Pretransition marital fertility variation over time: was there deliberate control in England?

An important line of research concerning historical fertility patterns in currently developed countries of Europe has concluded that, prior to the fertility transition, marital fertility was essentially constant over time, and deliberate fertility control was virtually unknown. It has been argued that variations over time in overall fertility were largely the consequence of variations in nuptiality. Other researchers have challenged these views and present evidence for the existence of a significant minority of fertility controllers in pretransition populations. In this article, we find support for this second view and argue that (1) there was significant, non-random variation in marital fertility over time, prior to the transition; (2) in many cases, this variation in marital fertility was large relative to contemporaneous variations in nuptiality; and (3) in a substantial minority of the cases, the variation over time in pretransition marital fertility was so large that it is suggestive of deliberate fertility control. Thus, our findings question the view of fertility transition as an innovation in deliberate marital fertility control. While most of our evidence is based on data from England and Wales, we find corroboration of our key results in other European data.     

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS OF AD 1660–1930 EUROPEAN COPPER-COLOURED BLUE GLASS TRADE BEADS FROM ONTARIO,CANADA

Blue glass trade beads from well-dated late seventeenth- to early twentieth-century sites and collections have been analysed non-destructively by instrumental neutron activation analysis. The beads display enough variations in their elemental contents to allow us to characterize the different chemistries. The implication of these results is that similar chemical analyses of blue beads from undated archaeological sites may be used to help date the sites, since each bead chemistry has a specific earliest period.     

RADIOCARBON DATES FOR BEESWAX FIGURES IN THE PREHISTORIC ROCK ART OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA

Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon ages have been taken for a test suite of small samples of material removed from some of the ‘beeswax’art figures found in rock shelters in northern Australia. The results indicate that we can reliably date this unique form of rock art with no noticeable damage. We had not expected to find figures of any great antiquity, and so we were surprised to find that the ages obtained spanned the time period from the recent past to about 4000 BP.     

Book Reviews

Technopoles of the World: The Making of 21st Century Industrial Complexes. M. Castells and P. Hall. London, Routledge, 1994, x + 275 pp, £45.00 hb, ISBN 0 415 10014 3, £14.99 pk, ISBN 0 415 10015 1 pb.

Transport and Communications Innovation in Europe. G. Giannopoulos and A. Gillespie (Eds). London, Belhaven Press, 1993, xii + 369 pp, £42.00 hb, ISBN 1 85293 269 4.

The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. F. Fisher and J. Forester (Eds). London, UCL Press, 1993, 327pp, £14.95, pb, ISBN 1 85728 183 7.

Regional Development in the 1990s. The British Isles in Transition. P. Townroe and R. Martin (Eds). London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers and Regional Studies Association, 330pp, £22.50 pb, ISBN 1 85302 139 3.

Urban Land and Property Markets in France. R. Acosta and V. Renard. London, University College Press, 1993, 166pp, £40.00 hb, ISBN 1 85728 050 4.