The West Saxon boundary clause in context: Celtic and Continental connections

The perambulatory boundary clause in England originated as a West Saxon phenomenon in the eighth century, most likely through connections with the early Celtic church, and spread with the rise of the West Saxon kings. Vernacular perambulatory charter bounds occur throughout England after the tenth century – but before 800, they appear only in Wessex, and on the Continent where West Saxons were initially installed as missionaries, in an early Latin–vernacular form. The West Saxon roots of Boniface and his followers may thus explain the presence of early perambulatory bounds in Frankish archives.     

Shit Beautiful: Tambu and Kina Revisited

The concept of inalienability as discussed by Annette Weiner (1992) seems to privilege Polynesia over Melanesia in terms of a more ‘evolved’ logic of object possession. Two instantiations of material culture from the Wiru and Tolai people, pearlshells and coils of shell-money respectively, are compared and assessed for their inclusion into the category of “inalienable possessions.” The conclusion argues against fitting Melanesian artefacts into a developmental continuum of inalienability, and signals the need for a more contextual and aesthetic reading of material culture in comparative projects.     

HEDONIC PRICES,IDENTIFICATION, AND THE DEMAND FOR PUBLIC SAFETY*

In this paper, we use a two-stage intercity hedonic model to estimate household demand for public safety. This approach is shown to readily address the identification problem inherent in the hedonic model. Data from the 1980 Public Use Microdata Sample are used to estimate a willingness-to-pay function for the public-safety good. Income is found to be the primary determinant of willingness to pay. Indeed, the influence of income outweighs the combined impact of family life-cycle considerations.