(Im)material Culture : Towards an Archaeology of Cybercrime

Cybercrime is ubiquitous. People now inhabit a digital environment comprising permanent risk, exponential threats, and multiple virtual/physical harms, forming a global community of malefactors and the criminally exploited. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, through an archaeological lens, to characterize the new materiality of cybercrime (including its artefacts and architecture alongside digital/virtual manifestations). And second, to explore the potential for new perspectives on cybercrime borne out of this archaeological approach. In short: what is the archaeology of cybercrime and can new understandings emerge from an archaeological perspective? In undertaking this research we also challenge the long-held presumption that non-physical traces cannot be studied archaeologically. It is our contention that they can

A ‘Baby GDA’: Norwich’s Airspace during the Second World War

Throughout the Second World War, the Luftwaffe attacked Norwich on various occasions. The impact this had on the city was recorded visually on the ‘Norwich Bomb Map’. This cartographic depiction, however, only records a single ‘horizontal’ component of the aerial ‘battlescape’. In reality, the aerial battlefield comprised a combination of Norwich’s air defences and the flightpaths of the Luftwaffe bombers, which existed in three-dimensional space. As other scholars have developed methodologies for reconstructing anti-aircraft ‘fire domes’, this article will combine these concepts with a new approach that reconstructs historic flightpaths to give a three-dimensional overview of Norwich’s ‘Gun Defended Area’. By examining all components of Norwich’s airspace, this article will demonstrate the importance of considering the vertical component of a battlescape

Ecoacoustics and multispecies semiosis: naming, semantics, semiotic characteristics, and competencies

Biosemiotics to date has focused on the exchange of signals between organisms, in line with bioacoustics; consideration of the wider acoustic environment as a semiotic medium is under-developed. The nascent discipline of ecoacoustics, that investigates the role of environmental sound in ecological processes and dynamics, fills this gap. In this paper we introduce key ecoacoustic terminology and concepts in order to highlight the value of ecoacoustics as a discipline in which to conceptualise and study intra- and interspecies semiosis. We stress the inherently subjective nature of all sensory scapes (vivo-, land-, vibro- and soundscapes) and propose that they should always bear an organismic attribution. Key terms to describe the sources (geophony, biophony, anthropophony, technophony) and scales (sonotopes, soundtopes, sonotones) of soundscapes are described. We introduce epithets for soundscapes to point to the degree to which the global environment is implicated in semiosis (latent, sensed and interpreted soundscapes); terms for describing key ecological structures and processes (acoustic community, acoustic habitat, ecoacoustic events) and examples of ecoacoustic events (choruses and noise) are described. The acoustic eco-field is recognized as the semiotic model that enables soniferous species to intercept core resources like food, safety and roosting places. We note that whilst ecoacoustics to date has focused on the critical task of the development of metrics for application in conservation and biodiversity assessment, these can be enriched by advancing conceptual and theoretical foundations. Finally, the mutual value of integrating ecoacoustic and biosemiotics perspectives is considered

Barnham, St Edmundsbury, Suffolk:RAF Barnham, Special Storage Site. Documentary Analysis of Sources in The National Archives

In 1998, the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) undertook a survey of the atomic bomb stores, Special Storage Site, at former RAF Barnham, Suffolk. This comprised a photographic survey, and a site description based on a field visit and drawings made available by Mr Eldred (Cocroft 1998). The site was also briefly described and illustrated in Cold War Building for nuclear confrontation 1946-1989 (Cocroft and Thomas 2003, 29-34). Later, the site was protected as a Scheduled Monument and a number of its buildings listed. In 2008, Mr Eldred and English Heritage funded a Conservation Management Plan (ACTA Purcell Miller Tritton 2008), which has guided subsequent innovative work to conserve its 1950s steel and reinforced concrete structures. It was in the context of this work that the Operational Record Books of No.94 Maintenance Unit were investigated at the National Archives, Kew. This brief note provides a commentary on the entries in the Operational Record Books, in particular where they are able to clarify the chronology of the site and shed light on the storage of nuclear weapons. Building numbers referred to in this note correspond with those in the original site report (Cocroft 1998)

Situating the Greenham archaeology: an autoethnography of a feminist project

This paper discusses an ongoing investigation into the material cultural legacy and memory of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Using an autoethnographic approach it explores how a project at Greenham became an exercise in feminist practice, which aimed to stay close to the spirit and ethics of its subject of study, the women-only, feminist space of Greenham. We draw on principles from feminist and post-positivist scholarship to argue for the importance of refl exively exploring personal investments and situatedness in relation to research. The paper offers three narratives, one by each author, of our involvement with, and relationship to, the archaeological and ethnographic work at Greenham. It thereby also presents an account of how the objectives and methodologies of the research developed and changed over time

Variation in plant leaf traits affects transmission and detectability of herbivore vibrational cues

Many insects use plant-borne vibrations to obtain important information about their environment, such as where to find a mate or a prey, or when to avoid a predator. Plant species can differ in the way they vibrate, possibly affecting the reliability of information, and ultimately the decisions that are made by animals based on this information. We examined whether the production, transmission, and possible perception of plant-borne vibrational cues is affected by variation in leaf traits. We recorded vibrations of 69 Spodoptera exigua caterpillars foraging on four plant species that differed widely in their leaf traits (cabbage, beetroot, sunflower, and corn). We carried out a transmission and an airborne noise absorption experiment to assess whether leaf traits influence amplitude and frequency characteristics, and background noise levels of vibrational chewing cues. Our results reveal that species-specific leaf traits can influence transmission and potentially perception of herbivore-induced chewing vibrations. Experimentally-induced vibrations attenuated stronger on plants with thicker leaves. Amplitude and frequency characteristics of chewing vibrations measured near a chewing caterpillar were, however, not affected by leaf traits. Furthermore, we found a significant effect of leaf area, water content and leaf thickness—important plant traits against herbivory, on the vibrations induced by airborne noise. On larger leaves higher amplitude vibrations were induced, whereas on thicker leaves containing more water airborne noise induced higher peak frequencies. Our findings indicate that variation in leaf traits can be important for the transmission and possibly detection of vibrational cues