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Background: Anti-welfare narratives depict welfare systems as overly-permissive, open to fraud, and fundamentally unfair. Countering these supposed ills have been political appeals to evidence and reforms made to disability benefit assessments under the banner of objectivity. But objectivity is a complex construct, which entails philosophical and political choices that tend to oppress, exclude and symbolically disqualify alternative perspectives. Aims and objectives: To examine reforms made to UK disability benefits assessments in the name of objectivity. Methods: Thematic analysis of 50 in-depth qualitative interviews with UK disability benefit claimants. Findings: Reforms made in pursuit of "procedural objectivity" reproduce existing social order, meaning claimants without personal, social and economic resources are less likely to succeed. Data reveal an increasingly detached and impersonal assessment process, set against a broader welfare landscape in which advocacy and support have been retrenched. In this context, attaining a valid and reliable assessment was, for many, contingent upon personal, social and economic resources. Discussion and conclusions: Political appeals to evidence helped establish an impetus and a legitimising logic for welfare reform. Procedural objectivity offers superficially plausible, but ultimately specious, remedies to longstanding anti-welfare tropes. Despite connotations of methodological neutrality, procedural objectivity is not a politically neutral epistemological standpoint. To know disability in a genuinely valid and reliable way, knowledge-making practices must respect dignity and proactively counter exclusory social order. These latter principles promise outcomes that are more trustworthy by virtue of their being more just.

Abrupt radiocarbon (14C) excursions, or Miyake events, in sequences of radiocarbon measurements from calendar-dated tree-rings provide opportunities to assign absolute calendar dates to undated wood samples from contexts across history and prehistory. Here, we report a tree-ring and 14C-dating study of the Neolithic site of Dispilio, Northern Greece, a waterlogged archaeological site on Lake Kastoria. Findings secure an absolute, calendardated time using the 5259 BC Miyake event, with the final ring of the 303-yearlong juniper tree-ring chronology dating to 5140 BC. While other sites have been absolutely dated to a calendar year through 14C-signature Miyake events, Dispilio is the first European Neolithic site of these and it provides a fixed, calendar-year anchor point for regional chronologies of the Neolithic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconstructing the absolute chronology of Jerusalem during the time it served as the Judahite Kingdom's capital is challenging due to its dense, still inhabited urban nature and the plateau shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve during part of this period. We present 103 radiocarbon dates from reliable archaeological contexts in five excavation areas of Iron Age Jerusalem, which tie between archaeology and biblical history. We exploit Jerusalem's rich past, including textual evidence and vast archaeological remains, to overcome difficult problems in radiocarbon dating, including establishing a detailed chronology within the long-calibrated ranges of the Hallstatt Plateau and recognizing short-lived regional offsets in atmospheric 14C concentrations. The key to resolving these problems is to apply stringent field methodologies using microarchaeological methods, leading to densely radiocarbon-dated stratigraphic sequences. Using these sequences, we identify regional offsets in atmospheric 14C concentrations c. 720 BC, and in the historically secure stratigraphic horizon of the Babylonian destruction in 586 BC. The latter is verified by 100 single-ring measurements between 624 to 572 BC. This application of intense 14C dating sheds light on the reconstruction of Jerusalem in the Iron Age. It provides evidence for settlement in the 12th to 10th centuries BC and that westward expansion had already begun by the 9th century BC, with extensive architectural projects undertaken throughout the city in this period. This was followed by significant damage and rejuvenation of the city subsequent to the mid-eight century BC earthquake, after which the city was heavily fortified and continued to flourish until the Babylonian destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of Venice have been of great interest to Venetians and to scholars more generally for centuries. Long shrouded in myth and legend due to the dearth of pre-ninth-century AD evidence, recent archaeological research is now illuminating how the famous city built on water began. Using high-resolution AMS dating of peach stones (pits) from below the Basilica of San Marco, the authors provide the first evidence for human activity at what is now the location of Piazza San Marco. Dating to between AD 650 and 770, this activity included canal in-filling and ground consolidation intended to create an area that was to become the city's civic centre in the early ninth century. Keywords: Venice, Piazza San Marco, Basilica of San Marco, AMS dating, Introduction The question of how Venice, the city built on water, began is one of great interest to both the Venetian and the scholar. Over the centuries, writers have spent [...]

People with learning disabilities in England and Scotland have experienced an increased risk of illness and death during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on data of a longitudinal qualitative study with 71 disabled people and 31 disability organisations, this article examines the experiences of 24 people with learning disabilities in England and Scotland during the pandemic, reflecting on what rendered them vulnerable and placed them at risk. Qualitative interviews were conducted with participants and key informants at two timepoints; June–August 2020 and February–April 2021. Findings emerged across four key themes: failure to plan for the needs of people with learning disabilities; the suspension and removal of social care; the impact of the pandemic on people's everyday routines; and lack of vaccine prioritisation. The inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities in this study are not particular to the pandemic. We explore the findings in the context of theoretical frameworks of vulnerability, including Fineman's conceptualisation of a 'vulnerability paradigm'. We conclude that the structured marginalisation of people with disabilities, entrenched by government action and inaction, have created and exacerbated their vulnerability. Structures, policies and action must change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across the world have been slow in reacting to meeting the needs of disabled people during the pandemic. This has exposed existing inequalities in social policies, as well as new support barriers. Debates over social care have focused on Covid-19's impact on those living in residential care. Little is known about the experiences of disabled people who rely on daily support in their homes. This article reports on a year-long study examining the experiences of disabled people during the pandemic in England and Scotland. It focuses on the crisis in social care and offers evidence of how lives have been disrupted. For many, this resulted in a sudden loss of services, delayed assessments and break down of routines and communities. Findings underline the weakness of social care in its wider relationship with the NHS and show how the social care crisis has challenged the goal of independent living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability benefits function by demarcating categories of need (the administrative category of disability) and determine eligibility using assessments of functioning. In the UK, these assessments are the Work Capability Assessment and PIP assessment. Inherently technical and abstruse processes, these assessments have been opportune sites for welfare reform in recent years. Disability benefits have also been a central point of contention between disability studies and sociology. Sociology has traditionally favoured an 'incomes approach' and called for more adequate financial support from the state. Early figures in the disabled people's movement rejected this position, and aligned with an oppression paradigm, argued for a more radical economic and social inclusion. We contend that this divide, set out in the Fundamental Principles of Disability, remains relevant for researching welfare reform today. This article treats benefits assessments as epistemic practices—interactional processes wherein claimants, their personal health professionals and commercial assessment providers come together in the production of knowledge about disability. Data include 50 in‐depth interviews with benefit claimants and a discourse analysis of official texts directed at claimants, personal health professionals and commercial assessment providers. We outline a phenomenon we term 'epistemic sabotage', whereby the knowledge claims of claimants and their health professionals are systemically disqualified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the issue of engagement in antenatal parent education for women living in deprived areas. The article focuses on the findings of a local evaluation of a Sure Start parent education programme designed to improve parental engagement with antenatal services. The article discusses the re-orientation of this service, the impact on service users and the implications for professionals. Evidence suggests that this service has been beneficial for those involved and resulted in improved levels of engagement, with 9 per cent of eligible women attending prenatal sessions prior to the introduction of the Sure Start local programme's parent education service and 34 per cent of eligible women attending after its introduction. Despite this, the service only reaches a small proportion of the eligible population. The article also discusses the issue of professional resistance from mainstream services as an unintended consequence of the introduction of the Sure Start local programme and considers the implications of this for effective delivery.