Are refugee ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’ the same thing? This article investigates the mid-century emergence of these two key concepts in the context of the entangled histories of post-1945 displacement and resettlement in Palestine/Israel, which has long had the dubious distinction of serving as a central site of international experimentation vis-à-vis modern questions surrounding mass expulsion and the possibilities of return. Despite the deeply interwoven nature of Palestinian and Jewish displacement, scholars have generally accepted these histories as distinct and segregated national memories. Such accounts actively ignore a crucial set of actors in the making of these forced migrations and their aftermaths: the ‘international community’, made up mainly of the victorious Allied powers, who constructed the framework within which such nationally bounded interpretations could be perpetuated and sustained. This article therefore aims to bring the international dimension to the forefront and to combine it with the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) to examine how the concepts of ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’ evolved – and diverged – in the aftermath of the Second World War, in the context of an emerging modern international refugee regime designed primarily to serve superpower interests.

Artificial illumination is a fundamental human need. Burning wood and other materials usually in hearths and fireplaces extended daylight hours, whilst the use of flammable substances in torches offered light on the move. It is increasingly understood that pottery played a role in light production. In this study, we focus on ceramic oval bowls, made and used primarily by hunter-gatherer-fishers of the circum-Baltic over a c. 2000 year period beginning in the mid-6th millennium cal bc. Oval bowls commonly occur alongside larger (cooking) vessels. Their function as ‘oil lamps’ for illumination has been proposed on many occasions but only limited direct evidence has been secured to test this functional association. This study presents the results of molecular and isotopic analysis of preserved organic residues obtained from 115 oval bowls from 25 archaeological sites representing a wide range of environmental settings. Our findings confirm that the oval bowls of the circum-Baltic were used primarily for burning fats and oils, predominantly for the purposes of illumination. The fats derive from the tissues of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial organisms. Bulk isotope data of charred surface deposits show a consistently different pattern of use when oval bowls are compared to other pottery vessels within the same assemblage. It is suggested that hunter-gatherer-fishers around the 55th parallel commonly deployed material culture for artificial light production but the evidence is restricted to times and places where more durable technologies were employed, including the circum-Baltic.

In the immediate aftermath of World War I, the newly formed League of Nations saw Middle Eastern refugees—particularly displaced Armenians and Assyrians scattered in camps across the Eastern Mediterranean—as venues for working out new forms of internationalism. In the late 1940s, following the British abandonment of the Palestine Mandate and the subsequent Zionist expulsion of most of the Palestinian Arab population, the new United Nations revived this concept of a refugee crisis requiring international intervention. This paper examines the parallel ways in which advocates for both the nascent League of Nations and the United Nations made use of mass refugee flows to formulate arguments for new, highly visible, and essentially permanent iterations of international authority across the Middle East.