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Recently rediscovered photographs of the remains of thirteen individuals buried in the Sado Valley Mesolithic shell middens of Poças de S. Bento and Arapouco, excavated in 1960 and 1962, show the potential of revisiting excavation archives with new methods. The analysis, which applies the principles of archaeothanatology and is enriched by experimental taphonomic research, confirmed details concerning the treatment of the dead body and provided new insights into the use of burial spaces. Some bodies may have been mummified prior to burial, a phenomenon possibly linked to their curation and transport, highlighting the significance of both the body and the burial place in Mesolithic south-western Portugal.

Abstract Background Hunter-gatherer lifestyles dominated the southern African landscape up to ~ 2000 years ago, when herding and farming groups started to arrive in the area. First, herding and livestock, likely of East African origin, appeared in southern Africa, preceding the arrival of the large-scale Bantu-speaking agro-pastoralist expansion that introduced West African-related genetic ancestry into the area. Present-day Khoekhoe-speaking Namaqua (or Nama in short) pastoralists show high proportions of East African admixture, linking the East African ancestry with Khoekhoe herders. Most other historical Khoekhoe populations have, however, disappeared over the last few centuries and their contribution to the genetic structure of present-day populations is not well understood. In our study, we analyzed genome-wide autosomal and full mitochondrial data from a population who trace their ancestry to the Khoekhoe-speaking Hessequa herders from the southern Cape region of what is now South Africa. Results We generated genome-wide data from 162 individuals and mitochondrial DNA data of a subset of 87 individuals, sampled in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, where the Hessequa population once lived. Using available comparative data from Khoe-speaking and related groups, we aligned genetic date estimates and admixture proportions to the archaeological proposed dates and routes for the arrival of the East African pastoralists in southern Africa. We identified several Afro-Asiatic-speaking pastoralist groups from Ethiopia and Tanzania who share high affinities with the East African ancestry present in southern Africa. We also found that the East African pastoralist expansion was heavily male-biased, akin to a pastoralist migration previously observed on the genetic level in ancient Europe, by which Pontic-Caspian Steppe pastoralist groups represented by the Yamnaya culture spread across the Eurasian continent during the late Neolithic/Bronze Age. Conclusion We propose that pastoralism in southern Africa arrived through male-biased migration of an East African Afro-Asiatic-related group(s) who introduced new subsistence and livestock practices to local southern African hunter-gatherers. Our results add to the understanding of historical human migration and mobility in Africa, connected to the spread of food-producing and livestock practices.

Syftet med denna text är att problematisera riksdagens roll i svensk politisk historia, ca 1600–1900, och dess bidrag till utvecklingen mot demokrati och allmän rösträtt. För det första stärkte riksdagsrepresentanterna monarkin på riksdagens bekostnad vid flera tillfällen och bytte långsiktigt institutionellt inflytande mot vinster i enskilda sakfrågor. Vid andra tillfällen var de märkbart passiva och oförmögna att förhindra monarkin. Riksdagen utgjorde en tveksam och svag bastion för folkrepresentation och man kan hävda att riksdagen mellan 1611 och 1809 hade en svag ställning gentemot kungen i 94 år, nästan hälften av perioden. Detta förändrades dock mellan 1809 och 1866, trots att det fanns flera likheter i det politiska ramverket, samt politiska förutsättningar för ytterligare ett skifte till en stark monarki och en svag eller upplöst riksdag. Ståndsriksdagens sista 50 år utgör således en nyckelperiod om vi vill förstå varför riksdagen slutligen intog en stark ställning i den svenska politiska kulturen. Denna fråga berör inte bara historiker, utan också människor som är intresserade av hur och varför representativa församlingar blir lika eller mer legitima än auktoritära alternativ. Eftersom vi lever i en period där demokratiska institutioner och värderingar ifrågasätts är det viktigt att förstå hur de kom att omfamnas i första hand.

AbstractThis article presents the discovery and analysis of a new glass bead assemblage from the Swahili site of Mkokotoni, an early second millennium AD settlement in northwestern Zanzibar. It explores the possibilities for local production of glass beads using imported glass cullet or glass tubes at this site. Glass beads are ubiquitous at archaeological sites from the second millennium on the East African coast. They are presumed to have been traded via long-distance networks from South and Southeast Asia, and used locally in personal adornment, barter, and ritual practices. However, the data from Mkokotoni offers a new and unique perspective on glass bead-making traditions, which places the East African coast as an area of production and distribution.

During a spectacular excavation in 1921 at the Norse farm of Herjolfsnes (Ikigaat) on the southern tip of Greenland, Poul Norlund found 58 wooden crosses of drift­wood in the graves at the site. Th ...

Kulturarv utgörs av olika kulturella uttryck och hur vi i dag uppfattar, tolkar och för det vidare i såväl materiell som immateriell form. Det förändras över tid och är dynamiskt. Därmed kan kulturarv inte sällan bli föremål för motsättningar och förhandlingar. De senaste årens avlägsnande av statyer som representerar den koloniala tiden i Storbritannien eller minnen av slaveriet i USA är exempel på hur omtolkningar av det förflutna kan leda till krav på aktiv handling. Konflikter kan också leda till att nya kulturarv skapas i form av minnesplatser, museer, ruiner av förstörda byggnader, ceremonier och så vidare. Detta temanummer av Laboratorium behandlar frågor om hur kulturarv omvärderas och behandlas till följd av olika slags konflikter eller förhandlingar som äger rum i ett samhälle.

This article examines the development of a taxi drivers’ transportation network in the “marriage mill” of Elkton, Maryland between 1913 and 1941. It explores how legal conditions for marriage engendered particular forms of spatial organisation meant to accomplish the intensive production of weddings. Social policy impacted how space was organised and connected, but in ways different than authorities expected. The network drivers sought to maintain took direction from the conditions set by political authorities yet simultaneously threatened those conditions’ corruption in the eyes of many. Local and state authorities’ further attempts at regulation as well as changes in transportation together created a greater need for more durable associations between drivers, clergy, and technologies such as vehicles, trains, and advertising signs that they enlisted in their efforts. The article contends that a full accounting of the social consequences of marriage policies should encompass the networks that those policies facilitated.

A major obstacle for reusing and integrating existing data is finding the data that is most relevant in a given context. The primary metadata resource is the scientific literature describing the experiments that produced the data. To stimulate the development of natural language processing methods for extracting this information from articles, we have manually annotated 100 recent open access publications in Analytical Chemistry as semantic graphs. We focused on articles mentioning mass spectrometry in their experimental sections, as we are particularly interested in the topic, which is also within the domain of several ontologies and controlled vocabularies. The resulting gold standard dataset is publicly available and directly applicable to validating automated methods for retrieving this metadata from the literature. In the process, we also made a number of observations on the structure and description of experiments and open access publication in this journal.