The Concept of Taboo in Raga,Vanuatu: Semantic Mapping and Etymology

This article discusses the two terms that convey the concept of taboo in Raga, the language of north‐central Vanuatu originally spoken in north Pentecost, and provides linguistic evidence expanding on the information published previously by the anthropologists Masanori Yoshioka and John Patrick Taylor. Based on the corpus collected in north Pentecost in the period 2015–2017, and on older ethnographic and religious written material, a semantic map is proposed for the two taboo‐related Raga terms: sabuga and gogona. Reviewing the terms that designate the concept of ‘taboo’ in the neighbouring languages, the study also explores the possibility of borrowing and semantic interference from other languages, and proposes that sabuga is a reflex of Proto Oceanic *tabu, albeit an irregular reflex, and gogona a reflex of Proto North and Central Vanuatu*kona ‘sacred, taboo’.     

Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision: A meta-analysis

The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods using a meta-analysis approach to systematize the wide range of empirical approaches and modeling frameworks found in the previous literature. Our analysis confirms the presence of moderately increasing to constant returns to scale in the provision of local services with no reduction in the average costs of production in the delivery of most local public services beyond a certain, modest jurisdictional size, which many studies have estimated at 10,000 residents. Also, the potential for economies of scale differs at least across three traditional services: education, water and sanitation, and garbage collection, being highest for education and lowest for garbage collection. Our analysis also offers guidelines for future empirical research in this area. Physical output and production cost data should be used, together with translog specifications for the modeling of cost functions. Last, we find evidence that the determinants of output cost elasticity include bidirectional publication bias and population density but do not include the presence or absence of modern “lean” production technologies or the (perceived) capital intensity of the sector, contrary to conventional wisdom. These findings have significant policy implications for countries considering jurisdictional consolidation programs.     

Anthropologies of extinction

This guest editorial reflects on the relevance of anthropology for extinction concerns, a rapidly expanding practical, ethnographic and theoretical space at a time of impending mass extinction. While biological extinction is necessarily a multispecies development (usually implicating humans), traditional species talk – focused on taxonomies, collections and classification – needs critical rethinking as it necessarily diverts attention from the vitality of life. The broad discipline of anthropology has much to offer for understanding processes of extinction and recovery, fleshing out habitat problems and prospects of extinction, and advancing meaningful environmentalist practices.     

The coming of age of the history of archaeology

Publications and organizational developments relating to the history of archaeology from 1989 until June 1993 are critically examined. Attention is paid to the changing motivations for producing such publications, their shifting intellectual orientation, controversies, especially as they relate to internal vs external approaches and the epistemological status of explanations, problems of verification, and the status of these studies as a subfield within archaeology.     

THE CHRONOLOGY OF GROUPS OF DIES FOR LARGE ISSUES OF ANCIENT COINS USING MAHALANOBIS DISTANCES*

Discriminant analyses of distances and angles obtained from 25 coins struck by P. Crepusius in 82 BC permitted the correct chronology for five groups of closely-related dies to be obtained by the method of Carter and Frurip. Twenty distances and 15 angles were measured on 10 x projections of the coins which represented five groups of dies separated in time from each other. The use of all or many variables gave poorer results than the use of five to ten variables having a high ‘figure of merit’, defined as the maximum range of mean values for a given variable in the five groups of dies divided by the mean standard deviation of the variable in the five groups. It is recommended that chronologies of ancient coins be determined from Mahalanobis distances by using only variables of relatively high figure of merit.     

COMPOSITIONAL CHARACTERIZATION OF FRENCH LIMESTONE: A NEW TOOL FOR ART HISTORIANS*

Limestone from quarries known to medieval craftsmen and from the monuments they built and embellished, as well as from carvings now in museum collections, has been characterized by neutron activation analysis. Specimens from 38 quarries in the Lutetian and Jurassic limestone formations of France and from sculptures in American and French museums have been tested, and the results have been compiled in a data base to which art historians may refer when attempting to determine provenance for sculptures. Multivariate statistical analysis of concentration data shows stone from a particular quarry in the Paris basin to be compositionally homogeneous and distinguishable from other quarries in the same formation. The same approach to data related to quarries near the Burgundian abbey of Cluny finds general agreement between classifications based on compositional and on petrographic data, but the number of samples available for analysis at the time of writing was insufficient to achieve the finer distinctions reported for the Paris basin.