This article explores the systems of policing that emerged in the early Cape Colony (1652–1830). Contrary to previous historical scholarship that understood the institution to be largely nonexistent or of marginal importance to the colony’s political economic development, this article argues that the Cape colony’s systems of policing, which doubled as ad hoc military organizations, were not so much weak as privatized. It shows how this persistent tendency was motivated by the Dutch East India Company’s desire to maximize profits—though it manifested differently in different parts of the colony. Moreover, this article demonstrates that the mercantile economy that the company installed at the Cape ensured that private policing would become a vehicle of indigenous dispossession. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the field of African carceral studies and understandings of processes of racialization in the early Cape.

We report new interpretation of >19,500 beach strandlines from waterbodies in the western St. Lawrence and Champlain Lowlands in northern New York and adjacent areas of Vermont, Quebec, and Ontario from ≤2-m-resolution digital elevation models. Strandline evidence supports a deglaciation model in which proglacial lake and marine shoreline deposits adjusted continuously in response to steady shoreline regression linked to outlet incision, differential isostatic adjustments, and postglacial relative sea-level rise. Gaps in strandline preservation reflect times of rapid water-level decline associated with breakout floods and abrupt shifts in drainage to new outlets. Water levels returned to slower, steady decline and renewed beach sedimentation during the later stages of a breakout as water levels in the source and receiving waterbodies equilibrated. Our conclusions contrast with previous models that infer discrete lake stages were controlled by stable outlets then fell abruptly as lower outlets were exhumed from beneath the Laurentide Ice Sheet during deglaciation. We present a new deglacial chronology and lake nomenclature that reflects this paradigm and redefines the spatial and temporal distributions of proglacial lake and marine water in the region.

Rituals are sites of personal and social transformations. However, we still do not have a sophisticated theory for how these rituals were embedded and generated within specific political economies, nor how communities used ritual activities to conceptualize the cosmos. This paper develops a theoretical framework exploring pragmatism and materialism to articulate the relationship between imperial political economies and ritual activities, situating the latter in the former. This framework will then be applied to ritual activities in southern Roman Britain, exploring how ritual activities emerged within the imperial political economy. The emergence of Roman imperialism in Roman Britain materially impacted upon not only the nature and range of ritual activities, but also the cosmologies of local communities. Ritual activities are materializations of cosmological beliefs, and both were determined by the imperial political economy. It is this process by which cosmologies emerged to naturalize socially constructed relations and activities that I call ontogenesis.

Some cadres receive promotions, whereas others do not. This study explores the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) personnel control over the central state-owned enterprise (SOE) leaders from the Hu era to the Xi era. An analysis of the résumés and careers of SOE leaders reveals that the CCP has established a dual-track system to manage enterprises with different functions. This system employs two types of incentives: promotion incentives for leaders of eldest-son enterprises associated with national security, and salary incentives for leaders of other enterprises. Through the dual-track system, the CCP aims to influence the career trajectories of SOE leaders and address conflicts of interest in the principal-agent relationship. This study also investigates the individual characteristics of SOE leaders, including their political qualifications, professional qualifications and ages. The results indicate a tendency towards specialization and institutionalization in central-enterprise leaders, even during the Xi era.

The authors examine the 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940 US censuses to identify demographic characteristics of children who resided in public and private institutions for minors, with special attention to patterns of racial segregation and exclusion. The article focuses on public and private institutions founded exclusively to serve children and youth and also on correctional institutions for children and adults. The authors found racial segregation in private institutions, underrepresentation of children of color in both private and public institutions, and overrepresentation of boys of color in correctional institutions for minors and adults. They also identified a historical pattern, with few exceptions, of excluding girls of color from all types of public and private institutions.

The Tudor and Stuart New Year's gift exchange rolls were prepared every year. The manuscripts were kept in the Jewel House as an audit and accounting record of the inventory and were removed when the contents of the Jewel House were dispersed in 1649. A total of thirty-five rolls of the Tudor and Stuart exchanges are known to be extant. Between the mid-seventeenth century and the present time these manuscripts were held in private muniment collections, sold at auctions and intermittently studied by dilettantes. Individuals purchased the rolls for personal study and as curiosities. Antiquarians and Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London were interested in and recognised the value of these gift rolls. Antiquarian book dealers and autograph collectors enhanced the rarity of royal signatures and emphasised the rarity of these manuscripts. Sale catalogues of various bookdealers and auction houses record the path of the gift rolls from and/or into private collections and archives. Presently, while they should be included with the other state papers, these manuscripts are in the custody of eleven different archival locations in three countries. This paper tracks the preservation of these manuscripts through their ownership journeys and the records related to their locations.

Social isolation and loneliness have been linked to adverse health outcomes such as depression in old age. However, limited data exist on the association of loneliness and social isolation with probable depression (PD) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), while psychosocial mediators are largely unknown. This study investigates the individual and joint associations of social isolation and loneliness with PD among older adults in Ghana. It quantifies the extent to which psychosocial factors mediate the associations. Cross-sectional data from the Aging, Health, Well-being, and Health-seeking Behaviour Study were analyzed. PD was defined as moderate to severe depressive symptoms with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D-9) scale. Loneliness and social isolation were assessed with the University of California, Los Angeles 3-item loneliness scale and the Berkman-Syme Social Network Index, respectively. Multivariable logistic models and PROCESS macro bootstrapping mediation analyses were performed. Among the 1,201 adults aged ≥50 years (Mage = 66.1 ± 11.9 years, 63.3% women), 29.5% PD cases were found. The prevalence of social isolation and loneliness was 27.3% and 17.7%, respectively. Loneliness (OR = 3.15, 95% CI = 3.26–5.28) and social isolation (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.10–1.41) were independently associated with higher odds of PD. The loneliness and PD association was modified by spatial location (Pinteraction = 0.021); thus, the association was more pronounced in rural areas (OR = 7.06) than in urban areas (OR = 3.43). Psychosocial factors (e.g. sleep problems) mediated the loneliness/social isolation and PD association. Loneliness and social isolation were independently associated with a higher likelihood of PD, and psychosocial factors mediated the associations. Interventions to reduce PD in later life should also consider addressing loneliness and social isolation, as well as sleep problems.

This essay reviews the following works:

El caso Padilla/The Padilla Affair. Dir. Pavel Giroud. Prod. Lia Rodríguez, Alejandro Hernández. Spain and Cuba, 2022. 78 mins. Distributed by Amazon Prime Video.

Footage of Heberto Padilla’s “confession” recorded by Cuban authorities on April 27 at the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. The footage is available on YouTube.

‘Giant’ handaxes are a widely recognized but infrequently investigated phenomenon of the Acheulean period. The scale of their distribution and the selective pressures underpinning their production are not well explored. Here, we report new data from a large-scale experimental study that identifies the point at which handaxes become too large to use with a single hand, alongside a review of known Acheulean assemblages displaying ‘giant’ handaxes. On the understanding that most ‘regularly sized’ Acheulean handaxes were gripped in one hand, if handaxes require bimanual grips, alternative explanations for their production—beyond unimanual butchery and woodworking tasks—should be sought. Our data identify clear mass, length and thickness thresholds for bimanual gripping. It is revealed that spatially and temporally diverse archaeological sites display ‘giant’ artefacts that exceed these thresholds. We suggest these atypically large handaxes would most plausibly have been utilitarian tools used for cutting, but in alternative ways to more regularly sized bifaces. This includes when worked materials were secured by another individual or structure, during digging activities, or when used as a stationary cutting ‘plane’ secured on the ground.

African newspapers have been the subject of scrutiny from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. However, comparably little attention has been paid to the early visual archives produced by these presses. This essay mines the pages of West African Pilot and other newspapers to explore the genesis of the practice and profession of press photography in Lagos, Nigeria. Over the course of three defining historical moments, press photographs became a record and consequence of the ways that professional, legal, and political contours of visual freedoms were defined in an increasingly anti-colonial city and nation-state.

All societies throughout time have shown a greater or lesser degree of superstition when facing the traumatic event of death. Roman society was no exception, especially when numerous religious currents participated in the funerary rituals, sharing their own conception and beliefs. The following lines present a brief overview of children’s death, especially premature ones, from the early Imperial to the late Imperial period, when they became more highly regarded. It is followed by the traumatic or marginal deaths of some individuals whose behaviour, illnesses or ways of dying were suspicious for their closest people: the article closes with the treatment given to certain women. All the deaths in this research aroused suspicions among their relatives or the authorities, who did not hesitate to practise rituals to calm them in the afterlife and ensure that they did not return to life as evil spirits. In this article we will focus on the practices that developed in the city of Onoba and its hinterland or influential area; a Roman colony located in the westernmost part of the province of Baetica, a port city of enormous importance for the Empire given its importance as a gateway for minerals coming from the Urium mines.

The “revolutionary script” of Leninism was foundational to how the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde (PAIGC) and Amilcar Cabral imagined the course of decolonization. Under-utilized archives and party documents highlight that the impact of the political-organizational model of Lenin was an early source of inspiration for PAIGC leaders, a fact which historians have not investigated in detail. The manner in which Leninism influenced the PAIGC was neither linear nor dogmatic, however. Dating from early exposure to Marxist texts in underground study circles to aborted attempts at launching armed struggle, party leaders constantly improvised upon the script with which they based their anti-colonial revolution.

Tell settlements often provide a unique window into prehistoric lifeways due to remarkable preservation and safeguarding from modern disturbances. Vésztő-Mágor in Hungary is one such tell with stratigraphy, features and finds that reflect thousands of years of prehistoric settlement. In 2021, the Vésztő-Mágor Conservation and Exhibition Program began the work of stabilizing, documenting and preserving prehistoric deposits, features and artefacts exposed in an in situ exhibition trench at Vésztő-Mágor. In the process, an exceptionally well-preserved carbonized item was discovered embedded in a series of Middle Bronze Age house floors. We describe the object and context of discovery, and interpret it as matting inside a wattle-and-daub house. We expand our discussion to similar contexts known from Vésztő-Mágor, in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond, to highlight the technologies involving organic materials used at prehistoric tell sites and their significance for understanding lifeways at these settlements.