Nature’s keepers: Working families and the economy of earthly objects

Index to Titles and Authors/Editors of Books Reviewed

PREFACE

Was FLK North levels 1–2 a classic “living floor” of Oldowan hominins or a taphonomically complex palimpsest dominated by large carnivore feeding behavior?

The history of imperial science has been a growing topic over recent decades. Overviews of the imperial history of science have rarely included the Russian, Habsburg, and German empires. The history of Central and Eastern Europe has embraced empire as an analytical and critical category only recently, having previously pursued national historiographies and romanticised versions of imperial pasts. This article highlights several key narratives of imperial sciences in Central and Eastern Europe that have appeared over the past twenty years, especially in anglophone literature. Interdependence between national and imperial institutions and biographies, the history of nature as an interplay of scales, and finally, the histories of imagining a path between imperialism and nationalism, demonstrate how the history of imperial science can become an important part of the discussion of Central European history from a global perspective, as well as how the history of science can be factored into the general history of this region. Finally, I argue that the imperial history of science can play an important role in re-thinking the post/decolonial history of Central and Eastern Europe, an issue that, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has become the centre of intellectual attention.

This article addresses the institutional dimension of metropolisation processes in Central Europe. It draws on qualitative research conducted as a part of the Strengthening Metropolitan Cooperation and Governance in Central Europe (MECOG-CE) project. Initiated in 2023 and running to 2026, the MECOG-CE project covers seven metropolitan areas. Based on the concept of hard and soft dialogue spaces, the article seeks to identify the main domains of activity undertaken by institutions in metropolitan areas and elucidate the similarities and differences in their approaches to these activities. Empirical data underline the primacy of three spheres of activity undertaken by metropolitan institutions: regional development, spatial planning, and transport. The study also discusses the prevailing model of urbanisation and metropolitan development, which assumes a triad based on forces of globalisation-innovation-competition, concluding instead that metropolisation in contemporary Central Europe is driven more by metropolitan institutions, collaboration, and principles of inclusive participation and sustainable development.

Previous articleNext article No AccessA Seventeenth-Century Naturalist: John RayAgnes ArberAgnes Arber Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 34, Number 4Spring, 1943 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/347827 Views: 19Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1943 History of Science SocietyPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: OUP accepted manuscript, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (Jan 2020).https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaa047Vittoria Feola Agnes Arber, historian of botany and Darwinian sceptic, The British Journal for the History of Science 52, no.33 (Sep 2019): 515–523.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087419000633C. D. Preston Using John Nidd's annotated books in the Wren Library to reassess his contribution to John Ray's Catalogus (1660), Archives of Natural History 44, no.22 (Oct 2017): 275–291.https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.2017.0449J. Haffer The development of ornithology in central Europe, Journal of Ornithology 148, no.S1S1 (Jul 2007): 125–153.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-007-0160-2B. J. Ford Shining through the centuries: John Ray's life and legacy, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 54, no.11 (Jan 2000): 5–22.https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2000.0092 George Sarton , and Frances Siegel Sixty-Fifth Critical Bibliography of the History and Philosophy of Science and of the History of Civilization (To December 1943), Isis 35, no.11 (Oct 2015): 53–94.https://doi.org/10.1086/358679

Middle to Late Pleistocene ice extents, tephrochronology and paleoenvironments of the White River area, southwest Yukon

Deer species provide a valuable biostratigraphical tool through Cromer Forest‐bed times, due particularly to species turnover between the Early and early Middle Pleistocene. This study is based on the reidentification of 348 fossil antlers. The provenance of most large mammal fossils from the CF‐bF, collected over 150 years, was recorded only by the nearest coastal village. None the less, analysis of the cervid taxa by these ‘localities’ reveals interesting patterns. The fauna of the West Runton Freshwater Bed is of early Middle Pleistocene complexion, and that from the foreshore at East Runton is of Early Pleistocene. Pure or nearly pure early Middle Pleistocene assemblages also occur at Kessingland‐Pakefield and at Trimingham. At Overstrand, Sidestrand, Mundesley, Bacton and Happisburgh, there is a mixture of Early and early Middle Pleistocene elements. Analysis of Savin's data shows that fossils of earlier species were generally found further down the beach than those of later ones. Late nineteenth century geological surveys, made when bone collecting was at its peak, give additional information about fossil horizons, which in several cases can be related to modern stratigraphical units. Most Early Pleistocene large‐mammal bones came from Pastonian conglomerates, in contrast to small‐mammal and molluscan assemblages mostly extracted from Pre‐Pastonian Crag. However, the diversity of Early Pleistocene CF‐bF cervid species in comparison with continental faunas, and their pattern of distribution between sites, suggests they may span more than one chronostratigraphic stage. Early Middle Pleistocene assemblages came from strata now referred to the Cromerian, and the differing proportions of taxa between sites provide limited evidence of time‐transgression.

Late Pliocene to late Pleistocene environments preserved at the Palisades Site, central Yukon River, Alaska

A fossil rhinocerotid tooth from the Yage Formation (Middle to Late Pleistocene), Yage in Shizuoka Prefecture, is described. The present specimen shows the following characteristics of the second lower incisor: tusk-like shape, enamel on the labial side, a teardrop-shaped cross section of the tooth crown, and an oval cross section of the root. The specimen is similar to the genus Rhinoceros in having a large and robust shape. However, owing to a lack of other elements, generic and specific identification are not possible. Previously, several large mammal fossils had been reported from the Yage area, but there were no rhinocerotids among them. Thus, this report is the first record of a rhinocerotid from the area. The Yage specimen suggests rhinocerotids were widely distributed during the Pleistocene of Far East Asia.

During the 1960s to 1980s a human mandible, together with fossils of other animals and a lithic industry, were recovered from Units I to VI of Azokh Cave. After the year 2002, new excavations in Units I to V were undertaken. The new large mammal fossils are described and the fauna is revised, using part of the older collections. The only clear break in the sequence is the appearance of domestic mammals in Unit I. The following taxa recovered from Pleistocenic sediments were identified: Ursus spelaeus (the most abundant), Ursus sp. (U. aff. arctos/thibetanus), Vulpes vulpes, Canis aureus, Canis lupus, Meles meles, Martes cf. foina, Crocuta crocuta, Felis chaus, Panthera pardus, Equus hydruntinus, Equus ferus, Stephanorhinus hemitoechus, Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis, Sus scrofa, Capreolus pygargus, Dama aff. peleponesiaca, Dama sp., Megaloceros solilhacus, Cervus elaphus, Bison schoetensacki, Ovis ammon, Capra aegagrus and Saiga. Most species present are common in western Eurasia. All fossiliferous Units have taxa that in mid-latitude Europe are considered to be “interglacial” elements, while there are no clear “glacial” elements, which suggests temperate conditions despite the altitude of the cave. The evolutionary levels of various species suggest ages of about 300 ka for Units VI–IV, while Units III–II are slightly younger. Domestic mammals indicate a Holocene age for Unit I. Most sediments represent a normal transition between units. Processes of erosion, however, affected the top of the Pleistocene sediments recorded in the cave. Therefore, Unit I (Holocene sediments containing domestic animals) lies disconformably over Unit II (Late Pleistocene).

Biodiverse communities have been shown to sustain high levels of multifunctionality and thus a loss of species likely negatively impacts ecosystem functions. For most taxa, however, roles of individual species are poorly known. Rare species, often most likely to go extinct, may have unique traits and functional roles. Alternatively, rare species may be functionally redundant, such that their loss would not disrupt ecosystem functions. We quantified the functional role of rare species by using captures of wood-living (saproxylic) beetle species, combined with recent databases of morphological and ecological traits, from three regions in central and northern Europe. Using a rarity index based on species' local abundance, geographic range, and habitat breadth, we used local and regional species removal simulations to examine the contributions of both the rarest and the most common beetle species to three measures of community functional structure: functional richness, functional specialization, and functional originality. Both regionally and locally, all three measures declined more rapidly when rare species were removed than under common (or random) species removal scenarios. These consistent patterns across scales and among forest types give evidence that rare species provide unique functional contributions, and their loss may disproportionately impact ecosystem functions. This implies that conservation measures targeting rare and endangered species, such as preserving intact forests with dead wood and mature trees, can provide broader ecosystem-level benefits. Experimental research linking functional structure to ecosystem processes should be prioritized to increase understanding of the functional consequences of species loss and to develop more effective conservation strategies.

The heart and soul of geology are to be found in rock relationships and earth history. The fossil record was central and critical to geology emerging as geohistory, the first historical science, from the speculative geotheories of the 18th Century. The key figure was Cuvier. In the process of shaping geohistory, Cuvier and palaeontology produced the second historical science, namely biohistory, including faunal and floral succession in deep time; and biohistory and geohistory have been intertwined for two centuries.Lamarck kept alive the venerable theory of organic change, but evolution as heuristic scientific theory was stumbling. Even so, the fossil-based geological time scale was constructed in the six decades between Cuvier nailing bioextinction and Darwin nailing biospeciation. by about 1830, French molluscan palaeontology was building Tertiary stratigraphic succession, correlation and age determination in the palaeontological synthesis, i.e., biostratigraphy. Palaeontology revealed ancient and exotic life in a deep-time panorama of succession punctuated by extinctions and demanding explanation, but it contributed little to theory of evolutionary processes.Darwin’s world was Lyell’s gradualist world and his appreciation of environmental change as an evolutionary forcing factor lessened as competition came to dominate his thinking. Darwin’s Darwinism comprised five theories. Two were historical theories (the world and its biospecies change in deep time; and common descent in branching evolution produces the tree of life) and both were widely accepted by the generation after Darwin. The other three were causal or nomothetic theories (respectively speciation; gradual change not saltational; and variational change by natural and sexual selection) and they were accepted only in the 20th Century. For its importance to our culture, Darwin’s historicist worldview, in the face of entrenched, ahistorical opinion as to what science really is, outweighs disputes about the importance of selection.As stratigraphy and palaeontology went global and highly successful on most criteria, their evolutionary direction went ‘anti-Darwinian’ in the later 19th Century, towards such theories as orthogenesis, saltationism and a resurgent ‘Neo-Lamarckism’, mostly in Hyatt, Cope and Osborn in North America. This cluster of trends culminated a second time in the 1930s–1940s, in the macromutational typostrophism of the German synthesis, dominated by Schindewolf.Meanwhile there was a thin red line of Darwinian palaeontology down those decades from the 1860s to the 1920s. When population genetics emerged from decades of its own anti-Darwinism the Modern Synthesis was forged between natural history, genetics and palaeontology, the latter especially embodied by Simpson’s macroevolution. Darwin’s three causal theories came into their own in the 1930s–1950s in completing the Darwinian Revolution—or, as I prefer, installing the Darwinian Restoration. However, the Restoration was dominated by variational evolution, whilst practitioners of embryology and morphology, in the transformational mode of evolution, felt excluded.The roots of modern palaeobiology are firmly in the Darwinian Restoration and Simpsonian palaeontology and macroevolution. Modern palaeobiology (i) is thoroughly Darwinian in its historicism and variational evolution but (ii) is beyond Darwin in becoming pervasively hierarchical whilst (iii) reconciling with elements of the German Synthesis through collaboration with developmental genetics in evo-devo. Also (iv) we have gone beyond Darwin (and Simpson) primarily in the rise of micropalaeontology with its untold millions of specimens and in enormous progress in chronologically resolving and reconstructing bioevents and environmental shifts in the geological past. And (v) the tree of life is underlain by an anastomosing web of life. Deep-time palaeobiology becomes more autonomous as major soluble problems arise from the fossil record, utterly beyond the reach of shallow-time neontology.Securely embedded in thriving research programmes recovering the recorded history of life on earth, Darwinism lives!

Historical sciences like paleontology and archaeology have uncovered unimagined, remarkable and mysterious worlds in the deep past. How should we understand the success of these sciences? What is the relationship between knowledge and history? In Scientific Knowledge and the Deep Past: History Matters, Adrian Currie examines recent paleontological work on the great changes that occurred during the Cretaceous period - the emergence of flowering plants, the splitting of the mega-continent Gondwana, and the eventual fall of the dinosaurs - to analyse the knowledge of historical scientists, and to reflect upon the nature of history. He argues that distinctively historical processes are 'peculiar': they have the capacity to generate their own highly specific dynamics and rules. This peculiarity, Currie argues, also explains the historian's interest in narratives and stories: the contingency, complexity and peculiarity of the past demands a narrative treatment. Overall, Currie argues that history matters for knowledge.

People in Motion: Introduction to Transnational Movements and Transwar Connections in the Anthropological and Genetic Study of Human Populations