Palaeoecological evidence from neolithic fireplaces in the Sahara

Circular concentrations of stone fragments or pebbles occur widely in the Sahara, mostly on the great alluvial plains or along the foot of the escarpments. They are interpreted as fireplaces, but associated archaeological remains are usually scarce. More than 50 radiocarbon dates indicated that these features are of neolithic age, ranging fromca 9000 toca 3500 bp, with a maximum occurrence at 5800–5000 bp. In some regions they are extremely rare, elsewhere their density may exceed 30 per square kilometre. There are several reasons for attributing these fireplaces to neolithic cattle herders.

---

Résumé Il y a de nombreuses concentrations circulaires de fragments de pierre ou de galets au Sahara; ils se trouvent surtout dans les grandes plaines alluviales, ou le long du pied des escarpements. On les interprète comme des foyers, mais d'habitude on n'y trouve que très peu de restes archéologiques qui y sont associés. Plus de 50 datations au radiocarbone ont indiqué que ces sites datent du Néolithique, s'échelonnant deca 9000 àca 3500 bp, avec une forte concentration entre 5800 et 5000 bp. Dans certaines régions ces sites sont très rares, tandis qu'ailleurs leur densité peut être supérieure à 30 par kilomètre carré. Pour plusieurs raisons on attribue ces foyers à des pasteurs des boeufs du Néolithique.

     

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.     

Sustainable management of metallurgical forest on Mont Lozère (France) during the Early Middle Ages

Mont Lozère, located in the French Massif Central region, provides an exceptional context in which to research the impact that charcoal production and metallurgy had on woodlands, along with the role that these activities played in changing the mountain landscape. This study provides an insight into the land use, forest management methods and metallurgical practices in the area during the Middle Ages (11th to 15th centuries). Medieval charcoal burning platforms, archaeological remains that have often been neglected in the past as a source of historical information, along with nearby smelting sites, were identified, sampled and analysed. In this paper, spatial analyses, radiocarbon dating and anthracological and dendro-anthracological studies have been combined in a unique manner. The results reveal that charcoal burners practiced beech coppicing, where the species and diameter of wood used remained the same over a period of four centuries. It is proposed that this form of metallurgical forest management be considered an early example of a sustainable utilisation of natural resources.