The Santa María pottery of El Bolsón valley (Catamarca,Argentina): Compositional characterization and implications on the elaboration processes,ca. 1000–1600 ce

The results obtained from the multi-analytic compositional characterization of ceramic pastes and paints of the Santa María style, from the El Bolsón valley (Belén Department, Catamarca Province, Argentina), are presented here. This pottery style had a wide regional distribution in Northwestern Argentina between ca. 1000 and1600 ce and is characterized by its complex iconography painted in black, cream and red. The analyses show that the containers correspond to the technical tradition of using grog temper and suggest that its manufacture involved a double firing process. This reveals a new practice for the time.     

COVID-19, mental health,and rurality: A pilot study

COVID-19 has caused enormous economic and social disruptions that may have lasting effects on employment, income, and working conditions. Critically, these disruptions often have a negative impact on mental health. While significant research has examined the relationship between COVID-19 and mental health, most of these studies focus on urban centres. This paper presents results from a pilot study conducted in two rural counties in Ontario, Canada on the experiences of residents from small and rural communities related to COVID-19. Based on 3496 survey results, this study quantifies the negative impact of COVID-19 on overall mental health and the confounding role of gender, income, and age. Results must be used to expand the dialogue around rural mental health and to ensure appropriate programs and policies are developed.     

Predictors of Out-of-Home Placement in a Family Preservation Program: Are Welfare Recipients Particularly Vulnerable?

Participants in a statewide family preservation program were classified on the basis of income level and enrollment in public assistance. These variables, along with other economic, parent, and child risk factors, were used to predict the probability of out-of-home placements at the close of this intervention program. Results revealed that neither low income nor receiving public assistance was predictive of having a child removed from the home. Higher levels of child-centered risk and parent-centered risk were the only consistent predictors of placement outcomes. Additional analyses revealed that family characteristics (e.g., history of psychiatric care, prior child placements, and involvement with the legal system) also were typical of families experiencing out-of-home placements. This study challenges the stereotype of low-income or welfare families being at greater risk of having a child removed from their home. Findings are discussed in the context of recent welfare reform initiatives and implications for future family policy research.     

A hyperreal first-place: Portugal dos Pequenitos theme park and the narrative of origins

Abstract

This article analyses a nation-theme park in Portugal. Located in Coimbra and built in the 1940s, when Portugal was a colonial empire and was under the rule of a right wing dictatorship, the park was designed as a pedagogical device for children to learn about the nation. In the park, the whole of the nation was represented by miniature replicas of buildings representing European Portugal and its overseas territories. Seventy-five years after its construction and with little changes to its material structures, this theme park is the most visited tourist attraction in Coimbra. This paper presents the result of ethnographic work carried out with Portuguese visitors to the park so as to understand the affect the place has over Portuguese visitors. The work undertaken with the latter has allowed to identify a narrative of ‘firstness’ that constructs the park as a hyper-real first-place by Portuguese visitors.     

OBJECTS OF HISTORY: THE PAST MATERIALIZED1

What is the role of material culture in understanding the past? This review essay explores two principal approaches—the history of museums and antiquities and environmental history—to reflect on their shared investment in historical materialism. It reviews Timothy LeCain's The Matter of History and Peter Miller's History and Its Objects, discussing their perspectives on objects and the writing of history. One important part of this history concerns the relationship of academic historians to the idea of a history museum, curatorial practices, and public history. What kinds of history can we do in a museum, with things, that might not occur without the presence of objects? Why were nineteenth- and early twentieth-century efforts to encourage a close relationship between historical research and the history museum largely abandoned in favor of a document-driven approach? The second dimension of current interest in historical materialism concerns new approaches to environmental history. It draws inspiration from Deep History as well as recent work in archaeology and STS (Science and Technology Studies) to argue for a more integrated history of humans and nature that demonstrates how things have made us. The history of successive efforts to remake the environment in different parts of the world and their consequences offers crucial object lessons in how humans have responded to nature's own creativity. Both approaches to historical materialism highlight the virtues of a more interdisciplinary approach to historical scholarship, in the museum or in the field, but most important, in our own sensibilities about what it means to think historically with artifacts and to treat them as compelling evidence of a shared history of humanity and nature.     

Hunter-Gatherer Mobility Strategies in the High Andes of Northern Chile during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Transition (ca. 11,500–9500 CAL B.P.)

The high Andes of western South America feature extreme ecological conditions that impose important physiological constraints on humans including high-elevation hypoxia and cold stress. This leads to questions regarding how these environments were colonized by the first waves of humans that reached them during the late Pleistocene. Based on previous research, and aided by human behavioral ecology principles, we assess hunter-gatherer behavioral strategies in the Andean highlands during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Specifically, we formulate three mobility strategies and their archaeological expectations and test these using technological and subsistence evidence from the six earliest well-dated highland sites in northern Chile. Our results suggest that all of the studied sites were temporarily occupied for hunting, processing animals, and toolkit maintenance. The sites also exhibit shared technological features within a curatorial strategy albeit with different occupation intensities. From this evidence, we infer that the initial occupations of the highlands were logistical and probably facilitated by increased local resource availability during a period of environmental amelioration.     

Continental Patterns in Stone Tools: A Technological and Biplot-Based Comparison of Early Late Pleistocene Assemblages from Northern and Southern Africa

The technology of the end products i.e. blades and points in Late Pleistocene stone artefact assemblages from Klasies River, South Africa, and the Nile Valley, Egypt, are compared. The comparison includes univariate and multivariate analysis of metrical attributes enhanced by graphical biplot displays. The end products in these assemblages are either dominantly points or blades and this is related to the core reduction strategy adopted. The MSA 11 from Klasies River and the Nubian Complex industry from the Nile Valley are point industries made in the Levallois tradition, while the MSA 1 from Klasies River and the Taramsan from the Nile Valley may be non-Levallois or adapted Levallois blade industries. Dating of the assemblages shows the changes between dominant core reduction strategies are sequential and time restricted in both South and North Africa. It is concluded that variability of the same kind occurs in Middle Stone Age and Middle Palaeolithic assemblages south and north of the Sahara in the early Late Pleistocene.Dans cet article, les technologies des produits recherchés, des lames et des pointes, pour certains ensembles lithiques de Klasies River, Afrique du Sud et la Vallée du Nil, Egypte, sont comparées. Cette comparaison implique des analyses univariées et multivariées de variables métriques biplot. Les produits recherchés sont bien des pointes que des lames, selon les stratégies dexploitation adoptées. Le MSA II de Klasies River et le Complexe nubien de la Vallée du Nil sont des industries à pointes issues de la tradition Levallois. Par contre, le MSA I de Klasies River et le Taramsien de la Vallée du Nil évoquent une technologie de production non-Levallois ou Levallois modifiée. Les éléments de datation disponibles indiquent que les changements dans la prépondérance des stratégies dexploitation senchaînent dans une séquence chronologique bien identifiable, aussibien dans lAfrique du Sud que lAfrique du Nord. On arrive à la conclusion quune variabilité du même caractère est attestée dans les ensembles du Middle Stone Age et du Paléolithique moyen au sud et au nord du Sahara, pendant le Pléistocène supérieur ancien.