Baseline bioavailable strontium isotope values for the investigation of residential mobility and resource-acquisition strategies in prehistoric Cambodia

Strontium (Sr) isotope ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) measured in human skeletal material can increase one's understanding of the residential behaviour and resource-acquisition strategies of past populations. The paper maps bioavailable ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr variation in 183 plant and soil samples across Cambodia. Bioavailable ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr, as measured in plants, differs significantly between four major geological units. The data set will support future investigations of skeletal material from Cambodian archaeological sites. Baseline ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr data should be applied judiciously to skeletal populations, and in concert with other lines of evidence, to identify potential geographical outliers rather than to ascribe specific locations from which individuals may have moved.     

Law, Justice and the Idea of a World Security

This article examines the thesis that international law is evolving in ways that reflect the requirement of world justice rather than international order and that are appropriate to an emerging world society rather than the traditional society of states with which international law is normally associated. After considering arguments for and against this thesis, the article concludes that neither adequately describes the nature of international society at the end of the millennium.     

The Bennachie Colony: A Nineteenth-Century Informal Community in Northeast Scotland

In this paper we explore the intertwined issues of improvement and community relations within the context of the Colony site, a nineteenth-century informal settlement in Scotland best known through caricatures of the poor and stereotypes of rural living. Drawing on a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research framework, a collaborative initiative involving academics and community researchers has begun rediscovering and rethinking the history of the Colony. Our investigations have established a rich and unexpected tapestry of life that played out at multiple scales of analysis according to a variety of issues. The settlement’s rise and fall was shaped by wider improvement processes impacting parts of Europe and beyond, but it is also an example of how outside influences were adopted locally, resisted and adapted; material conditions that played directly into the way community relations were themselves constituted. The lessons learned have implications for the archaeology of improvement and the study of informal communities on a global scale.     

ChoroWare: A Software Toolkit for Choropleth Map Classification

Choropleth mapping plays an important role in exploratory spatial data analysis. Several objectives have been suggested to guide choropleth map construction. These objectives, however, often conflict and, consequently, a choropleth map that is best for one objective may not be best for others. Choosing a set of choropleth class intervals is thus a multiobjective problem. This article describes an open-source software toolkit, called ChoroWare that is designed to help cartographers identify class intervals that are suitable for a specific application. The software uses a genetic algorithm to generate a set of nondominated solutions to the multiobjective choropleth class interval problem and uses an interactive visualization tool to display members of this classification set. Using ChoroWare, cartographers can examine trade-offs between alternatives and find desirable choropleth classifications that meet their objectives.     

Why is there too much international theory?

Claire Turenne Sjolander and Wayne S. Cox (eds), Beyond Positivism. Critical Reflections On International Relations (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1994) pp.201 $US35.00 ISBN 1 55587 483 5.

Ronan P. Palan and Barry Gills (eds), Transcending the State‐Global Divide. A Neostructuralist Agenda In International Relations (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1994) pp.283 $US40.00 ISBN 1 55587 395 2.     

史前时期的崇鸟习俗及其历史背景

以绘画和雕塑方式表现的鸟禽形象广泛地存在于史前时代世界众多先民中。自19世纪后期在世界众多地区发现并被确认以来,对于其含义的解读便从未间断。《史前时期的崇鸟习俗及其历史背景》一文对于这些发现和研究作了比较全面的总结。这是一篇完成于40多年以前的文章,译者选择该文,当然不是着眼于考古资料本身,甚至也不在于作者的观点多么新颖,更为重要的是从学术史的角度,了解近半个世纪前西方人类学家在解读此类题材时所涉及的诸多理论。作者认同早期艺术中的动物形象具有鲜明的原始宗教意义,并从丰产巫术、成丁礼、图腾崇拜、通天媒介和鸟的死亡象征意义等多个角度对特定图像进行了功能性阐释。作者对于这类图像所采取的多重可能性解释本身,已经反映出此类问题的复杂性。半个多世纪过去了,我们发现,除了在考古学本体论方面我们"发明"了认知考古学,并将"符号"的概念赋予这些早期艺术品之外,对于"洞穴艺术"或"符号"含义的阐释,我们似乎并没有走很远。作者是一位人类学家,文中不经意间流露出的国外人类学方面的知识与信息,如鸟禽除了为人类提供肉食与禽蛋之外,鸟骨可以做成骨笛(现在知道我国新石器时代早期也有发现),可以盛放颜料,蛋清还可以当作调制颜料的粘合剂。这些,对于考古学者来说都是别有新意的。