Working on http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBXB-97 "org.w3c.dom.Element is being mapped incorrectly" led to this change http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=JBossXB_UnresolvedContent

The change in the defaults is that the unresolved content is now bound to DOM be default. Which is the default in JAXB as well, IIRC.