Sorcery and Warfare in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Sorcery and warfare are closely interrelated in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In contrast to other areas of the Highlands, sorcery in large parts of the Eastern Highlands is considered to be an exclusively male domain, and violent retribution for deaths attributed to sorcery is primarily directed against other communities. Thus, sorcery accusations have the tendency to escalate to large‐scale inter‐group warfare, often causing additional casualties. Sorcery beliefs have undergone changes during the colonial and postcolonial era, with new forms of sorcery proliferating, and the zones of safety from sorcery shrinking, due to demographic and economic changes. Sorcery accusations were triggers for the resumption of warfare during the late 1970s and 1980s, and they remain pertinent to outbreaks of hostilities today. In fact, the majority of armed conflicts between 1975 and 2006 among a sample of Fore, Auyana, and Tairora communities in the Okapa and Obura‐Wonenara districts of the Eastern Highlands Province are connected to sorcery beliefs and sorcery accusations. These sorcery accusations are the result of uneven economic development and failure to deliver basic social services. When violence is threatened, local leaders try to mediate the hostility, but the state seems unable to offer alternatives for the peaceful settlement of conflicts.     

Tracing sickle blade levels of wear and discard patterns: a new sickle gloss quantification method

Although sickle blades gloss is known to form during the harvest, which is a dynamic process and although it is known to be a type of wear which is the outcome of the repetitive encounters between the sickle blades working edges and plant stems; there is no common way to quantify its intensity. Since there is no consensus over a specific scale that will enable the estimation of the amount of wear, based on the quantification of gloss brightness intensity. In this paper we propose a new measurement system which is based on the projection of laser (He–Ne) beam on glossed sickle blades and an analysis of the reflected images. The results form a relative scale from which it is possible to infer on the sickle blades level of wear, and to create discard models.     

Maps and the settlement of southern Palestine, 1799–1948: an historical/GIS analysis

Historical maps of the Negev Desert which comprises half of the total land area of Palestine can be viewed from several intersecting perspectives relating to aspects such as their contribution to tracing patterns of settlement and agricultural history, imperialism and mapping, and legal geography of land ownership and indigenous people. Here we focus mainly on the first theme, incorporate new methods and demonstrate their application to studies in historical geography.     

New challenges for old commons: The role of historical common land in contemporary rural spaces

In Scotland, as elsewhere in Western Europe, many examples of historical common land have endured to the present day, but are under major pressure from the economic restructuring, socio-cultural recomposition and changing policy context that characterise contemporary rural change. For the crofting common grazings of Scotland, two particular challenges have arisen in the form of: (1) the growing difficulty of gaining sufficient livelihood contributions from traditional agriculturally-based activities; and (2) the increasing heterogeneity of rights-holders. This paper elaborates the findings of a recent survey, which sought to identify the main implications of these challenges for common grazings use and governance. An overall decline in levels of use of common grazings was identified, as well as decreasing involvement and investment in associated local institutions. This informs a discussion of the factors shaping the role of historical common land in contemporary rural spaces, an area neglected in the common property literature.     

Educational

EUROPE

Flight into Portugal. By R. Bodley. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. xi+224. London : Jarrolds Ltd., 1941. Price 16s.

Heart of Spain. By G. G. King. Illustrated. 10×7. Pp. 179. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1941. Price $3.00.

Snowdonia through the Lens. By W. A. Poucher. Illustrated. Fcap. fol. Pp. 124. London : Chapman &; Hall Ltd., 1941. Price 18s.

The Land of Britain. Edited by L. D. Stamp. London : Geographical Publications, 1941. Price 1s. 6d each.

At Slieve Gullion's Foot. By W. J. Murphy. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.115. 1940. Price 3s. 6d.

On Our Hill. By Annette Barlee. Illustrated. Small 4to. Pp. 100. Price 3s. 6d. Dundalgan Press, Dundalk.

English Woodland. By John Rodgers. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. xii+132. London : Batsford, 1942. Price 10s. 6d.

The Nazi New Order in Poland. By Jon Evans. Demy 8vo. Pp.184. London : Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1941. Price 6s.

Russia in Flux. By Sir John Maynard. Demy 8vo. Pp. 301. London : Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1941. Price 7s. 6d.

AMERICA

Ports of Piscataqua. By W. S. Saltonstall. Illustrated. 11×7#fr1/2>. Pp. viii+244. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1941. Price 20s.

Cape Horn. By F. Riesenberg. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 487. London : Robert Hale Ltd., 1941. Price 18s.

ASIA

Dawn Watch in China. By Joy Homer. Demy 8vo. Pp. 288. London : Collins Ltd., 1941. Price 12s. 6d.

Soviet Asia : Progress and Problems. By E. S. Bates. Map. Demy 8vo. Pp.191. London : Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1942. Price 8s. 6d.

GENERAL

After C.T. Studd. By N. Grubb. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.185. London : R.T.S., 1941. Price 3s. 6d.

Economic Geography. By C. F. Jones. Illustrated. Crown fcap. Pp. xxii+626. New York : The Macmillan Company Ltd., 1941. Price $4.25.

Geography and World Power. By J. Fairgrieve. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 376. London : Univ. of London Press, 1941. Price 7s. 6d.

The Earth and its Resources. By Finch, Trewartha, and Shearer. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 634. New York and London: M'Graw‐Hill Book Co. Price 17s.

Wanderings with a Shotgun. By Sir Edward Durand. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 184. London : Jarrolds Ltd., 1942. Price 16s.

British Mountaineers. By F. S. Smythe. Illustrated. 9×6#fr1/2>. Pp.48. London : Collins Ltd. Price 4s. 6d.     

Contentious Realities: Politics of Creating an Image Archive with the Negev Bedouin in Southern Israel

This paper discusses the politics of creating an image archive amidst local Bedouin historicity in Southern Israel. To do so, it summarizes an archival initiative conducted during my fieldwork in Rāha?, Israel between 2011 and 2013, which broadly examined the presence and values of images in their society. I suggest that members compete over historical resources in attempts to augment limited cultural capital in the Negev, making efforts to collect and exhibit ‘shared’ histories contentious. This is particularly the case when local societies consider archival images rare artefacts and thus objects to be owned and protected. This paper concludes that control over archives and image objects, and the past, present, and future ideals to which they are used, is far from uniform amongst peripheral peoples in the Middle East. Visual evidence and the histories and presents it serves are indelibly localized within the prevailing status negotiations and current spatial divisions between Bedouin members in the Negev.     

Metamorphic and basin fluids in quartz–carbonate–sulphide veins in the SW Scottish Highlands: a stable isotope and fluid inclusion study

Metalliferous (Fe–Cu–Pb–Zn) quartz–carbonate–sulphide veins cut greenschist to epidote–amphibolite facies metamorphic rocks of the Dalradian, SW Scottish Highlands, with NE–SW to NW–SE trends, approximately parallel or perpendicular to regional structures. Early quartz was followed by pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, galena, barite, late dolomite–ankerite and clays. Both quartz–sulphide and carbonate vein mineralisation is associated with brecciation, indicating rapid release of fluid overpressure and hydraulic fracturing. Two distinct mineralising fluids were identified from fluid inclusion and stable isotope studies. High temperature (>350°C) quartz‐precipitating fluids were moderately saline (4.0–12.7 wt.% NaCl equivalent) with low (approximately 0.05). Quartz δ¹⁸O (+11.7 to +16.5‰) and sulphide δ³⁴S (?13.6 to ?1.1‰) indicate isotopic equilibrium with host metasediments (rock buffering) and a local metasedimentary source of sulphur. Later, low‐temperature (T_H = 120–200°C) fluids, probably associated with secondary carbonate, barite and clay formation, were also moderately saline (3.8–9.1 wt.% NaCl equivalent), but were strongly enriched in ¹⁸O relative to host Dalradian lithologies, as indicated by secondary dolomite–ankerite (δ¹⁸O = +17.0 to +29.0‰, δ¹³C = ?1.0 to ?3.0‰). Compositions of carbonate–forming fluids were externally buffered. The veins record the fluid–rock interaction history of metamorphic host rocks during cooling, uplift and later extension. Early vein quartz precipitated under retrograde greenschist facies conditions from fluids probably derived by syn‐metamorphic dehydration of deeper, higher‐grade rocks during uplift and cooling of the Caledonian metamorphic complex. Veins are similar to those of mesothermal veins in younger Phanerozoic metamorphic belts, but are rare in the Scottish Dalradian. Early quartz veins were reactivated by deep penetration of low‐temperature basin fluids that precipitated carbonate and clays in veins and adjacent Dalradian metasediments throughout the SW Highlands, probably in the Permo‐Carboniferous. This event is consistent with paragenetically ambiguous barite with δ³⁴S characteristic of late Palaeozoic basinal brines.     

Archaeological investigations and OSL dating of terraces at Ramat Rahel,Israel

Abstract

Dating terraces, the most prominent feature of the agricultural landscape in many parts of the world, is a problem for archaeologists. This study presents an interdisciplinary approach that combines archaeological survey and excavations with direct sediment dating of terrace fill using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL). The study focuses on Ramat Rahel, a multi-period site located in the southern outskirts of modern Jerusalem, Israel, where, on a defined terraced slope chosen for a small-scale landscape archaeology project, three main phases of terrace construction and use were identified. The earliest phase dates to the Late Byzantine/Early Islamic period, the second to medieval times, and the last to the Ottoman period. The results enable a comprehensive reconstruction of the changing local landscape through time and demonstrate the validity of OSL, when combined with archaeological investigations, as a reliable method for terrace dating.     

Obituary: 1899

Work by historians, geographers and others has examined the role of memory and of commemoration in understanding social meaning and identity. Memory has been shown to be an active constituent of the ways in which meaning is invested in space and place. This paper examines the appeal to memory in Donald MacLeod's Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland, a text written to understand social and geographical change in the nineteenth‐century Scottish Highlands and, in revised form, to counter the alternative views expressed in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Sunny Memories. In discussing MacLeod's use of memory in Highland history and with reference to examples of memory's use in texts and other representations, the paper contributes to debates on how memory ‘works’ in geography and in history.     

‘They shut them out the road’: Migration,mental health and the Scottish highlands

There is a small literature tackling migration and mental health, but less is said about the migration of people with mental health problems (incipient or diagnosed). The present paper considers what might be claimed about such migration, particularly when entailing movement into rural and remote areas where lack of anonymity, high social visibility and certain differences in how ‘locals’ and ‘incomers’ are treated may have serious consequences for those displaying psychological and behavioural differences. Drawing upon qualitative evidence from in‐depth interviewing of in‐migrants with mental health problems living in the Scottish Highlands, light is thrown on the connections between their problems and the decision to relocate to this predominantly rural region. Attention also focuses on dissonances between expectations regarding their new situation and their actual experiences of it in terms of both natural landscapes and, more importantly here, social milieux. There are further implications for changing regional attitudes towards mental health, suggesting certain impacts that arise not just from the in‐migration of people themselves who have mental health problems, but also from the ideas and practices that they often carry with them.