Migration and adaptation of popular Balladry in the US Appalachian region

Scottish ballads were carried to isolated hamlets in the Appalachian Mountains of North America through successive waves of migration in the 17th and 18th centuries. The cultural diffusion of ballad singing underwent divergence as the songs were transmitted orally. Place names, local festivals, and current events were especially plastic components of this process. In the beginning of the 20th century, the intrusion of the radio and rural disturbances brought about by the coal industry functioned as barriers to cultural transmission of the ballads. Even so, songs were kept alive as evidenced by the metamorphosis of My Boy Tammie into Billy Boy and the more recent resurrection of The Elfin Knight into popular culture as Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel. The relationship between orality and literacy is multi‐faceted and difficult to categorise and evaluate.     

Out of the outhouse: The impact of place‐based policies on dwelling characteristics in Appalachia

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) administers and partially funds investment projects designed to improve economic conditions in the Appalachian region, an area of persistent poverty and reduced economic opportunity in the eastern United States in and around the Appalachian mountains. Previous research on the effectiveness of ARC programs is mixed. We analyze the impact of ARC investment projects related to expanding sewerage and waste water treatment on dwelling characteristics. Results from a difference‐in‐differences model using a quasi‐experimental approach show that ARC investment projects improved access to running water, and increased sewer hookups and indoor bathrooms in dwellings.     

Towards Asian regional functional futures: bringing Mitrany back in?

In the early years of the twenty-first century, Asian regionalism is at a crossroads. While the region is home to a broad array of multilateral organisations, the record of these bodies in fostering effective and legitimate cooperation has been decidedly weak. Drawing on insights from the work of David Mitrany on international cooperation, this article contends that the key problem facing Asian regionalism is a predilection for ‘top-down’ rather than ‘bottom-up’ regionalism strategies. These top-down strategies have involved efforts to find a single institutional design for regional cooperation (similar to the experience of Europe), which has been hindered by geopolitical rivalries and a lack of shared consensus around what constitutes the ‘Asian region’. By considering the contours of interstate competition in Asia, the track record of its existing regionalism efforts and insights from comparative regional studies, it is instead argued that Asia's future is one of regions rather than a single region. As Mitrany suggests, the unique geopolitical context in Asia means that functionally discrete and variegated strategies are likely to provide a more effective basis for regional cooperation. Indeed, trends towards such a functional approach to regionalism are already becoming evident in Asia today.     

Household ceramic diversity in the late prehistory of the Appalachian Summit

ABSTRACT

Pottery from the Ward site village (31WT22; ca. A.D. 1100) in mountainous northwestern North Carolina exhibits remarkable synchronic diversity that evokes speculations about prehistoric social institutions. Large fragments of ceramic jars recovered from the base of a storage pit at a nearby single house site appear to represent the wares of one household dating to approximately A.D. 1350. Like the Ward site pottery, diverse tempering materials and surface treatments at this site defy existing typologies and show that individual artisans availed themselves of a palette of technological and stylistic choices, some of which were introduced through interaction with neighboring Mississippian and Woodland groups, especially those lying to the south and east.     

Temperature‐dependent Li isotope ratios in Appalachian Plateau and Gulf Coast Sedimentary Basin saline water

Lithium (Li) concentrations of produced water from unconventional (horizontally drilled and hydraulically fractured shale) and conventional gas wells in Devonian reservoirs in the Appalachian Plateau region of western Pennsylvania range from 0.6 to 17 mmol kg^?1, and Li isotope ratios, expressed as in δ⁷Li, range from +8.2 to +15‰. Li concentrations are as high as 40 mmol kg^?1 in produced waters from Plio‐Pleistocene through Jurassic‐aged reservoirs in the Gulf Coast Sedimentary Basin analyzed for this study, and δ⁷Li values range from about +4.2 to +16.6‰. Because of charge‐balance constraints and rock buffering, Li concentrations in saline waters from sedimentary basins throughout the world (including this study) are generally positively correlated with chloride (Cl), the dominant anion in these fluids. Li concentrations also vary with depth, although the extent of depth dependence differs among sedimentary basins. In general, Li concentrations are higher than expected from seawater or evaporation of seawater and therefore require water–mineral reactions that remove lithium from the minerals. Li isotope ratios in these produced waters vary inversely with temperature. However, calculations of temperature‐dependent fractionation of δ⁷Li between average shale δ⁷Li (?0.7‰) and water result in δ⁷Li_water that is more positive than that of most produced waters. This suggests that aqueous δ⁷Li may reflect transport of water from depth and/or reaction with rocks having δ⁷Li lighter than average shale.     

Japan’s role conception in multilateral initiatives: the evolution from Hatoyama to Abe

This article examines Japan’s role conception in its multilateral commitments to the Asia-Pacific after the global financial crisis in 2008. The Hatoyama government launched an East Asian Community initiative, which aimed to assume a kingmaker role in creating a new order in East Asia. However, the East Asian Community initiative did not develop due to stress on self-reliance and distance from partnership with the USA. The Abe government sought to play a dual role in its major multilateral commitments. On the one hand, the government sought to play a follower role in enhancing the position of the East Asia Summit with an eye to consolidating the US-based institutional framework. On the other, Abe’s new multilateral initiative of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific represented Japan’s kingmaker role in maintaining a free and open maritime regime, and to keep a liberal and open economic regime under the emergence of the Trump administration.     

An experimental study of bean and maize burning to interpret evidence from Stillhouse Hollow Cave in western North Carolina

ABSTRACT

Test excavations in a small rockshelter in the mountains of North Carolina uncovered remains of a hearth containing carbonized twigs, maize kernels, bean cotyledons, animal bone, and the fragments of a single ceramic vessel dating to approximately AD 1350. Experiments in carbonization of maize kernels and beans and involving fire-extinguishing conditions indicate that the burnt seeds recovered from the hearth were probably dry when burned, that the fire may have been smothered or doused, and that the remains may represent an offering of dry seeds, rather than food refuse, similar to that observed historically among the Cherokee.     

Regionalising resource security in the Asia-Pacific: the challenge of economic nationalism

In recent years, efforts to institutionalise resource security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region have intensified. Soaring world prices for minerals and energy have seen a range of resource security strategies launched—through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN Plus Three, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the East Asia Summit—all of which aim to promote intergovernmental dialogue, policy coordination and the integration of regional resource markets. However, the practical achievements of these regional efforts have been limited, as none have advanced beyond dialogue activities to more formalised types of resource security cooperation. This article examines the dynamics of these abortive attempts to regionalise resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, arguing that economic nationalist resource policy preferences held by governments have acted as a major obstacle to cooperation. Through an analysis of national resource policy regimes and the outputs of recent cooperative efforts, it demonstrates how economic nationalism has encouraged inward-looking and sovereignty-conscious actions on the part of major resource players in the Asia-Pacific. As a result, intergovernmental resource cooperation has been limited to informal and voluntary ‘soft-law’ initiatives, which have not made a substantive contribution to the resource security of economies in the region.