A DOUBLE-ENTRY METHOD FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF BI-REGIONAL INPUT-OUTPUT TABLES*

ABSTRACT. In The Netherlands, a strong tradition in the construction and updating of (inter)regional input-output tables has been built up. The paper gives a brief overview of this Dutch experience and discusses the features of the by now more or less standardized double-entry bi-regional construction method (DEBRIOT). This method systematically adds sales and export coefficients to the usual construction procedures. Thus, it introduces consistency checks at the cell level of the input-output table. Moreover, it offers a non-survey technique to estimate a regional domestic sales table that is crucial to the double-entry character of the method.     

Dilemmas of Development Discourse: The Crisis of Developmentalism and the Comparative Method

ABSTRACT Developmentalism, or the theory of linear progress, has taken several forms — evolutionism, modernization theory, development thinking — which correlate with different epochs of western hegemony. The comparative method serves as its underpinnings in theoretically incorporating non-western societies into the developmental paradigm. Developmentalism is universalist and ahistorical, teleological and ethnocentric. A discourse of power, it is presented and taken as a recipe for social change. The present crisis of developmentalism is both a crisis of development in the south and a crisis of modernism in the west. In the west, developmentalism is being challenged by new social movements and, in theoretical terms, by postmodernism; in the south, alternative development strategies test the limits of the developmental paradigm. Non-western concepts of modernization have also been developed. This discussion concludes with two queries, one concerning the passage from the bi-polar world of the Cold War to polycentrism, and one with respect to the deconstruction of the west as a prerequisite to the deconstruction of development. If ‘development’ itself has become a problem, and has sowed the seeds of discontent and ethnic conflict, a corrective to development can only come from other worldviews, other visions.     

Recovery and analysis of human genetic material from mummified tissue and bone

Using sensitive techniques of molecular biology, we have been able to demonstrate the presence of genomic material of human origin in samples of mummified human tissue and bone from selected archaeological sites in Greenland. This result has far-reaching consequences for both evolutionary and archaeological studies of past human populations.     

The Middle Neolithic of Morocco’s North-Western Atlantic Strip: New Evidence from the El-Khil Caves (Tangier)

The period comprising the end of the Early Neolithic and the Middle Neolithic, dated broadly within the fifth millennium cal BC, corresponds to an interval that remains largely unknown in the extreme north-western tip of Africa. This situation contrasts with that of the Early Neolithic, a period characterised by the earliest evidence of the diffusion of a productive economy, cultivated plants and domestic animals. The paucity of data for these later phases can be explained in part by the lack of secure contexts and sequences based on radiocarbon datings of short-lived samples. The current study presents the results of the excavations of El-Khil Caves B and C that yield materials allowing re-evaluation of the chronology of a type of ceramic known as Ashakar ware. The study also identifies two traditions in the northern Moroccan Middle Neolithic. The first is heir to the so-called Impressa Mediterranean ware and rooted in the Cardial Neolithic, while the second is characterised by roulette cord impressions, red slip and tunnel lugs and probably rooted in the region of the Sahara, and has no technological precedents in the study area.     

Marginalized Potters and Ceramic Compositional Groups: Neutron Activation Analysis of Contemporary Pottery from Tigray,Northern Highland Ethiopia

The study presents the results of neutron activation analysis (NAA) of contemporary pottery from Tigray Regional State, northern highland Ethiopia. This is the first regional-scale study of ceramic composition of Tigray’s pottery and is part of an ethnoarchaeological study of the material and social contexts of pottery production and consumption in Tigray’s Eastern (Misraqawi), Central (Mehakelegnaw), and North-western (Semien Mi’irabawi) zones. The analysis identifies clear compositional groups with strong regional patterns, an encouraging result for the use of NAA to study Tigray’s ancient pottery trade. Significantly, the study further contributes to discussions of how mutually constituted social identities of potters and consumers affect compositional patterning in the distribution of pottery in market networks.     

On the Origins and Dissemination of Domesticated Sorghum and Pearl Millet across Africa and into India: a View from the Butana Group of the Far Eastern Sahel

Four decades have passed since Harlan and Stemler (1976) proposed the eastern Sahelian zone as the most likely center of Sorghum bicolor domestication. Recently, new data on seed impressions on Butana Group pottery, from the fourth millennium BC in the southern Atbai region of the far eastern Sahelian Belt in Africa, show evidence for cultivation activities of sorghum displaying some domestication traits. Pennisetum glaucum may have been undergoing domestication shortly thereafter in the western Sahel, as finds of fully domesticated pearl millet are present in southeastern Mali by the second half of the third millennium BC, and present in eastern Sudan by the early second millennium BC. The dispersal of the latter to India took less than 1000 years according to present data. Here, we review the middle Holocene Sudanese archaeological data for the first time, to situate the origins and spread of these two native summer rainfall cereals in what is proposed to be their eastern Sahelian Sudan gateway to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean trade.