Integrated IT-based Geography Teaching and Learning: A Macquarie University case study

Use of information technology (IT) is increasingly common in geography teaching and learning. This paper outlines a still relatively unusual initiative involving the integrated use of a variety of IT-based components across all aspects of a large course unit. Multiple evaluations reveal strongly positive reactions to the IT-based approach and the time and place flexibility offered; there are few technical impediments to, and no detectable gender differences in, students' use of the system. Most aspects of the integrated approach work well, although it has not yet succeeded in facilitating a genuinely participative online dialogue. Many aspects of the initiative can be transferred cost-effectively to other contexts.     

Virtual Geographies and the Use of the Internet for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education

Despite the plethora of teaching materials that are available on the Internet to enhance geography higher education, few assessments of the effectiveness of these materials exist. This symposium collects papers that provide guidelines for using the Internet effectively for teaching geography. Students must learn how to use the Internet effectively to promote learning; instructors need to learn how to use the Internet effectively to promote good practice in higher education; instructors need to learn how to use the Internet effectively to enhance learning; and higher educators need to learn how to use the Internet effectively not only in traditional classroom settings, but in new, non-traditional settings such as those used for distance learning. These papers provide some assessment of these various aspects of using the Internet for teaching geography in higher education.     

Discovering Networked Information in the Internet Age: The JISC Resource Guide to Geography & the Environment

As networked information resources are used ever more in higher edu cation, the requirement for subject-specific, quality-assured resource selection assumes greater importance. The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee has implemented the Resource Guide initiative in which seven subject-specific printed and web-based guides to electronic resources have been provided. The centralised coordination of the guides ensures consistency in resource awareness across UK higher education and the training element packaged within each aims to improve students' approaches to resource discovery.     

From Hawaii to Glasgow: The International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education (INLT) Five Years On

This paper examines and reflects on the activities of the International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education (INLT) from its founding at the Association of American Geographers' Annual Conference in Hawaii in 1999 to the post-International Geographical Congress workshop in Glasgow five years later. It provides a context and introduction to the following six papers, which resulted from the Glasgow workshop. It is suggested that, despite some of the proposals in Hawaii proving over-ambitious, several other projects have emerged and the INLT continues largely to meet the goals and purposes set out in 1999. Although the desire of the INLT to move beyond its Anglo-American and Australasian origins largely remains a challenge to be met, the INLT has established itself as a valuable forum for the geography higher education community to identify and reflect on similarities and differences in national practices, to engage in debate virtually and face-to-face on issues concerned with learning and teaching, and to bring geographers from different countries to work together on educational projects.     

Creating Regional Futures: A Scenario-Based Inter- and Transdisciplinary Case Study as a Model for Applied Student-centred Learning in Geography

Human geography students face changing qualification requirements due to a shift towards new topics, educational tasks and professional options regarding issues of spatial development. This ‘practical turn’ raises the importance of inter- and transdisciplinary work, management and capability building skills, with case study projects and student-centred learning providing suitable approaches. This paper introduces the example of the teaching and research project ‘Leben 2014’: Students, faculty and local actors have collectively worked out future development scenarios for a rural region in Austria, actually creating impact. The project may thus serve as a model that inspires similar schemes in other countries.     

Using network expectations to identify multiple exchange systems: A case study from Postclassic Sauce and its hinterland in Veracruz,Mexico

Exchanges of material objects often play a pivotal role in the trajectories of political, social, and economic development for ancient societies, but the study can be challenging because of the complexity of exchange. Multiple forms of exchange co-exist in ancient societies including market exchange and social exchange such as gift-giving. A further complicating factor is that different exchange systems such as redistribution and central place market exchange can result in the same regional spatial patterning of artifacts. Recent innovations in identifying exchange systems use network expectations for spatial, contextual, and distributional information to help distinguish between social exchanges such as gift-giving versus market exchange using household inventories. I introduce a Monte Carlo computer simulation to evaluate network expectations for alternative exchange mechanisms, using a case study of decorated ceramics from 65 residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterland during the Middle Postclassic period (1200–1350 A.D.) in southcentral Veracruz, Mexico. Using these new tools, I identify the coexistence of several exchange systems operating simultaneously. The methods developed here demonstrate the potential of using network expectations to refine existing methods to identify different exchange systems that can be applied to other complex ancient economies.     

Investigating foetal and perinatal mortality in prehistoric skeletal samples: a case study from a 3000-year-old Pacific Island cemetery site

The Teouma skeletal sample from Vanuatu represents one of the few truly colonising populations in the Pacific Islands. Therefore, investigating the factors that may have affected foetal/infant mortality in this population is potentially important for understanding the success of settlement in this region of the world. We investigate whether stable isotope analyses of carbon and nitrogen in conjunction with skeletal ageing techniques, can aid in identifying whether the subadults from Teouma died before or after birth in an attempt to understand the potential threats to foetal and infant survival. Multiple skeletal ageing methods using diaphyseal lengths were used to age the young subadults (n = 7). Using regression-based skeletal ageing methods, four of the individuals were aged at around full-term gestation (37–42 weeks gestation), while the remaining three individuals died preterm. The isotope analyses did not assist in identifying the individuals that survived post-birth because none of the subadults displayed the 2–3‰ trophic increase in δ¹⁵N values expected for a breastfed infant, probably as a result of their young age. However, all of the foetal/perinatal individuals exhibited higher δ¹⁵N values in their bone collagen compared with the adult females of the sample, with two of the individuals demonstrating unusually high δ¹⁵N values. The δ¹³C values of the foetuses/perinates did not exhibit the same variation. We explore a number of possible explanations for this elevation of perinatal/foetal δ¹⁵N values and tentatively suggest that this is a result of in utero stress as a consequence of chronic maternal ill-health. The osteological and palaeodemographic evidence supports the assertion that females, foetuses and perinates were susceptible to environmental stress within this colonising population, resulting in early death of the perinatal individuals in addition to early terminations of pregnancy or premature birth possibly caused by infectious and/or metabolic diseases.     

A GIS method for assessing the zone of human-environmental impact around archaeological sites: a test case from the Late Neolithic of Wadi Ziqlâb,Jordan

Assessing the impact of prehistoric sites on their local environment is difficult to accomplish with standard archaeological methods. Simulation modeling offers a solution to this issue, but it is first necessary to delimit a site catchment, or “zone of impact”, around archaeological sites in which to carry out human–environment interaction modeling. To that end, I have developed a new method for GIS-based catchment reconstruction and distilled it into a custom module (r.catchment) for GRASS GIS, which calculates catchments of a given area based on anisotropic travel costs from a point of origin. One method of applying this new module in exploratory catchment modeling is discussed using the pastoral economy of the Late Neolithic period in Wadi Ziqlâb, Northern Jordan as a test case. A model of Late Neolithic herding economy and ecology is constructed, which combines data from archaeology, phytogeography, range science, agronomy, and ethnohistory. Four sizes of pastoral catchments are then derived using r.catchment, and the herd ecology model is used to estimate the stocking-rate (carrying capacity) of mixed goat and sheep herds for each catchment. The human populations these herd numbers could support (between 3 and 630 people in the Wadi) are then compared with human population estimates derived from household architectural analyses (between 18 and 54 people in the Wadi) to determine the most probable catchment configurations. The results indicate that the most probable zone of impact around the known Late Neolithic sites in Wadi Ziqlâb was somewhere between 9 and 20 square kilometers, delineated by 3 and 4.5 km pasture radii respectively.     

A new method for identifying sherd refits: A case study from the Neolithic of Northumbria,U.K.

Abstract

Here we present a flexible, quantitative methodology for refitting handmade ceramics. Rather than analyzing the physical joins between sherds, we assess the likelihood that non-adjoining sherds of similar appearance are from the same vessel. The customary disregard of non-adjoining sherds in refitting experiments prompts us to address this issue. Using the Neolithic ceramic assemblage from Thirlings (Northumberland, U.K.) as a case study, we test several scoring systems for assessing the probability of two sherds pertaining to the same vessel. The utility of this approach is supported by the comparison of a set of percentage scores statistically verified using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. We conclude with a discussion of the contribution of the new method to post-excavation ceramic analyses, and its applicability to other assemblages.     

Skeletal markers of occupational stress in the Fur Trade: A case study from a Hudson's Bay Company Fur Trade post

The Seafort Burial Site (FcPr100) is a Fur Trade Period cemetery located near the town of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. The results of recent analysis of skeletons recovered during salvage excavations between 1969 and 1971 suggest that three males in this sample were voyageurs in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company. Vertebral osteophytosis and osteoarthritis, Schmorl's nodes, muscle origin robusticity and new bone formation at entheses and syndesmoses, and osteoarthritis at the elbow and shoulder joints provide evidence for carrying, lifting, and paddling or rowing. The presence of accessory sacral facets also may be stress-related. In addition, the development of accessory articular facets on the metatarsals and proximal pedal phalanges may indicate activity-induced stress from hyperdorsiflexion of the toes in habitual kneeling, such as when river canoeing.     

台湾大遗址保护与开发的经验及启示——以卑南遗址为例

我国台湾地区通过完善制度、健全机构、加强考古调查发掘与研究、推动公众积极参与等多种方法和手段,在大遗址保护与开发领域取得了较显著的成效,特别是卑南遗址的保护与开发,在制订保护规划、强化公众遗产保护意识、建立遗址文化公园并重视经营管理与宣传、加强学术研究、积极培养人才等方面,积累了丰富的实践经验,为进一步推动我国大陆大遗址保护与开发提供了有益的借鉴。     

Marine electrical resistivity tomography for shipwreck detection in very shallow water: a case study from Agropoli (Salerno,southern Italy)

A marine electric resistivity survey was carried out over a submerged beach along the Agropoli shore (Salerno, Italy) to detect buried objects of archaeological interest below the sandy seabed. We found a shipwreck, a military vessel that probably sunk during the Salerno landing operations of the allied forces in the Second World War. Resistivity data provide information on the vertical and horizontal extension of the shipwreck, which is characterized by very low calculated resistivity values (about 2–5 ohm m). Such values differ significantly from the sand and the bedrock values (5–40 ohm m). Although the presence of the shipwreck is clearly visible from geoelectric data, the joint application of electric, magnetic and multibeam bathymetric techniques reduces the ambiguities inherent in each method. As shown in the Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) and confirmed by the Digital Elevation Model (obtained from the processing of bathymetric data), the shipwreck extends more than 30 m in NE–SW direction and it is about 13 m wide. The global extension of the relic is consistent with the magnetic data, that are characterized by a magnetic anomaly with an amplitude of about 1800 nT and similar dimension, as inferred from the estimation of source boundaries obtained from the computation of the analytic signal. The results of our survey encourage the use of marine geoelectrical methods for the detection of buried archaeological targets, particularly in locations where the use of seismic prospecting is not effective (e.g. very shallow water with sandy sea-bottoms). The integration of different geophysical methods allows to better define the extension, depth and thickness of buried objects, suggesting that such an approach is the most effective for underwater archaeological investigations.     

The use of SEM-EDS,PIXE and EDXRF for obsidian provenance studies in the Near East: a case study from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (central Anatolia)

In this paper we evaluate the relative analytical capabilities of SEM-EDS, PIXE and EDXRF for characterizing archaeologically significant Anatolian obsidians on the basis of their elemental compositions. The study involves 54 geological samples from various sources, together with an archaeological case study involving 100 artifacts from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (central Anatolia). With each technique the artifacts formed two compositional groups that correlated with the East Göllü Da? and Nenezi Da? sources. The non-destructive capabilities of these methods are emphasized (albeit with certain analytical limitations in the case of SEM-EDS), suggesting important new techniques for Near Eastern obsidian provenance studies.     

Redefining ‘sub‐culture’: a new lens for understanding hybrid cultural identities in East‐Central Europe with a case study from early 20th century L'viv‐Lwów‐Lemberg

This paper proposes a new definition of the term ‘subculture’, as a way of better understanding hybrid identities specific to East‐Central Europe, before applying this definition to a case study from the now‐Ukrainian city of L'viv from around 1900. The first section outlines the theory, arguing that the continued focus on the nation state – either from the ‘top down’, or else the ‘bottom up’ as a source of contestation, by historians and anthropologists, has limited the ability to study groups in the interstices of the national projects that typically remain defined in monolithic ethno‐linguistic terms. It examines the theoretical term ‘subcultures’ to propose a new definition that accounts for such hybridity, by having particular sensitivity to context (historical, social, geographical) and cultural practice, in addition to any prevailing national narratives at a given time. The case study in the second section focuses on linguistic hybridity in the city then known more commonly as Lemberg (German) or Lwów (Polish). It argues that Lemberg/Lwów/L'viv produced an urban dialect that blended Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish and German elements. This dialect should be reassessed as a mixed, hybrid or transitional code, rather than as a linguistic variant of a titular nation. Archival evidence – in particular, court records – is quoted to show that at the lower end of L'viv society, people routinely mixed and transcended linguistic and, thereby, ethnic and religious boundaries. This offers direct evidence of a specific subsection, or subculture, in urban life where people interacted and intermingled intensely. As such, the paper offers new possibilities for investigating ‘hybrid’ identities, as well as proposing a counterpoint to recent research focusing on deliberate indifference or opposition to national segregation for various socio‐political, economic and cultural reasons (Judson 2006: 19–65; King 2002; Zahra 2008).