The significance of pottery in Zambian Later Stone Age contexts

Archaeological investigations in the Lunsemfwa Drainage Basin of Zambia have yielded evidence that necessitates modification of current views about the nature of culture contact between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. Hypotheses of barter, theft or some kind of exchange network between the two communities are not supported. It is suggested that stone-tool-using foragers collected pottery from abandoned village sites and transported these back to their base camps. This hypothesis recognizes the significance of resource availability and of patterns of exploitation and settlement. Lack of regular contact during the period of co-existence was largely due to the environmental diversity of the region: the two populations occupied and utilized different areas and did not compete for the same resources.

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Résumé Des recherches archéologiques dans le bassin du Lunsemfwa en Zambie ont fourni des indices qui nous obligent à modifier nos idées actuelles au sujet de la nature du contact culturel entre les chasseurs-cueilleurs et les agriculteurs. Les hypothèses de troc, de vol ou d'un réseau quelconque d'échanges entre les deux communautés ne sont pas soutenues. L'auteur suggère que les chasseurs-ceuilleurs qui utilisaient des outils lithiques ont ramassé de la céramique dans des villages abandonnés et l'ont rapportée à leurs camps de base. Cette hypothèse reconnaît l'importance de la disponibilité des ressources, et celle des systèmes d'exploitation et d'habitation. L'absence de contacts réguliers pendant la période de co-existence était due surtout à la diversité de l'environnement de la région; les deux populations ont occupé et utilisé des zones différentes et ne se sont pas fait concurrence pour les mêmes ressources.

     

The evolution of international political economy

The 'invisible college' of international political economy (IPE) is a house divided. The field is split between the rationalist species that dominates in the US and a diverse genus of critical scholars. Recent developments in IPE suggest, however, that there is scope to rebuild the invisible college. An increasing awareness of normative questions should make rationalist scholars more receptive to critical work, while critical scholars are discovering an independent identity as they reinvent themselves in the tradition of classical political economy. There is much to gain from a renewed exchange between rationalist and critical scholars, particularly in the context of empirical work, as demonstrated by the vivid politics of the global bioeconomy.     

The effects of political participation on political efficacy: A simultaneous equations model

The absence of studies investigating the influence of political participation on individuals’ perceptions of political efficacy constitutes a significant gap in our knowledge of political behaviour. While many researchers have investigated the influence of efficacy on political participation, and there has been some endeavour to examine the reciprocity of the relationship between the variables, none has estimated a comprehensive model of the impact of individuals’ participation is different kinds of political activity on different aspects of their perceptions of political efficacy. We redress these particular deficiencies in our knowledge of political behaviour, investigating the influence of participation in three different modes of activity—partisan activism, community activism and political extremism—on individuals’ perceptions of internal and external efficacy; that is, their perceptions of political self‐competence and system responsiveness. Our findings confirm that the relationships between different modes of participation and efficacy are both reciprocal and varied, and that they vary in ways which have important implications for theories of participatory democracy.     

The recovery and interpretation of microvertebrate bone assemblages from archaeological contexts

The analysis of microvertebrate remains recovered from buried contexts is frequently problematic for archaeologists. Diminutive size is a major obstacle to recovering, identifying, and interpreting microfaunal bone materials successfully. Their taphonomic history is often obscure, thus the significance of microvertebrate accumulations for settlement, subsistence, and ecological interpretation is difficult to evaluate. Recognizable and reliable archaeological signatures are sought for assessing the effect of taphonomic history on microvertebrate assemblages. Relevant signatures of bone damage, skeletal survivorship, taxonomic composition, and context are examined in assemblages produced and modified through accidental non-predator-related death, predator accumulation, and postmortem alteration.     

The international political thought of Martin Wight

The different responses in Great Britain and the United States to Martin Wight as a thinker of international relations reveal something about the contrasting academic cultures of the two countries. Wight was pre‐eminently an ‘arts’ man, regarding history and philosophy as essential prerequisites for understanding the world. Above all he was concerned with the moral dimension in politics, whether domestic or international. His pacifism in the Second World War, curiously linked to his profound sense of realism, reflected deep religious convictions; indeed theology, and particularly eschatology, underlay much of his thinking. His career centres upon first Chatham House and Nuffield College, Oxford, then the London School of Economics and Political Science, and finally the University of Sussex. His lectures at the LSE on international theory achieved legendary fame, but he did not publish much in his lifetime. The appearance since 1977 of four notable posthumous works has enhanced his already high reputation, as has the increasing scholarly interest in the ‘English School’, of which he is now seen as a founding father. Ian Hall's book is a brilliant piece of analysis in which Wight's theological world view—which was not obtrusive in his teaching and writing—is investigated with a sureness that is probably rare among scholars in the international relations field.     

The West's moral and political crisis

The West is in the grip of a moral panic with unforeseeable political consequences. After four decades of neoliberalism, cracks are beginning to appear in the form of nationalist challenges from the right and a youthful insurrection from the left, both frequently described as ‘populist’ by establishment figures. The Faustian compact made with finance capital by the traditional parties of the centre‐left in the 1990s now leaves them on the verge of extinction. The underlying conditions for this disarray are a massive demographic shift at the global level which will see Asians and Africans with over four‐fifths of the world's population in 2100. This editorial briefly reviews the Cold War and the transformations that have occurred since. A world revolution after 1945 was overthrown by a counter‐revolution in 1979–1980 which is itself under threat now. The American Empire is sustained by mercantilism, militarism, the world currency, intellectual property and the Internet economy. Free markets are just an ideological fig leaf for this. The editorial concludes with a review of recent political events in the US, France and Britain: Trump's presidency, Macron's improbable rise and Corbyn's surge in May's snap election. In Britain's case, the terrorist attacks, hung parliament and Grenfell Tower fire constitute a perfect storm that could sink the British political right.     

The United States and counterinsurgency: 'political first, political last, political always'

According to the status of forces agreement signed by Iraq and the United States in November 2008, US troops are to be withdrawn entirely from Iraq by the end of 2011. A few days later it was also revealed that the British force in Iraq, numbering about 4,100 troops, will be reduced to a contingent of just a few hundred military advisors by summer 2009. The counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, on the other hand, is to be intensified in the form of a ‘surge’ in military and political effort. Counterinsurgency operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq have long been at the centre of the security policy debate in the United States and elsewhere; a debate which seems unlikely to be resolved in the near future. But what exactly is counterinsurgency? This article offers some reflections on the practice and the politics of an especially complex form of military engagement. All military activity should be understood through the prism of politics, and counterinsurgency particularly so.