‘You cannot shake that shimmie here’: producing mobility on the dance floor

This paper examines the regulation of ballroom dancing in England in the first four decades of the 20th century. It demonstrates how various forms of dance considered to be ‘American’, particularly the ‘shimmy’, were labelled as degenerate and threatening, and how the newly formed Imperial Society for Teachers of Dancing and the dance master and band leader Victor Silvester sought to produce a thoroughly regulated and encoded ‘English’ style of ballroom dancing. The paper charts the various strategies of representation and standardization that were used to enact this regulation of corporeal mobility. Theoretically the paper argues for an interpretive approach to bodily movement that considers bodily movement in the context of wider contexts of cultural geographies of mobility. In so doing it contributes to a growing body of work on the politics of mobility in the modern West and, particularly, the cultural politics of dance

Chronostratigraphy of an eroding complex Atlantic Round House, Baile Sear, Scotland

The excavation team would like to thank Historic Scotland (now Historic Environment Scotland) and the University of St Andrews for providing funding.A high-resolution chronostratigraphy has been established for an eroding Atlantic round house at Sloc Sàbhaidh (North Uist, Scotland), combining detailed OSL profiling and dating of sediments encompassing the main bracketing events associated with the monument, radiocarbon AMS dates on bone recovered from excavated features and fills within it, and TL dates on pottery and burnt clay. Concordant OSL and radiocarbon evidence place construction of the wheelhouse in the first to second centuries AD, contemporary with dates from the primary occupation. Beneath the wheelhouse, clay deposits containing burnt material, attest to cultural activity in vicinity to the monument in the preceding second to first centuries BC. At a later date, the southern wall collapsed, was rebuilt, and the interior spaces to the monument re-structured. The chronology for the later horizons identified from the sediment luminescence dates extends to the second half of the first millennium AD, which goes beyond the range of the radiocarbon dates obtained. The data from ceramics encompass both periods. The juxtaposition of the dating evidence is discussed relative to short and longer chronologies for this Iron Age monument. Corollaries of this research are the implications that based on the long chronology, some of the ecofacts (bone) appear to be residual, and that the temporal duration of Hebridean Coarse Ware may extend into the second half of the first millennium AD.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Breeding system and spatial isolation from congeners strongly constrain seed set in an insect-pollinated apomictic tree: Sorbus subcuneata (Rosaceae)

The article associated with this dataset is in ORE at: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/26965The datasets are the results of 1) pollen grain accumulation on stigmas. 2) Flowering phenology of individual trees as % of opened buds, with 50 percentile values of the cumulative flowering curve. 3) Location data for all trees of both species of flowering size (see article text) plus connectivity measures of maternal seed trees to all S. admonitor trees. X and y coordinates are GB OS National Grid. This data is related to the Scientific Reports paper of the same title.Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust, Paignton Zoo Environmental ParkNER

Luminescence dating of soils and sediments from Jerash, Jordan

The urban site of Jerash, Jordan is recognised as one of the great cities of the classical Middle East and has been the subject of ongoing systematic archaeological investigations since the 1920s. Its significance lies in its location on limestone geology in one of the more fertile areas of the Ajlun Highlands in northern Jordan with a good water supply, a number of springs and its central position in regional trade routes. The hinterland context of the city is yet to be considered and is a significant omission given the importance of water and its management together with the agricultural systems dependent on water in supporting urban development. Landscape chronologies are vital to the establishment of city and hinterland relationships and in this working papers we assess the value and significance of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurement in this endeavour. Our findings so far suggest a measurement cluster range of ca. 480 BC – 250 BC in landscapes underlying the city and a dominant trend of sediments infilling the adjacent Wadi Suf between 640 ± 240 AD and 1400 ± 60 AD reflecting land management changes in a soil environment sensitive to degradation