete estate system. By analysing Finnish Diet and press discussions, the article re-examines the significance and reception of the Swedish Riksdag institution of plenum plenorum, the joint discussion of all four estates, in Finland. The article highlights a struggle between two concepts of deliberation. A liberal group organized around the newspaper Helsingfors Dagblad used plenum plenorum to challenge their Fennoman opponents’ consensual idea of deliberation and the Diet’s deliberative model, which was based on committee negotiation. The Dagbladists advocated plenum plenorum in order to transform the estates into a single debating parliamentary assembly.     

Large game, agricultural land, and settlement pattern change in the eastern Mimbres area, southwest New Mexico

The 12th-century depopulation of large villages in the Mimbres region of the US Southwest has been attributed to a number of causes, including resource stress. This study combines archaeological evidence and models of environmental conditions in the eastern Mimbres area of southwest New Mexico to assess the magnitude and timing of food stress from a combination of a period of reduced precipitation and the effects of prolonged hunting and farming activities on the landscape. Results indicate that large game in the area was quite sensitive to hunting pressure, and was locally depleted long before settlement reorganization occurred. Access to arable land was somewhat reduced around the time of settlement reorganization, but productive land remained locally plentiful. Although the settlement reorganization did not improve access to large game or arable land, farmers’ perceptions of below-average conditions for agriculture relative to their expectations and past experience would have contributed to decisions to move.     

Game Resources, Social Interaction, and the Ecological Footprint in Southwest New Mexico

Humans have modified their environments for millennia, but the role of these impacts on economic and social strategies among communities can be difficult to assess. This is due in part to the difficulty of quantifying impacts, which hinders our evaluations of the effects of different resource acquisition strategies and impairs attempts to understand competing demands on resources and their effects on the evolution of social relations. In this paper we employ footprint analysis, a tool used in ecology, to assess the impact of prehistoric subsistence farming communities on the environment, specifically faunal resources. We use footprint analysis to quantify the impact of various strategies of game acquisition by Classic Mimbres period (AD 1000-1130) farmers in the North American Southwest. Assessments are then employed in identifying changes in social relations among communities that may have contributed to settlement changes in the region.     

Settlement Patterns, Source–Sink Dynamics, and Artiodactyl Hunting in the Prehistoric U.S. Southwest

Numerous studies in the US Southwest suggest that prehistoric artiodactyl populations in areas of dense human settlement experienced population reductions which substantially reduced their availability to human hunters. Although most assemblages from villages in this region are dominated by lagomorphs, some settlements maintained greater access to artiodactyls. Factors influencing this variability include both local settlement history and settlement location relative to productive source areas for large game. In our study areas, source–sink dynamics likely contributed to the long-term resilience of hunted artiodactyl populations and allowed villagers continued access to animals moving in from source areas despite relatively rapid game depletion in heavily hunted areas immediately around villages.