Book reviews

Serviços e Desenvolvimento numa Região em Mudança (Services and Development in a Changing Region). Comissão de Coordenação da Região Centro (Ed.), Coimbra, Comissão de Coordmação da Região Centro, 1993, 443 pp, ISBN 972 659 040 0.

Technology Transfer in Europe. David Charles and Jeremy Howells, London, Belhaven Press, 1992, 256 pp., £35.00, ISBN 1 85293 160 4.

Technology and Economic Development. The Dynamics of Local, Regional and National Change. E. J. Malecki, Harlow, Longman Scientific & Technical; New York, John Wiley, 1991, 495 pp., ISBN 0 470 21723 5.

The Rise of Meso Government in Europe. L. J. Sharpe (Ed.), London, Sage Publications, 1993, 327 pp., £45.00, ISBN 0 8039 8776 5.

British Urban Policy and the Urban Development Corporation. Rob Imrie and Huw Thomas (Eds), London, Paul Chapman, 1993, 216 pp., £15.50 pb, ISBN 1 85396 207 4.     

A new Arabian stone tool assemblage and notes on the Aterian industry of North Africa

An unusual stone tool assemblage, reported for the first time in the Arabian Peninsula, occurs at the southwest edge of the Rub'al Khali desert. The assemblage is characterized by large, unifacially worked, prominently tanged points and scrapers. An age of between about 20,000 and 35,000 years B.P., when the Rub'al Khali was a well-watered grassland, is likely. Typological affinity with the Aterian stone tool industry of North Africa is suggested. Aterian toolmakers were a vigorous population of desert hunters, ranging over much of North Africa and the Sahara during a wet phase of the late Pleistocene. Pursuit of animals running in herds may have been a hunting strategy reflected in some of the Aterian and Arabian tools. Typology of the tanged tools and the palaeogeographic context in which they occur suggest certain specific functional usage.     

How best to drain the alchemist's cauldron: A study of the problem of marine pollution in Australia

There exists a significant problem of marine pollution in the Commonwealth of Australia. The present paper attempts to explore three aspects of this problem: the scientific, legislative, and probative. With respect to the scientific, the kinds (eg hydrocarbons, toxic metals, and viruses and bacteria) and sources (eg ship‐source and dumping) of marine pollution are examined. With respect to the legislative, the Offshore Constitutional Settlement 1979, as well as relevant‐ Commonwealth and state (Victoria and New South Wales) legislation are studied. Finally with respect to the probative, three solutions including cooperative, bottom‐up and top‐down ones are proposed and, at least in the case of the first of these, evaluated. The paper finds that the problem of marine pollution is rooted more in the federal nature of the Australian constitution than in the concurrent (as distinguished from coordinate) nature of the powers of the Commonwealth and states under this same constitution.