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Private label brands may be in danger as a result of recent changes in the marketing strategies used by private label firms. The primary competitive advantage of private label brands, good quality at low prices, may be lost if private label firms continue to modify and expand how their brands are marketed. Specifically, changes in private label brands′ advertising, packaging, sales promotion, and product improvement strategies indicate that private label brands are moving closer than ever to manufacturer brand status. To the extent that these changes result in higher average retail prices and/or lower gross margins for retailers, the advantages of private brands to both consumers and distributors will diminish, illustrating that the historical “wheel of retailing” hypothesis may be applicable to private label brands. Investigates the aforementioned trends and provides suggestions for manufacturers and retailers for future brand management strategies.

The recovery of botanical remains from the late fourteenth-century BCE Uluburun shipwreck near Kaș, Turkey, provides a unique opportunity to examine the consumable components of an eliteoriented cargo, which included numerous pomegranate seeds, skin fragments and flower parts. Examination of pomegranate-shaped objects and botanical remains permits investigation of the establishment and development of the pomegranate as part of the 'package' of elite and luxury items exchanged by Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean cultures.

Cedar ship-timbers and associated debris from Mersa/Wadi Gawasis on the Red Sea provide direct evidence for seafaring in complex watercraft built with standard Egyptian shipbuilding technologies. The Middle Kingdom craft buried at Dashur and disassembled timbers from Lisht (c.1850 and 1950 BC) provide the best parallels for most of the Gawasis finds, but two steering-oar blades are more comparable to early New Kingdom examples. A new type of hull-construction technology is presented, along with descriptions of maritime artefacts and site activities.

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