Stylistic Change as a Self-Organized Critical Phenomenon: An Archaeological Study in Complexity

Archaeologists can learn from models of evolution as a self-organized critical phenomenon. Self-organized critical systems are large, interactive systems that organize into a critical state where minor events can trigger chain reactions. Such systems demonstrate power-law distributions in the size of changes, or avalanches, that occur. The theory of self-organized criticality is important in that it implies that the evolution of complex systems may be driven more by interactions between agents than by external events or natural selection. Stylistic changes may be examples of avalanches of interconnected events. Evidence for self-organized criticality is shown for stylistic evolution in historical pottery styles from New York State and is used to evaluate the nature of a prehistoric pottery typology from the Southwest.     

Book reviews

STRENGTHENING THE FRAMEWORK OF PEACE. A Study of Current Proposals for amending, developing, or replacing present International Institutions for the Maintenance of Peace. By Alan de Rusett. (London and New York, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1950. xiii +225 pp.)

VOTING AND THE HANDLING OF DISPUTES IN THE SECURITY COUNCIL. By Eduardo Jiménez de Aréchaga. Carnegie Endowment, N.Y., 1950. This is a lawyer's study of the operations of the Security Council. The author, a Uruguayan, was an officer in the U.N. Secretariat for some time and is now Under Secretary of Foreign Relations in Uruguay.

IMMIGRATION. By W. D. Borrie, 1949. Sydney and London, Angus and Robertson, pp. 105 + viii.

THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH SINCE 1815. By C. H. Currey. 2 vols. Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1950–51. Vol. I, pp. viii +471; Vol. II, pp. viii +287.

DEFENCE IN THE COLD WAR. By a Chatham House Study Group. London: R.I.I.A. 1950, pp. viii +123.

ASPECTS OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. A Symposium edited by Sidney Bailey. London: The Hansard Society. 1950.     

Imago Mundi bibliography (of literature mainly published 1994–1996)

The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. By R. A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston and George D. Painter, with a foreword by Alexander 0. Vietor; New Edition with an Introduction by George D. Painter and Essays by Wilcomb E. Washburn, Thomas A. Cahill and Bruce H. Kusko, and Laurence C. Witten II. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. ISBN 0 300 06520 5. Pp. lxvi, 291, ill. STG£30 (cloth).     

Ludwig Alsdorf 8.8.1904 – 25.3.1978

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

The Full Hempel

Book reviewed in this article:
The Logic of Historical Explanation by Clayton Roberts     

Reconstructing site organization in the eastern Aleutian Islands,Alaska using multi-element chemical analysis of soils

This study presents the results of multi-element analysis of weak-acid extractions of 953 soil samples collected by coring on and around pre-historic village sites on two islands, Sanak and Amaknak, in the eastern Aleutians. Concentrations of aluminum (Al), barium (Ba), calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), phosphorus (P), strontium (Sr), titanium (Ti), and zinc (Zn) were determined using an inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). Resultant elemental signatures allow the identification of site features and organization in the absence of large-scale excavation. All the archeological sites showed similar and distinct chemical signatures regardless of the several thousand year date range of the sites or the length of time a site was occupied. However, intensity of occupation does appear to affect concentrations of elements. Site features such as houses, house berms, house floors and middens had distinct anthropogenic signatures and could be distinguished from one another. This approach may be used to identify sites that do not have distinct surface features and to target areas for excavation.     

HISTORY AND THE MANIFEST IMAGE: HAYDEN WHITE AS A PHILOSOPHER OF HISTORY1

To claim that Hayden White has yet to be read seriously as a philosopher of history might seem false on the face of it. But do tropes and the rest provide any epistemic rationale for differing representations of historical events found in histories? As an explanation of White's influence on philosophy of history, such a proffered emphasis only generates a puzzle with regard to taking White seriously, and not an answer to the question of why his efforts should be worthy of any philosophical attention at all. For what makes his emphasis on narrative structure and its associated tropes of philosophical relevance? What, it may well be asked, did (or could) any theory that draws its categories from a stock provided by literary criticism contribute to explicating problems with regard to the warranting of claims about knowledge, explanation, or causation that represent those concerns that philosophy typically brings to this field? Robert Doran's anthologizing of previously uncollected pieces, ranging as they do over a literal half‐century of White's published work, offers an opportunity to identify explicitly those philosophical themes and arguments that regularly and prominently feature there. Moreover, White's essays in this volume demonstrate a credible knowledge of and interest in mainstream analytic philosophers of his era and also reveal White as deeply influenced by or well acquainted with other important philosophers of history. White thus invites a reading of his work as philosophy, and this volume presents the opportunity for accepting it as such.     

Notices of Books

Abstract

The three greatest German buildings of the first half of the eleventh century were of an ambition not to be found elsewhere in contemporary Europe and were modelled directly on Roman Imperial prototypes. They demonstrate a new grandeur of spirit that is typical of German architecture of the time, but in their precise forms, remarkably enough, they remained unique in that country. Archbishop Heribert's huge rotunda at Deutz was partly inspired by the Pantheon, and since Heribert had been Otto III's chief politician and Italian Chancellor for the previous six years the building was an important monument of Otto III's political policy of ‘Renovatio Imperii Romanorum’. The re-creation of Roman Imperial grandeur that these and other German buildings represent is essentially Romanesque and to call them anything else is not to do them justice. The idea of an Ottonian style of architecture has not been helpful.     

Metatourism: Dealing Critically with the Future of Tourism Environments

This essay links the virtually endless varieties of tourist developments which are proceeding in many parts of the world to the system of tourism. The finite nature of tourism environments is recognized and the losses which result when development demands are not balanced with the finite nature of the areas where tourism takes place are discussed. The argument is presented that to avoid such impending losses, perceptions about tourism need to be restructured along ecological lines. This new way of thinking about tourism and its development has been labelled metatourism. The sources from which this concept derives, and some of its implications, are considered.