Book reviews

THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. William T. R. Fox (Ed.). University of Notre Dame Press, 1959. Pp. xii + 118.

DIPLOMACY IN A CHANGING WORLD. Stephen D. Kertesz and M. A. Fitzsimmons (Eds.). University of Notre Dame Press, 1959. Pp. viii + 407.

THE UNITED NATIONS AS A POLITICAL INSTITUTION. H. G. Nicholas. London, Oxford University Press, 1959. Pp. x + 222. Australian price, 34/9.

AUSTRALIA AND THE UNITED NATIONS. Norman Harper and David Sissons. For the Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. N.Y., Manhattan Publishing Company, 1959. xiv + 423. Australian price, 35/‐.

CANADA IN WORLD AFFAIRS: OCTOBER 1955 TO JUNE 1957. James Eayrs. Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1959. Pp. x + 291. Australian price 44/‐.

CANADIANS AND FOREIGN POLICY: The Record of an Independent Investigation. Fred Alexander. Melbourne, F. W. Cheshire; Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1960. Pp. 160. Australian price 30/‐.

INDEPENDENT AFRICAN: JOHN CHILEMBWE AND THE NYASA‐LAND RISING OF 1915. George Shepperson and Thomas Price. Edinburgh University Press, 1958. Pp. x + 564. Australian price 73/‐.

COMMUNISM IN SOUTH EAST ASIA: A POLITICAL ANALYSIS. J. H. Brimmell. For the Royal Institute of International Affairs. London, Oxford University Press, 1959. Pp. ix + 415. Maps. Australian price 62/‐.

INDIA CHANGES. Taya Zinkin. London, Chatto & Windus, 1958. Pp. xii + 233. Stg. 25/‐.

THE INNER CIRCLE: MEMOIRS OF IVONE KIRKPATRICK. London, Macmillan & Co., 1959. Pp. 275. Australian price 41/6.     

Medieval Britain in 1976

Abstract

The Hospital of St Mary Magdalen, Partney has seen the first major excavation of a minor rural hospital. Existing by c 1115, it was amongst the earliest hospitals founded in Britain after the Norman Conquest and is one of a class of about 60 sites that were run as cells of larger religious foundations. Excavations uncovered the hospital chapel and its burial ground, as well as timber buildings. Monks/priests and lay people, possibly from the monastic estate, may have been interred in separate locations with different burial rites. Of particular note was a burial in a locked coffin or chest. Partney had ceased to function as a hospital by 1318, when it formed an administrative cell of Bardney Abbey. It was abandoned and robbed in the mid-15th century when the area was given over to agriculture.     

Framing the new midwifery: media narratives in Ontario and Quebec during the 1980s and 1990s

After long periods of activism and policy debate, Ontario and Quebec were the first two provinces to integrate midwifery into their health-care services. Despite its success and growing popularity in the post-legislative era, midwifery was a highly contentious policy issue, with debates emerging at every level of policy development. In this essay, the authors explore how these debates played out in media. Specifically, the authors suggest that the frames produced by newspapers during this period served to align midwifery with broader provincial socio-political discourses, which in turn legitimized state intervention in the area of reproductive health. At the same time, however, the authors demonstrate that where Ontario media representations muted differences between midwives and physicians, representations in Quebec emphasized them. Thus, the authors show that in very different ways, media representations of midwifery in Ontario and Quebec both established a discursive context in which the state had to "act on" midwifery and midwives, and also challenged the potential of midwifery to transform women's birth experiences.     

Patterning and Its Causation in the Pre-Neolithic Colonization of the Mediterranean Islands (Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene)

In 1981 one of us (Cherry) first attempted to identify spatial and temporal patterning in the human colonization of the Mediterranean islands. Since the 1980s, slowly accumulating evidence has suggested that the Mediterranean islands were sporadically inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Here we seek to establish whether or not these data exhibit regularity. We suggest that evidence for Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic activity, tending to cluster on larger or less remote islands, indicates that while humans were clearly capable of reaching the Mediterranean islands prior to the Neolithic, their general reluctance to do so can be explained in terms of the variable environmental attractiveness of the insular Mediterranean. Tending to be relatively small, dry, and biologically depauperate, the Mediterranean islands were largely inhospitable to mobile groups preferring extensive territories with diverse and robust biotas. Sedentism only became a widely viable strategy in the insular Mediterranean with the development in the Neolithic of what we might regard as “terraforming”—that is, the introduction of cereals, pulses, and ovicaprids, all tolerant of xeric environments.     

Medieval Britain in 1972

WHAT WAS IT LIKE to be a teenager in medieval England? Despite the fact that medieval society often singled young apprentices and workers out for comment, their study has been largely neglected in medieval archaeology. The skeletal remains of 4940 children and adolescents (6.6–25 years) from 151 sites in medieval England were compiled from a combination of primary data collection and secondary data from published and unpublished skeletal reports and online databases. The aim was to explore whether apprentices could be identified in the archaeological record and, if so, at what age they started work and what impact occupation had on their health. The data were divided into urban and rural groups, dating from before and after the Black Death of ad 1348–49, and before the Industrial Revolution. A shift in the demographic pattern of urban and rural adolescents was identified after the Black Death, with a greater number of young females residing in urban contexts after 14 years. The average age of males in urban contexts increased from 12 years to 14 years after the plague years, contrary to what we might expect with the greater opportunities for work after the Black Death. There were higher rates of spinal and joint disease in the urban adolescents, and before the age of 18 years, their injuries were more widespread than their rural counterparts. Domestic service was the potential cause of greater strain on the knees and backs of urban females, with interpersonal violence evident in young urban males. Overall, it was the urban females that carried the burden of respiratory and infectious diseases, suggesting they may have been the most vulnerable group. This study has demonstrated the value of adolescent skeletal remains in revealing information about their health and working life, before and after the Black Death.