This catalogue accompanies an exhibition which presents artefacts from burial mounds of the Saka people of East Kazakhstan, who, over 2,500 years ago, lived lives rich in complexity. The Saka people occupied a landscape of seemingly endless steppe to the west, bounded by mountains to the east and south. Known to be fierce warriors, they were also skilled craftspeople, producing intricate gold and other metalwork. Their artistic expression indicates a deep respect for the animals around them – both real and imagined. They dominated their landscapes with huge burial mounds of sophisticated construction, burying their horses with elite members of their society. Recent excavations and analyses, led by archaeologists from Kazakhstan, have demonstrated that by looking through a scientific and social lens at what the Saka left behind we can paint a picture of a complex society. We can start to understand how it affected the way people lived, how they travelled, the things they made and what they believed in. Including contributions from experts at Nazarbayev University, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, and the University of Cambridge, this publication details the results of new archaeological research from East Kazakhstan. It is richly illustrated with photographs of intricate gold artefacts in the Saka-Scythian animal style, landscape and aerial photography of the burial mounds, and details of the excavations and analyses. Grounded in decades of careful study, papers by the two leading Kazakhstani archaeologists of the East Kazakhstan region, Professors Zainolla Samashev and Abdesh Toleubayev, demonstrate current archaeological thinking in Kazakhstan today. These papers are complemented by material from a team of international scholars, which contribute the results of new scientific analyses on the artefacts, and wider Eurasian perspectives on the Saka people and their practice of horse burial.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries, this volume by A-zerdem and Roberts conceptualizes the challenges of developing sustainable agriculture in post-conflict environments as well as identifying the policies and practical solutions to achieve sustainable agricultural production which is central to the survival of humanity. Without sustainable agriculture, populations remain vulnerable increasing the likelihood of a return to conflict. Therefore, sustainable agriculture is central to effective post-conflict recovery that provides human security as well as stability and rule of law. Unique in combining a comprehensive and comparative understanding of sustainable agriculture challenges in post-conflict environments, there is originality in the interdisciplinary nature of the book. Interdisciplinary often means bringing together a political scientist and a sociologist, but in this case it means bringing together natural and social scientists, as well as those with practical experience in development and agricultural contexts. By adopting a holistic multi-disciplinary approach which identifies key themes and case studies, this book sets the scene for the debate surrounding sustainable agriculture in post-conflict environments. Seeing 'fixing' agriculture as more than merely a technical matter, the volume focuses on this critical post-conflict challenge with social, political and cultural characteristics and consequences as well as the obvious economic ones.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries, this volume by A-zerdem and Roberts conceptualizes the challenges of developing sustainable agriculture in post-conflict environments as well as identifying the policies and practical solutions to achieve sustainable agricultural production which is central to the survival of humanity. Without sustainable agriculture, populations remain vulnerable increasing the likelihood of a return to conflict. Therefore, sustainable agriculture is central to effective post-conflict recovery that provides human security as well as stability and rule of law. Unique in combining a comprehensive and comparative understanding of sustainable agriculture challenges in post-conflict environments, there is originality in the interdisciplinary nature of the book. Interdisciplinary often means bringing together a political scientist and a sociologist, but in this case it means bringing together natural and social scientists, as well as those with practical experience in development and agricultural contexts. By adopting a holistic multi-disciplinary approach which identifies key themes and case studies, this book sets the scene for the debate surrounding sustainable agriculture in post-conflict environments. Seeing 'fixing' agriculture as more than merely a technical matter, the volume focuses on this critical post-conflict challenge with social, political and cultural characteristics and consequences as well as the obvious economic ones.

In 1660, a mysterious sect of Dutch mystics arrived to an island in the New World with the objective to create a new society. Their governing principle revolved around the uninterrupted performance of a single dramatic work in seven tableaux vivants. Invoking alchemical imagery and hermetic thought, their goal was to arrive to a higher state of being by collectively embodying the symbolic representation of all of human and divine knowledge. Their experiment, which would last a century, would test the human boundaries of time, physical endurance, and the collective commitment toward an idea. "Like a 'lamb in wolf's clothing, ' Pablo Helguera uses the exoteric mechanisms of historical erudition to lure us to his magical island of the Ourobourians.But right about the time we lose our footing on the land's slippery shores-when we begin to wonder if the artist has gleaned an esoteric tradition for more than just source material for his island's symbols and nomenclature, when we start to navigate his land with the non-verbal hunches of the alchemists' score, and call into question the artifices we employ to gather the world around us-we realize Helguera has really taken us on a journey to another land altogether, the most forbidden of places: the self." -Lise Patt, founder and director of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Los Angeles "Pablo Helguera is a splendid liar, a first-class storyteller, a curious mind constantly in search of stories, a creator of parallel universes and impossible characters living in credible situations, which invariably probe our certainties, intuition and knowledge." - Naief Yehya, writer and critic