Ancient olive DNA in pits: preservation,amplification and sequence analysis

The olive tree (Olea europaea) was domesticated by vegetative propagation of selected wild individuals with superior fruit. Later, new cultivars were established repeatedly from feral trees or from crosses between wild, feral, and domesticated trees. Thus the genetic background of many contemporary domesticated lines is a mixture of ancient cultivars and local wild trees. Ancient DNA may illuminate the complicated process of olive domestication because such DNA sequences provide data about ancient genomes that existed closer to the domestication events. Well preserved DNA must be available for such studies, even though in the Mediterranean region, where olive cultivation took place, the climatic conditions are not favorable for DNA preservation. To select for well preserved pits we measured their proportions of lignin by IR spectroscopy, and correlated this with parameters of DNA quality such as template length in an olive-specific repeat array, and template quantity as determined by real-time PCR amplification. Archaeological pits that passed these tests did contain high quality ancient DNA. We present the first ancient olive DNA sequences and compare them to modern wild, feral and domesticated lines.     

Book reviews

Brian Girvin (ed.). The Transformation of Contemporary Conservatism. London: Sage Publications, 1988. 232pp. $10.95.

Ingrid Detter DeLupis. The Law of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. xx + 411pp. $54.00.

Martin Shaw (ed.). War, State and Society. London: Macmillan, 1984. viii + 266pp. No price given.

Denis de Rougemont (translated by Anthony J.C. Kerr). The Future is Within Us. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983. v + 244pp. No price given.

David Goldsworthy (ed.). Development Studies In Australia: Themes and Issues. Melbourne: Monash University, Development Studies Centre, Monograph No. 1, 1988. 203pp. $10.00.

Martin Walker. The Waking Giant: The Soviet Union Under Gorbachev. London: Abacus Books, 1987. xxvii + 315pp. $16.95.

Andrew Farran. Changing Directions in the Soviet Union?: Perestroika, Glasnost ... and Australia ?with particular reference to the Soviet Far East. Canberra: The Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1988. iv + 24pp. $6.00.

Eberhard Kolb (translated by P.S. Falla). The Weimar Republic. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. xi + 237pp. $27.95.

Ian S. Lustick. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988. xi + 244pp. $11.95

Michael Mandelbaum. Israel and the Occupied Territories: A Personal Report on the Uprising. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988. 20pp. No price given.

Robert A. Scalapino and Masataka Kosaka. Peace, Politics and Economics in Asia. London and Washington: Pergamon‐Brassey's, 1988. xiv + 209pp. No price given.

Hal Hill. Foreign Investment and Industrialisation in Indonesia. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988. xxi + 179pp. No price given.

Chelvadurai Manogaran. Ethnic Conflict and Reconcilitation in Sri Lanka. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987. xiv + 232pp. $US22.00.

C.K. Brown (ed.). Rural Development in Ghana. Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1986. xii + 325pp. No price given.

Helen Fraser. New Caledonia: Anti‐Colonialism in a Pacific Territory. Peace Research Centre Monograph No. 2, Australian National University, 1988. 88pp. $10.00.

Susan K. Purcell (ed.). Mexico in Transition: Implications for U.S. Policy. Essays from Both Sides of the Border. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1988. viii + 156pp. $US9.95.

James Ferguson, Papa Doc. Baby Doc: Haiti and the Duvaliers. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Inc., 1987. xi + 164pp. $39.95.     

Claiming Space: Aboriginal Students within School Landscapes

There is an emerging body of theoretical, historical and design research that examines the ways in which race and cultural identity are understood to be produced and represented in the landscape. Yet, there remains a dearth of research examining both the historic and contemporary effects of race upon the development of school geographies. This paper has two broad purposes. It highlights the experiential aspects of racialized geographies within schools and, at the same time, it grapples with the processes that maintain or challenge the spatial conditions for the construction of whiteness. Drawing upon in-depth case study research this paper highlights the experiences of Aboriginal students and staff at four different schools, with a particular focus on cross-cultural schools, in Manitoba, Canada.

What is needed is a concept of landscape that helps point the way to those interventions that can bring about much greater social justice. And what landscape study needs even more is a concept of landscape that will assist the development of the very idea of social justice. (Henderson, 2003, p. 196)     

A brief history of brain archiving

This paper narrates the history of the conservation of the human brain, tracking techniques of brain archiving from the first experiments in the preservation of soft tissue in spirits of alcohol to the latest refinements in cryogenic technology. It traces the changing social and legal conditions that permitted the collection of post mortem human tissue, as well as the increasingly sophisticated technologies that allowed for the preservation and storage of this material. This preliminary survey of brain archiving uses examples of specific collections in order to discuss changes in the techniques, goals and achievements of neural tissue collecting from the mid-eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries.