Comparing Communities—The Limits of Typology

Across the disciplines, communities and identities are usually classified into general categories, such as ethnic, tribal, territorial, civic, religious or political communities/identities. This may be useful in many instances to structure the field and highlight certain distinctive features. But, as this contribution will argue, such typologies do not provide a sound basis for comparison. This holds true both for intercultural and for interdisciplinary comparison. For instance, religion was configured rather differently in ancient Rome, late Antique Christianity and early Islam, and each of them differed fundamentally from our modern concept of religion (as opposed to a secular sphere). The same applies to ethnicity. Likewise, historians and social anthropologists (and even specific schools within the disciplines) operate with often rather differently configured concepts in this area. In fact, most actual communities are framed by more than one “vision of community”; they are rarely only ethnic, religious or political. Their shared frames of reference can be compared: for instance, ancestral lineages, supernatural origins, sacred places, shared history, tribal solidarities, legal practices, exchange networks or outside perceptions. Such frames of references of course overlap and typically create more than one level of identification. This contribution will take the example of the new peoples and powers that emerged after the end of the Roman Empire in the West (such as Goths, Franks and Anglo-Saxons). What shaped these communities, and how did ethnic, territorial, religious and political identifiers interact in the process?     

Luminescence dating of anthropogenic deposits from Tall Zarʿa in the Jordan Valley

This study uses quartz-based optically stimulated luminescence dating to determine when a massive fortification wall (W11186) was constructed in the archaeological site of Tall Zarʿa in the Jordan Valley. A total of 11 samples of sediments were taken from a trench on the north side of the wall (extramuros). The extracted quartz grains had good luminescence characteristics and were identified as well bleached by comparison with feldspar infrared-stimulated luminescence (IRSL) ages. The optical ages showed that the deposition against the wall occurred in two different periods. The first was around 3.20 ± 0.07 ka ago (Iron Age), and the second was around 2.28 ± 0.08 ka (Hellenistic period). Human activity was evident because of the intermixing of cultural material with the presumed naturally deposited units.     

An Approximation for the Rank Adjacency Statistic for Spatial Clustering with Sparse Data

The rank adjacency statistic D provides a simple method to assess regional clustering. It is defined as the weighted average absolute difference in ranks of the data, taken over all possible pairs of adjacent regions. In this paper the usual normal approximation to the D statistic is found to give inaccurate results if the data are sparse and some regions have tied ranks. Adjusted formulae for the moments of D that allow for the existence of ties are derived. An example of analyses of sparse mortality data (with many regions having no deaths, and hence tied ranks) showed satisfactory agreement between the adjusted formulae and the empirical distribution of the D statistic. We conclude that the D statistic, when used with adjusted moments, provides a valid approximate method to evaluate spatial clustering, even in sparse data situations.     

Water and Salt (I): Yājñavalkya's Saindhava Drstānta (BĀU II 4,12)

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

The Reporting of International News in Canada: Continuity and Change, 1988–2006

This article examines Canadian daily newspaper editors' views regarding the status of international news reporting in Canada. It is based on a series of surveys administered in 1988, 1995, 2000, and 2006 that measured editors' assessments of issues such as the quantity and quality of international news in their papers, the importance they attach to international news coverage, the areas of the world they consider important to cover, and the sources they use for international news. The article uses the data from the surveys to determine whether 11 September 2001 affected editors' perceptions of international news reporting. This question has been widely studied in the United States, but less so in Canada. The central conclusion here is that 9/11 has had only a limited impact on editors' perceptions. The data across all four surveys demonstrate a remarkable degree of consistency in editors' assessments of international news reporting in Canada.