Isotopic dietary analysis and molecular sex identification of adults and juveniles from medieval Great Moravia

Like many complex agricultural societies, medieval European society was strongly patriarchal, with men favored in terms of property rights, political status, and household authority. However, it is unclear whether male dominance in medieval society was manifested in unequal access to food resources between the sexes. In this pilot study, we examine the pattern of sex-related differences in diet through biomolecular analyses of skeletal remains from Kostelisko, a suburban area within the early medieval Great Moravian site of Mikulčice. Mikulčice was a prominent center of Great Moravia, an early Slavic state that existed in the 9th and early 10th centuries AD, and was situated on the lower Morava River valley in the south-eastern corner of what is today the Czech Republic . Previous bioarchaeological studies of skeletal material from Mikulčice have revealed activity differences between males and females (Havelková et al., 2010), as well as health differences according to socioeconomic status (Velemínský et al., 2009). Here we present dietary reconstructions based on bone collagen carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses, and we evaluate a new method of molecular sex identification using high resolution melting analysis of ancient DNA

Science/policy boundaries: a changing division of labour in Dutch expert policy advice

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Regulatory Futures in Retrospect

In our 1998 volume ‘The Politics of Chemical Risk: Scenarios for a regulatory Future’ we envisioned four ideal typical scenarios for the future of European chemicals policies. The scenarios focused on the nature of expertise (seen either as a universal or a localised phenomenon) and the organisation of the boundary between science and policy (as either diverging or converging). The four scenarios were titled International Experts, European Risk Consultation, European Coordination of Assessment, and Europe as a Translator. For all four scenarios, we hypothesized internal dynamics and articulated dilemmas related to the development of the sciences contributing to chemical assessment, the relation between the EU and member states and the role of the public. In this contribution, we look back on our four scenarios fifteen years later, to see which ones have materialized and to explore whether the dilemmas we saw have indeed surfaced. We conclude that the International Experts scenario by and large has materialized and explore some of the underlying tensions and dynamics in this development

Wetenschappelijke beleidsadvisering in Nederland : trends en ontwikkelingen

In dit artikel beschrijven we institutionaliseringspatronen in wetenschappelijke beleidsadvisering in Nederland, met veel aandacht voor variaties en veranderingen door de tijd. We behandelen achtereenvolgens de drastische verandering in samenstelling en functie van de adviescolleges, het blijvend belang en de uitbreiding van de planbureaus, verschuivingen in de allocatie van expertise tussen de uitvoerende en de wetgevende macht, de worsteling van departementen met wetenschappelijke advisering en de contractualisering van beleidsrelevant onderzoek, de mogelijke hype rond nieuwe kenniscentra, de veranderde positie van wetenschappelijke expertise in het publiek domein en uitingen van reflexiviteit in het systeem van wetenschappelijke beleidsondersteuning. We laten zien dat er in Nederland in feite drie ontwikkelingen tegelijk gaande zijn: (1) een blijvend restant van corporatistische grenzenwerkarrangementen tussen wetenschap en beleid; (2) een sterke, neoliberaal geïnspireerde, technocratische trend; en (3) een beweging naar een meer interactief-deliberatieve stijl van wetenschappelijke beleidsadvisering van nog onbepaalde kracht

If agency is the answer, kindly repeat the question. Essay review of Harbers et al., Inside the Politics of Technology

Review of: Inside the Politics of Technology: Agency and Normativity in the Co-Production of Knowledge and Society / edited by Hans Barbers. - Amsterdam University Press, 2005. - ISBN 90-5356-756-

Measuring the Stakes: The Dutch Planning Bureaus

The planning bureaus are knowledge institutes that provide the Dutch gov-ernment with knowledge about the present and future state of the country and how it is affected by the government’s policies. The name is somewhat mis-leading, as planning may invoke associations with the faltering centralisation policies of the darker days in really existing socialism. These institutes are not involved in planning the economy or the provision of services through state-controlled resource allocation, but in the provision of policy relevant know-ledge. For these reasons, they prefer to use terms like policy assessment insti-tutes in their English names, although their Dutch names are anchored in law and have become commonplace in Dutch political parlance – and hence I pre-fer to use planning bureau in English too. Currently, there are four planning bureaus in the Netherlands: one provid-ing advice for economic policy, one providing advice for environmental and nature conservation policy, one for social policy, and one for urban and re-gional planning policy.1 They are government institutes with agency status