The authors set a relatively small and little-known corpus of human remains recovered from Iron Age wetland contexts in Norway in a wider theoretical framework of sacrifice and personhood. The material studied, fragmentary skeletal remains in wetland contexts, juxtaposed with the better-known bog body tradition of northern Europe, offers a base from which to query constructions and perceptions of personhood. Situating the discussion in a contextual framework and relational underpinnings of ways of being, the authors examine whether or not the assumption that personhood rests in a human body can be implicitly inferred when confronted with ancient human remains, and what this may imply for interpretations of human bodies in votive settings.

The essay investigates the occupation of the city of Rijeka (1919–20) by an irregular army led by Italian poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, focusing on the concepts of sovereignism and populism. While people with different mentalities and ideological horizons took part in the endeavour, it was d'Annunzio that gave the occupation its profound meaning. The poet attempted to put into practice his political vision centered around a ‘noble people’, composed of warriors and producers, opposed to the liberal elites and in competition with revolutionary socialist movements. In this sense, the Free State of Rijeka grew into the prototype of a new society based on the integration of racial, plebiscitary, corporate, aesthetic, and political themes. At the same time, the city became a beacon of opposition to the new international order proposed by US president Woodrow Wilson, since it advocated and worked towards the birth of sovereignty for small countries resisting new supranational bodies such as the League of Nations.

This article analyzes the instrumentalization of “China” in contacts between the Ming and Qing dynasties and Siam-Ayutthaya. It focuses both on the state-to-state relations and those between various members of the Siamese and the imperial societies. “China” and “Chinese-ness” stood for forms of ascribed identity within the Sinocentric world, for a form of social distinction, and for one of many identities assumed in the games of political loyalty. For the Ming and Qing empires, inclusion of a foreign land within “China” was conducted through the ritual and administrative fictions that situated Ayutthaya within a hierarchy vis-à-vis the imperial capital. Beyond the state's discourses, participation in a vaguely defined Chinese culture were means of building social networks within the merchant and official communities in Ayutthaya. For the junkmen that connected Ayutthaya and South China, multiple Chinese identities were instrumentalized and inflected according to the needs and necessities of the moment.

Early Neolithic funerary practices and the meaning of complete ceramic vessels found isolated are poorly researched topics in western Iberia. However, recent archaeological salvage excavations at Armazéns Sommer and Palácio Ludovice in Lisbon have revealed individual burial pits of male individuals laid in a foetal position and directly associated with necked vessels. These discoveries suggest that finds of isolated vessels, known since the beginning of the twentieth century in Portugal and usually found fortuitously apparently without archaeological context, may also have originally belonged to similar burials, unnoticed by their finders. This hypothesis opens new perspectives for the interpretation of such finds, which are inventoried in the present article.

The Russian Arctic regions have a significant geographical, historical, and economic connection with the Northern Sea Route (NSR); the successful implementation of Russia’s geo-political and geo-economic strategies in the Arctic is mainly dependent upon the socio-economic situation in these regions. Population migration is a determinant of the current and future labour potential of the supporting regions; compared to natural growth, it has been a key driver of population and an indicator of the quality of human resources. The research herein considered the factors and impacts of migration on the quality of human resources in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation (AZRF). Russian population census data for 2002 and 2010, and statistical materials were analysed by age and migrant education to characterise the quality of human resources. To identify the causes of migration, the quantitative data analyses were supplemented with results from sociological studies and expert assessments. An index methodology was used to compare the quality of life and human capital development of the Arctic regions. Accordingly, most of the analysed Arctic regions showed high indicators of human development, which were higher than the national average in education, but significantly lower in longevity. Further, most of the Arctic regions occupied lower positions in Russian regional quality of life. It was concluded that the AZRF regions hold high quality of human capital; however, since high-quality living conditions are lacking, they serve as donors of human capital to other parts of the country. These regions would require external labour resources in the near future due to the planned large-scale projects for the development of the NSR, concurrent reduction and ageing of labour resources, and demand changes in the labour market. The government’s socio-economic policies would determine the scale, dynamics, and direction of migration, as well as their impact on the demographics and labour potential of the supporting regions of the NSR.