Ichnofacies of the Stairway Sandstone fish-fossil beds (Middle Ordovician,Northern Territory,Australia)

The Stairway Sandstone is a 30–560 m thick succession of Middle Ordovician siliciclastic sedimentary rocks within the Amadeus Basin of central Australia, deposited in the epeiric Larapintine Sea of northern peri-Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone is significant as one of only two known Gondwanan successions to yield articulated arandaspid (pteraspidomorph agnathan) fish. Herein we use the ichnology of the Stairway Sandstone to reveal insights into the shallow marine habitat of these early vertebrates, and compare it with that of other known pteraspidomorph-bearing localities from across Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone contains a diverse Ordovician ichnofauna including 22 ichnotaxa of Arenicolites, Arthrophycus, Asterosoma, Cruziana, Didymaulichnus, Diplichnites, Diplocraterion, ?Gordia, Lockeia, Monocraterion, Monomorphichnus, Phycodes, Planolites, Rusophycus, Skolithos and Uchirites. These ichnofauna provide a well-preserved example of a typical Ordovician epeiric sea assemblage, recording the diverse ethologies of tracemakers in a very shallow marine environment of flashy sediment accumulation and regularly shifting sandy substrates. New conodont data refine the age of the Stairway Sandstone to the early Darriwilian, with ichnostratigraphic implications for the Cruziana rugosa group and Arthrophycus alleghaniensis.     

The Limits of Low-Tax Social Democracy? Welfare,Tax and Fiscal Dilemmas for Labor in Government

The Australian Labor Party, following its election to government in 2007, has implemented an ambitious social policy agenda with spending on hospitals, pensions and community workers, as well as programs for parental leave and disability. It has also reformed taxes, in part to finance these reforms, implementing the mining and carbon taxes in 2012. Labor, however, has difficulty avoiding deficits because tax revenues are too low to finance expanded welfare. This article explores the political constraints and opportunities involved in financing welfare by examining voter responses to the ANU Poll of September 2011. Spending on welfare is supported by low-income earners, while taxing big industries finds greater support among university-educated voters. The article advances an explanation for this mismatch and for why tax resistance has hindered Labor's efforts to finance welfare expansion.

澳大利亚工党在2007年选举上台后实施了雄心勃勃的社会政策计划,涉及医院、养老金、社区工作人员、带薪育婴假、残疾人等项开支。它还在2012年改革了税收,推行采矿及碳排放税为上述改革筹集资金。不过,工党苦于避免赤字,因为税收太少,资助不了扩大的福利。本文分析了选民对2011年9月ANU民调的回应,探讨了资助福利之举的限制与机遇。低收入者支持福利开支,受过高等教育者则多支持向大企业征税。本文解释了这种矛盾,以及为什反税收阻碍了工党资助福利扩张的努力。     

Local Markets and the Polarization of Public-Sector Schools in England and Wales

Notwithstanding the recent change of government, UK educational policy continues to stress school performance tables, parental choice and competition – reflecting an acceptance by New Labour of Tory notions concerning the role that market mechanisms play in improving school performance. In view of the 1997 Education White Paper's insistence that the new government's goal was to 'overcome the spiral of disadvantage … passed from one generation to the next', this implies that the DfEE remains unimpressed by long-standing arguments concerning the socially-divisive consequences of market forces in education.
This paper seeks to add empirical weight to this debate. Arguing that recent analyses of aggregate levels of social stratification have masked polarization occurring at the local level, our analysis places schools in the context of the local markets within which they operate. This yields clear evidence that educational markets tend to exacerbate existing differences between schools in terms of both their performance and social status.     

The politics of contemporary ethno‐nationalist conflicts

That the 1990s began and ended with wars in the Balkans, often evoking reference to ‘ancient hatreds’, might suggest little has been learned since the fall of the Wall on how to address the recrudescence of violent ethno‐nationalist conflict – and indeed some fatalism as to whether this can be done at all. Yet the rethinking of notions of national sovereignty, the increasing minority‐rights jurisprudence and the development of anti‐essentialist concepts of identity in recent times have begun to indicate new policy instruments which might better allow such conflicts to be managed in the twenty‐first century. As ever, however, policy lags behind intellectual innovations, and the predominant approach of the international community remains for the moment significantly more conservative in character.     

Facilitating Interaction: Board Games as Social Lubricants in the Ancient Near East

This re‐evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in cross‐cultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double‐sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other, the games of senet, mehen and twenty squares provide evidence for social interactions. Cypriots had adopted Egyptian mehen and senet by the third millennium BC, and indigenized the games. This lies in contrast to the game of twenty squares, which had a particular role among elites in the Late Bronze Age interaction sphere. This anthropological discussion of evidence relating to gaming seeks to inspire further research on the role of board games in society.     

On Early Thimbles: A Seventh‐Century‐AD Example from Punta Secca,Sicily, in Context

A copper‐alloy thimble was found in 2010 at Punta Secca, Sicily, in a sealed context datable by coins to the first quarter of the seventh century AD. It has generally been thought that thimbles did not reach the Mediterranean area until the ninth century AD, but at least nine metal examples are in fact attested at various places from contexts datable between the late sixth century and the early ninth. It is suggested that the increasing use of silk in clothing in the Byzantine Empire during the seventh century, probably accompanied by the use for the first time of steel needles which made the use of a finger protector imperative, explains the apparent introduction of thimbles at this time. No securely dated metal thimbles are known from sites of Roman date, except for one at Ephesus of c.AD 100. It is very tentatively suggested that this last example might represent an import from China, where thimbles (and steel needles) are attested from at least the third century BC onwards.