Reserve Selection for Nature Conservation in South Australia: Past,Present and Future

This paper re‐examines the chronology of reserve selection in South Australia in the context of changing social, political and economic attitudes. The effect of these changing attitudes on reserve selection in South Australia is assessed in the light of the principles of a comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) National Reserve System. The outcome of reserve selection in South Australia is the establishment of a vast network of reserves in the arid regions and many fragmented and small reserves in the agricultural regions. It is likely that the remnant ecological system in the agricultural regions is not representative of the regional environmental diversity and that land clearance has precluded the establishment of a CAR reserve system in South Australia. The rate of reserve selection for nature conservation has decreased over the past decade as the opportunities for reserve acquisition decrease. It is concluded that large‐scale and strategic revegetation will be required to facilitate a CAR reserve system in South Australia.     

Reluctant Humanitarians: British Policy Toward Refugees in Kenya During the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1940

Following the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, several hundred Eritrean deserters from the Italian army and several thousand Ethiopian officials, soldiers, and civilians fled to Kenya. British officials on the border, in Nairobi, and in London found themselves deeply conflicted over how to deal with these refugees. Sheltering refugees was costly, and it antagonised the Italians whose friendship (or at least neutrality) the British hoped to win in Europe and in eastern Africa. But vocal critics in London watched for any signs of mistreatment or forced repatriation of the refugees. Government officials themselves expressed a revulsion at the possibility of turning away or repatriating refugees who feared for their lives. Because of this humanitarian sentiment, Kenya sheltered the refugees until the liberation of Ethiopia, much to the dismay of government officials.     

Why Are Clovis Fluted Points More Resilient than Non‐Fluted Lanceolate Points? A Quantitative Assessment of Breakage Patterns Between Experimental Models

For decades, archaeologists have wondered whether the Clovis Palaeoindian (c.11 600–10 800 radiocarbon years bp ) practice of ‘fluting’, a flake removal technique that creates a distinctive shallow channel extending from the base of the projectile point towards the tip, bestowed a functional advantage over non‐fluted projectile points. Using analytical modelling and static engineering experiments, Thomas et al. (2017) found that points that more effectively redistribute stress and relocate damage can absorb significantly more energy, last longer and remain intact relative to points that do not experience these phenomena. In general, stress redistribution and damage relocation is significantly more likely to occur in fluted points, as opposed to non‐fluted points, suggesting that fluting acts as a ‘shock absorber’. Here, we present a comparative quantitative assessment of breakage patterns between Thomas et al.’s (2017) experimental points that shows those experiencing stress redistribution and damage relocation were also able to significantly better resist breakage, and to incur non‐catastrophic breaks, than points that less effectively redistribute stress and relocate damage. This more beneficial breakage pattern explains the material advantages provided by stress redistribution and damage relocation, and hence the potential motivation for fluting. This does not preclude the possibility that the process of fluting was accorded significance beyond its possible utilitarian value. Additional tests will be necessary to further resolve the ‘shock‐absorbing’ capabilities of fluting.     

The Concept of Community

G. Reichel‐Dolmatoff. Beyond the Milky Way: Hallucinatory Imagery of the Tukano Indians. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978. x + 159 pp. Index, illustrations. $25.00, cloth.

Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann. Plants of the Gods: Origins of Hallucinogenic Use. New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1979.192 pp. Index, illustrations. $34.95, cloth.

R. Gordon Wasson. The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica. New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1980. xxvi + 248 pp. Index, illustrations. $12.95, paper.     

Book reviews

Ken Alder. Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. xvi+476.

Robert Kanigel. The One Best Way: Frederick Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency (New York: Viking, 1997), pp. 675.

Robert P. Crease. Making Physics. A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1946–1972 (University of Chicago Press, 1999).     

Prime Suspect: William Cowper Prime in the Holy Land and the Identity of “An American” In Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1858

One of the most popular writers for travellers to Egypt, the Holy Land and Syria in the later nineteenth century was William Cowper Prime. His journey of 1855–1856 resulted in two books which went through multiple editions over a period of twenty years, a stimulus to follow in his footsteps and a standard text in the hands of many pious Christians. A series of five long articles published anonymously in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in the mid- to late 1850s can be shown as by Prime. All have been accepted as factual reports of actual events, places, and people but closer examination leaves little doubt they are fictitious. In the light of these conclusions, it is clear Prime had a taste not just for the wild exaggeration parodied by Mark Twain, but also outright invention and we must be cautious in using his writings as sources.     

‘Poisons Disguised with Honey’: European Expansion and the Sacred Trust of Civilization

For many centuries now, those considering themselves civilized have carried out numerous atrocities—from abductions to dispossession to massacres—against those thought to be less civilized, all in the name of civilization. This has particularly been the case in the last 500 years when Europeans came into contact with indigenous peoples in their voyages of discovery and subsequent settlement. One of the justifications for these offences was often couched in terms of the self-appointed duty of “civilized” Europeans to bring the blessings of civilization to the “savage” and “barbarian” hordes, also called the “white man's burden” or the “burden of civilization.” Many nations took up this sacred trust of civilization and the challenge of bringing enlightenment and salvation to the uncivilized peoples of the world, during which the latter were either subjugated or perished. In this article I trace the intellectual heritage of the sacred trust and note its inherent contradictions, ranging from debates between Sepúlveda and Las Casas over Spain's rights of conquest in the New World to the musings of key Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Hegel, Kant, and J. S. Mill. As some of its advocates acknowledge the sacred trust and concomitant civilizing missions were inevitably and invariably violent and went against the very idea of civilization. And as Las Casas deftly highlighted, much of the reasoning underpinning the sacred trust was in the form of “poisons disguised with honey.”