Decorated discs from Sharm

Eight discs, largely concavo-convex in shape and decorated with a symmetrical rosette pattern, were recovered from Tomb I during excavations. A similar undecorated concavo-convex disc was also found. The following paper presents the results of the typological examination of the objects, with the materials and manufacturing techniques published elsewhere in this volume. These discs are widely recognised in southeastern Arabia, with parallels suggesting a predominantly Iron Age date.     

Continuity of Ideas and the Politics of Higher Education Expansion in Britain from Robbins to Dearing

This article examines the politics of higher education expansionin Britain between the 1960s and 1990s, bookmarked by the Robbinsand Deanng reports respectively. We argue that throughout thisperiod higher education expansion has been employed, by allpolitical parties, as an instrument of economic growth thoughthis justification has been dressed up to satisfy transientideological preferences. We first present a detailed account,based on archival and primary sources, of the three major reformsto higher education since the 1950s—Robbins, Thatcherism,and Dearing; and second, develop an argument about how the dominantideas about the rationale for higher education constitute aform of path dependency for policy choices once these institutionsare publicly funded and explicitly linked to economic needs.     

‘What I Used to Do … On My Mother's Settee’: spatial and emotional aspects of heterosexuality in England

Using data from an ongoing project which investigates continuities and changes in the institution of heterosexuality across the twentieth century, this article brings a spatialised perspective to bear on the contradictions implicit within family‐based models of hegemonic heterosexuality. In this context we contribute to the growing focus by geographers on theorising the spatial and emotional aspects of heterosexuality. Via interviews with women and men from three generations in 20 families from East Yorkshire, England, we discover the difficulties experienced by individuals seeking to bring together their sexual and family lives. Focusing on two areas, the transmission of sexual knowledge between the members of different generations and between heterosexual partners and the use of space within the performance of gendered identities, the article shows how individuals both experience constraint and discover scope for agency in managing such contradictions. Via empirical data we therefore begin to identify the ways in which heterosexuality, as an institution, has provided an implicit organising principle through which materially‐grounded links between self, the emotions, other, body, home and the public sphere have been produced and/or negotiated over the last 80 years.     

Wadi Suq and Iron Age period ceramics from Sharm, Fujairah (U.A.E.)

The Wadi Suq period and Iron Age ceramics from Sharm are examined in terms of morphological, compositional and decorative features. The assemblage is typical of the second- and first-millennium BC ceramics of southeastern Arabia. The more unusual Iron Age 'imitation soft stone' ceramics are amply represented and the Sharm assemblage considerably expands upon this corpus of ceramics which has hitherto been less than abundant in the region. Comparisons with other second- and first-millennium sites suggest the tombs were largely occupied in the late Wadi Suq period, a pattern of occupation which again peaked in the Iron Age II period.