Being Ritual in Mesolithic Britain and Ireland: Identifying Ritual Behaviour Within an Ephemeral Material Record

Acceptance of ritual as a valid interpretation of Mesolithic behaviour has slowly emerged over the past decade; the ‘silly season’ heralded by Mellars (Antiquity 83:502–517, 2009) has not materialised, though in Ireland and Britain difficulties persist in defining what might constitute ‘ritual’ away from the graveside. New discoveries from both the development-led and academic sectors enable Mesolithic archaeologists to better establish which elements of the archaeological record can be interpreted as ritual. This paper seeks to identify further strands of ritual behaviour, incorporating evidence from sites without organic remains. We consider the evidence for ritual at the site and feature scales, and in the special treatment of objects—an often overlooked body of data in understanding ritual. Thus the material signature of ritual will be questioned, and ways in which Mesolithic ritual can be rehabilitated and expanded will be explored.     

CRITERIA FOR THE PETROGRAPHIC CHARACTERIZATION OF STONEPASTE CERAMICS

The application of petrographic analysis to the problems of provenance attribution of ceramics made in the Islamic world is complicated by the presence of the highly quartzose ‘stonepaste’body. To facilitate the differentiation of different stonepaste groups, it has been necessary to develop specific criteria for distinguishing the characteristics of each centre, including the assessment of the degree of cloudiness of the quartz as rendered by fluid inclusions. This has enabled the successful application of petrographic analysis, and the solution of a number of provenance problems.     

John Cheyne's classic monographs

John Cheyne (1777-1836), a Scotsman born in Leith, graduated at Edinburgh University but spent most of his career in Dublin. He was professor of medicine (1813-19) at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, physician to the House of Industry Hospitals and co-founder of the Dublin Hospital Reports in which his celebrated account of a patient with irregular breathing was described in 1818. His Essay on hydrocephalus acutus (1808) and Cases of apoplexy and lethargy (1812), important nineteenth-century contributions to neuropathology are considered here in detail. Towards the end of his life he was afflicted by depression and his posthumously-published Essays on the partial derangement of the mind (1843) was written as a therapeutic exercise.     

The Oral Tradition,Environmental Change and River Basin Management: Case Studies from Queensland and Victoria

River basin management activities are often carried out in the context of real or perceived environmental change. Views of environmental change provided by the oral tradition are compared with histories of change reconstructed from the historical documentary record for the Nogoa River, Queensland, and the Avon River, Victoria. Quite different perspectives on the nature and causes of river channel change are provided by the two types of sources. River basin managers appear to have generally adopted the views provided by the more easily accessible oral tradition, leading to management strategies that are not necessarily justifiable in the light of the documentary history.     

Book reviews

Etudes hégéliennes: Raison et décision. Bernard Bourgeois (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, Questions, 1992). 404 pp. FF 198.00 paper.

Name, Hero, Icon: Semiotics of Nationalism through Heroic Biography. Anna Makolkin (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992), 264 pp. DM 148 cloth.

A History of Women in the West: II. Silences of the Middle Ages. Edited by Christiane Klapisch‐Zuber (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).

Examination of Pharisaic Traditions. Exame das tradiçoes phariseas. By Uriel Da Costa. Facsimile of the only copy, Royal Library of Copenhagen. Supplement by Samuel Da Suva's Treatise on the immortality of the soul. Tratado da immortalidades da alma. Trans., notes and introduction by H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon (E. J. Brill: Leiden, New York, Köln, 1992) 578 pp. $143.00 cloth.

La transparence du mal: Essai sur les phénomènes extrêmes. By Jean Baudrillard (Paris: Galilée, 1990) 180 pp. (English translation: The Transparency of Evil: Essay on Extreme Phenomena [New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1992] 200 pp.)

Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France. (Women in Culture and Society). By Penelope D. Johnson (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994) pp. xv, 294, £11.95/ $17.25 paper in the U.K. and Eire.

Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries. Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 447 pp. m.p.g. paper.

Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science, Paul Hoy‐ningen‐Huene, translated by Alexander T. Levin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) 310 + xx pp. $40.00 cloth $15.95 paper.

Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth‐Century French Thought. By Martin Jay (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) xi + 632 pp. $35.00 cloth $16.00 paper.

Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue. By Lester H. Hunt (London/New York, 1991) xxiii + 200 pp. £12.99 paper.

Empire, Welfare State, Europe: English History, 1906–1992 (Short Oxford History of the Modern World), 4th ed. By T. O. Lloyd (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993) 587 pp. paper.

Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917. By Anna Geifman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) xii + 376 pp. $39.50 £32.50 cloth.

Thucydides, Hobbes and the Interpretation of Realism. By Laurie M. Johnson (DeKalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993). xiv + 214 pp. $32.00 cloth.

Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age. By Luc Ferry, trans. by Robert de Loazia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) viii + 276 pp.

Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth Century Metaphysics. By R. S. Woolhouse (London and New York: Rout‐ledge, 1993) 214 pp., £10.00 paper.

Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. By John Tolan (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993) xv + 288 pp. £31.50 cloth £15.50 paper.

To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. By Eric J. Sundquist (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993) pp. ix + 705.

Speculative Freemasonry and the Enlightenment: A Study of the Craft in London, Paris, Prague, and Vienna. By R. William Weisberger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1993) vii + 244 pp. $52.00 cloth.

Spain's First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931–1936. By S. G. Payne (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 470 pp. £53.95 cloth £17.95 paper.

Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment. The Debate over Maladies des Femmes. By Lindsay Wilson (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) vii + 246 pp. cloth, n.p.g.

Pragmatism and Social Theory. By Hans Joas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) 272 pp. $45.00 cloth $16.95 paper.

Karl Kautsky: Marxism, Revolution & Democracy. By John H. Kautsky (New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Books, 1994) 256 pp. $32.95/£24.95 ISBN 1–56000–109–7.

The Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes. By Mark Hulliung (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) 293 pp. $45.00 cloth.

What is Property? By Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, edited by Donald R. Kelley and Bonnie G. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xxxviii + 225 pp. $49.95 cloth $16.95 paper.

Sophocles, 2 vols. Trans, and edited by Hugh Lloyd‐Jones, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1994) vii + 486 pp. and viii + 599 pp. $16.95 per volume, cloth.

The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello. By Margaret L King (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) xviii + 484 pp. $22.95 paper $74.75 cloth.

Men Writing the Feminine: Literature, Theory and the Question of Genders. Edited by Thaïs E. Morgan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994) vi + 207 pp. $16.95 cloth.

Stone. By John Sallis (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994) 147 pp. $24.95 cloth $11.95 paper.

The Humanity of Thucydides. By Clifford Orwin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) x + 235 pp. n.p.g.

Bruno Kreisky: Chancellor of Austria. A Political Biography. By H. Pierre Secher (Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 1994) vii + 223 pp. $17.85 cloth.

Visions of America since 1492. Edited by Deborah L. Madsen (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994) xv + 164 pp. $39.95 cloth.

Flying Out of This World. By Peter Greenaway (The Parti‐Pris Series) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) vi + 199 pp. £31.95/$45.95 paper £59.95/$86.25 cloth.

Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought. By Louis A. Sass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) x + 595 pp. n.p.g., paper.

Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker. By Julia Stapleton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 249 pp. £35.00/$59.95 ISBN 0–521–46125–1.

Marguerite Duras: Apocalyptic Desires. By Leslie Hill (Routledge, 1994) viii + 200 pp. £11.99 paper.

The Rhetorical Voice of Psychoanalysis: Displacement of Evidence by Theory. By Donald P. Spence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) 228 pp. $29.95 cloth.

Nietzsche, God, and the Jews. By Weaver Santaniello (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994) 232 pp. $17.95 cloth.

Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida. By Rodolphe Gasche (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) vii + 286 pp. $45.00 cloth $22.95 paper.

Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy. By Jonathan Steele (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) xviii + 427 pp. $27.95 cloth.

Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture. By John Gascoigne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 324 pp. £35, $59.95.

National Cultures and European Integration: Explorative Essays on Cultural Diversity and Common Policies. Edited by Staffan Zetterholm (Oxford/Providence USA and Berg, 1994) vii + 175 pp. £24.95 cloth £12.95 paper.

English Mystics of the Middle Ages. Edited by Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xi +311 pp. £37.50, $59.95 cloth.

Schumann and His World. Edited by R. Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) xi + 396 pp. n.p.g.

English Traits: The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 5, Historical introduction by Philip Nicolof, notes by Robert E. Burkholder, text established and textual introduction and apparatus by Douglas Emery Wilson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) lxxiii + 433 pp. $65.00.

To Destroy Painting. By Louis Marin, trans. by Mette Hjort (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) $49.95 cloth, $18.25 paper.

Italian Fascism, 1919–1945. By Philip Morgan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995) xii + 209 pp. $45.00.

Leaders and Masses in the Roman World: Studies in Honour of Zvi Yavetz. Edited by I. Malkin and Z. W. Rubinsohn (Leiden, New York, and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1995) xviii + 243 pp. 110.00/ $63.00 cloth.

From Newton's Sleep. By Joseph Vining (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) xvii + 398 pp. cloth.

A Requiem for Karl Marx. By Frank E. Manuel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) xi + 255 pp. ISBN 0–674–76326–2, $24.95 cloth.

The Romans. Edited by Andrea Giardina, trans. by Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) pp. x + 393 $15.95 paper.     

Character and Age of Lateritic Weathering at Jervis Bay,Southern New South Wales

Lateritic profiles near Jervis Bay developed under humid temperate climates on a surface of considerable relief. δ¹⁸O and TL dating of these profiles indicates that their ages range from Late Mesozoic-Early Tertiary to Late Pleistocene. These profiles thus demonstrate a complexity of development far greater than that allowed for in traditional explanations which attributed lateritic weathering to the effects of tropical climates on Middle Tertiary erosional surfaces.     

EARLY BRONZE AGE TIN PROCESSING AT KESTEL/GÖLTEPE,ANATOLIA

Chemical analysis of statistically significant numbers of samples including minerals, sediments, soil, host rock as well as powdered materials, crucible accretions and metal artefacts revealed information about the distribution of cassiterite at Kestel and the tin smelting processes that took place at Göltepe c. 2600 BC. Using the ancient technique of vanning for the isolation of tin ore (cassiterite), followed by assaying by blowpipe/charcoal block, as well as crucible smelting with a blowpipe, good tin metal suitable for alloying with copper to make bronze was obtained. There is every indication that tin was mined and smelted in the Early Bronze Age at the Kestel/Göltepe sites.