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The article will comprise a discussion on the continual aspect of landscape based on a burial place in the eastern part of Estonia. This burial place was used for collective dispersed burials into a stone grave from the 3rd to 11th centuries AD. In the second half of the 11th century the burial tradition changed, and from that time on richly furnished inhumations were practiced in the very place next to the stone grave. Previously, I have interpreted such a change in social and religious landscape as a rupture, but it can also be considered as a continuation. The physical landscape remained the same, while new religious rituals (individual inhumations instead of collective cremations) were starting to be practiced at the same location. I will argue that there were various reasons for using this place in the landscape for such a long period of time. The main reason, however, was economic, for the place was probably used as a harbour site. But as practical everyday life was probably closely connected to religious life during that period, I will argue that there was also a religious importance to the place.

The article examines T. E. Hulme's reading of Georges Sorel as a politically transversal thinker of moral renewal. It argues that, by distancing Sorel from syndicalism and by reading him as a thinker of moral absolutes, this interpretation constituted an act of resignification. This is shown by contrasting Hulme's reading with the dominant patterns of the British reception of Sorel. What emerges is the striking, and self-aware, originality of Hulme's positions. This originality, we argue, was made possible by the European scope of Hulme's intellectual horizon, which gave him the resources to read Sorel differently. Finally, we ask why Hulme read Sorel in this way. We suggest that Hulme was working through a contradiction between his relativistic philosophical education and an increasing need for political commitment. Sorel's ethics of commitment grounded in myth were a way to move from Bergsonian openness to a metaphysics capable of conceptualizing moral and political absolutes.

Doktoritöö vaatleb mälupoliitika arenguid Poolas ja Ukrainas alates 1989./1990. aasta demokraatlikest siiretest, seda eeskätt läbi seadusandliku prisma. Neid kahte juhtumit võib käsitleda esinduslikena mälupoliitiliste debattide intensiivsuse osas regioonis ning doktoritöö seadiski eesmärgiks selgitada „mäluseaduste“ arengu üldisi mustreid ning selgitada lähemalt nn karistusõiguslikul tasemel vastu võetud seadusandlike aktide spetsiifilisi protsesse Poola ja Ukraina parlamentides. Dissertatsioonis uurisin süstemaatiliselt kahe juhtumiriigi ühismälu reguleerimise protsessiga seonduvaid poliitilisi arenguid. Doktoritööga panustan teadusala arengusse kolmel viisil. Kontseptuaalsel tasandil eristab väitekiri ühismälu reguleerimise valdkonna üleminekuõigluse poliitikatest. Käsitlesin kriitiliselt „mäluseadusi“ kontseptualiseerivaid töid näitamaks, kuidas kontseptuaalset kategooriat saab kasutada kollektiivse mälu reguleerimise mustrite analüüsimisel. Iseäranis olulisena uuendasin Eric Heinze tööst lähtudes mäluseaduste kontseptualiseerimist, suhestades selle omakorda teiste temaatiliste käsitlustega. Empiiriliselt toetub doktoritöö kahe juhtumiriigi parlamentides vastu võetud mälupoliitikaga seotud aktide ammendavale ja süstemaatilisele uurimisele. Doktoritöö analüüs põhines unikaalsel, maksimaalselt ammendaval seadusandlike aktide kogumil, mis koosnes vastavalt 447 Ukraina ning 719 Poola parlamendi alamkojas ning Senatis vastu võetud aktist. Analüütiliselt selgitab väitekiri erinevuste põhjuseid mälu ja mäletamist reguleeriva seadusloome komposiitmustrites Poolas ja Ukrainas (uurimus 1) ning karistusõiguslikul tasemel vastu võetud seadusandlike aktidega seotud spetsiifilisi protsesse (uurimus 2). Kahe uurimuse kaasamine väitekirja tulenes soovist illustreerida „mäluseaduse“ kontseptsiooni operatsionaliseerimise võimalusi juhtumiriikide mälupoliitiliste protsesside empiirilisel uurimisel. Uurimus 1 formuleeris kaks hüpoteesi parlamenditaseme mäluprotsesside regulatsiooni ajastuse kohta. Doktoritöö empiiriline analüüs vaidlustas olemasolevaid teoreetilisi vaatenurki, mille kohaselt peaksid mälupoliitilised protsessid algama varakult pärast siirdeprotsessi toimumist (üleminekuõigluse hüpotees). Selle asemel leidis uurimuses 1 toetust teine hüpotees (mälupoliitika hüpotees), mida tutvutatakse väitekirja sissejuhatuses. Uurimus 1 argumenteeris, et mälupoliitilise võimuvõitluse struktuur rahvusparlamentides tõi kaasa mäluseaduste profiilide hilisema intensiivistumise nii Poolas kui Ukrainas. Uurimus 2 keskendus Poola ja Ukraina parlamentides karistusõigluslikul tasemel vastu võetud seadusandlike aktide esilekerkimise protsessi analüüsile. Keskseks küsimuseks oli, miks erinesid Poolas ja Ukrainas teatud mälu- või ajaloopoliitilisi seisukohtade avaldamist keelustavad seadused oma karistusliku iseloomu poolest? Kuigi mõlemas riigis keelustati teatud riigi minevikku puudutavatest teemadest rääkimine, erines vastavates seadustes oluliselt karistuslike meetmete ulatus. Uurimus 2 leidsin, et Poola Seimis ja Ukraina Ülemraadas välja kujunenud lähenemine rahvuslikule ajalookirjutusele ennustas variatiivsust karistuslikes meetmetes ajaloost kõnelemist puudutavas seadusandluses. The dissertation investigates the politics of memory laws in Poland and Ukraine since the democratizing moments of 1989/1990. Considering two cases emblematic of the intensity of the politics of memory in the region, the thesis aimed to explain the overall patterns of memory legislation evolution and explicate the specific processes of punitive memory law-making in the parliaments of Poland and Ukraine. It systematically investigated the political dynamics behind collective memory regulation in two country-cases. I contribute to the state of the field in three ways. On a conceptual level, the thesis distinguishes the domain of collective memory regulation from transitional justice politics. It critically revisited the works over the concept of ‘memory law’ in order to show how this conceptual category can be used to analyze the patterns of collective memory regulation. In particular, I introduced a novelty with regard to the conceptualization of memory law originally formulated by Eric Heinze against the backdrop of other works in the field. Empirically, the dissertation provided an exhaustive and systematic investigation of commemorative lawmaking in the parliaments of two country-cases. The dissertation advanced its analysis based on a unique set of legislation consisting of 447 and 719 parliamentary acts issued by Ukrainian and Polish legislatures, respectively. Analytically, the dissertation explicated the reasons behind the patterns of collective memory regulation (Study 1) and the specific processes of the emergence of punitive memory laws (Study 2) in Poland and Ukraine. The rationale for dividing the dissertation into Study 1 and Study 2 was to illustrate the potential of operationalizing the concept of memory law into the empirical investigation of the politics of memory of country-cases. Study 1 examined the patterns of commemorative lawmaking in the parliaments of Poland and Ukraine, asking why there was a variation in intensity and propensity of commemorative lawmaking occurring in the politics of Polish Sejm and Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada. Study 1 formulated two hypotheses regarding the politics of memorialisation. It set an aim to verify these hypotheses through an empirical investigation of the politics of memory laws in two countries. Furthermore, Study 2 engaged in process analysis of the emergence of punitive memory laws in the national parliaments of Poland and Ukraine. It asked why there was a variation in criminal punishment functions between Polish and Ukrainian laws on historical denialism. While each country-case outlawed certain instances of historical speech over the national past, the severity of prohibitions found in the relevant laws was different. As an analytical added value of the investigation, Study 2 argued that the types of orientation towards national historiographies taken in the politics of the Sejm and the Verkhovna Rada predicted the variation in the formulation of punitive provisions between Polish and Ukrainian laws on historical speech. https://www.ester.ee/record=b5507839

We thank the wet laboratory teams at MPI-SHH, the PalaeoBARN at the University of Oxford and the University of York. We thank David K. James and Lucia Hui of the Alameda County Vector Control Services District for procuring the rat used for the de novo genome. We are grateful to Sarah Nagel at Max Planck Institute for the Evolutionary Anthropology for the single-stranded library preparation, and Dovetail Genomics for the de novo genome assembly service. We thank Maria Spyrou for her suggestions and comments. We acknowledge Ewan Chipping and Helena England (University of York), Carl Phillips, Veronica Lindholm (Ålands Museum), Christine McDonnell and Nienke van Doorn (York Archaeological Trust), Emile Mittendorf (Gemeente Deventer), Inge Riemersma (Archaeological depot, Provincie Zuid-Holland), the Turkish Ministry of Culture & Tourism, Jan Frolík and Iva Herichová (Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague), Franz Humer and Eduard Pollhammer (Archaeological Park Carnuntum), Dorottya B. Nyékhelyi and László Daróczi-Szabó (Budapest History Museum), Institut National du Patrimoine (Tunisia), University of Barcelona, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Project HUM2006-03432/HIST), Spanish Ministry of Culture (program of archaeological excavations abroad 2009); Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for the Development (2009), Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC), Vujadin Ivanisević, Nemanja Marković and Ivan Bugarski (Archaeological Institute 809 Belgrade), the Field Museum Chicago, the British National History Museum and the American Museum of Natural History for providing materials and support. G.L. and A.J. were supported by the ERC (grant ERC-2013-StG-337574-UNDEAD) and A.J. was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council Doctoral Training Program. D.O. was supported by Wellcome (Small Grant in Humanities and Social Science 209817/Z) and the British Academy / Leverhulme Trust (Small Research Grant SG170938). E.R. was supported by Estonian Research Council grant No PRG29. R.K. was supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences institutional support (RVO:67985912). S.V.-L. was supported by the ERC (grant ERC-StG- 716298 ZooMWest). H.E. was funded by an ERC grant (206148) through the Sealinks Project. A.H.B was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2017-315). The de novo genome assembly, population genomics study, and radiocarbon dating were funded by the Max Planck Society. The distribution of the black rat (Rattus rattus) has been heavily influenced by its association with humans. The dispersal history of this non-native commensal rodent across Europe, however, remains poorly understood, and different introductions may have occurred during the Roman and medieval periods. Here, in order to reconstruct the population history of European black rats, we generated a de novo genome assembly of the black rat, 67 ancient black rat mitogenomes and 36 ancient nuclear genomes from sites spanning the 1st-17th centuries CE in Europe and North Africa. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA confirm that black rats were introduced into the Mediterranean and Europe from Southwest Asia. Genomic analyses of the ancient rats reveal a population turnover in temperate Europe between the 6th and 10th centuries CE, coincident with an archaeologically attested decline in the black rat population. The near disappearance and re-emergence of black rats in Europe may have been the result of the breakdown of the Roman Empire, the First Plague Pandemic, and/or post-Roman climatic cooling. Peer reviewed

Along most of the European littoral, oysters were appreciated as a wholesome and palatable food from the Stone Age onwards, yet were transported much further from their natural habitats when long-distance trade in marine foodstuffs began in medieval times. The brackish waters of the Baltic Sea are not considered a suitable environment for this mollusc, and therefore all archaeological oyster shell finds are the result of import to the eastern Baltic. In this study, over 1000 shells found in different medieval and early modern archaeological contexts in Estonia were analysed, and the obtained data recorded in a data repository. Some conclusions are set out, based on shell size and shape, and breakage traces, but more detailed taphonomic studies are left for the future. This study identifies the earliest imports of oysters recorded by archaeological material and written sources. Both show records not much earlier than the 16th century AD. Although no information is preserved about the exact origin of oysters imported to Estonia, the oyster beds most probably exploited are those in the central eastern North Sea, i.e., the Wadden Sea.

Abstract The Lithuanian onshore section of the south-eastern Baltic Sea region, or the so-called Lithuanian Maritime Region (LMR) – a belt several tens of kilometres wide along the Baltic Sea coast – is characterised by a complicated Quaternary structure and many of unsolved problems related to stratigraphy and palaeogeography. The inter-till lacustrine sediments widespread in the middle part of the Pleistocene thickness play a key role in solving the mentioned problems. The primary inter-till sediments were attributed, as a single lithostratigraphic unit, to the late Saalian Glaciation (MIS 6, Pamarys Sub-Formation; according to the Lithuanian Quaternary Stratigraphic Scheme). Subsequent detailed investigations show that the investigated inter-till succession represents a more complicated sediment complex formed over a wide time interval from the Saalian ice sheet decay at the very end of MIS 6 to the beginning of severe climate cooling during MIS 4. This standpoint is confirmed by the results of a few series of OSL and IR-OSL datings of inter-till sediments, as well as by data of pollen and diatom analysis. The more detailed stratigraphic subdivision of the inter-till sedimentary complex offers a new significant insight into the regional stratigraphic scheme of the Quaternary. As a result of the mentioned investigations, a new original reconstruction of the palaeogeographic situation in the LMR during the MIS 6 – MIS 3 time span was carried out. The lowermost part of the investigated inter-till sediments, attributed to MIS 6, could be correlated with the third MIS 6 warming in Northern Eurasia about 155 ka ago. The reconstruction of the palaeoenvironmental changes starting from MIS 6 and lasting to MIS 3 shows that the Eemian Sea MIS 5e in age was absent in the LMR, while part of the south-eastern Baltic Sea region was covered by a continental ice sheet during MIS 4 and, possibly, the very beginning of MIS 3.

Abstract. Based on the Baltic Earth Assessment Reports of this thematic issue in Earth System Dynamics and recent peer-reviewed literature, current knowledge of the effects of global warming on past and future changes in climate of the Baltic Sea region is summarised and assessed. The study is an update of the Second Assessment of Climate Change (BACC II) published in 2015 and focuses on the atmosphere, land, cryosphere, ocean, sediments, and the terrestrial and marine biosphere. Based on the summaries of the recent knowledge gained in palaeo-, historical, and future regional climate research, we find that the main conclusions from earlier assessments still remain valid. However, new long-term, homogenous observational records, for example, for Scandinavian glacier inventories, sea-level-driven saltwater inflows, so-called Major Baltic Inflows, and phytoplankton species distribution, and new scenario simulations with improved models, for example, for glaciers, lake ice, and marine food web, have become available. In many cases, uncertainties can now be better estimated than before because more models were included in the ensembles, especially for the Baltic Sea. With the help of coupled models, feedbacks between several components of the Earth system have been studied, and multiple driver studies were performed, e.g. projections of the food web that include fisheries, eutrophication, and climate change. New datasets and projections have led to a revised understanding of changes in some variables such as salinity. Furthermore, it has become evident that natural variability, in particular for the ocean on multidecadal timescales, is greater than previously estimated, challenging our ability to detect observed and projected changes in climate. In this context, the first palaeoclimate simulations regionalised for the Baltic Sea region are instructive. Hence, estimated uncertainties for the projections of many variables increased. In addition to the well-known influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation, it was found that also other low-frequency modes of internal variability, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, have profound effects on the climate of the Baltic Sea region. Challenges were also identified, such as the systematic discrepancy between future cloudiness trends in global and regional models and the difficulty of confidently attributing large observed changes in marine ecosystems to climate change. Finally, we compare our results with other coastal sea assessments, such as the North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment (NOSCCA), and find that the effects of climate change on the Baltic Sea differ from those on the North Sea, since Baltic Sea oceanography and ecosystems are very different from other coastal seas such as the North Sea. While the North Sea dynamics are dominated by tides, the Baltic Sea is characterised by brackish water, a perennial vertical stratification in the southern subbasins, and a seasonal sea ice cover in the northern subbasins.

Abstract The shift from carbon-intensive to low-carbon energy systems has profound justice implications as some regions are likely to lose as much as gain from decarbonization processes. Increasing calls have been made to adopt a ‘whole systems’ perspective on energy justice. Drawing on the Multi-level Perspective on socio-technical transitions this paper presents a new comprehensive framework of energy justice in system innovation, proposing to map injustices along three dimensions: 1) multiple spatial scales (regional, national, international); 2) different time horizons (currently experienced vs. anticipated injustices); 3) connections to transition dynamics (injustices related to the optimization of the currently dominant system, destabilization of the incumbent system or the acceleration of alternative solutions in niches). The framework is applied to analyse the ongoing energy transition in Estonia, involving interactions between the incumbent oil shale based regime and wind, solar, nuclear and bioenergy as emerging niche challengers. The content analysis of news items in Estonian media reveals an inventory of 214 distinct incidents of energy injustices across 21 different categories. We find that many experienced and anticipated injustices are deployed, often strategically, by certain actors to advocate specific energy futures and to influence current political choices. From the justice perspective our analysis thus raises a question whether it is ethical to use probable yet currently unrealized injustices related to regime destabilization and niche acceleration as a means to perpetuate injustices related to the optimization of the currently dominant regime.

The geographical location and shape of Apulia, a narrow land stretching out in the sea at the South of Italy, made this region a Mediterranean crossroads connecting Western Europe and the Balkans. Such movements culminated at the beginning of the Iron Age with the Iapygian civilization which consisted of three cultures: Peucetians, Messapians, and Daunians. Among them, the Daunians left a peculiar cultural heritage, with one-of-a-kind stelae and pottery, but, despite the extensive archaeological literature, their origin has been lost to time. In order to shed light on this and to provide a genetic picture of Iron Age Southern Italy, we collected and sequenced human remains from three archaeological sites geographically located in Northern Apulia (the area historically inhabited by Daunians) and radiocarbon dated between 1157 and 275 calBCE. We find that Iron Age Apulian samples are still distant from the genetic variability of modern-day Apulians, they show a degree of genetic heterogeneity comparable with the cosmopolitan Republican and Imperial Roman civilization, even though a few kilometers and centuries separate them, and they are well inserted into the Iron Age Pan-Mediterranean genetic landscape. Our study provides for the first time a window on the genetic make-up of pre-Roman Apulia, whose increasing connectivity within the Mediterranean landscape, would have contributed to laying the foundation for modern genetic variability. In this light, the genetic profile of Daunians may be compatible with an at least partial autochthonous origin, with plausible contributions from the Balkan peninsula. ispartof: MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION vol:39 issue:2 ispartof: location:United States status: published