Status of geoinformatics education and training in Sub-Saharan Africa: initiatives taken and challenges

This paper presents an update on some of the activities that have taken place since a World Bank report; “Guidelines for Education and Training in Environmental Information Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: Some Key Issues” was published and provides details on the current situation. It shows how organizations such as the African Association on Remote Sensing of Environment, International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, European Association of Remote Sensing Companies, Group on Earth Observation, and several others have helped to increase manpower resources in the region and strengthened institutional capacity in the field of geoinformatics, through capacity building, technology transfer, international cooperation and the provision of internal African resources. After reviewing what has happened in the field of geoinformatics education and training, we focused on current initiatives taken and challenges in five Sub-Saharan countries: Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. We reviewed GIS education and training in the private sector, government, information communications technology in higher education institutions, GIS application areas and challenges facing GIS education and training. Findings show that; change should involve education stakeholders in all levels of education and curriculum quality, regional and international cooperation through exchange programs, should be a priority for Sub-Saharan Africa countries.     

Modeling distance with time in ancient Mediterranean seafaring: a GIS application for the interpretation of maritime connectivity

Investigations of Mediterranean connectivity have increasingly turned toward maritime landscape models to frame questions of seaborne exploration, marine resource exploitation, trade and exchange, and seafaring culture. Environmental and technological parameters are consistently acknowledged as crucial for understanding when and why different relationships developed across the sea, but their formal employment in the modeling and interpretation of maritime space remains quite limited. The methodology outlined here utilizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to integrate environment and technology as analytical tools for exploring the complexity of seaborne connectivity. Focusing on sailing days as practical units of distance and using an Archaic Greek shipwreck off Turkey as a case study, this preliminary model demonstrates how a more nuanced spatial approach can inform the human geography and socioeconomic structures of ancient maritime interaction.     

The Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project (Akko,Israel): Assessing the suitability of multi-scale 3D field recording in archaeology

Abstract

Archaeology is a destructive discipline, and, unfortunately, the majority of methods employed by archaeologists to record and preserve the archaeological record consist of two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional (3D) subjects. Recent breakthroughs in 3D technology, however, have the potential to revolutionize the discipline. In recent years, multiple software suites capable of generating spatially accurate, photorealistic 3D models with a series of digital photographs have become available. Following a successful season of field testing in 2011, the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project (Akko, Israel) expanded the use of Agisoft’s PhotoScan Pro—one of the commercially available software suites—to test the accuracy and suitability of the program for archaeological applications at multiple scales. After two years of field testing, it is clear that the implementation of PhotoScan Pro in archaeology facilitates unprecedented accuracy in field recording and digital heritage management, and provides a new outlet for the dissemination of archaeological data.     

Toward Historical Ethnography: Notarial Records and Family History in the Middle Ages

One can easily use nineteenth-century tithe data of England and Wales in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze a range of subjects, for example, land use, productivity, land ownership, or tenancy. Making the tithe data GIS ready, on the other hand, is a nontrivial matter. The tithe data consist of two main types: spatial, that is, the tithe map, and nonspatial attribute data linked to the map. The tithe therefore has the characteristics of a GIS, albeit in paper form. The author outlines the process of creating the structures for building a data repository that allows the storage and dissemination of both tithe schedules and maps in a single GIS-ready system. The author chose Oracle to host the repository. The Oracle Spatial module allows storage of both spatial and attribute information. Oracle also provides the means of serving data to users via the Internet.     

The construction of hunting sceneries: Interactions between humans,animals and landscape in the Antofalla valley,Catamarca, Argentina

Through the history of human occupation in the south-central Andes, the interactions between south-American camelids and human populations were essential in the social reproduction, being hunting one of the appropriation modes of greater long term. In this sense, the way in which encounters between hunters and their preys were materialized becomes a relevant subject in order to understand these interactions. That is why in this paper I pretend to show the way in which the landscape were constructed where the encounters between hunters and their preys were given. For this, I shall focus in the information obtained from the intensive and systematic survey developed in the Antofalla valley, located in the Antofagasta de la Sierra Department, Catamarca Province, Argentina. This information has allowed me to identify a series of structures build with the aim of propitiate the encounter of herds by means of anticipating the movements of the animals, searching to obtain near and fixed targets in order to materialize the attack.     

Watching North Korea from the sky: Remote sensing and documenting human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

For organisations committed to documenting human rights abuses in North Korea, gathering data is an ongoing challenge. Faced with the lack of access to the country, as well as the problems inherent in verifying testimonies from North Korean escapees, some organisations have turned to hybrid methodologies, including pairing remote sensing (RS) technologies with testimonial data to better understand the people, places and institutions associated with human rights violations. In the case of North Korea, to date, remote sensing has been used primarily to monitor nuclear weapons and missile development sites. This work has at times sparked controversy, given the scope for analytical error and the high stakes associated with flawed analysis. Against this backdrop, this article discusses the application of remote sensing to augment human rights abuse investigations and calls for greater attention to the potential of remote sensing data to both assist in eliciting information in research interviews, and to generate data that may be used to support the pursuit of accountability for alleged violations of international law. Specifically, it considers the work of an ongoing project developed in South Korea using satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems technology together with witness testimonies to document sites of state-led killings and burials in North Korea. The paper cites advantages to be had from developing hybrid methods of data-gathering in this context and describes some of the key methodological considerations involved, as well as the possible applications of the data in seeking justice and remedy in the future.     

The Location and Concentration of Businesses in Britain: Business Clusters, Business Services, Market Coverage and Local Economic Development

An important debate has recently developed around the significance of business clusters for the development of the economy. This paper assesses the extent to which concentrated clusters of businesses exist in Britain, using the fine spatial mesh of postcode districts. It identifies the major clusters using a development of the methodology to define local labour market areas. The paper demonstrates the high degree of localization and uneven development of businesses in Britain. It also shows that business service firms are even more highly localized and clustered than other businesses. Moreover, the larger the business centre, the more localized and clustered the firms. The pattern suggests that there is a strong influence of increasing returns of scale, and that, as well as local clusters, much of the British economy is covered by one metacluster. Implications from these results are drawn for the likely future development of the economy, the location of business service suppliers in order to develop their market coverage, and local economic development policy.     

New Data on the Exploitation of Obsidian in the Southern Caucasus (Armenia,Georgia) and Eastern Turkey,Part 2: Obsidian Procurement from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Late Bronze Age

Within the framework of the French archaeological mission ‘Caucasus’, in a previous paper we have presented new geochemical analyses on geological obsidians from the southern Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia) and eastern Turkey. We present here the second part of this research, which deals with provenance studies of archaeological obsidians from Armenia. These new data enhance our knowledge of obsidian exploitation over a period of more than 14 000 years, from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Late Bronze Age. The proposed methodology shows that source attribution can be easily made by plotting element contents and element ratios on three simple binary diagrams. The same diagrams were used for source discrimination. As the southern Caucasus is a mountainous region for which the factor of distance as the crow flies cannot be applied, we have explored the capacity of the Geographic Information System to evaluate the nature and patterns of travel costs between the sources of obsidian and the archaeological sites. The role of the secondary obsidian deposits, which enabled the populations to acquire raw material at a considerable distance from the outcrops, is also considered.     

The Tertiary Turn: Locating “The Academy” in Autobiographical Accounts of Activism in Manchester,UK and Auckland,Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract: Activists often strategically negotiate sectoral boundaries by switching between public, private and voluntary sectors over the life course in order to pursue their aims. This paper draws on a cross‐national study that explored the extent of this inter‐sectoral movement and the specific “career pathways” activists developed in relation to governmental, private and voluntary/community sector organisations. Using an analysis of 46 biographical narratives gathered from activists in Manchester, UK and Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand during 2007 we situate “the academy” in these life stories of activism. Teasing out from these accounts the motivations behind a turn towards tertiary education at particular moments we examine how “academia” supports and sustains individual activists while legitimising and professionalising their activism. In so doing, we track the tactical transfer of knowledge, skills and expertise effected by contact with “the academy” to make substantive and conceptual claims around the future role universities might play in the knowledge economy.     

Reading with the Occultists: Arthur Machen,A. E. Waite,and the Ecstasies of Popular Fiction

My article recovers a forgotten moment in the history of popular fiction criticism – the late Victorian advent of what I term occultic literary criticism – to challenge the persistent anxiety thesis that continues to dominate fin-de-siècle studies. In the late 1890s, the close friends, writers, bibliophiles, and, for varying amounts of time, practising occultists Arthur Machen and A. E. Waite used their literary criticism to champion the ecstatic occult potential of mass-circulated popular fiction, insisting that the penny dreadful, the newspaper story, and the popular picaresque as exemplified in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) represented coded versions of ancient mystery tradition rituals. The cheap popular texts could offer to readers, writers, and collectors the kind of joyous direct encounter with the unseen world that sacred texts no longer could. The pair’s conviction that ecstatic occult initiation was just as, if not more, attainable through popular exoteric texts as through their restricted esoteric counterparts offers an important corrective to contemporary understandings of both the late-Victorian reception of popular fiction and of the reach and constituency of the occult revival.     

Hope,Cynicism, and Complicity: Worldly Resistance in Reinhold Niebuhr's Criticism of Karl Barth

This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between hope, cynicism, and despair in the stakes of a well-known dispute between Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr accuses Barth, and those who adopt Barth's central doctrinal and political positions, of quietism: in the name of religious perfectionism, such Barthians are not disposed toward incremental but necessary social reforms. For Niebuhr, this is a sure sign of “Barthian pessimism,” the despair that results from a conscience oversensitive to the absolute demands of God's righteousness. This paper seeks to show that a certain form of Barthian political theology is defensible as an ethical disposition since it need not fall victim to the helpless despair that Niebuhr fears, and simultaneously that a defensible account of what I call “total complicity” reflects the self-awareness and self-criticism that often become deformed into cynical despair and reshapes them toward repentant engagement with the world.     

The Design,Application and Evaluation of an Effective Subsurface Sampling Strategy: Detecting Holocene Knapping Floors in Southeastern Australia

Subsurface sampling programs are regularly employed to detect buried archaeological material in open landscapes. Rarely, however, is the effectiveness of the sampling program assessed through subsequent excavation. Here, an optimal subsurface testing strategy is designed using Kintigh’s simulation approach to locate prehistoric knapping floors and is applied to an open landscape in southeastern Australia. Several prehistoric knapping floors were discovered using this strategy and nine of these were subsequently excavated to establish their diameters, densities, and density distributions. The results indicate that there is a high level of divergence between test-pitting data and excavation data. This demonstrates that test-pit data cannot be assumed to provide an accurate representation of site characteristics. It follows that an empirical validation of site characteristics through subsequent excavation is needed before a meaningful evaluation of the effectiveness of a sampling strategy can be conducted.     

The Stalk that Supports the Flower: Orang Rimba Kinship,Marriage and Gender in Jambi Sumatra

This article examines Orang Rimba kinship, marriage and gender relations in the Bukit Duabelas region of Jambi, Sumatra. Orang Rimba social organization, its terms and concepts, primary kinship relations, use of botanic metaphor and key structural contrasts demonstrate their ties to Malay and Austronesian‐speaking peoples throughout the region. The manner in which these concepts are applied is very different, and is arranged in a way to fit their unique way of life in the forests. Some of the broader differences relate to their mobile economy, small and dispersed camps, and asymmetrical relations of affinity, which take place in the context of egalitarian social relations. This results in a set of social relationships not unlike many of the bride service societies throughout the world. Orang Rimba women have great rights over forest resources, yet are restrained in their interactions with men and outsiders by rigid gender relations.     

Navigating the binaries of island independence and dependence in Greenland: Decolonisation,political culture,and strategic services

Over the past decades, islands and archipelagos undergoing decolonisation have opted not to pursue independence. Many have instead become autonomous subnational island jurisdictions (SNIJs), maintaining links with their former colonisers in order to gain economic, social, and political benefits. The age of island independence movements has largely ceased. One exception is Greenland, an SNIJ in which the public overwhelmingly favours independence from Denmark. This desire for independence is linked to a binary understanding of Greenlandic identity and Danish identity as well as a binary understanding of independence and dependence. Greenland's colonial experience has trapped it in a Denmark-oriented conceptualisation of Greenlandic identity, which prevents the pursuit of potential political and economic futures, for example gaining economic benefits through the provision of strategic services to a patron state. This study demonstrates how island status and centre-periphery relations can influence political culture and, by considering the exceptional case of a present-day island independence movement, sheds light on the dynamics of island-mainland relations more generally.     

家族内人口与生活:以浦江义门郑氏为例

《(浦江)义门郑氏宗谱》拥有一个家族中以男性人口为主的详细资料,具有重要的研究价值,对于了解该家族的人口数量、人口增减的速度、职业、化状况、婚姻状况、寿命等等,都具有重要的研究价值。藉此数据为蓝本,加以比排分析,为后人了解一个家族的婚姻状况、平均寿命、化、职业等都可以展开新的视野。     

Globalised dreams,local constraints: migration and youth aspirations in an Indian regional town

Youth in India’s regional towns face a paradox: they are exposed to discourses of neoliberal globalisation through education and media, yet are unable to seize the benefits of globalisation, due to regional isolation. In this paper, we explore how aspirations of youth in India’s regional towns are influenced by their geographic marginalisation. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Darjeeling, a regional town in West Bengal, we demonstrate that regional youth feel disadvantaged in their access to middle-class jobs, modern education and lifestyles associated with neoliberal globalisation. Consequently, they express strong desires for ‘exposure,’ which can only be met through migration, particularly to India’s metropolitan cities. They are frustrated in their aspiration to migrate, however, as they feel constrained by the traditional family structure, discrimination in the larger cities and the uneven temporalities between regional towns and ‘global India.’ Their experiences highlight the geographically uneven effects of neoliberal globalisation.     

汉代华北的耕作与环境:关于三杨庄遗址内农田垄作的探讨

2003年,河南省内黄县三杨庄汉代村落遗址内发现有大面积的农田遗迹,其中保存有比较完整的旱田垄作形态。汉代聚落遗址内出现农田垄作这一事实,很容易使人联想到汉武帝晚期主要在黄土高原地区推行过的"代田法",现在已经有相关学者对两者作过初步的比较研究;三杨庄遗址内的农田在当时处于华北平原黄河下游的沿岸地带,受当地自然环境的显著影响,其垄作形态相对于"代田法"也出现了一些变化。在相当长的历史时期内,华北平原的自然环境与黄土高原地区一直存在着很大的差异,两地的农业技术也遵循各自独特的发展规律,因此,不能简单地认为三杨庄遗址内农田就是"代田法"的遗存;三杨庄农田遗址的"垄作"作为反映汉代华北平原耕作情况的一个珍贵个案,不会脱离春秋战国时期"畎亩法"的范畴以外,在研究中应该将"垄作法"发展的历史与华北平原的特殊环境结合起来,以探讨三杨庄遗址农田垄作的真实面貌。