Smakkerup Huse: A Mesolithic Settlement in NW Zealand,Denmark

Abstract

Excavations at the site of Smakkerup Huse on the island of Zealand, Denmark, have revealed Late Mesolithic Ertebølle deposits, dating between 5000 and 3900 B.C. Preservation was excellent and a variety of bone, antler, wood, and other plant remains were recovered in the waterlogged deposits, along with stone and ceramic artifacts. The remains document a diverse subsistence base utilizing both marine and terrestrial foods, an elaborate wood technology, new artifact types, and some of the oldest domestic cows in Scandinavia. This report provides background information on the site, and discusses the artifacts and plant and animal remains. The question of domestic animals in the Late Mesolithic is addressed.     

Mussels,Tourism and Community Development: A Case Study of Place Branding Through Food Festivals in Rural North Jutland,Denmark

Abstract

Rural areas are facing prospects of marginalization and peripherality in an age of globalization where the attention of governments and media focuses increasingly on the (lack of) competitiveness of urban and metropolitan regions in Europe. Many rural areas have, therefore, searched for ways to improve their position vis-à-vis other localities by mobilizing local resources and employing policy tools that are believed to foster indigenous social and economic development, including place branding. Unsurprisingly, using food as a means to profile rural localities has become widespread, with branding efforts revolving around local food festivals that commodify local cultural resources. The article attempts to illuminate the challenges faced by branding processes in rural areas through a case study of Løgstør, a small rural town in North Jutland, Denmark, which builds its branding efforts around an annual mussel festival. The analysis focuses on the relationship between stakeholders and branding strategies, and in particular aims to uncover the role of the food festival in aggravating or alleviating inherent tensions between different stakeholders and target groups. It is argued that in the case of Løgstør making a food festival pivotal, a signature event for the place branding efforts has been created, which appeals to both external and internal audiences, and that this may hold wider lessons for place-branding initiatives in other small towns across Europe.     

Employment growth and regional development: industrial change and contextual differences between Denmark and Sweden

This paper explores the potential drivers behind uneven regional development in the context of employment growth in Denmark and Sweden. In particular, we are interested in the roles of urbanization, industrial change and the rise of the new economy as manifested in the growth of the two economies in 2002–2007. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to analyse the impact of a number of key industrial sectors on regional employment growth in the two countries. The empirical analysis is based on longitudinal matched employer–employee data retrieved from official registers in each economy from 2002 to 2007, a period of strong national growth following the crisis of early 2000. Our findings indicate that the two economies follow a similar pattern in addressing total employment growth; but looking at changes in employment levels across the national borders of these two relatively similar open economies, we find that, although in general these economies react relatively similarly to changes, embarking on a narrower analysis of the individual sectors reveals marked national differences. This indicates that context matters in the analysis of regional economic dynamics in terms of structure, system and policy.     

Settlement and land alienation in Western Australia: the shire of Denmark

The pattern of initial settlement in the Shire of Denmark in Western Australia is mapped using land registrations of the date of the first lease and first freehold grant. Settlement started near the main rivers before World War I and accelerated with Group Settlements of the 1920s. However, many Group settlers abandoned their land before 1940. Little development occurred until in-migration during the last 30 years. Local persistence of families was estimated from records of land tenure, rate books, electoral rolls, postal directories and interviews. The rate of persistence of families on each block varied considerably. Geographical expansion of holdings among successive generations of founding families reflects more general processes such as clone colonization in which, by mutual support and intra-family co-operation, families undertake short-distance migration to newly acquired—often abandoned—holdings. In this way, settlers have gradually created a continuously settled landscape in this once densely forested area of south-western Australia. Land alienation has occurred since 1900 in the study area of 217 surveyed lots, or ‘blocks’ which are, on average, 150 acres (70 hectares) in size. The geographical pattern of initial settlement comprised isolated sites, occupied in the wake of early lumbering, rather than a linear frontier.     

Testing the sustainability and sensitivity to climatic change of terrace agricultural systems in the Peruvian Andes: a pilot study

The results of an integrated geoarchaeological and palaeoecological pilot study of a prehistoric agricultural terrace and nearby mire basin are presented. They reveal two stages of terrace construction for the cultivation of Zea mays during the Middle Horizon (615–695 AD) and late, Late Intermediate Period (1200–1400 AD). These stages were strongly associated with evidence for vegetation succession, destabilisation and erosion of the surrounding landscape, and changes in mire surface wetness. The reasons for agricultural terrace abandonment and/or reconstruction are uncertain, with only circumstantial evidence for climatically induced agricultural change.     

Diet in medieval Denmark: a regional and temporal comparison

The aim of this research is to explore regional and temporal patterning in diet in medieval Danish populations. δ¹⁵N, δ¹³C_coll, δ¹³C_ap values were obtained from 154 human bone samples from three sites located in the Jutland peninsula of Denmark. These sites span the medieval period. The results suggest that the medieval Danish diet was composed of C₃ plants, terrestrial animals, and freshwater and marine fish in varying amounts. The data also suggest some regional patterning in diet, but little temporal differences in the composition of diet.     

Changes in regional settlement patterns and the development of complex societies in southeastern Shandong,China

Around the globe, archaeological settlement pattern survey has brought a new spatial, diachronic, and theoretical vantage to the study of early civilizations. This paper provides a new perspective on the rise and reorganization of complex societies in northern China through the synthesis of 11 years of systematic regional survey in southeastern Shandong Province. Based on our surface findings, we suspect that the agricultural colonization of this coastal region occurred primarily during the later half of the Neolithic and was rapidly followed by the development of a four-tiered settlement hierarchy with two primary centers during the Early Longshan period. We also document the reorganization of this regional system during the Bronze Age, and the eventual political integration of this study area under polities centered to the west (and outside the region surveyed). We argue that southeastern Shandong was not merely a backwater or periphery throughout its history, particularly in regard to the Early–Middle Longshan periods when there were centers of great size. Through our long-term and broad-scale perspective, we provide new evidence of how complex societies arose and changed over millennia in northern China.     

Industrial development,technology change,and regional disparity in Hungary

In this paper the main conclusions concerning regional differences in enterprise development in Hungary will be summarized, and the fields and scope of action at enterprise and at the level of the authorities will be outlined briefly. The empirical results need to be put into a wider perspective, and therefore the first part of the paper contains a brief overview of the process of transition and of the regional economic development of Hungary.     

Restructuring, gender and employment in flux: a geography of regional change in Cornwall, Ontario

For the past two decades, uneven development in general, and the changing structure of the labour market in particular, have figured prominently in geographic literature explaining the possible trajectories of restructuring events in industrial countries. This paper explores the regional nature of various socio-economic processes shaping gendered employment patterns in Cornwall, eastern Ontario. Focussing on the dimensions of workforce 'feminisation' we argue for a critical reexamination of gender-neutral regional geographies in understanding how gendered divisions of labour and local identity formation and concepts of 'class' are in flux.     

Social enterprises in regional innovation systems: a review of Finnish regional strategies

The aim of modern innovation policies is to enhance the innovation capability of regions, their organizations and people. Regional innovation system (RIS) theory has been one of the most popular frameworks for realizing innovation policies. Yet, adopting the perspective of sustainable innovation policy where innovation is also seen as a solution to various societal and environmental problems has been slow. Social enterprises (SEs) are discussed here as a means to address those problems, particularly through collaboration between sectors and focusing on social sustainability. The aim of this paper is to identify whether and in what way SEs are communicated as an innovative solution and as a source of innovations for economic and development activities through regional strategies. The data consist of regional innovation and business strategies from all Finnish regions, analysed using qualitative content analysis. We argue that there is a need to go deeper and include effective support mechanisms for SEs in these documents. Better inclusion of SEs as part of innovation systems and communicating this through regional strategies would help to develop SEs and to have them perceived as potential innovators and active entrepreneurial actors in innovation systems contributing to economically, environmentally and socially sustainable development.     

Settlement patterns,social complexity and agricultural strategies during the Chalcolithic period in the Northern Negev,Israel

Previous studies have reported a Chalcolithic site distribution pattern in the Northern Negev as clustered, exhibiting a number of characteristics that imply a chiefdom level of organization. However, a recent spatial analysis suggests that in some areas of the Northern Negev, settlement patterns were essentially random and that there is no evidence for regional chiefdom organization. We examine this controversy by closely inspecting the methods of spatial analyses employed by previous researchers, by introducing an additional multiscalar spatial technique, namely Ripley's K-function, and by using updated and modified data. Our results indicate that settlement distributions were essentially clustered, even in small areas along the wadis. Examining the relation between these spatial-dependent distributions and the landscape surroundings revealed that particular physiographic characteristics of the wadis contribute to increscent in site clusters. Furthermore, a general linear model analysis suggests that the distribution of Chalcolithic sites is determined primarily by environmental factors rather than factors related to political organization.     

Arctic archaeological sites threatened by climate change: A regional multi-threat assessment of sites in south-west Greenland

Climate change threatens many well-preserved archaeological sites in the Arctic. The paper presents the first Arctic multi-threat assessment focusing on the Nuuk region of Greenland. The results suggest that the majority of the 336 known archaeological sites are already exposed to impacts from microbial degradation, permafrost thaw and vegetation, and that these impacts will increase over the next 80 years. Additional impacts from coastal erosion are only noted at a limited number of sites due to a predominant consolidated and uplifting coast. The applied methods represent an important first step to identify threatened sites and emphasize important data limitations.     

Conquest,ceramics, continuity and change. Beyond representational approaches to continuity and change in early medieval England: a case study from Anglo‐Norman Southampton

Studies of Anglo‐Norman material culture, and pottery in particular, have struggled to see how processes of change are reflected in the material record. In this paper I propose a new approach to the analysis of this material. By reconstructing how people interacted with objects, we can see how the agency to create Anglo‐Norman England was distributed through interactions between people and their surroundings. Furthermore, rather than being reflected in such interactions, continuity and change flowed through engagements with objects, generating unique meanings and experiences. This approach therefore challenges the existing ontology that underlies our understanding of the period and its political developments and ethnic identities.     

Environmental change,agricultural innovation,and the spread of cotton agriculture in the Old World

Recent excavations at the site of Kara-tepe in northwestern Uzbekistan revealed evidence for the production of cotton (Gossypium sp.) in domestic contexts dated to ca. 300–500 AD. These archaeobotanical remains help to document the spread of Old World cotton production, and predate the existing evidence for its cultivation in Central Asia. The context in which these remains were found—in temperate Eurasia at a time of intense environmental and social change—suggests that the spread of cotton agriculture to this region occurred when new plant varieties were incorporated into domestic production regimes as part of local adaptive strategies. The development and transmission of cotton as a global cultigen was initiated by these small-scale innovations aimed at the expansion of economically and environmentally sustainable subsistence practices in Central Asia. Subsequent worldwide transmission occurred when emerging empires helped to spread cotton agriculture more widely across the Old World.     

Denmark,Scandinavia and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in the early Cold War

This article analyses the role of the Danish and Scandinavian labour movements in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in 1950–1955. First, it is demonstrated that although the Scandinavians were critical towards the communist regimes in eastern Europe and supported the Marshall Plan, they only joined the ICFTU as a result of the British break-up of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). Next, the Scandinavians, on the one hand, allied with the British and other west Europeans and rejected the ‘negative’ anticommunism of the Americans, while, on the other hand, they supported the establishment of an intelligence network behind the Iron Curtain, gave financial aid to the campaign against communists in west European unions, and supported victims of the East German uprising in 1953. In short, the Scandinavians closely followed the British, remained critical towards the Americans, and challenged the Soviets.