The Location of Services in the Urban Hierarchy and the Regions of the United States

We use regression and factor analyses to explain intermetropolitan variation in the proportion of jobs in disaggregated service sectors in American metropolitan areas. Central place theory postulates of centrally located establishments serving a surrounding complementary region partially explain the positive relationship between metropolitan size and the proportion of jobs in an area in services. Regional variation in demand following several decades of substantial shifts in population and economic output is an additional influence. Intermetropolitan clustering of service sectors is also occurring. A factor analysis of employment proportions in twenty-two disaggregate service sectors identified five intersectoral service clusters. The factor analysis accounted for substantially more variance than the regression equations. We interpret this result as evidence of the emergence of service-based spatial industrial complexes. We argue that agglomeration of information-intensive intermediate services is driven by an attraction to labor markets endowed with pools of skilled professionals who can flexibly apply their talents in a variety of sectors. Unusual demographic characteristics of some metropolitan areas probably explain clusters of final demand services.     

Earliest hunters and gatherers of South America

Traditional syntheses of the archaeology of the late Pleistocene period in South America have focused primarily on the peopling of the continent by North American cultural groups and on identifying associations among regional sites. This focus has tended to ignore the widespread culture diversity of the period and the possible effects of different paleolandscapes on human migration and colonization, such as the presence of unglaciated tropical and temperate environments in the northern lowlands, the gateway to the interior. The earliest known cultural assemblages are characterized by various unifacial and bifacial lithic industries that may represent regional processes reminiscent of an Archaic lifeway. The major archaeological sites and associated artifact assemblages are examined in terms of regional and continental patterns of environmental and cultural change. Results suggest that the Pleistocene archaeological record of South America must be explained in its own terms and that the events and processes producing this record either occurred earlier than previously thought or are very different from those in North America.     

Landscapes, land use, and the history of territory formation: An example from the Puebloan southwest

Territories are spatial units that encompass the broadest range of a society's land-use behaviors as well as the history of human interactions with the natural landscape. Drawing from published documents pertaining to the North American Indian Land Claims and to the prehistory and history of land use among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this paper integrates spatial, material, and historical variables of land use behavior (1) to formulate an empirical definition of territory and (2) to develop a generalized life history of territory formation that can be applied explicitly to the archaeological record.     

Alma Söderhjelm and Hilma Granqvist

This essay examines two outstanding Finnish scholars, the historian Alma Söderhjelm (1870–1949) and the social anthropologist Hilma Granqvist (1890–1972). The article investigates their social background, the obstacles they faced in becoming qualified and in advancing within the university system, their scholarly ambitions and the particular personal qualities they brought to their task. Although a generation apart and coming from different social milieux, their stories have much in common, both with each other and with many other pioneers of womenà s history in a variety of societies.     

COVID-19 in Chihuahua,Mexico: Assessing its spatial behaviour through the inverse distance weighted interpolation technique

This study focused on the spatial evolution of COVID-19 in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Data were retrieved from governmental databases and analyzed by means of GIS, applying the inverse distance weighted (IDW) method. The period of December 2019 through November 2021 was split into eight seasons. The root mean square error (RMSE) was used to assess the reliability of the interpolations, showing acceptable values (RSME < 25). During the period, the municipalities of Juarez and Chihuahua reached the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths, Juarez being the main hotspot of contagion (37.2% of confirmed cases; 46.9% of deaths). Four waves of contagion were identified during the evaluated period, with Fall 2020 being the strongest season. Since Fall 2020, the spread of the disease was more often observed in municipalities with the highest human mobility. Although the spread of COVID-19 decreased after Spring 2021, in Fall 2021 records indicated a continuous increase in cases in the state. That could be due to a relaxation of the implementation of sanitary measures, as well as to the propagation of novel COVID-19 variants having an elevated infectious level. Geospatial techniques allowed for an understanding of the spatial spread of COVID-19 and could be useful for its control.