Mining sick: Creatively unsettling normative narratives about industry,environment, extraction,and the health geographies of rural,remote, northern,and Indigenous communities in British Columbia

Rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous communities on Turtle Island are routinely—as Cree Elder Willie Ermine says—pathologized. Social science and health scholarship, including scholarship by geographers, often constructs Indigenous human and physical geographies as unhealthy, diseased, vulnerable, and undergoing extraction. These constructions are not inaccurate: peoples and places beyond urban metropoles on Turtle Island live with higher burdens of poor health; Indigenous peoples face systemic violence and racism in colonial landscapes; rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies are sites of industrial incursions; and many rural and remote geographies remain challenging for diverse Indigenous peoples. What, however, are the consequences of imagining and constructing people and places as “sick”? Constructions of “sick” geographies fulfill and extend settler (often European white) colonial narratives about othered geographies. Rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies are discursively “mined” for narratives of sickness. This mining upholds a sense of health and wellness in southern, urban, Euro‐white‐settler imaginations. Drawing from multi‐year, relationship‐based, cross‐disciplinary qualitative community‐informed experiences, and anchored in feminist, anti‐colonial, and anti‐racist methodologies that guided creative and humanities‐informed stories, this paper concludes with different stories. It unsettles settler‐colonial powers reliant on constructing narratives about sickness in others and consequently reframes conversations about Indigenous well‐being and the environment.     

Between east and west: Glass beads from the eighth to third centuries bce from Poland

The study analyses the chemical composition of 57 glass samples from 40 beads discovered at 20 archaeological sites in Poland. The beads are dated to Hallstatt C–Early La Tène periods (c.800/750–260/250 bce ). Analyses were carried out using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Two groups were distinguished among the glasses based on the MgO/K₂O ratio: high-magnesium glass (HMG), five samples; and low-magnesium glass (LMG), 52 samples. The former were melted with halophyte plant ash, the second with mineral soda. These glasses were produced in the Eastern Mediterranean (more likely in Mesopotamia or Syro-Palestine than in Egypt) and transported in the form of semi-products to secondary glass workshops in Europe. Some of the white opaque glass was coloured and opacified in Europe.     

Regional cultural heritage versus national heritage in Scania's disputed national landscape

This article argues that the official landscape heritage in Sweden is formed in an interplay between regional and national discourses, and that the national ideology during the last century has promoted the preservation of stereotyped landscapes that partly ignores the conditions under which these landscapes were actually formed. This tends to naturalise the landscape, often cleansing it of human action and thereby generating a notion of an innate and given national landscape. To illustrate this, the landscape of the province of Skåne in southernmost Sweden is discussed from a heritage perspective. This province (which was Danish up to 1658) has a landscape characterised by its openness and contrasting to the emblematic Swedish cultural landscape of forests and small hamlets. A conclusion is that Skåne's landscape heritage runs the risk of being alienated when it is valued from a national criterion, and that a critical questioning of official heritage practice is therefore needed.     

Pest,Stadt, Wissenschaft — Wechselwirkungen in oberitalienischen Städten vom 14. bis 17. Jahrhundert

After the Black Death of 1348 the Plague was not only the cause of personal disasters and individual despair, but was also of political and social significance. Each outbreak of the epidemic implied a crisis for the community with crucial consequences for trade, jurisdiction, administration, executive powers and for food supply. The faith in authority by the leading university medics was tragic, as they subscribed to the hippocratic-galenical humoral pathology and to the miasmatic theory. On the other hand, municipal authorities, from the 14th century onwards responded to the epidemic in a pragmatic manner, isolating the sick, carrying out checks, imposing trade embargos and special epidemic laws. From the 15th century onwards people were also put under quarantine. The medics' role, their relationship with the government and their tendency to play down the diagnosis will be discussed at length, together with the questionable tradition of the Regimina pestis.     

Crop Fertility Conditions in North-Eastern Gaul During the La Tène and Roman Periods: A Combined Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeobotanical and Archaeozoological Remains

ABSTRACT

Considerable archaeobotanical datasets describe cereal cultivation in north-eastern France, from the Iron Age to the Roman period. This study aims to complement these by using stable isotope analysis on charred cereal grains. Soil fertility was investigated through δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C analyses of 1480 charred cereal grains, dated from the Late La Tène to the Late Antiquity periods. In the Île-de-France, charred grain Δ¹³C values suggested good hydric conditions, with drier episodes in the 1st and 3rd century AD; while in Champagne, the lower Δ¹³C values for spelt reflect the lower water holding capacity of the chalky soils. A wide range of cereal δ¹⁵N values (0.8–8.7‰) implies a wide range of soil fertility conditions. Jouars-Pontchartrain and Palaiseau (Île-de-France) yielded the highest cereal δ¹⁵N values, whereas Acy-Romance (Champagne) delivered among the lowest. From these three sites, the δ¹⁵N values of red deer bone collagen were used to estimate the reference δ¹⁵N values for unmanured plants. Unlike in Acy-Romance, there were significant differences in Palaiseau and Jouars-Pontchartrain, indicating that the cultivated cereals inherited their high δ¹⁵N values from manured soil. At Jouars-Pontchartrain, the δ¹⁵N value (almost 9‰) suggested a high trophic level manuring source, possibly from pig and/or human faeces.     

Einfluß der Chemischen Industrie auf den Chemieunterricht Abriß einer historischen Entwicklung

This historical inquiry into the enfluence with the Chemical Industriy and the chemistry education at German classical stateschools is described since the revolution of 1848. The introduction of chemistry lessons at German classical stateschools step by step is further observed between 1882 and 1901. Specially the author gives a comprehensive survey about the development after the World War II.     

Evaluating copper isotope fractionation in the metallurgical operational chain: An experimental approach

Until today, raw material information of copper (Cu) objects is mostly gained from impurities and trace elements and not from the Cu itself. This might be obtained using its stable isotopes. However, isotopic fingerprinting requires the absence of fractionation during the smelting process. The Cu isotope evolution during outdoor smelting experiments with Cu sulphide ore was investigated. It is shown that external materials, in particular furnace lining, clay, manure and sand, alter the isotopic composition of the smelting products. Cu isotopes are fractionated within low viscosity slag derived from matte smelting. The produced metallic Cu has a Cu isotope signature close to the ore.     

Evidence for “Celtic migrations”? Strontium isotope analysis at the early La Tène (LT B) cemeteries of Nebringen (Germany) and Monte Bibele (Italy)

Strontium isotope analysis on human remains from the Iron Age (4th/3rd century BC) cemeteries of Nebringen, Germany and Monte Bibele, Italy were carried out to investigate the role of residential changes during the period of the historic “Celtic migrations”. From an archaeological perspective, the location of the cemeteries in the Celtic core (Nebringen) and expansion area (Monte Bibele), and the distinctive development of their material culture, suggest that the buried populations had differing mobility rates. On the contrary, the strontium results indicate that only few individuals were mobile or non-local. There is, however, a difference in variation of strontium isotope ratios between the two studied cemeteries, presumably caused by differing geological conditions. In Nebringen changing use of cultivated land in a geologically heterogeneous environment most likely caused varying strontium isotope ratios even within the same jaw, while individual mobility over longer distances can also not be excluded. In Monte Bibele the range of strontium isotope ratios is narrow, and this may be explained by a community living in the same village and using the same agricultural resources. For various prehistoric time periods it has been suggested that some population groups were more mobile than others, for example because they had special social roles. In the two cemeteries studied here, males have slightly more often a non-local birthplace or moved during childhood. In contrast, females had isotope signatures which are more consistent with the local geological environment. Male mobility is, however, not correlated with burial as a warrior, and patrilocal residential patterns were not observed among females. Foreign and local items are found with isotopically local and non-local individuals and objects per se do not indicate descent. The motives for residential changes were, therefore, varied and not constrained to a specific area or population group. The presented dataset provides details on the way of life and land-use in the Celtic communities, for which information is otherwise absent.     

Benjamin Franklin,Georges‐louis le rouge and the Franklin/Folger chart of the gulf stream

Abstract: While in Paris as minister to the French court, Benjamin Franklin arranged for the production of a French version of his famous chart of the Gulf Stream, which had been based on a sketch by Timothy Folger and first printed in London c. February, 1769. This paper recounts Franklin's collaboration with the Parisian cartographer Georges‐Louis Le Rouge from their first meeting in 1780, and pieces together the history of the Le Rouge chart. Two open questions have been when the chart was engraved, and whether its purpose was primarily military, commercial or scientific. Evidence suggests that it was produced for French merchant and packet captains in the months following the end of the American War of Independence.     

Value chains,business conventions,and market adaptation: A comparative analysis of Norwegian and Icelandic fish exports

Business transactions’ value chains can constrain their capacity to maximize market value from limited resources. Seafood markets exhibit a strong demand for fresh, high‐quality seafood yet empirical studies show large variations in value chains’ adaptation and exploitation of market opportunities. This article presents a comprehensive model that identifies the main drivers and constraints in value chains for wild harvested seafood that generate differences in market adaptation. The model is built on theories of value chains, business conventions, competitive behaviour, governance conventions, legal regulation, and direct ecological and economic constraints. The model is applied in a comparative case analysis of market adaptation by value chains for North Atlantic cod products in Norway and Iceland, which explains why business conventions in Iceland are more consumer market adapted than those in Norway.