A Bayesian framework for age modeling of radiocarbon-dated peat deposits: Case studies from the Netherlands

Recently, Bayesian statistical software has been developed for age-depth modeling (wiggle-match dating) of sequences of densely spaced radiocarbon dates from peat cores. The method is described in non-statistical terms, and is compared with an alternative method of chronological ordering of 14C dates. Case studies include the dating of the start of agriculture in the northeastern part of the Netherlands, and of a possible Hekla-3 tephra layer in the same country. We discuss future enhancements in Bayesian age modeling.

Sex, Politics and Religion: The Transformation of the Figure of the Fairy Queen from Thomas off Ersseldoune to ‘‘Thomas Rymer’’

Our earliest version of the Thomas Rymer story is the medieval romance Thomas off Ersseldoune (c.1430). There is a four hundred year lacuna before the ballad “Thomas Rymer”, our next surviving version, is recorded in the early 1800s. In the intervening time the narrative changed very little but the dynamic of the piece, radically. The romance transformed into the highly subversive ballad, “Thomas Rymer”. Central to this transformation is the reconceptualization of the romance's heroine. Referred to simply as the “lufly lady” and caught between her husband, the fay King, and a mere mortal, Thomas, she becomes in the ballad the powerful Queen of the Fairies. The ballad is structured around a series of revelations in which the enigmatic Queen assumes the roles of Eve and Mary, and finally Christ Himself. I will explore the implications of this extraordinary ballad. Moreover, I suggest that it is Queen Elizabeth herself who, ironically, enables the heroine's transformation. “Ironically” because it appears that it was Elizabeth's own restrictions, designed to suppress heretical, seditious or radical literature, which forced Thomas off Ersseldoune (and many other romances which employed religious imagery or figures) out of the written domain and into the oral tradition. And yet, it is Elizabeth who, in creating the image of herself as a female prince, as the Faerie Queen, inspires a new literary vocabulary designed to describe female executive power, without which it would have been impossible to imagine a figure such as the ballad's Queen of the Fairies.

Euroscepticism in the Netherlands: Stirrings of Dissent

Recent years have seen the emergence of a markedly more critical discourse in the Netherlands as regards European integration. Concerns over both the size of the net national contribution to the European Union budget and the implications for the country of EU enlargement have given rise to high-profile public debates. An explicitly articulated discourse of national interest, centred on but not limited to the Liberal VVD, has become a staple of political debate. At the same time, movements with clearly Eurosceptic agendas (the Pim Fortuyn List and the Socialist Party) have enjoyed unparalleled levels of electoral success. Although not of significant electoral salience, 'Europe' has nevertheless emerged as an issue in Dutch politics. The present article examines these stirrings of dissent in an EU member state which had long been regarded as one of the most enthusiastic supporters of further integration.

Solar forcing of climate change during the mid-Holocene: indications from raised bogs in the Netherlands.

Two cores of mid-Holocene raised-bog deposits from the Netherlands were 14C wiggle-match dated at high precision. Changes in local moisture conditions were inferred from the changing species composition of consecutive series of macrofossil samples. Several wet-shifts were inferred, and these were often coeval with major rises in the D14C archive (probably caused by major declines in solar activity). The use of D14C as a proxy for changes in solar activity is validated. This paper adds to the increasing body of evidence that solar variability forced climatic changes during the Holocene.

Irish social thought and the relief of poverty, 1847-1880

This paper investigates the way in which the ‘problem of poverty’ in Ireland was encountered, constructed and debated by members of the Irish intellectual and political elite in the decades between the Great Famine and the outbreak of the land war in the late 1870s. This period witnessed acute social upheavals in Ireland, from the catastrophic nadir of the Famine, through the much-vaunted economic recovery of the 1850s–1860s, to the near-famine panic of the late 1870s (itself prefigured by a lesser agricultural crisis in 1859–63). The paper focuses on how a particular elite group – the ‘Dublin School’ of political economists and their circle, and most prominently William Neilson Hancock and John Kells Ingram – sought to define and investigate the changing ‘problem’, shape public attitudes towards the legitimacy of welfare interventions and lobby state officials in the making of poor law policy in this period. It suggests that the crisis of 1859–63 played a disproportionate role in the reevaluation of Irish poor relief and in promoting a campaign for an ‘anglicisation’ of poor law measures and practice in Ireland.

Potential Rôle of Hares in the Spread of Liver Fluke in the Netherlands.

Hares (Lepus europeanus) sharing pasture with cattle from six locations in the Netherlands were examined for the presence of liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica) and shown to have prevalences of infection ranging from zero to 41%. The mitochondrial haplotypes of liver flukes present in the hare populations were determined and compared with those found in cattle from a farm where triclabendazole resistance has been reported. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the flukes present in the hares belonged to the same clades as those present in the cattle. A consideration of the life cycle of the liver fluke and the seasonal breeding pattern and ecology of hares supports the suggestion that hares may act as a refugia for liver fluke and as a vector for the spread of drug-resistant genotypes.

Population dynamics of the liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica: the effect of time and spatial separation on the genetic diversity of fluke populations in the Netherlands

An evaluation of the genetic diversity within Fasciola hepatica (liver fluke) may provide an insight into its potential to respond to environmental changes, such as anthelmintic use or climate change. In this study, we determined the mitochondrial DNA haplotypes of >400 flukes from 29 individual cattle, from 2 farms in the Netherlands, as an exemplar of fasciolosis in a European context. Analysis of this dataset has provided us with a measure of the genetic variation within infrapopulations (individual hosts) and the diversity between infrapopulations within a herd of cattle. Temporal sampling from one farm allowed for the measurement of the stability of genetic variation at a single location, whilst the comparison between the two farms provided information on the variation in relation to distance and previous anthelmintic regimes. We showed that the liver fluke population in this region is predominantly linked to 2 distinct clades. Individual infrapopulations contain a leptokurtic distribution of genetically diverse flukes. The haplotypes present on a farm have been shown to change significantly over a relatively short time-period.