Re-evaluating the Neolithic: The Impact and the Consolidation of Farming Practices in the Cantabrian Region (Northern Spain)

Research projects undertaken in the Cantabrian region since 1980 have produced new, high-quality information about the neolithisation process(es) in this area. It is now necessary to review this archaeological information and test the main hypotheses put forward to explain it. This paper presents an update on the archaeological evidence (sites, chronological dates, archaeozoological, archaeobotanical and technological information) for the early Neolithic in the Cantabrian region. It summarizes recent research on neolithisation in the region, and assesses the impact of this process during the early Neolithic, and its later consolidation. Although the available information is still incomplete, it is now possible to identify the focal point of the introduction of elements characteristic of the Neolithic way of life in the region. Current evidence suggests that it is in the eastern sector, where the earliest arrival of domesticates and new technologies such as pottery has been attested. The existence of continuities—such as sustained reliance on hunting and gathering and the coexistence of old and new funerary rites—suggests the persistence of native populations, which gradually participated in the neolithisation process after an ‘availability phase’.     

The problem of “technological unemployment” in the industrial research of the 1930's in the United States∗

The article surveys the findings and debates about “technological unemployment” carried out in the 1920's and 1930's in the United States. The huge productivity increases of the 1920's had sizable labour‐displacing effects, which were not matched by the job‐creating trends of prosperity. Unemployment was therefore a sizable and observable phenomenon as early as the late 1920's, while manufacturing employment shrank. After 1929, it was found that the Depression had hit production and investment hard, but productivity per man‐hour continued to increase. This meant that, because of the increases in population of working age and because of technological progress, in the late 1930's it would have been necessary to outgrow the levels of investment and production of 1929 in order to bring unemployment down to the 1929 rate. Even the recovery of 1937 remained much below those levels: the cause was seen in the behavior of large, concentrated industrial firms that administered prices and only applied technological advances in order to reduce costs. Their limited spending did not foster enough demand to move the economy out of the slump. The recovery was eventually brought about not by spontaneous, market‐driven economic behaviour, but by the deus‐ex‐machina of war‐induced Government spending.

A separate study of the theories of technological progress out‐distancing the job‐creating trends of prosperity is in preparation.     

Multi-method Analysis of Avian Eggs as Grave Goods: Revealing Symbolism in Conversion Period Burials at Kukruse,NE Estonia

Eggshells are unusual finds in the Iron Age of eastern Europe (500 BC–1200 AD) deserving extra attention in terms of analysis as well as interpretation. This paper discusses two rare eggshell finds, discovered in female burials at the conversion period (12th–13th century AD) cemetery at Kukruse, NE Estonia. Our multianalytical study combining FT-IR, SEM(-EDS), microscopy and ZooMS provides an overview of methods applicable for identifying egg species, their predepositional history and curation. Based on the analytical results and the comparative analysis of the content and context of these two burials, we argue that different aims and connotations lay behind depositing eggs as burial goods, allowing well-supported interpretations of both pagan and Christian religious worldviews simultaneously.     

Last Glacial Human Settlement in Eastern Cantabria (Northern Spain)

While the excavation of individual sites remains fundamental to the creation of the Palaeolithic archeological record, increasingly the focus of prehistoric research is on human adaptations to and within natural regions. Such a reorientation implies viewing sites and occupations as samples of different suites of activities in various habitats across space and time; it is dependent on the use of radiocarbon to date and relate occupation residues among sites; and it necessitates the application of methods to uncover patterns of human mobility as an integral aspect of subsistence economy, demographic arrangements and social relations. This paper contributes to the regional study of Last Glacial foragers by presenting preliminary aspects of a case study from the Asón River basin in eastern Cantabria. Assembled here are data from several recent and a few older excavations in sites distributed between the present shore of the Bay of Biscay and the uplands of the Cantabrian Cordillera. The main sites are El Otero, La Chora, La Fragua and El Perro near or at the present mouth of the river, the classic cave of El Valle in the mid-valley, and El Mirón and El Horno near the cave art loci of Covalanas, La Haza and Cullalvera in the upper valley. While the highest density of known sites in the whole drainage area occurs during the Magdalenian and Azilian periods (17–10 kya), there is evidence for substantial abandonment of the montane interior during the Mesolithic, when human settlement was concentrated around the estuary of the Asón, after which time the whole valley was repopulated in the Neolithic.     

Early American technological Edens

Howard P. Segal, Technological Utopianism in American Culture, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1985     

Oxygen isotopic composition of limpet shells from the Beagle Channel: implications for seasonal studies in shell middens of Tierra del Fuego

Shell middens distributed along the coastal areas of the Beagle Channel (Tierra del Fuego) testify the primary role of marine resources in the successful social dynamic of hunter–gatherer–fisher societies (HGF) in extreme high latitude environmental conditions. Intertidal and subtidal limpet species are frequently identified taxa of these archaeological deposits. We investigated whether shell δ¹⁸O of the limpet species Nacella deaurata is a valuable record of local sea surface temperature (SST) and ambient water δ¹⁸O (δ¹⁸Ow) fluctuations, and in turn can be used to estimate the season of its exploitation by Holocene HGF. Sequential shell δ¹⁸O of modern species track seasonal changes of SST and δ¹⁸Ow. The comparison of shell δ¹⁸O profiles of N. deaurata and Nacella magellanica (a coexisting species) suggests the occurrence of distinct growth rate and physiological adaptations between species. Shell δ¹⁸O of zooarchaeological specimens of N. deaurata from Lanashuaia II suggests that animals were exploited predominantly in winter and that experienced similar environmental conditions of present day at ∼1320 years BP. Results also indicate that N. deaurata is a valuable candidate for studying past seasonal changes in SST and δ¹⁸Ow in this southernmost part of South America.     

Migrant masculinities in-between private and public spaces of reproductive labour: Asian porters in Rome

Abstract

This article explores the construction of migrant masculinities in the context of reproductive labour. It focuses on Asian Christian men working as porters in upper middle-class residential buildings in Rome (Italy). This masculinised niche of reproductive labour combines differently gendered chores: feminised tasks (cleaning and caring) - mainly performed in the most private spaces of the home - and masculinised tasks (maintenance and security), carried out in the public or semi-public spaces of the buildings. The analysis addresses the dearth of studies on the sex-typing of jobs in the context of migrant men’s work experiences. It also contributes to ongoing debates on the geography of reproductive labour, by exploring how gendered practices of migrant reproductive labour construct private and public places. The construction of masculinities and place is shaped by the gendered racialisation of migrant men at the wider societal level, which materialises in the construction of ‘dangerous’ and ‘respectable’ urban areas. The article suggests that widespread concerns over religious difference and public security play a key role in defining migrant men’s access to the workplace and in shaping work relations.