Ancient Microbial DNA in Dental Calculus: A New method for Studying Rapid Human Migration Events

Ancient human migrations provide the critical genetic background to historical and contemporary human demographic patterns. However, our ability to infer past human migration events, especially those that occurred over rapid timescales, is often limited. A key example is the peopling of Polynesia, where the timing is relatively well defined, but the exact routes taken during the final stages and the source populations are not. Here, we discuss the technical limitations of current methods for inferring rapid human migration events, using the final stages of Polynesian migration as an example. We also introduce a promising new proxy method to infer human migrations—patterns of bacterial evolution within ancient dental calculus (calcified plaque). While we focus on Polynesia, this method should be applicable to other past migrations, enhancing our understanding of human prehistory and revealing the crucial events that shaped it.     

Book reviews

William M. Carpenter and David G. Wiencek (eds), Asian Security Handbook: An Assessment of Political‐Security Issues in the Asia‐Pacific Region. New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1996. xv + 301 pp. $US68.95 (cloth), $US27.95 (paper).

David S. Mason, Revolution and Transition in East‐Central Europe. Second Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. xiv + 242 pp. $US52.00 (cloth), $US 14.95 (paper).

Desmond Ball (ed.), The Transformation of Security in the Asia/Pacific Region. London: Frank Cass, 1996. 244 pp. £30.00 (cloth), £15.00 (paper).

M. Jane Davis (ed.), Security Issues in the Post‐Cold War World. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1996. ix + 248 pp. £45.00 (cloth).

Sam Bateman and Stephen Bates (eds), Calming the Waters: Initiatives for Asia Pacific Maritime Cooperation. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 114, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1996. xxii + 207 pp. $23.00 (paper).

Sam Bateman and Stephen Bates (eds), The Seas Unite: Maritime Cooperation in the Asia‐Pacific Region. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 118, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1996. xxx + 303 pp. $25.00 (paper).

Anthony Hyman, Political Change in Post‐Soviet Central Asia. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994. 52 pp. £9.50 (paper).

Steven Philip Kramer and Irene Kyriakopoulos, Trouble in Paradise? Europe in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: McNair Paper 49, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, 1996. v + 71 pp. No price given.

Yaw Saffu (ed.), The 1992 PNG Election—Change and Continuity in Electoral Politics. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change Monograph No. 23, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1996. xii + 409 pp. $30.00 (paper).

Roger Bell, Tim McDonald and Alan Tidwell (eds), Negotiating the Pacific Century—The ‘New’ Asia, the United States and Australia. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin in association with The Australian Centre for American Studies, 1996. xi + 324 pp. $29.95 (paper).

Anthony Milner and Mary Quilty (eds), Australia in Asia: Communities of Thought. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. xi + 212pp. $24.95 (paper).

Colin Mackerras (ed.), Australia and China: Partners in Asia. South Melbourne: Macmillan Education Australia, 1996. xi + 217 pp. $32.95 (paper).

Peter Maass, Love Thy Neighbour: A Story of War. Papermac, 1996. 305 pp. $24.95 (paper).

United Nations, The United Nations and The Advancement of Women 1945–1996. Blue Books Series, Volume VI, Revised Edition. New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1996. 852 pp. US$49.95 (paper).

Frank Elbe and Richard Kiessler, A Round Table With Sharp Corners, The Diplomatic Path to German Unity. Baden‐Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996. 256 pp. No price given.

Walter Hatch and Kozo Yamamura, Asia in Japan's Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alliance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xv + 281 pp. $90.00 (cloth), $34.95 (paper).

Andrew Selth, Transforming the Tatmadaw: The Burmese Armed Forces Since 1988. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 113, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1996. 205 pp. $23.00 (paper).

Terry Burstall, Vietnam: The Australian Dilemma. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993. xxv + 329 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Terry Nardin (ed.), The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. x + 286 pp. $US35.00 (cloth).

Archie Law, A Hollow Success: The Repatriation and Reintegration of Cambodian Refugees. Melbourne: Issues in International Development No.7, Research and Policy Unit, World Vision Australia, 1995. 86 pp. No price given.     

Editor's Introduction

Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996. xvii + 448 pp. including chapter references and index. $19.95 paper.

Hoberman, John. Darwin's Athletes: How Sports Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. New York: Houghton Miffin, 1997. xxvi + 341

Williams, Vernon J., Jr. Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and His Contemporaries. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. ix +152 pp. including chapter references and index. $34.95 cloth.

Wolpoff, Milford and Rachel Caspari. Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 463 pp. including chapter references and index. $26.00 cloth.     

After the Exception: HIV/AIDS Beyond Salvation and Scarcity

Abstract: Access to treatment for HIV/AIDS became a flashpoint for global justice struggles in the late 1990s. An expanding international response, premised to a significant extent on the idea of HIV/AIDS as an exceptional global problem, has since delivered treatment, care and prevention to growing numbers of people. HIV/AIDS exceptionalism, however, has increasingly been questioned, many aspects of the response have been critiqued and donor funding has started to decline. I argue that, having been framed as an exceptional humanitarian emergency, the question of HIV/AIDS as a global problem is increasingly located within a discourse of scarcity. Tracking the growing entanglement of global HIV/AIDS relief with neoliberal governmentality and the emergence of something I term therapeutic neoliberalism, I argue that the shift from a rationality of salvation to one of administration poses new challenges for global health activism. Questioning the discourse of scarcity remains essential to an alternative global health agenda.     

Canadian Civil Aviation 1935–45: Flying Between the United States and Great Britain

This article examines Canada's role in post-war planning for international civil aviation and how it was influenced by plans emanating from both London and Washington. Canadian aviation policy was driven by ambitions not easily reconciled: collective-security idealism; commercial advantage; the desire to reconcile British and US policies; and to raise Canada's international profile. These issues are explained and analysed in the lead-up to and in the events of the Chicago International Civil Aviation Conference in November–December 1944. What emerges challenges a considerable part of the conventional wisdom about Canada's diplomacy and the role it played at Chicago through a more nuanced picture of both motives and the stage upon which the civil-aviation drama was played out.     

Rational versus Heuristic Decision Making during Residential Search

The decisions of seventy household members during a residential search for a new home for owner-occupancy were measured in a search simulation game. Their decisions both to inquire about homes during the search, and to select a new home at the termination of the search, were more accurately predicted by a heuristic decision-making model than by a rational model.     

The Order of Battle in the Roman Army: Evidence from Marching Camps

The Iron Age in the North-West of Iberia is characterized by settlement patterns in which small hilltop enclosures or castros were dominant. Recent field-survey work has revealed more about the distribution of rural settlement sites in part of this area, and an analysis has been made of the pattern of rural site distributions in relation to the castros. This confirms the continued focal role of castros into the Roman period. An explanation for the settlement pattern in this region and the absence of typically Roman features like developed villas is sought in the nature and extent of Roman military recruitment from the region.