Women, other "fresh” workers, and the new manufacturing workforce of interwar Britain

Structural, organizational, and technological changes in British industry during the interwar years led to a decline in skilled and physically demanding work, while there was a dramatic expansion in unskilled and semiskilled employment. Previous authors have noted that the new un/semiskilled jobs were generally filled by “fresh” workers recruited from outside the core manufacturing workforce, though there is considerable disagreement regarding the composition of this new workforce. This paper examines labour recruitment patterns and strategies using national data and case studies of eight rapidly expanding industrial centres. The new industrial workforce is shown to have been recruited from a “reserve army” of workers with the common features of relative cheapness, flexibility, and weak unionization. These included women, juveniles, local workers in poorly paid nonindustrial sectors, such as agriculture, and (where these other categories were in short supply) relatively young long-distance internal migrants from declining industrial areas.

The re-identification of great bustard (Otis tarda) from Fishbourne Roman Palace, Chichester, West Sussex, as common crane (Grus grus)

This paper details the results of recent reanalysis of the animal remains from the 1960s excavations at Fishbourne Roman Palace, West Sussex. It argues that specimens originally identified as belonging to the great bustard are, in fact, misidentified remains of common crane. This discovery has important connotations. First, these findings need to be reported so that the avian archaeological record can be updated to avoid future syntheses of Romano-British faunal remains incorrectly including great bustard. Secondly, interpretations of the zooarchaeological remains at Fishbourne Palace will alter, due to the differing ecological histories of bustards and cranes.

The detection of atmospheric rivers in atmospheric reanalyses and their links to British winter floods and the large-scale climatic circulation

Atmospheric Rivers (ARs), narrow plumes of enhanced moisture transport in the lower troposphere, are a key synoptic feature behind winter flooding in midlatitude regions. This article develops an algorithm which uses the spatial and temporal extent of the vertically integrated horizontal water vapor transport for the detection of persistent ARs (lasting 18 h or longer) in five atmospheric reanalysis products. Applying the algorithm to the different reanalyses in the vicinity of Great Britain during the winter half-years of 1980–2010 (31 years) demonstrates generally good agreement of AR occurrence between the products. The relationship between persistent AR occurrences and winter floods is demonstrated using winter peaks-over-threshold (POT) floods (with on average one flood peak per winter). In the nine study basins, the number of winter POT-1 floods associated with persistent ARs ranged from approximately 40 to 80%. A Poisson regression model was used to describe the relationship between the number of ARs in the winter half-years and the large-scale climate variability. A significant negative dependence was found between AR totals and the Scandinavian Pattern (SCP), with a greater frequency of ARs associated with lower SCP values.

Undying voices: the poetry of Roman Britain

An anthology (comprising introduction, text, translation, and notes) of Britain's most ancient (surviving) poetry (Latin/Greek, with an English translation).