Refining the Chronology of the Neolithic Settlement at Pool, Sanday, Orkney: Implications for the Emergence and Development of Grooved Ware

New radiocarbon dates for the Neolithic settlement at Pool on Sanday, Orkney, are interpreted in a formal chronological framework. Phases 2.2 and 2.3, during which flat-based Grooved Ware pottery with incised decoration developed, have been modelled as probably dating to between the 31st and 28th centuries cal bc. There followed a hiatus of a century or so, before the resumption of occupation in Phase 3, which has a different Grooved Ware style featuring the use of applied decoration. This has been modelled as probably dating from the 26th to the 24th centuries cal bc. The implications of these results are discussed for the emergence and development of Grooved Ware, and for the trajectory of settlement and monumentality on Sanday.

The working practices of Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

This article offers a history of the working practices of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Based on extensive interviews with former members and on research into a new archive of the Centre, housed in the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, it argues that cultural studies as practised in the 1970s was always a heterogeneous subject. The CCCS was heavily influenced by the events of 1968 when it tried to develop a new type of radical and collaborative research and teaching agenda. Despite Stuart Hall's efforts to impose a focused link between politics and academic practice, the agenda soon gave way to a series of diverse and fruitful initiatives associated with the ‘sub-groups’ model of research.

Who Knows What's Going On? Mapping New Security Landscapes in Contemporary Espionage Fiction

This article explores whether or to what extent the contemporary espionage novel is able to map and interrogate transformations in the post-9/11security environment. It asks how well a form or genre of writing, typically handcuffed to the machinations and demands of the Cold War and state sovereignty, is able to adapt to a new security environment characterized by strategies of “risk assessment” and “resilience-building” and by modes or regimes of power not reducible to, or wholly controlled by, the state. In doing so, it thinks about the capacities of this type of fiction for “resisting” the formations of power it wants to make visible and is partly complicit with.

Investigation of thermal resistance and bridging in examples of contemporary and vernacular solid wall architecture

Contemporary architecture has tended to increase envelope insulation levels in an unceasing effort to reduce U-values. Traditional masonry architecture in contrast was devoid of insulation, except for the inherent insulative nature of vernacular materials. Also the consistency of the outer membrane of the building skin diminished any impact due to bridging. In contemporary highly insulated walls bridges are numerous due to the necessity to bind inner and outer structural skins through insulation layers. This paper examines thermal bridging in an example of contemporary façade design and compares it with an example of traditional vernacular architecture currently being researched which is characterized by a lack of bridging elements. Focus is given to heavy weight materials of high thermal mass, which appropriately for passive architecture help moderate fluctuations in internal temperature. In an extensive experimental study samples of highly insulated precast concrete sandwich panels and lime rendered masonry walls are tested in a guarded hot-box. The building construction methods are compared for static and dynamic thermal transmittance, via heat flux and surface temperature differential measurements. Focus is given to the differential heat loss due to the thermal bridging in the sandwich panels and its associated impact on overall heat loss relative to traditional masonry construction.

Navigating the Borderlands: Brian McGilloway as Contemporary Cartographer of the Liminal in the Ulster Landscape

Set in the borderlands between Letterkenny and Derry-Londonderry, a landscape scarred by geological fold, river and cartographer’s pen, the Ulster crime novelist Brian McGilloway chronicles the hopes and fears of a contemporary society unable to escape a complicated history, redolent and entwined with the voices of its ‘ghosts of its past.’ Through his choice of chief protagonist, An Garda Síochána officer Benedict Devlin, McGilloway turns detective to critically investigate the both the seemingly straightforward and the unseen dwelling in the rural Ulster landscape. Following in the footsteps of Nordic and Tartan Noir in making commentary on current societ,y McGilloway recognises the importance of the past in trying to reach an understanding of the present. His critique however goes beyond criminal behaviour motivated primarily by politics or religion, allowing a deeper and more meaningful diagnosis of the ‘state of the nation’. Place, name and event become especially important in contextualising the liminality of McGilloway’s real rural border settings. In doing so, McGilloway continues in the rich tradition of Ulster poet such as Heaney, MacNiece, Muldoon and Hewitt in trying to rationalise the man-made amidst the elemental in the land of both the ‘Planter & The Gael.’ History, language, tradition and the sacral are all instruments of investigation in helping McGilloway present a revealing pathology and atlas of our times to his readers. Turning literary investigator, the author contends that there is much to learn from this physiography, not just for the borderlands region, but for the wider countryside and society beyond. Keywords Cultural Atlas, Crime Fiction, Place, Poetry, Rural.

Precision dating of the Palaeolithic: A new radiocarbon chronology for the Abri Pataud (France), a key Aurignacian sequence

This paper presents a new series of AMS dates on ultrafiltered bone gelatin extracted from identified cutmarked or humanly-modified bones and teeth from the site of Abri Pataud, in the French Dordogne. The sequence of 32 new determinations provides a coherent and reliable chronology from the site's early Upper Palaeolithic levels 5-14, excavated by Hallam Movius. The results show that there were some problems with the previous series of dates, with many underestimating the real age. The new results, when calibrated and modelled using a Bayesian statistical method, allow detailed understanding of the pace of cultural changes within the Aurignacian I and II levels of the site, something not achievable before. In the future, the sequence of dates will allow wider comparison to similarly dated contexts elsewhere in Europe. High precision dating is only possible by using large suites of AMS dates from humanly-modified material within well understood archaeological sequences modelled using a Bayesian statistical method. © 2011.

Radiocarbon chronology for the Early Gravettian of northern Europe : new AMS determinations for Maisieres-Canal, Belgium

The authors explore the arrival of the earliest Gravettian in north-west Europe, using new high precision radiocarbon dates for bone excavated at Maisieres-Canal in Belgium to define a short-lit^ed occupation around 33 000 years ago. The tanged points in that assemblage have parallels in British sites, including Goat's Hole (Paviland). This is the site of the famous ochred burial of a young adult male, confiisingly known as the 'Red Lady', notv dated to around 34 000 BP. The new results demonstrate that this British 'rich burial' and the Gravettian with tanged points may bebng to two different occupation horizons separated by a cold spell.

Chronology of the site of Grotte du Renne, Arcy-sur-Cure, France: implications for Neanderthal symbolic behaviour

Higham et al (2010) published a large series of new dates from the key French Palaeolithic site of the Grotte du Renne at Arcy-sur-Cure. The site is important because it is one of only two sites in Europe in which Châtelperronian lithic remains co-occur with Neanderthal human remains. A large series of dates from the Mousterian, Châtelperronian, Aurignacian and Gravettian levels of the site was obtained. The 14C results showed great variability, which Higham et al (2010) interpreted as most likely to be due to mixing of archaeological material in the site. In contrast, Caron et al (2011) suggested that the site stratigraphy is well preserved and that the problem with the variability in the radiocarbon ages was due to unremoved contamination in the dated bone. In this paper we address their critique of the original Higham et al (2010) paper