The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance

ThetimingofNeanderthal disappearanceandtheextent to whichthey overlapped with the earliest incoming anatomically modern humans (AMHs)inEurasia arekey questions inpalaeoanthropology1,2 .Deter- mining the spatiotemporal relationship between the two populations is crucial if we are to understand the processes, timing and reasons leading to the disappearance of Neanderthals and the likelihood of cultural and genetic exchange. Serious technical challenges, however, havehinderedreliable datingof the period,as theradiocarbonmethod reaches its limit at 50,000 years ago3 .Herewe apply improved accel- erator mass spectrometry 14C techniques to construct robust chro- nologies from 40 key Mousterian and Neanderthal archaeological sites, ranging fromRussia toSpain.Bayesianagemodellingwas used togenerate probability distributionfunctions todetermine the latest appearancedate.Weshowthat theMousterianendedby41,030–39,260 calibratedyears BP(at95.4%probability) acrossEurope.Wealsodem- onstrate that succeeding ‘transitional’ archaeological industries, one ofwhich has beenlinked withNeanderthals (Cha ˆtelperronian)4 ,end at a similar time. Our data indicate that the disappearance of Nean- derthals occurred at different times in different regions.Comparing the data with results obtained fromthe earliest datedAMHsites in Europe, associated with the Uluzzian technocomplex5 , allows us to quantify the temporal overlap between the two human groups. The results revealasignificantoverlap of 2,600–5,400years (at 95.4%prob- ability).This hasimportant implications formodels seeking toexplain the cultural, technological and biological elements involved in the replacement of Neanderthals byAMHs.Amosaic of populations in Europe during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition suggests that there was ample time for the transmission of cultural and sym- bolic behaviours, as well as possible genetic exchanges, between the two groups.

Of no fixed form: The Irish Pavilion at Venice 2014 and beyond

This paper explores the theme of exhibiting architectural research through a particular example, the development of the Irish pavilion for the 14th architectural biennale, Venice 2014. Responding to Rem Koolhaas’s call to investigate the international absorption of modernity, the Irish pavilion became a research project that engaged with the development of the architectures of infrastructure in Ireland in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Central to this proposition was that infrastructure is simultaneously a technological and cultural construct, one that for Ireland occupied a critical position in the building of a new, independent post-colonial nation state, after 1921.

Presupposing infrastructure as consisting of both visible and invisible networks, the idea of a matrix become a central conceptual and visual tool in the curatorial and design process for the exhibition and pavilion. To begin with this was a two-dimensional grid used to identify and order what became described as a series of ten ‘infrastructural episodes’. These were determined chronologically across the decades between 1914 and 2014 and their spatial manifestations articulated in terms of scale: micro, meso and macro. At this point ten academics were approached as researchers. Their purpose was twofold, to establish the broader narratives around which the infrastructures developed and to scrutinise relevant archives for compelling visual material. Defining the meso scale as that of the building, the media unearthed was further filtered and edited according to a range of categories – filmic/image, territory, building detail, and model – which sought to communicate the relationship between the pieces of architecture and the larger systems to which they connect. New drawings realised by the design team further iterated these relationships, filling in gaps in the narrative by providing composite, strategic or detailed drawings.

Conceived as an open-ended and extendable matrix, the pavilion was influenced by a series of academic writings, curatorial practices, artworks and other installations including: Frederick Kiesler’s City of Space (1925), Eduardo Persico and Marcello Nizzoli’s Medaglio d’Oro room (1934), Sol Le Witt’s Incomplete Open Cubes (1974) and Rosalind Krauss’s seminal text ‘Grids’ (1979). A modular frame whose structural bays would each hold and present an ‘episode’, the pavilion became both a visual analogue of the unseen networks embodying infrastructural systems and a reflection on the predominance of framed structures within the buildings exhibited. Sharing the aspiration of adaptability of many of these schemes, its white-painted timber components are connected by easily-dismantled steel fixings. These and its modularity allow the structure to be both taken down and re-erected subsequently in different iterations. The pavilion itself is, therefore, imagined as essentially provisional and – as with infrastructure – as having no fixed form. Presenting archives and other material over time, the transparent nature of the space allowed these to overlap visually conveying the nested nature of infrastructural production. Pursuing a means to evoke the qualities of infrastructural space while conveying a historical narrative, the exhibition’s termination in the present is designed to provoke in the visitor, a perceptual extension of the matrix to engage with the future.

Visible Difference, Stigmatising Language(s) and the Distinctive Construction of Prejudices against Others in Leeds and Warsaw

The chapter argues that language and cultural communication matter in a transnational world and that the transmission of prejudices against minorities has to be closely analysed while contextualising national histories with minorities. Looking at two spatial sites (Leeds and Warsaw) and analysing interview material that was drawn from a larger study, the authors discuss the way local people address difference particularly through the axes of gendered ethnicity (Muslim men) and gendered class (male underclass). It explores how the same categories of difference are discursively produced in Poland and the UK/ England; to what degree they differ or overlap.

LaGomiCs - Lagomorph Genomics Consortium: An International Collaborative Effort for Sequencing the Genomes of an Entire Mammalian Order

The order Lagomorpha comprises about 90 living species, divided in 2 families: the pikas (Family Ochotonidae), and the rabbits, hares, and jackrabbits (Family Leporidae). Lagomorphs are important economically and scientifically as major human food resources, valued game species, pests of agricultural significance, model laboratory animals, and key elements in food webs. A quarter of the lagomorph species are listed as threatened. They are native to all continents except Antarctica, and occur up to 5000 m above sea level, from the equator to the Arctic, spanning a wide range of environmental conditions. The order has notable taxonomic problems presenting significant difficulties for defining a species due to broad phenotypic variation, overlap of morphological characteristics, and relatively recent speciation events. At present, only the genomes of 2 species, the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and American pika (Ochotona princeps) have been sequenced and assembled. Starting from a paucity of genome information, the main scientific aim of the Lagomorph Genomics Consortium (LaGomiCs), born from a cooperative initiative of the European COST Action “A Collaborative European Network on Rabbit Genome Biology—RGB-Net” and the World Lagomorph Society (WLS), is to provide an international framework for the sequencing of the genome of all extant and selected extinct lagomorphs. Sequencing the genomes of an entire order will provide a large amount of information to address biological problems not only related to lagomorphs but also to all mammals. We present current and planned sequencing programs and outline the final objective of LaGomiCs possible through broad international collaboration.