A geography of residents' worry about the disruptive effects of contaminated sites

While the links between contaminated sites and adverse effects on human health and well‐being are being increasingly recognised, some argue that the magnitude of the health problem is inadequately addressed because it is largely invisible. Health geographies literature has sought to highlight this invisibility by focusing on the link between contaminated sites and health. This study adds to health geographies by presenting unique insights into the geography of residents' worry about the disruptive effect of environmental contamination on health and well‐being. It analyses a sample of residents (n = 485) living near 13 contaminated sites across Australia. Ordinal logistic regression analysis of closed‐format survey questions was combined with coding of open‐ended survey questions to reveal the geography of residents' worry about contamination from nearby sites. First, the study explores some of the main relationships between residents, their environs, and contaminants from nearby source sites, which determines their levels of worry: residents' demographics, residents' proximity to sites, contaminant boundaries and borders, and type of contaminant. Second, the study investigates how worry affects residents' health and well‐being, ranging from effects on their personal functioning through to their sense of ontological security, which depends in part upon their perceptions of contaminants' impacts. Despite having identified a range of diverse and negative effects of worry about contamination on residents, we found that worry for contamination can also prompt coping strategies and problem‐solving, reinforcing the need for more research on this subject.     

The Gravity of Archaeology

One of the defining features of the material culture of space exploration is the fact that much of it is “out there”: in orbit around celestial bodies and on planetary surfaces. In outer space, we have to rethink the meaning of place. Cartesian coordinates must be replaced with equations of motion to describe the ceaseless movement of heavenly objects in relation to centres of gravity. Archaeological sites in space are not solid condensations of artefacts, hundreds or thousands of years compressed into layers perhaps only centimetres deep. The materials of an archaeological deposit become rather a cloud or swarm. But for both Earth and space, gravity is the structuring force. In this paper I want to reconceptualise archaeological sites according to their position in the gravity well, using dynamical systems and Riemann surfaces. I then consider the Mir space station as an example of a site existing simultaneously on Earth and in orbit, as a preliminary excursion towards a frame of reference that can be used to effectively conduct an archaeology in outer space.     

A Flawed Saint: The Popular Image of William Gladstone in the Australian Colonies

ABSTRACT

This article looks at the popular image of William Gladstone which gradually emerged and evolved in the Australian Colonies throughout the nineteenth century. By using a wide variety of newspaper sources and political speeches, the piece shows how Gladstone was extensively discussed and interpreted on the far side of the ‘British World’. It tracks the ups and downs of the turbulent relationship Gladstone had with the Australian Colonies over his long career, as he influenced Australian history both directly through the policies he implemented and indirectly as an inspiration for local politicians. It concludes that although Gladstone repeatedly aggravated Australian opinion both through his time at the Colonial Office and the ‘soft’ foreign policy he pursued as Prime Minister, his domestic popularity as a successful liberal and democratic figure was enough to make him a hero in colonial eyes. This conclusion shows how ‘British World’ popular sentiment was able to trump nominal local interests. This demonstrates not only the predominance of Britishness in Australian identity during this time period, but also how as a simultaneously separate yet intimately linked part of the Empire, Australians abstracted their own significance and meaning from domestic British politics.     

A new elasmosaurid specimen from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica: new evidence of a monophyletic group of Weddellian elasmosaurids

O’Gorman, J.P. & Coria, R.A. September 2016. A new elasmosaurid specimen from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica: new evidence of a monophyletic group of Weddellian elasmosaurids. Alcheringa 41, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

A new fossil elasmosaurid specimen, MLP 15-I-7-48, from the upper Maastrichtian Sandwich Bluff Member of the López de Bertodano Formation, Vega Island, Archipelago James Ross, Antarctica, is described. The fossil is a well-preserved anterior limb, which shares with Vegasaurus molyi from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica, a concave to flat anterior margin of the humeral shaft, and with Vegasaurus molyi and Aphrosaurus furlongi from the upper Maastrichtian of California, a well-defined depression on the anterior margin of the ventral surface of the humeral shaft. A phylogenetic analysis recovered MLP 15-I-7–48 as sister group of the lower Maastrichtian Vegasaurus molyi within a new clade nominated as Weddellonectia: Kawanectes lafquenianum ((Vegasaurus molyi; MLP 15-I-7–48) (Morenosaurus stocki (Aristonectinae))). This indicates that the previously proposed faunal turnover between the early and late Maastrichtian Weddellian marine reptile fauna, did not severely affect the non-aristonectine elasmosaurids. Additionally, other taxa previously considered evidence of a faunal turnover are re-evaluated.

José P. O’Gorman. [joseogorman@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar]. División Paleontología Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n., B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina. Rodolfo A. Coria. [rcoria@unrn.edu.ar]. Instituto de Investigación en Paleobiología y Geología, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro—Subsecretaría de Cultura de Neuquén—Museo Carmen Funes, Av. CVórdoba 55 (8318), Plaza Huincul, Neuquén, Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina.     

“It's About Time You Came Out”: Sexualities,Mobility and Home

Abstract: Helping redress the dominance of metropolitan narratives upon which much literature on sexuality is framed, this article interprets the narrative told by a “white” 16‐year‐old man living in regional Australia. Our aim is to investigate the intersections of migration and homemaking in sexual subject formation. Finding a place to call “home” can be a complex process for young men born in regional Australia and not conforming to the social formations of a “normal guy”. This young man's narrative expressively reveals the fluidity and spatiality inherent in processes of negotiating sexual subjectivities. His story provides telling insights into how migration and mobility change his understandings of home and of self by making possible a third‐space configured by neither the gender norms of his hometown nor the “gay scene” in Sydney.     

Lucy Hutchinson,Lucretius and Soteriological Materialism

Abstract

This article examines Lucy Hutchinson's pervasive materialism, arguing that her use of corporeal imagery – in part shaped by her early translation of Lucretius – contributes to the soteriological purposes of her later works in multiple ways. Criticism on Hutchinson has tended to divorce the materialist imagery of her translation from the Calvinistic themes of her other writings. I argue, however, for the lasting presence of a materialism constructed from the vocabularies of Lucretian Epicureanism, Neoplatonism and John Owen. Focusing especially on the poem Order and Disorder and Hutchinson's theological tract to her daughter, I show how she uses materialism as a “means” to achieving assurance and grace. I suggest that these various responses to physical experience are part of Hutchinson's enduring investigation into the ontology of “Order” and “Disorder”, and her quest for stable spiritual being.     

Poromoi Tamu and the Case of the Drowning Village: History, Lost Places and the Stories We Tell

Archaeological excavations at an ancestral village site within rainforest in Papua New Guinea has revealed buried cultural evidence that can be explained in a number of ways. While interpretations based on Western archaeological methods suggest regional landscape dynamics informed by geomorphological processes, Indigenous Rumu oral traditions suggest an interpretation of the site’s stratigraphy based on the workings of spiritual forces. The role of story-telling and new information in site interpretation and understanding is explored in light of these different yet complementary accounts.