Local geology controlled the feasibility of vitrifying Iron Age buildings

During European prehistory, hilltop enclosures made from polydisperse particle-and-block stone walling were exposed to temperatures sufficient to partially melt the constituent stonework, leading to the preservation of glassy walls called ‘vitrified forts’. During vitrification, the granular wall rocks partially melt, sinter viscously and densify, reducing inter-particle porosity. This process is strongly dependent on the solidus temperature, the particle sizes, the temperature-dependence of the viscosity of the evolving liquid phase, as well as the distribution and longevity of heat. Examination of the sintering behaviour of 45 European examples reveals that it is the raw building material that governs the vitrification efficiency. As Iron Age forts were commonly constructed from local stone, we conclude that local geology directly influenced the degree to which buildings were vitrified in the Iron Age. Additionally, we find that vitrification is accompanied by a bulk material strengthening of the aggregates of small sizes, and a partial weakening of larger blocks. We discuss these findings in the context of the debate surrounding the motive of the wall-builders. We conclude that if wall stability by bulk strengthening was the desired effect, then vitrification represents an Iron Age technology that failed to be effective in regions of refractory local geology

Remaking place : the social construction of a geographical indication for Feni

A range of social movements mobilise around and seek to valorise ‘place-based’ imageries. There is, these movements argue, vitality in place. As anthropologists remind us, people continue to construct some form of boundaries around place, however permeable and transient those boundaries might be. In the context of global agrifood, a diversity of socially generated marks indicating conditions of origin have emerged that seek to speak to a range of moral economies. Within this constellation, Geographical Indication (GI) appears as a remarkable place-based intellectual property which the author appreciates as the juridical reification of a place-based stabilisation of cultural norms. However, rather than idealise GIs, the paper also probes a ‘politics in place’ through a fieldwork-based study of a recently acquired GI for Feni, a liquor distilled from either coconut or cashew apples. Juxtaposing observations of Feni distilling with the specifications that constitute the GI, the paper explains these differences in terms of the local social relations of power. The Goa government aligned itself with the recently established Feni Association, composed mainly of large distillers with bottling operations, to acquire the GI and was successful because of the complicity of the GI Registry office