Governance at community level: Small towns in rural Victoria

The ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between and within public and private sectors has led to new styles of governing that affect the way that rural communities organise themselves. Some have called this a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ where there has been a convergence of neo-liberal and communitarian ideologies to form the basis of a new relationship between the state, the market and civil society. We analyse the impact of these converging ideologies using a survey of development groups in 35 towns in rural Victoria and explore the types of community governance that have emerged as a response to changes in those towns that lost their local government authorities in the last decade of the twentieth century.     

Palaeoenvironments, the archaeological record and cereal pollen detection at Clickimin, Shetland, Scotland

The Loch of Clickimin, Shetland, is well known for its broch and associated monuments supposedly of the Bronze and Iron Ages, although the former date is disputed. Pollen, diatom and sedimentological investigations permit fresh insights into the landscape and economic impacts of those who constructed the monuments, reveal that the environs of the site experienced environmental change from Neolithic times onward and provide the first Holocene radiocarbon dates from the immediate locality. The broch-building period witnessed a continuation of pre-existing pastoral husbandry for which heather burning may have exacerbated the natural spread of blanket peat. Initially, no evidence was adduced for local arable activity in the present investigation, and this was thought to be consistent possibly with the low numbers of excavated querns and the absence of cereal macrofossil finds when compared with other Shetland broch sites. The application of ‘rapid scanning’ techniques, however, led to the discovery of a consistent cereal-type pollen representation from Bronze Age times onwards. The discrepancies between the palaeoenvironmental evidence and the environmental and palaeoeconomic inferences made by the excavator of the site are explored. Evidence is presented that both supports and contradicts previous assumptions surrounding an important archaeological site.     

Population Forecasting with Nonstationary Multiregional Growth Matrices

Though the mathematics of multiregional population projections were defined over twenty years ago, and the methodology has seen some adoption internationally, most practitioners in the United States still use rudimentary cohort component projections techniques. Both the stationarity assumption and the implicit five‐year retrospective time scale imposed by the census migration data have probably contributed to the limited use of multiregional projections methods. This paper reviews previous attempts to overcome the stationarity assumption and proposes a decompositional approach using log linear models estimated via the ECM algorithm. The paper discusses the advantages of the decompositional approach and implements the model for intrastate migration in California.     

Regional integration and the built environment in middle-range societies: Paracas and early Nasca houses and communities

We use the built environment of residential sites (house form and community layout) to investigate the effects of increasing regional integration at the level of the community in middle-range societies. We consider spatial data on house form, arrangement of residences within settlements, site location, and organization of non-residential spaces to reveal specific social phenomena linked with pan-regional political organization and ethnic identity formation, and evaluate how macro-scale processes affect micro-scale phenomena. Specifically, we argue that architecture reflects different community patterns of ritual, integration, and inequality. As a case study, we employ a diachronic perspective for two periods in Peruvian south coastal prehistory to assess the magnitude of changes implied by the genesis of Nasca society out of the preceding Paracas. Survey and excavation data from residential sites in the southern Nasca region indicate that important modifications in local community organization accompanied the regional, wide-ranging effects of Nasca society and its innovative form of regional integration. Comparison of the residential built environment from both periods suggests important changes in ritual and patterns of status acquisition and maintenance. In addition, house form indicates that a greater level of household autonomy accompanied increasing regional integration and a decrease in conflict.     

Book reviews

The Restless Urban Landscape. Paul L. Knox (Ed.), New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1993, 285pp.

Towards a New Economic Order: Postfordism, Ecology and Democracy. Alain Lipietz, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992, 206pp.

London: A New Metropolitan Geography. Keith Hoggart and David R. Green (Eds), London, Edward Arnold, 1992, pbk.

Regional Innovation Policy: Case‐studies from the Ruhr Area, Baden‐Württemberg and the North East of England. Robert Hassink, Faculteit Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen Rijksuniversiteit, 1992, 187pp., ISBN 90–6809–155–7.

Environmental Problems in Eastern Europe. F. W. Carter and D. Turnock (Eds), London, Routledge, 1993, 249 pp., ISBN 0–415–06229–2.

From Garden Cities to New Towns: Campaigning for town and Country Planning 1899–1946.. Dennis Hardy, London, E. and F. N. Spon, 1992, 340pp., £39.95 hbk.     

PRESSURE POLITICS REVISITED: THE ANTI-ABORTION CAMPAIGN*

This article focuses on the anti-abortion campaign as an extreme example of pressure group operations. After a review of the history of the abortion controversy, the recent activities of anti-abortion groups are assessed in the state of Pennsylvania. A comparison to the Anti-Saloon League is examined, and the article concludes with speculations about the probable consequences and future of such closely defined single interest groups.     

Korounkorokalé revisited: ThePays Mande and the West African microlithic technocomplex

In 1992 and 1993, the author reexcavated the rockshelter of Korounkorokalé, located in the heart of the Pays Mande. Evidence from this reinvestigation supports the idea of a long-term recurrent occupation of this site by peoples possessing a conservative quartz microlithic tradition for at least 5000 years. Seemingly aberrant “recent” first millennium AD dates from similar sites in the region are reexamined in the light of the Korounkorokalé sequence. It is argued that some isolated groups of Sub-Saharan peoples maintained a hunting-gathering lifestyle as recently as the mid to late first millennium AD. Oral traditions among modern Savanna groups, which refer to the presence of “little peoples” at their first colonization of the region, are used to support this argument. A new model for the peopling of West Africa is presented based upon a long-term autochthonous presence south of the Sahara.