The killing of Micah Johnson by Dallas police using a teleguided exploding robot on 8 July 2016 is the first known example of the use of a killer drone by US law enforcement in the domestic arena. This repatriation of the drone, under conditions of racialized urban unrest designated as exceptional, was predicted by Didier Bigo and follows a familiar pattern whereby coercive security technologies are tested abroad before finding their way ‘home’ to arm police forces that are becoming increasingly paramilitary in style and conduct. I use the Dallas incident to probe the cogency and limits of ‘drone theory’ and to consider its application in domestic policing contexts. I work through three broadly delineated areas of scepticism about drone theory as it intersects with policing and, in so doing, develop my own account of the weaponized policing drone as a defining techno-cultural element within the emergent form of neoliberal political rationality I call ‘governance’.

During nervous system development growing axons can interact with each other, for example by adhering together in order to produce bundles (fasciculation). How does such axon-axon interaction affect the resulting axonal trajectories, and what are the possible benefits of this process in terms of network function? In this paper we study these questions by adapting an existing computational model of the development of neurons in the Xenopus tadpole spinal cord to include interactions between axons. We demonstrate that even relatively weak attraction causes bundles to appear, while if axons weakly repulse each other their trajectories diverge such that they fill the available space. We show how fasciculation can help to ensure axons grow in the correct location for proper network formation when normal growth barriers contain gaps, and use a functional spiking model to show that fasciculation allows the network to generate reliable swimming behaviour even when overall synapse counts are artificially lowered. Although we study fasciculation in one particular organism, our approach to modelling axon growth is general and can be widely applied to study other nervous systems.

Cunliffe's excavations at Danebury have revealed an Iron Age settlement in extraordinary detail. Its inhabitants have come to represent, in the popular literature at least, the idealised hillfort community of warriors, craftsmen, farmers, and their families in a hierarchically ordered settlement system. This model has been vigorously challenged, although largely from a theoretical perspective, and there has been little contextual re-analysis of the dataset. This paper seeks to re-examine the Danebury structural assemblage and question why Iron Age people came together in this place, and how those that did come perceived their place within wider group identities. By examining patterns of activity within the interior of Danebury this paper demonstrates that the nature of the community that resided in the hillfort changed considerably over the course of the Early and Middle Iron Age. In particular, it is argued that Danebury was occupied by a permanent population. The organisation of domestic space, however, was tightly managed. In the early period occupation was characterised by single round-houses of individual household units emphasising their distinctiveness by spatial isolation and variability in round-house design. A dramatic change in the nature and intensity of occupation came in the late period. A large number of ‘identikit’ round-houses were tightly packed into the quarry hollows in the lee of the ramparts. This probably represents households from the surrounding settlements moving into the hillfort. It is also argued that the communal construction and maintenance of Danebury's defences would have been a way for a dispersed population to have reproduced a sense of community. Participation may also have been a mechanism of maintaining networks and relationships with other households in the long term

Causewayed enclosures have recently been at the forefront of debate within British and European Neolithic studies. In the British Isles as a whole, the vast majority of these monuments are located in southern England, but a few sites are now beginning to be discovered beyond this core region. The search in Wales had seen limited success, but in the 1990s a number of cropmark discoveries suggested the presence of such enclosures west of the River Severn. Nonetheless, until now only two enclosures have been confirmed as Neolithic in Wales – Banc Du (in Pembrokeshire) and Womaston (in Powys) – although neither produced more than a handful of sherds of pottery, flint or other material culture. Recent work by the authors at the Iron Age hillfort of Caerau, Cardiff, have confirmed the presence of another, large, Early Neolithic causewayed enclosure in the country. Excavations of the enclosure ditches have produced a substantial assemblage of bowl pottery, comparable with better-known enclosures in England, as well as ten radiocarbon dates. This paper provides a complete review of the evidence for Neolithic enclosures in Wales, and discusses the chronology and context of the enclosures based on the new radiocarbon dates and material assemblages recovered from Caerau.

The variability of Wessex hillfort form, use and development has long been noted, but not satisfactorily explained. This paper seeks to explain this variability and suggests that each hillfort may have had its own distinctive history of use, dependent upon the nature of the hillfort community -the people who visited, inhabited and used the hillfort. This paper starts by using grid-group analysis to define identities that can be found among modern communities -such as that of spectators of contemporary professional football clubs -which helps to frame our understanding of hillfort communities as constituted of households with differing motivations, loyalties and identification with the material environment. The variable trajectories of hillfort development are thus explained by the changing cultural relationships between Iron Age households and hillforts.