Permanent Settlement Research Articles

Forty Canoes of Women

There has been an increasing tendency in recent decades to characterize North American Indigenous peoples as “people of the corn” living in permanent or semi-permanent settlements. This approach focuses on matrilineal, agricultural societies in which women play a central role in the economy and the organization of domestic life. Iroquoian women have been at the heart of this approach, while Algonquian women from patrilineal, hunter-gatherer societies remain in the shadows of the men who continue to be perceived as the main providers. In reality, on both the land and the water, the “nomadic” way of life of the people of the forest was anchored in the courage, strength, and endurance of Algonquian women providers.

Landscapes of Mobility and Movement in North-West Arabia: A Remote Sensing Study of the Neom Impact Zone

The historic environment of north-west Saudi Arabia is likely to be severely impacted by the construction of the Neom mega-city complex and the development of the city’s hinterland. This region, located east of the Gulf of Aqaba, has only been subject to limited archaeological survey in the past, limiting any assessment of this negative impact. This paper presents data collected through a remote sensing survey of the region undertaken by the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project, independent of the Neom project. It is argued that this data reflects a landscape of movement between north and south, with evidence of structures and monuments from at least the Bronze Age through to the pre-Islamic period, but little evidence of permanent settlement or agriculture. This should not be dismissed as a peripheral landscape, but one that contains rich archaeological evidence of concentrated activity, suggesting that some areas have held long-term significance to the people inhabiting and moving through this region.

DEM study on the dynamic responses of a ballasted track under moving loading

This paper presents the discrete element modeling of the dynamic response of a ballasted track under moving loads. The DEM model, consisting of sleepers, ballast, and sub-ballast, has been calibrated using field and laboratory data. This model was further used to examine the dynamic responses of the ballasted track subjected to a series of moving traffic loading representing various train axle loads and speeds. The results show that the permanent settlement of the sleeper, the breakage of ballast, and the dynamic stresses in the track substructure increase with an increase in train axle load and speed. As the train moves, the magnitudes of dynamic stresses and the orientations of principal stress axes in the track change continuously, and a more pronounced principal stress rotation is observed at sleeper edges than those underneath sleepers. The capping layer is found to play a critical role in reducing train-induced stress and further alleviating the disturbance from the trains to the subgrade. The interparticle contacts and the vibration of ballast during the movement of the train including the influences of train axle load and speed on the dynamic responses of ballasted railway tracks are captured and analyzed from a micromechanical perspective.

Women's labor in Russian America

ABSTRACT The topic of the use of female labor in the Russian colonies in the New World has not yet been fully studied, since researchers have usually been attracted only by the activities of women who came to Alaska from Russia and Europe. However, the bulk of the female population of Alaska at that time was not made up of them but rather of Unangan (Aleuts), and Alutiiq/Sugpiaq, and other Alaska Natives, and from the very beginning of Russian colonization Indigenous women were used in work by the newcomers, often in a forced way. The scale of the use of female labor increased sharply after the founding of permanent Russian settlements in America (from 1784). Only after naval officers came to power in the colonies (from 1818) did the labor of Indigenous women began to be regularly rewarded, albeit very insignificantly. The natives of the metropolis, of whom there were always very few in the colonies, mainly kept up the households and only occasionally worked as servants, livestock tenders, midwives, and caretakers of schools for girls. Their contribution to the general labor effort was not comparable to the scale of the work of Indigenous women.

Street network and land use in the slum of Chouf Lekdad in Sétif (Algeria)

The phenomenon of slums in Algeria dates back to the 1930s following the deterioration of the rural economy and the mass exodus to the big cities. After independence, this phenomenon was accentuated and generalized to several towns. State efforts to eradicate informal settlements and relocate their inhabitants have not succeeded in solving this problem; on the contrary, slums have evolved into permanent settlements. The Chouf Lekdad district in Sétif illustrates this evolution and this change in status, hence the need to take a different look at this type of district. The objective of this work is to explore the spatial configuration of the Chouf Lekdad district through the study of its network of streets and the distribution of houses in space. To achieve this, we opted for the theory of space syntax using the axial map, all-line analysis and the Visibility graph analysis (VGA). The results revealed a hierarchy of streets and spaces as well as the importance, of certain areas such as mechanical access and the center of the slum.

Coetzee's Carcer[e]al State: Michael K as Hunter-Gatherer

In Life & Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee appears thoroughly persuaded by those anthropological theories—still emerging at the time of the novel's publication—that were reconceiving hunter-gatherer bands as happier, healthier, better-fed, more leisured, and less socially stratified communities than the permanent settlements of agriculturalists. By depicting Michael as a nutritionally and spiritually satisfied forager upon the karoo and by figuring the labor camps in which he is intermittently confined as epitomes of the Neolithic (and subsequent) grain state, Coetzee endorses those intellectual currents that have now supplanted the optimistic narrative of the Agricultural Revolution with that of the Agricultural Trap. In short, the novel figures the adoption of farming as a hedonic catastrophe for the great mass of humankind. Thus, critics who register their disappointment with the novel's supposed political quietism have failed to grasp the text's longue durée concerns or to realize that Michael refuses to aid the guerillas because their victory would only impose upon him a different version of agro-culture. By the same token, many critics' insistence that Michael is a vaguely allegorical figure offering some unrealizable alternative lifeway is refined into sharper focus by the revelation of his anthropological specificity.

Are migration and settlement environment-driven? Environment-related residential preferences of migrants in China

This paper evaluates the relative weight of local contextual factors (including environment-related factors, labor market, social services, housing market, and migratory patterns) in shaping the “relative stickiness” of migrants at the city level in China. Previous studies focused on the volume, ratio, and pattern of migration while ignoring the complexity of the place-bound “political-industrial ecology” (PIE) that would reinforce or stiffen the migrants' “stickiness” to the destination city. This paper uses the city-level data of migrants' intention ratios of permanent urban settlement and home-buying, respectively, as a pair of proxy measures of the city's relative stickiness and attractiveness. We use Multi-Scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) to detect the variation of migrants' sensitivity to environmental reconstruction-related factors at the city level in China. Our analysis reveals a north-south divide in migrants' stickiness in China, which is opposite to the conventional understanding that the migrants are stickier to the high-wage and high-quality ecological environment. Different PIE in North China and South China can explain why migrants are stickier to North China that have negative environmental externalities, while rapidly flowing into and frequently out of the south-southeast coast which has richer environment-related amenities. It is revealed that the relative stickiness of migrants is also attributable to the specific migratory pattern, institutional context, and cultural distance, as embedded in the varied PIE in a country as geographically diverse as China. The findings support the notion of PIE where an uncertain and nonlinear relationship exists between the environment and migration. The social services and migratory pattern usually outweigh the environmental factors in the migrants' settlement and home-buying decision-making in China today.

Open Spaces in the European Alps—GIS-Based Analysis and Implications for Spatial Planning from a Transnational Perspective

This article presents an open space concept of areas that are kept permanently free from buildings, technical infrastructure, and soil sealing. In the European Alps, space is scarce because of the topography; conflicts often arise between competing land uses such as permanent settlements and commercial activity. However, the presence of open spaces is important for carbon sequestration and the prevention of natural hazards, especially given climate change. A GIS-based analysis was conducted to identify an alpine-wide inventory of large-scale near-natural areas, or simply stated, open spaces. The method used identified the degree of infrastructure development for natural landscape units. Within the Alpine Convention perimeter, near-natural areas (with a degree of infrastructural development of up to 20%) account for a share of 51.5%. Only 14.5% of those areas are highly protected and are mostly located in high altitudes of over 1500 m or 2000 m above sea level. We advocate that the remaining Alpine open spaces must be preserved through the delimitation of more effective protection mechanisms, and green corridors should be safeguarded through spatial planning. To enhance the ecological connectivity of open spaces, there is the need for tailored spatial and sectoral planning strategies to prevent further landscape fragmentation and to coordinate new forms of land use for renewable energy production.

THE DYNAMICS OF TREMATODE PREVALENCE IN TWO PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS OF THE PONTO-AZOV MOLLUSK <i>LITHOGLYPHUS NATICOIDES</i> (C. PFEIFFER, 1828) (GASTROPODA, HYDROBIIDAE) AT THE NORTH-EASTERN BORDER OF ITS RANGE

The freshwater gastropod mollusk Lithoglyphus naticoides (C. Pfeiffer, 1828) is one of the most successful invasive species in waterbodies of the Volga River basin. One of the negative consequences of its spread is range expansion of trematode species, some of which are highly pathogenic for fish, fish-eating birds and mammals. The aim of this study is to analyze the formation features of the trematode fauna in settlements of L. naticoides at the north-eastern border of its range (the Rybinsk Reservoir). It is found that the formation of the first permanent settlement of L. naticoides took place in 2005-2010 in coastal shallow waters in the lower part of the Volga reach of the reservoir. There was no rapid spread of the mollusk throughout the entire water area of the reservoir outside the Volga reach zone with a relatively high mineral content of water. However, in 2011-2019, the formation of a new large settlement of L. naticoides was recorded in the upper part of the Volga reach characterized by faster flow. A relatively low density of mature individuals in the settlements of L. naticoides (up to 50 ind./m) makes it possible for at least five trematode species to complete their life cycle: Apophallus muehlingi (Jägerskiöld, 1899), Apophallus (= Rossicotrema ) donicus (Skrjabin et Lindtrop, 1919), Parasymphylodora markewitschi Kulakowskaja, 1947, Nicolla skrjabini (Iwanitzky, 1928), Sanguinicola volgensis (Razin, 1929). The prevalence of parthenitae of certain species depends on the reservoir water level regime but the overall infection of L. naticoides can exceed 90%. The slow-flowing lower part of the Volga reach is characterized by the dominance of P. markewitschi and trematodes of the genus Apophallus , but N. skrjabini and S. volgensis dominate in the upper section, which is close to the river type. In the future in the Rybinsk reservoir, we can expect naturalization of other trematode species associated with L. naticoides within its range.

Revisiting Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) body size change in the southern Levant: A case for anthropogenic impact.

The average body size of human prey animals in archaeological sites is influenced by myriad environmental, physiological and anthropogenic variables. When combined with supporting evidence, body size has the potential to provide a proxy for several variables of fundamental interest to archaeologists including climatic change, food availability and hunting impacts, among other things. In the southern Levant changes in mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) body size in the Late Pleistocene were initially interpreted as evidence for a climatic downturn, but the picture has become increasingly murky as data has grown. Here we reconsider trends in gazelle body size using an updated dataset from the Mediterranean zone that spans the Early Epipaleolithic to the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (ca. 24,000–9,500 cal BP). Our results reveal that gazelle were smallest in the Early and Middle Epipaleolithic (Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran), reached their largest size in the early Late Epipaleolithic (Early Natufian) and then shrunk slightly before stabilizing in size through the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic. We see no evidence that sex ratio, or climatic factors influenced this trend. Instead, we explore the role of human impacts on gazelle populations and their habitats as they grew in earnest at the beginning of the Late Epipaleolithic when people first began to settle into more permanent communities. Initially, in the Early and Late Natufian, anthropogenic impacts related to more intensive hunting and the increased footprint of more permanent settlements on the landscape. This may have pushed gazelle numbers below what could be supported by the environment, thus increasing the amount of food available for each animal and hence average body size. Later, as humans began to cultivate plants, manage animals and establish permanent villages, avoidance of humans and livestock by gazelle, and greater stability in food and water availability provided by agriculture, may have similarly reduced gazelle population size and intraspecific competition, thus allowing individual animals to grow larger on average.

‘Ways to stick around’: im/mobility strategies of ageing, temporary migrants in Dubai

ABSTRACT In spite of the strict migration regimes that prevent permanent settlement and naturalisation, migrants have, for decades, made the UAE their unofficial home, something that has led to the existence of subsequent generations of non-citizens who are born there. However, reaching the age of 65 marks retirement for migrants, who can no longer receive work visas in the UAE. Prolonging residency is possible, yet without social security and pensions, maintaining a decent life requires significant financial investment and reliance on family and social networks. Based on interviews with the adult children of first-generation migrants from the ‘Global South’, this paper provides insights into a number of strategies their parents develop in order to navigate restrictive immigration regimes upon retirement in the UAE. Most migrants prefer to stay put in the UAE upon retirement, where their children continue to live. Drawing on ‘immobility’ debates, this paper argues that immobility is an active – and relatively privileged – response to restrictive immigration policies in the UAE that enforce mobility upon retirement. Whilst a preference for ‘ageing in the UAE’ is often costly and precarious, older migrants’ social and emotional attachments often outweigh economic reasons to leave, as this paper shows.

The effect of air pollution on migrants’ permanent settlement intention: Evidence from China

Few studies have explored the relationship between air pollution and settlement intention. In this study, we fill the gap by investigating the impact of air pollution on migrants' settlement intention and analyzing its heterogeneous effect and potential mechanisms. We find migrants are more likely to settle down in cities with clean air than in those with dirty air. The results are consistent when different air quality indices are used and the endogeneity problem is mitigated using thermal inversion as an instrument for air quality. Heterogeneity analyses show that low-SES (social economic status) migrants are more likely to migrate out due to polluted air. The mechanisms results show that air quality may affect the long-term settlement intention of migrants through two channels: the direct subjective attitude effect and indirect health effect. In addition, we also find that air pollution only affects migrants' permanent settlement intention, while it has no impact on their short-run stay intention. Our results shed light on air pollution as an important contributor to migrants' migration and settlement choice and as a determinant in discussions on cities’ brain drain.

Experimental investigation of the seismic performance of caisson foundations supporting bridge piers

Allowing the transitory attainment of bearing capacity of caisson foundations supporting bridge piers during strong seismic events can lead to substantial optimisation in their design and major cost savings. If the approach of capacity design is applied to geotechnical systems, the temporary triggering of plastic mechanisms may be permitted if the resulting permanent displacements are smaller than given threshold values. To validate this design approach, the seismic performance of caisson foundations was assessed through dynamic centrifuge testing on reduced-scale models. This paper presents the results of two tests in which a caisson–pier–deck system was embedded in a typical alluvial deposit and subjected to a series of earthquakes of different intensities. The caissons were founded on soft and very soft clay, to either avoid or induce the attainment of plastic soil behaviour under the same seismic inputs. It is shown that both yielding and failure of the layer of very soft clay limit inertial forces transmitted to the superstructure, validating the design approach and some useful empirical relations available in the literature. In contrast, inelastic soil behaviour implies accumulation of permanent rotation and settlement of the system, which must be carefully evaluated to check for fulfilment of performance requirements.

Housing Security and Settlement Intentions of Migrants in Urban China

A huge gap remains in the urbanization rate between China and developed countries, although China has experienced a rapid growth in urbanization rate over the last decade. Critical to the future growth of urbanization is how to increase the settlement intentions of migrants. This study uses land supply for security housing as an exogeneous shock to the supply of security housing in the near future to explore how housing security is associated with intentions to settle down in destination cities of the migrant population. We found that increased land supply for security housing promotes the settlement intentions of migrants. Moreover, housing security is positively associated with permanent settlement intentions, while its relation to temporary settlement intentions is not significant. Lastly, the effect of housing security is larger for households with more housing expenditure. Our results have important theoretical and practical significance for the research on urban development and social welfare.

“My second choice was Armenia”: motivations for diasporic return migration among Iranian Armenians to Armenia

ABSTRACT This article examines the concept of ethnic return migration in the permanent settlement of Iranian Armenians in the Republic of Armenia. Scholarship on ethnic return migration (or diasporic “homecoming”) almost exclusively focuses on mobility to or from affluent Western multicultural democracies in North America, Europe and Oceania. This article therefore provides a new opportunity to test the generalizability of existing models on return migration. Iranian Armenians fit within what the scholarship refers to as ethnic or diasporic return migrant – that is, migrations motivated, largely, by affective orientation to ethnicity and perceived home country. However, these migrations are not primarily motivated by ethnic or national longing for an ancestral homeland, but rather a variety of economic and political reasons sit behind these migrants’ decisions to choose Armenia instead of moving to a Western country or remaining in Iran.

Creating hospitable urban spaces: A multicultural city for refugees and asylum seekers

Australia is one of a handful of countries offering permanent settlement to refugees. It also has some of the harshest border-controlling measures. Drawing on Derrida’s writing on hospitality, and related work on hospitality’s affective and spatial dimensions, we examine the micropolitics of hospitality towards forced migrants in an Australian city (Brisbane). Our interest is in the affordances of affective hospitality to interrupt practices of differential inclusion in the city. The first part of the paper examines practices of embedded activism in health and education encounters, while the second part explores affect’s influence on the protest sensibility in urban movements against mandatory detention. The paper furthers understandings of the embodied and affective dimensions of hospitality in social justice work performed in urban spaces.

Graves, landmarks, or sacrificial monuments? The human osteology and paleopathology of the Bronze Age burial cairns in Finland

During the Bronze Age (ca. 1800-500 BC), cremation became the dominant burial practice in Finland. These Bronze Age (BA) cremations have been excavated from burial cairns in Finland for more than 150 years. This work provides new information on human osteology from this previously understudied area in northeastern Europe. The results cover the earliest period in Finnish prehistory for which large-scale human osteological assemblages are available. In this article, we present a comprehensive human osteological study on the curated bone collections of the National Museum of Finland and other provincial museums, and provide new radiocarbon datings of the cairns. The results show that the cairns were most often used for single burials, without accompanying animals or artefacts. Double and multiple burials became more common in the Iron Age. Porotic hyperostosis was a common finding. Signs of osteoarthritis are more common in the central Satakunta region, where Iron Age burial practices first emerged already during the Late Bronze Age. These observed changes can be connected to changes in subsistence strategies that also enabled permanent settlements

Mitigating liquefaction-induced displacements of shallow foundation using helical piles

During previous earthquakes, displacements of shallow foundations on liquefiable sites caused significant damage to overlying super-structures leading to casualties and catastrophic economic loss. Various countermeasures have been developed to lessen liquefaction-related damages while minimising cost and environmental impacts. This study aims to evaluate the use of helical piles as a possible technique to mitigate the settlement, tilting, and sliding of shallow foundations during seismic liquefaction. For this purpose, 12 1g shaking table tests were conducted on loose saturated sand under harmonic base input for (a) free-field condition, (b) a model foundation on the soil surface and (c) a model foundation underpinned by helical piles. The effects of input amplitudes and the number of helical piles were investigated in terms of acceleration response, excess pore-water pressure and foundation displacements. The results confirmed the satisfactory performance of helical piles in reducing shallow foundation displacements. In particular, the mean permanent settlements were reduced by 45 and 75% when using four and eight helical piles, respectively. Similar trends were observed for the shallow foundation permanent tilting and sliding: permanent tilting was reduced by 30 and 59% when using four and eight helical piles, respectively, while these results were 45 and 68% for the sliding.

Prehistory of Kinship

As observed in recent centuries, the contemporary variety of kinship systems reflects millennia of human migration, cultural inheritance, adaptation, and diversification. This review describes key developments in prehistoric kinship, from matricentric hominin evolution to the Neolithic transition to agriculture and the heterogeneous resilience of matriliny. Starting with our hominin ancestors, kinship evolved among a cooperative breeding species to multilevel group structure among human hunter-gatherers, to substantial kinship changes brought on by the origins of intensified farming, to permanent settlements and unequal resource access. This review takes the approach that new forms of subsistence facilitated new equations of reproductive success, which changed cultural norms of kinship systems and heritable wealth. Subsequently, the formation of complex societies diminished kinship as the primary organizing principle of society. The article describes new methodologies and theoretical developments, along with critiques of bioarchaeological interpretations of prehistoric kinship.

Transnational Characters in Bhattarai's Muglan

This article deals with the transnational characters used in Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s novel Muglan (1974). Based on the centuries long trend of Nepali people’s migration across the border and the pains they have been undergoing, the novel has presented three types of characters to show the types of Nepali transnational community living in India and Bhutan. The first type is that of transnational mobiles who leave Nepal for job and education, want to return to Nepal and cannot have any type of permanent settlement in the hostland. The main character Sutar is one of such characters. The highest number of characters in the novel is of this type. The second type of characters are diasporic ones who have left Nepal and have been permanently settled in Bhutan. Characters from the Nepali speaking community in Bhutan are of this type. The lowest number of characters in the novel are transnational outsiders who visit India from Nepal for a short time. The people who go for pilgrimage and cross-border purchase of everyday goods are the characters of this type. The discussion section of the article analyses the causes and effects of such migration resulting into the creation of such characters. The theoretical modality used for the analysis is Janine Dahinden and Steven Vertovec’s ideas of transnationalism. This article will be useful for the researchers and critics who want to study Nepali texts from transnational perspective.