How the Desert got a Past: A History of Quaternary Research in Australia’s Deserts

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Smith
Keyword(s):  
Climate Changes ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

This paper examines how the past of desert landscapes has been interpreted since European explorers and scientists first encountered them. It charts the research that created the conceptual space within which archaeologists and Quaternarists now work. Studies from the 1840s–1960s created the notion of a ‘Great Australian Arid Period'. The 1960s studies of Lake Mungo and the Willandra Lakes by Jim Bowler revealed the cyclical nature of palaeolakes, that changed with climate changes in the Pleistocene, and the complexity of desert pasts. SLEADS and other researchers in the 1980s used thermoluminescence techniques that showed further complexities in desert lands beyond the Willandra particularly through new studies in the Strzelecki and Simpson Dunefields, Lake Eyre, Lake Woods and Lake Gregory. Australian deserts are varied and have very different histories. Far from ‘timeless lands', they have carried detailed information about long-term climate changes on continental scales.

scholarly journals Development Shadows: The Afterlife of Collapsed Development Projects in the Zambian Copperbelt

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-31
Author(s):  
Lynn Schler ◽  
Yonatan N. Gez
Keyword(s):  
Local Communities ◽  
Agricultural Cooperatives ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Postcolonial Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Zambian Copperbelt

Communities that were once the target of postcolonial development schemes still contend with the legacies of these interventions, long after such projects have been abandoned. This article looks at the afterlife of Israeli-led agricultural cooperatives that were initiated in the Zambian Copperbelt during the 1960s. Although these schemes collapsed in the decade following their establishment, local communities are still coping with the history of their rise and fall. In the Kafubu Block and Kafulafuta, the physical, social, and economic landscapes resonate with the successes and failures of this modernist planning. The schemes continue to provide a fundamental and contentious point of reference in both individual and community lives. A long-term perspective on the communities’ continued engagement with the legacies of the abandoned schemes deepens our understanding of development's complex “afterlife,” and demonstrates how the past retains its relevance by taking on different meanings over time.

scholarly journals Reflections on the Challenges of Writing a (Pre-)History of the “Polarized” Present

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-408
Author(s):  
Thomas Zimmer
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Severe Problem ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Polarization is everywhere. It is, according to the Pew Research Center, “a defining feature of American politics today.” Elected officials, journalists, and political pundits seem to agree that it is a severe problem in urgent need of fixing, maybe even the root of all evil that plagues the United States, from dysfunction in Congress to the decay of social and cultural norms. Many historians, too, have embraced the concept of polarization for its explanatory power: It has emerged as the closest thing to a master narrative for recent American history. In this interpretation, the “liberal consensus” that had dominated mid-twentieth-century American politics and intellectual life—the widely shared acceptance of New Deal philosophy and broad agreement on the desirable contours of society and the pursuit of certain kinds of public good—gave way after the 1960s to an age of heightened tension, dividing Americans into two camps that since then have regarded each other with deepening distrust. Yet too few historians have reflected on the limits and potential pitfalls of using polarization as a governing historical paradigm. It is high time, therefore, to pause to consider the larger implications of approaching the past through the prism of polarization.

scholarly journals Mnemonic Populism: The Polish Holocaust Law and its Afterlife

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kornelia Kończal
Keyword(s):  
Significant Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Foundations ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

In early 2018, the Polish parliament adopted controversial legislation criminalising assertions regarding the complicity of the ‘Polish Nation’ and the ‘Polish State’ in the Holocaust. The so-called Polish Holocaust Law provoked not only a heated debate in Poland, but also serious international tensions. As a result, it was amended only five months after its adoption. The reason why it is worth taking a closer look at the socio-cultural foundations and political functions of the short-lived legislation is twofold. Empirically, the short history of the Law reveals a great deal about the long-term role of Jews in the Polish collective memory as an unmatched Significant Other. Conceptually, the short life of the Law, along with its afterlife, helps capture poll-driven, manifestly moralistic and anti-pluralist imaginings of the past, which I refer to as ‘mnemonic populism’. By exploring the relationship between popular and political images of the past in contemporary Poland, this article argues for joining memory and populism studies in order to better understand what can happen to history in illiberal surroundings.

Cities and Urban Patriciates

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Cowan
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas ◽  
The 1960S

Urban centers had an influence on the development of Renaissance Europe disproportionate to their overall demographic importance. Most of the population continued to live and work in the countryside, but towns and cities functioned as key centers of production, consumption and exchange, political control, ecclesiastical organization, and cultural influence. Historians still debate the relative roles of urban and rural areas in facilitating the development of capitalism in the long term. Writing on urban history has a very long pedigree dating back to the 16th century, but as an academic discipline it began to flourish in the late 19th century. Since the 1960s, the range of approaches to the field has widened considerably from concerns with political and economic organization to take in issues of governance, social structure, and, most recently, overlapping urban cultures. The role of religious belief, particularly in the context of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, runs as a thread throughout the history of the urban experience.

scholarly journals An Introduction to Nicos Hadjinicolaou's “Art Centers and Peripheral Art” (1982)

ARTMargins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
Terry Smith
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Book Art ◽  
Hard Edge ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time

Change in the history of art has many causes, but one often overlooked by art historical institutions is the complex, unequal set of relationships that subsist between art centers and peripheries. These take many forms, from powerful penetration of peripheral art by the subjects, styles and modes of the relevant center, through accommodation to this penetration to various degrees and kinds of resistance to it. Mapping these relationships should be a major task for art historians, especially those committed to tracing the reception of works of art and the dissemination of ideas about art. This lecture, delivered by Nicos Hadjinicolaou in 1982, outlines a “political art geography” approach to these challenges, and demonstrates it by exploring four settings: the commissioning of paintings commemorating key battles during the Greek War of Independence; the changes in Diego Rivera's style on his return to Mexico from Paris in the 1920s; the impact on certain Mexican artists in the 1960s of “hard edge” painting from the United States; and the differences between Socialist Realism in Moscow and in the Soviet Republics of Asia during the mid-twentieth century. The lecture is here translated into English for the first time and is introduced by Terry Smith, who relates it to its author's long-term art historical quest, as previously pursued in his book Art History and Class Struggle (1973).

To Utopia and Back: A Cycle in the History of the Chinese Communist Party

1981 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 407-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart R. Schram
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Past ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Sixtieth Anniversary

On 1 July 1981 the Chinese Communist Party celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of its foundation. To mark this occasion, the Party itself issued a statement summing up the experience of recent decades. It seems an appropriate time for outsiders as well to look back over the history of the past 60 years, in the hope of grasping long-term tendencies which may continue to influence events in the future.

Resilience of plant and testate amoeba communities after climatic and anthropogenic disturbances in a Baltic bog in Northern Poland: Implications for ecological restoration

The Holocene ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariusz Gałka ◽  
Kazimierz Tobolski ◽  
Aleksandra Górska ◽  
Mariusz Lamentowicz
Keyword(s):  
Human Impacts ◽  
Testate Amoebae ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Testate Amoeba ◽  
Raised Bogs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ombrotrophic Peatland ◽  
History Of ◽  
Climate Cooling

This study explores the history of the development of Sphagnum communities in an ombrotrophic peatland – Bagno Kusowo – over the past 650 years, based on high-resolution plant macrofossil and testate amoebae analysis. Our research provided information related to the length of peatland existence and the characteristics of its natural/pristine state before the most recent human impacts. Changes in the Sphagnum communities before human impact could have resulted from climate cooling during the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA). In this cold and unstable hydrological period, among vascular plants, Eriophorum vaginatum and Baeothryon caespitosum dominated in the peatland vegetation. Peat-forming Sphagnum communities survived the drainage conducted during the 20th century at the Bagno Kusowo bog. We provide three important messages through this study: (1) testate amoebae reflect similar hydrological trends in two peat cores despite considerable microhabitat variability, (2) average long-term water level 10 cm below the surface should be a target for active bog conservation and (3) sites like Bagno Kusowo are extremely important to preserve the remains of pristine biodiversity (including genetic diversity of plants and protists) that was completely removed from most of the raised bogs in Europe due to human activities, for example, drainage.

FROM LONG-TERM PATTERNS OF SEASONAL HUNGER TO CHANGING EXPERIENCES OF EVERYDAY POVERTY: NORTHEASTERN GHANA C. 1930–2000

2006 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
JÉRÔME DESTOMBES
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
West African ◽  
Anthropometric Data ◽  
Poor Diet ◽  
John Hunter ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Way

This article is a West African case-study of the nutritional history of everyday poverty. It draws on unusually rich statistical evidence collected in northeastern Ghana. In the 1930s, pioneer colonial surveys revealed that seasonal poor diet was pervasive, by contrast with undernourishment. They pave the way for constructing a new set of anthropometric data in Nangodi, a savanna polity where John Hunter completed a classic study of seasonal hunger in the 1960s. A re-survey of the same sections and lineages c. 2000, during a full agricultural cycle, shows a significant improvement in nutritional statuses, notably for women.

Trends in the frequency, extent, and severity of spruce budworm outbreaks in eastern Canada

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Blais
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spruce Budworm ◽  
Forest Composition ◽  
Eastern Canada ◽  
Clear Cutting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spruce Stands ◽  
History Of

The history of spruce budworm (Choristoneurafumiferana (Clem.)) outbreaks for the past 200 to 300 years, for nine regions in eastern Canada, indicates that outbreaks have occurred more frequently in the 20th century than previously. Regionally, 21 outbreaks took place in the past 80 years compared with 9 in the preceding 100 years. Earlier infestations were restricted to specific regions, but in the 20th century they have coalesced and increased in size, the outbreaks of 1910, 1940, and 1970 having covered 10, 25, and 55 million ha respectively. Reasons for the increase in frequency, extent, and severity of outbreaks appear mostly attributable to changes caused by man, in the forest ecosystem. Clear-cutting of pulpwood stands, fire protection, and use of pesticides against budworm favor fir–spruce stands, rendering the forest more prone to budworm attack. The manner and degree to which each of these practices has altered forest composition is discussed. In the future, most of these practices are expected to continue and their effects could intensify, especially in regions of recent application. Other practices, including large-scale planting of white spruce, could further increase the susceptibility of forest stands. Forest management, aimed at reducing the occurrence of extensive fir–spruce stands, has been advocated as a long-term solution to the budworm problem. The implementation of this measure at a time when man's actions result in the proliferation of fir presents a most serious challenge to forest managers.

scholarly journals Characteristics of cold–warm variation in the Hetao region and its surrounding areas in China during the past 5000 years

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.-Q. Li ◽  
Q.-S. Ge ◽  
Z.-X. Hao ◽  
J.-Y. Zheng ◽  
S.-F. He
Keyword(s):  
Climate Changes ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
Data Series ◽  
Proxy Data ◽  
Average Temperature ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Temperature Proxy ◽  
Surrounding Areas

Abstract. Using six long-term temperature proxy data series derived from different natural evidences, including pollens and lake-sediments, we reconstructed a temperature series with a 100-yr time resolution for the past 5000 yr in the Hetao region and its surrounding areas. The resulting series suggests that, on a millennial timescale, temperatures in the region were higher than the mean value of the whole series during the 5000~2600 years before present (yr BP) period, and became relatively low comparing with the average temperature of the whole series after 2600 yr BP. Within these two periods, temperature fluctuations comprising numerous short, multi-centennial intervals also existed. A comparison between our reconstructed series and other series in China and across the Northern Hemisphere indicate that, on a long-term scale, cold–warm variations had been in phase across the whole hemisphere during the past 5000 years; on the century to multi-century scale, the beginning and the ending times varied from region to region, thus implying that climate changes did not occur simultaneously in different regions.

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