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Item Open Access WHAT DOES THE COVID-19 CRISIS REVEAL ABOUT INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES?(International Review of Sociology, 2022) Corsi, Marcella; Ryan, J. MichaelWhen the first instances of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were reported in late 2019 and early 2020, there were few people who would have imagined the magnitude of the pandemic that we have experienced up to now. News of the virus seemed contained mostly to the epidemiological community and very few social scientists, especially those outside of health research, were raising much of an eyebrow. It was at that time that IRS editorial board decided to launch a Call for papers to stimulate a debate about the COVID-19 pandemic – the socially constructed classification of the epidemiological spread of the virus – with the aim to develop analyses within a pluralistic research community in social sciences.Item Open Access APPRAISING DISCREPANCIES AND SIMILARITIES IN SEMANTIC NETWORKS USING CONCEPT-CENTERED SUBNETWORKS(Applied Network Science, 2021-09-03) Medeuov, Darkhan; Roth, Camille; Puzyreva, Kseniia; Basov, NikitaThis article proposes an approach to compare semantic networks using conceptcentered sub-networks. A concept-centered sub-network is defned as an induced network whose vertex set consists of the given concept (ego) and all its adjacent concepts (alters) and whose link set consists of all the links between the ego and alters (including alter-alter links). By looking at the vertex and link overlap indices of concept-centered networks we infer semantic similarity of the underlying concepts. We cross-evaluate the semantic similarity by close-reading textual contexts from which networks are derived. We illustrate the approach on written and interview texts from an ethnographic study of food management practice in England.Item Open Access HIGH MITOCHONDRIAL DIVERSITY OF DOMESTICATED GOATS PERSISTED AMONG BRONZE AND IRON AGE PASTORALISTS IN THE INNER ASIAN MOUNTAIN CORRIDOR(Public Library of Science, 2020-05-21) Hermes, Taylor R.; Frachetti, Michael D.; Voyakin, Dmitriy; Yerlomaeva, Antonina S.; Beisenov, Arman Z.; Doumani Dupuy, Paula N.; Papin, Dmitry V.; Matuzeviciute, Giedre Motuzaite; Bayarsaikhan, Jamsranjav; Houle, Jean-Luc; Tishkin, Alexey A.; Nebel, Almut; Krause-Kyora, Ben; Makarewicz, Cheryl A.Goats were initially managed in the Near East approximately 10,000 years ago and spread across Eurasia as economically productive and environmentally resilient herd animals. While the geographic origins of domesticated goats (Capra hircus) in the Near East have been long-established in the zooarchaeological record and, more recently, further revealed in ancient genomes, the precise pathways by which goats spread across Asia during the early Bronze Age (ca. 3000 to 2500 cal BC) and later remain unclear. We analyzed sequences of hypervariable region 1 and cytochrome b gene in the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) of goats from archaeological sites along two proposed transmission pathways as well as geographically intermediary sites. Unexpectedly high genetic diversity was present in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC), indicated by mtDNA haplotypes representing common A lineages and rarer C and D lineages. High mtDNA diversity was also present in central Kazakhstan, while only mtDNA haplotypes of lineage A were observed from sites in the Northern Eurasian Steppe (NES). These findings suggest that herding communities living in montane ecosystems were drawing from genetically diverse goat populations, likely sourced from communities in the Iranian Plateau, that were sustained by repeated interaction and exchange. Notably, the mitochondrial genetic diversity associated with goats of the IAMC also extended into the semi-arid region of central Kazakhstan, while NES communities had goats reflecting an isolated founder population, possibly sourced via eastern Europe or the Caucasus region.Item Open Access SHIFTING SEAS, SHIFTING BOUNDARIES: DYNAMIC MARINE PROTECTED AREA DESIGNS FOR A CHANGING CLIMATE(Public Library of Science, 2020-11-10) Cashion, Tim; Nguyen, Tu; Brink, Talya ten; ten Brink, Talya; Mook, Anne; Palacios-Abrantes, Juliano; Roberts, Sarah M.Marine protected areas (MPAs) are valuable tools for marine conservation that aim to limit human impacts on marine systems and protect valuable species or habitats. However, as species distributions shift due to ocean warming, acidification, and oxygen depletion from climate change, the areas originally designated under MPAs may bear little resemblance to their past state. Different approaches have been suggested for coping with species on the move in conservation. Here, we test the effectiveness of different MPA designs, including dynamic, network, and different directional orientations on protecting shifting species under climate change through ecosystem modeling in a theoretical ecosystem. Our findings suggest that dynamic MPAs may benefit some species (e.g., whiting and anchovy) and fishing fleets, and these benefits can inform the design or adaptation of MPAs worldwide. In addition, we find that it is important to design MPAs with specific goals and to account for the effects of released fishing pressure and species interactions in MPA design.Item Open Access Sacred Geographies in the Eurasian Steppe: The Aqkol Shrine as a Symbol of Kazakh Ethnicity and Religiosity(Sciendo, 2019-12-05) Bigozhin, UlanItem Open Access Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia(Royal Society, 2019-09) Hermes, Taylor R.; Frachetti, Michael D.; Dupuy, Paula Doumani; Mar'yashev, Alexei; Nebel, Almut; Makarewicz, Cheryl A.Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age (ca 2500–2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on local cultivation or subsistence use, while contemporaneous evidence for the use and management of domesticated livestock in the region remains ambiguous. We analysed mitochondrial DNA and multi-stable isotopic ratios (δ13C, δ15N and δ18O) of faunal remains from key pastoralist sites in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan. At ca 2700 BC, Near Eastern domesticated sheep and goat were present at the settlement of Dali, which were also winter foddered with the region's earliest cultivated millet spreading from its centre of domestication in northern China. In the following centuries, millet cultivation and caprine management became increasingly intertwined at the nearby site of Begash. Cattle, on the other hand, received low levels of millet fodder at the sites for millennia. By primarily examining livestock dietary intake, this study reveals that the initial transmission of millet across the mountains of Inner Asia coincided with a substantial connection between pastoralism and plant cultivation, suggesting that pastoralist livestock herding was integral for the westward dispersal of millet from farming societies in China.Item Metadata only Bronze Age Hill Forts: New evidence for defensive sites in the western Tian Shan, China(Archaeological Research in Asia, 2017-11-08) Jia, Peter Weiming; Betts, Alison; Doumani Dupuy, Paula N.; Cong, Dexin; Jia, Xiaobing; Peter Weiming, JiaAbstract This paper reports on the recent discovery in western Xinjiang of three Late Bronze Age walled sites located on high hilltops, with a fourth on a terrace above a river bed. The hilltop sites contain very small clusters of residential structures and overlook one of the richest areas of seasonal pasture in the upper Bortala Valley, in the western Tian Shan. The walls do not fully encircle the residential structures but protect the most vulnerable points of access to the hilltops, and in particular protect against direct access from the pastures. The discovery of these walled sites in the western Tian Shan is surprising and significant in terms of regional patterns of increased social complexity in the Eurasian Late Bronze Age. It is suggested that the walled hilltop sites were lookout posts, with a small garrison of herders prepared to defend the area in the event of attack by rival pastoralist groups, and that in the Late Bronze Age the Upper Bortala Valley was home to a number of pastoralist groups who contested access to the best pastures.Item Metadata only Eurasian textiles: Case studies in exchange during the incipient and later Silk Road periods(Quaternary International, 2017-03-01) Doumani Dupuy, Paula N.; Spengler, Robert N.; Frachetti, Michael D.; Paula N., Doumani DupuyItem Open Access Stoicism or shyness?: Japanese professional matchmakers and new masculine conversational ideals(Journal of Language and Sexuality, 2014-01-01) Alpert, ErikaI examine data from my fieldwork with Japanese professional matchmakers and their attitude towards new, “less masculine” masculinities. Matchmakers’ ideologies of conversation show that they understand “good partners” as having personality traits that are not particularly ascribed to any gender. Consequently, they allow for flexibility in gendered behavior, as long as their clients can be brought within the heterosexual institution of marriage. As in previous work in the field of language and sexuality, I focus on the way that genders and sexualities are performed through language. However, by focusing on matchmakers, I aim to examine the institutional structures and language ideologies that constrain the process of self-fashioning. Like other recent work on topics such as “personal development”, I treat “self-fashioning” as a multiparty process by addressing the role of the expert in constructing the advice by which clients are supposed to (re)fashion themselves.