The Standard Model,the Maximalists and the Minimalists: New Interpretations of Trypillia Mega-Sites

The currently prevailing view of the Trypillia mega-sites of the fourth millennium BC has been the dominant model for over 40 years: they were extra-large settlement examples of the Childean ‘Neolithic package’ of permanent settlement, domesticated plants and animals, and artifact assemblages containing polished stone tools and pottery. Trypillia mega-sites have therefore been viewed as permanent, long-term settlements comprising many thousands of people. This view of these extraordinary sites has been identical whatever the various opinions on their urban or other status. In recent mega-site publications, a maximalist gloss has been put on this standard view—with population estimates as high as 46,000 people (Rassmann et al. in J Neolit Archaeol 16: 96–134, 2014). However, doubts about the standard view have been emerging over the past two decades. As a result of the last six years’ intensive investigations, a tipping point has been reached, with as many as nine lines of independent evidence combining to create such doubts that the only logical response is to replace the standard model (not to mention the maximalist model) with a version of the minimalist model that envisions a less permanent, more seasonal settlement mode, or a smaller permanent settlement involving coeval dwelling of far fewer people (the ‘middle way’). In this article, I seek to construct an evidential basis for the alternatives to the standard view of Trypillia mega-sites.     

Policy Agendas in Australian Politics: The Governor-General's Speeches, 1945–2008

The Policy Agendas Project collects and organises data from official documents to trace changes in the policy agenda and outputs of national, sub-national and supranational governments. In this paper we use the policy agendas method to analyse the changing contents of those Australian Governor-General's speeches delivered on behalf of incoming governments between 1945 and 2008. We suggest that these speeches provide an important insight into how the executive wishes to portray its policy agenda as it starts a new term of government. In mapping the changing agenda in this way we address four questions: which issues have risen or fallen in importance? When and in relation to what issues have there been policy ‘punctuations’? How stable is the Australian policy agenda? How fragmented is the policy agenda? We find evidence of a number of policy punctuations and one turning-point: the election of the Whitlam government.     

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.