Unequal 'cultures'? Racial integration at a South African university

This article examines the process of racial integration at the University of Pretoria since the demise of apartheid. The university has taken significant steps to achieve fairer representation of the different 'races', but has not succeeded in diminishing student perceptions of the overwhelming importance of racial identities. Some suggest that this is because white, Afrikaans-speaking students continue to display racial prejudice against fellow students who are black. We argue that while this may be so, a more important obstacle lies in the institution's adherence to a discourse involving an easy substitution of 'culture' for 'race' as a means to describe 'difference' in South Africa. This discourse, which has a long history at the university, serves to divert attention from the racialised inequalities that underpin the salience of racial identities.     

Exceptional preservation of a prehistoric human brain from Heslington,Yorkshire, UK

Archaeological work in advance of construction at a site on the edge of York, UK, yielded human remains of prehistoric to Romano-British date. Amongst these was a mandible and cranium, the intra-cranial space of which contained shrunken but macroscopically recognizable remains of a brain. Although the distinctive surface morphology of the organ is preserved, little recognizable brain histology survives. Though rare, the survival of brain tissue in otherwise skeletalised human remains from wet burial environments is not unique. A survey of the literature shows that similar brain masses have been previously reported in diverse circumstances. We argue for a greater awareness of these brain masses and for more attention to be paid to their detection and identification in order to improve the reporting rate and to allow a more comprehensive study of this rare archaeological survival.