Territorialising Movement Parties: The Case of Nuevo Encuentro in Buenos Aires

How and why do political parties, seemingly focused on electoral politics, also mobilise within contentious arenas? Drawing on qualitative research with a centre-left Argentine party called Nuevo Encuentro (NE) in the city of Buenos Aires this paper demonstrates the importance of a geographical reading of “movement parties” for responding to this question. Specifically, the paper analyses NE’s territorialisation, understood as a strategy for organisation building via the political appropriation of space, typically by opening branches and mobilising activists in neighbourhoods. Between 2007 and 2019 NE’s strategy of territorialisation mobilised across multiple scales—the neighbourhood, city and national—yet in so doing its organisation became overstretched and struggled to engage across both contentious and electoral arenas. Through an analysis of NE’s territorialisation, grounded in the historical and geographical context of contemporary Argentina, the paper provides an original attempt to spatialise the concept of movement party.     

A Man and a Perpetuum Mobile? Assigned Hermaphrodite Andreas Bruce's Memoirs

This article presents the memoirs of Andreas Bruce, a Swedish man that was assigned female sex at birth and later re-assigned sex as a male hermaphrodite. His memoirs, written by the end of the nineteenth century, are unique. They exhibit a rare example of what life could be like for gender transgressors during the nineteenth century. According to the memoirs, Bruce's transition and legal gender recognition was the source of some attention, but once he had gained a certificate of hermaphroditism and a male first name, his masculinity seldom seems to have been contested. Bruce navigates between describing himself as an ordinary man and describing his life story as unique.     

A geometric morphometric relationship predicts stone flake shape and size variability

The archaeological record represents a window onto the complex relationship between stone artefact variance and hominin behaviour. Differences in the shapes and sizes of stone flakes—the most abundant remains of past behaviours for much of human evolutionary history—may be underpinned by variation in a range of different environmental and behavioural factors. Controlled flake production experiments have drawn inferences between flake platform preparation behaviours, which have thus far been approximated by linear measurements, and different aspects of overall stone flake variability (Dibble and Rezek J Archaeol Sci 36:1945–1954, 2009; Lin et al. Am Antiq 724–745, 2013; Magnani et al. J Archaeol Sci 46:37–49, 2014; Rezek et al. J Archaeol Sci 38:1346–1359, 2011). However, when the results are applied to archaeological assemblages, there remains a substantial amount of unexplained variability. It is unclear whether this disparity between explanatory models and archaeological data is a result of measurement error on certain key variables, whether traditional analyses are somehow a general limiting factor, or whether there are additional flake shape and size drivers that remain unaccounted for. To try and circumvent these issues, here, we describe a shape analysis approach to assessing stone flake variability including a newly developed three-dimensional geometric morphometric method (‘3DGM’). We use 3DGM to demonstrate that a relationship between platform and flake body governs flake shape and size variability. Contingently, we show that by using this 3DGM approach, we can use flake platform attributes to both (1) make fairly accurate stone flake size predictions and (2) make relatively detailed predictions of stone flake shape. Whether conscious or instinctive, an understanding of this geometric relationship would have been critical to past knappers effectively controlling the production of desired stone flakes. However, despite being able to holistically and accurately incorporate three-dimensional flake variance into our analyses, the behavioural drivers of this variance remain elusive.     

The pearls and pitfalls of skull trephination as described in the Hippocratic treatise "On Head Wounds"

The purpose of our current study is to describe the guidelines regarding trephination as suggested in the Hippocratic writer's book, "Peri ton en cephali traumaton" ("On Head Wounds"). The ancient Greek text was reviewed as well as two English translations. The Hippocratic author described the indications, timing, and techniques of trephination for patients with head injury. He emphasized that attention should be paid to the details of the employed technique. He also commented on the difference of skull thickness at different anatomical sites and also between different age groups. The Hippocratic recommendations provided details for the performance of trephination by the ancient Greek physicians that are still considered important in modern neurosurgery.     

Sorting the butchered from the boiled

Is it possible to identify cooked, rather than burnt, bone? Mild heating (≤100 °C,1 h) – typical of cooking – does not lead to detectable changes in any biochemical parameter of bone yet measured. If it is only possible to detect charred bone, how is it possible to detect cooking in the archaeological record? In a previous paper (Koon et al., 2003, J. Arch. Sci.), we used a Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) based approach to investigate changes in the organization of the bone protein, collagen, as it is heated, using bone from heating experiments and short term burials. The work revealed that mineralized collagen, despite requiring aggressive treatment to gelatinise the protein (e.g. 90 °C, 240+ h), readily accumulates minor damage. We believe that the presence of mineral matrix stabilises the collagen enabling the damage to accumulate, but preventing it from causing immediate gelatinisation. Once the mineral is removed, the damage can be observed using appropriate visualization methods.     

Warton,George Washington and the Lancashire Roots of the Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’, C. 1880–1976

This article takes as its starting point the ancestral connection linking George Washington, first president of the United States, to the parish of Warton in north Lancashire. But rather than simply repeating the various details of this ancestry, this article considers instead the ways in which the Warton–Washington connection has been used within acts of ‘commemorative diplomacy’ — informal and often unofficial activities that deploy cultural memory in the interests of international relations. From the antiquarian endeavours of the 1880s, to the Washington-focused commemorations organized during the world wars, to the Bicentenary events of July 1976, places like Warton have long played a vital role in Anglo-American relations. Indeed, what Winston Churchill famously called the ‘special relationship’ has always been a carefully cultivated ‘myth’ as much as a political reality, and thus rooting it in specific places has been essential, ensuring it seems ‘organic’ rather than constructed, real rather than artificial, old and robust rather than new and superficial. Commemorative activities at Warton therefore offer an important perspective on twentieth-century Anglo-American relations, showing how a north Lancashire connection to the first president has provided an invaluable vector for defining, imagining and celebrating the transatlantic ties of the past and present.     

Death in the sun: the bioarchaeology of an early post-medieval hospital in Gibraltar

SUMMARY: In 2014, during construction work at the ex-Civil Hospital in Gibraltar, excavations led by the Gibraltar Museum revealed a major, previously unknown burial ground containing more than 200 skeletons. We present the historical, archaeological and radiometric dating evidence from the site alongside the results of initial osteological analyses. The data indicate that the burials pertain to an earlier 16th-century Spanish hospice, and therefore stand to offer new insights into the functioning of this early modern hospital and the health and movements of people at a time of incipient globalization.     

Tourism in Ethnic Communities: Two Miao Villages in China

The paper is concerned with the ways in which ethnic culture is presented and experienced by tourists with particular reference to two villages in China inhabited by members of the Miao minority group and popular with visitors. The study is based on qualitative and quantitative data derived from primary and secondary sources and findings reveal contrasts and similarities within and between destination residents and visitors regarding attitudes to tourism and its cultural impacts, especially in terms of authenticity. While the cases display unique features, their analysis affords more general insights into the characteristics of this particular form of heritage tourism and its consequences.