Holocene palaeoenvironmental history and the impact of prehistoric salt production in the Seille Valley, Eastern France

The Seille Valley in eastern France was home to one of Europe’s largest Iron Age salt industries. Sedimentology, palynology and geochronology have been integrated within ongoing archaeological investigations to reconstruct the Holocene palaeoenvironmental history of the Seille Valley and to elucidate the human–environment relationship of salt production. A sedimentary model of the valley has been constructed from a borehole survey of the floodplain and pollen analyses have been undertaken to reconstruct the vegetation history. Alluvial records have been successfully dated using optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon techniques, thereby providing a robust chronological framework. The results have provided an insight into the development of favourable conditions for salt production and there is evidence in the sedimentary record to suggest that salt production may have taken place during the mid-to-late Bronze Age. The latter has yet to be identified in the archaeological record and targeted excavation is therefore underway to test this finding. The development of the Iron Age industry had a major impact on the hydrological regime of the valley and its sedimentological history, with evidence for accelerated alluviation arising from floodplain erosion at salt production sites and modification of the local fluvial regime due to briquetage accumulation on the floodplain. This research provides an important insight into the environmental implications of early industrial activities, in addition to advancing knowledge about the Holocene palaeoenvironmental and social history of this previously poorly studied region of France.

Rethinking 'Inside the Visible'

This essay appears in the first book to examine feminist curatorship in the last 40 years. It undertakes an extended reading of Cathy de Zegher's influential exhibition, Inside the Visible, An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art. In, of and From the Feminine (1995) which proposed that modern art should be understood through cyclical shifts involving the constant reinvention of artistic method and identified four key moments in 20th century history to structure its project. The essay analyses Inside the Visible's concept of an elliptical traverse to raise questions about repetitions and recurrences in feminist exhibitions of the early 1980s, the mid 1990s and 2007 asking whether and in what ways questions of feminist curating have been continuously repeated and reinvented. The essay argues that Inside the Visible was a key project in second wave feminism and exemplified debates about women's time, first theorised by Julia Kristeva. It concludes, however, that 'women's time' has had its moment, and new conceptions of feminism and its history are needed if feminist curating is not endlessly to recycle its past. The essay informs a wider collaborative project on the sexual politics of violence, feminism and contemporary art, in collaboration with Edinburgh and one of the editors of this collection.

Hobbes, history, and non-domination

Pettit's and Skinner's stimulating books are open to historically-minded objections. Pettit's reading of Hobbes is Rousseauian, but he rejects the Hobbesian/Rousseauian belief that some modern people are driven by amour-propre/“glory”. If Hobbes is right, there is, in Pettit's sense, no “common good”. Skinner's treatment of the neo-Roman “theorists” over-estimates their self-consciousness and their consistency. Leviathan chapter 21 is not a response to neo-Romanism; it treats civil liberty as non-obligation, not as non-interference.

The impact of a seasonally ice free Arctic Ocean on the temperature, precipitation and surface mass balance of Svalbard

The observed decline in summer sea ice extent since the 1970s is predicted to continue until the Arctic Ocean is seasonally ice free during the 21st Century. This will lead to a much perturbed Arctic climate with large changes in ocean surface energy flux. Svalbard, located on the present day sea ice edge, contains many low lying ice caps and glaciers and is expected to experience rapid warming over the 21st Century. The total sea level rise if all the land ice on Svalbard were to melt completely is 0.02 m. The purpose of this study is to quantify the impact of climate change on Svalbard’s surface mass balance (SMB) and to determine, in particular, what proportion of the projected changes in precipitation and SMB are a result of changes to the Arctic sea ice cover. To investigate this a regional climate model was forced with monthly mean climatologies of sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentration for the periods 1961–1990 and 2061–2090 under two emission scenarios. In a novel forcing experiment, 20th Century SSTs and 21st Century sea ice were used to force one simulation to investigate the role of sea ice forcing. This experiment results in a 3.5 m water equivalent increase in Svalbard’s SMB compared to the present day. This is because over 50 % of the projected increase in winter precipitation over Svalbard under the A1B emissions scenario is due to an increase in lower atmosphere moisture content associated with evaporation from the ice free ocean. These results indicate that increases in precipitation due to sea ice decline may act to moderate mass loss from Svalbard’s glaciers due to future Arctic warming.

Manipulation and articulation: population statistics in 19th century France and England

The article presents an essay that deals with the study conducted by Donald MacKenzie and the case studies comparing the use of population statistics in France and Great Britain in the periods of 1825 and 1885. It analyzes Donald MacKenzie's study on the ways professional and political commitments informed the choice of statistical indexes in the British statistical community. Furthermore, the author is interested in knowing how this influenced the development of mathematical statistics in Great Britain. The author concludes that the differences in the debates over population statistics are accounted to the differences in the social and epistemological logics of population statistics.