The elemental chemistry of lithic microwear: an experiment

This paper examines the ability of elemental analysis to distinguish microwear traces on stone tools. Our research hypothesised that cleaning procedures of experimental specimens may have heavily influenced previous studies in this area. Experimental flakes are used and cleaned by two alternative methods before laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is applied to study use-wear chemistry. The results show that elementally recognisable traces remain on stone surfaces even with severe cleaning. Also studied were archaeological sickle blades from two sites in Northern England. The results were counter-intuitive demonstrating that experimentally validated models potentially require extensive modification and clarification before being applied to archaeological material. This research identifies methodological problems and errors concerning cleaning within previous experimental studies and highlights new directions for this quantitative analytic approach in microwear analysis.     

Employers as Mediating Institutions for Public Policy: The Case of Commute Options Programs

Scholars have recently noted the role that employers can play as “mediating institutions” for public policy. Mediating institutions connect the private lives of individuals with public policy concerns by communicating societal norms to members and providing social contexts that encourage a commitment to these norms. Despite the potential importance of employers as mediating institutions for public policy, little scholarly attention has been devoted to employer mediation behavior. Accordingly, this study examines two research questions. What factors influence an employer's willingness to mediate policy problems? And how effective are employers as mediating institutions? The mediation behaviors of interest relate to employer efforts to mitigate traffic congestion and air quality problems by enabling employee “commute options,” which are alternatives to single‐occupancy vehicle commuting to work. Drawing on theories of organization behavior, the study hypothesizes that self‐interest, organizational control, and association membership will affect willingness to provide commute options. The study also hypothesizes that employers providing commute options will have lower percentages of employees that drive to work alone. Both sets of hypotheses are supported by statistical analyses of data from a cross‐sectional mail survey of metropolitan Atlanta organizations.     

Indicators of community economic development through mural-based tourism

Community Economic Development (CED) has become a recognised form of economic development, despite contention regarding its definition and applications. It is acknowledged that development planning benefits from a more holistic approach with a focus on community participation. The objective of this paper was to explore the process and selected indicators of CED success through an examination of five Saskatchewan communities that have made the conscious decision to develop tourism through the use of wall murals on the exteriors of buildings. Extensive in-person interviews were conducted with stakeholders in each of these communities. Generally, this research has found that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. For example, in communities that created murals-as-community-beautification, the process was less formalised and success was measured more qualitatively, for example in increased community pride and the development of social relationships. For those communities where murals were developed as part of an explicit economic development strategy, the process was more formalised and the outcomes measured more quantitatively, including the numbers of visitors, employment and businesses created. This research also indicates that particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.     

Incipient aquaculture in prehistoric California?: Long-term productivity and sustainability vs. immediate returns for the harvest of marine invertebrates

California archaeologists have proposed two alternative methods for harvesting mussels—“stripping” and “plucking”. These two methods are modeled and compared with experimental data from central California (Jones, T.L., Richman, J.R., 1995. On Mussels: Mytilus californianus as a Prehistoric Resource, North American Archaeologist 16, 33–58) and archaeological data from the Punta Gorda Rockshelter, a well-stratified coastal shell midden in northern California. Foragers at the Punta Gorda Rockshelter appear to have practiced a “stripping” technique at approximately 24 month intervals. It is argued that, while this strategy reduced immediate foraging returns, it increased the long-term net productivity of the mussel beds.     

Book reviews

Dynamique de l'espace français et aménagement du territoire. (The Dynamics of French Space and Spatial Planning), Michel Rochefort. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995, 138 pp, £15.00, ISBN 2 7384 3338 3

Urban Process and Power. Peter Ambrose. London and New York: Routledge, 1994, 245 pp, £12.00 pb, ISBN 1 415 00850 6; £40.00 hb, ISBN 0 415 00850 4

Transport Systems, Policy and Planning: a Geographical Approach. R. Tolley and B. Turton. Harlow: Longman, 1995, xviii + 401 pp, £20.99 pb, ISBN 0 582 00562 0

Transport Policy—Ways into Europe's Future (Strategies and Options for the Future of Europe: Basic Findings 8). K. Button, with contributions by W. Weidenfeld, G. Wolfgang Heinze, H. H. Kill, R. Münch, N. Walter, G. Topmann, H. Holzapfel and K. O. Schallaböck. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 1994, 227 pp, £9.00, ISBN 3 89204 065 6

The European Challenge: Geography and Development in the European Community. M. Blacksell and A. M. Williams (Eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 429 pp, 1994, £45.00 hb, ISBN 0 19 874176 6; £15.95 pb, ISBN 0 19 874177 4     

The Chromatic Traveling-Salesmen Problem and Its Application to Planning and Structuring Geographic Space

The classical traveling-salesman problem involves the establishment of a tour around a set of points in a plane such that each point is intersected only once and the circuit is of minimal total length. When the length of a salesman's tour cannot exceed a specified constant, the problem becomes that of finding the fewest number of salesmen such that every city is visited by a salesman and the length of each salesman's tour does not exceed a specified constant. This is the chromatic traveling-salesmen problem. An algorithm for this problem is developed and is used to create periodic markets in parts of Sierra Leone. Fifteen rural areas were examined from Sierra Leone, and weekly market places were identified in each area. Salesmen were to be assigned to an area so that each market place was visited and each tour (or periodic ring) did not exceed forty hours. The chromatic traveling-salesmen algorithm was used to minimize the number of periodic rings needed for each area and provide the specific tour for each ring.     

Moderation and religious criticism in William Cartwright’s The Ordinary (1635)

Building on the recent revival of critical interest in the drama of William Cartwright, this article explores the politics of religious moderation in his 1635 play The Ordinary. I situate the concept of moderation in Caroline England in relation to recent historical work on the subject, examining how Cartwright treats the subject in his poetry, where he argues that religious extremism inhibits the proper articulation of moderate politics. I then consider religious criticism in The Ordinary, suggesting that it attacks aspects of Puritan and Arminian theology alike. Although he ranges over a number of topics, Cartwright is particularly concerned with the way in which religious innovation is undermined by economic unfairness, incompetence, and greed. The play shows how Caroline comedy engages with polemical culture in subtle and sophisticated ways.     

THE FULL-DISTRIBUTION APPROACH TO AGGREGATE REPRESENTATION IN THE INPUT-OUTPUT MODELING FRAMEWORK*

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a probabilistic specification of coefficients in the input- output modeling framework. Although previous works on probabilistic input-output models attribute uncertainty to measurement and sampling errors, this specification derives from systematic variation directly attributable to industrial, institutional, and location factors. Experiments with national input-output data support the existence of such variation. Employing the specification not only yields a more flexible aggregate modeling framework capable of producing interval impact estimates, but also an alternative perspective on such issues as interregional differentiation and structural comparison, the identification of key industrial sectors, aggregation, and spatial variation in production.