A Context for Concealment: The Historical Archaeology of Folk Ritual and Superstition in Australia

Are there traditions of folk ritual practice in Australian historical contexts, and are they observable in the archaeological record? Studies from the US and UK have documented a range of practices suggesting the persistence of British and European traditions of folk magic well into the twentieth century and previous historical work has identified numerous examples of ritual concealments in Australian buildings. In examining over 4,500 Australian historical archaeological sources, however, we found very few examples of possible folk ritual practices. This raises the question of why such practices are not being captured by current archaeological recording methods. As counterpoint, a general model is constructed from US, UK and Australian work that raises intriguing possibilities for the situating of superstitious behavior in Australian historical archaeology, including the contexts in which people might be more prone to practise such behaviors and how they might be materially identifiable.     

Producer Services, Economic Geography, and Services Tradability

We investigate how the incorporation of producer services linkages affects the outcome of an economic geography model. We specify the production of manufactures such that a variety of producer services is needed to transform tradable unfinished goods into final consumption goods. We find that service linkages promote the concentration of economic activity in a single region, but whether full concentration is achieved depends on the costs and mode of services trade. Applying the model to a multiregion world shows that incorporating producer services may also give rise to regions that specialize in different economic activities.     

Disabilities,gender and employment: social exclusion,employment equity and Canadian banking1

People with disabilities, especially women, suffer from appallingly high rates of poverty, and paid work is frequently cited as a primary route out of poverty. I draw on feminist analyses of work and disability studies to reflect on the Canadian federal government's Employment Equity Act. I use the example of the ‘Big Six’ banks to investigate the numerical representation and occupational distribution of women and men with disabilities compared to their counterparts without disabilities. However, social justice in the workplace is at least as much about the quality of social relationships as it is about statistical effects. Reaching workplace equity also involves the creation of a workplace climate where people with disabilities experience supportive and responsive supervision, along with a sense of being respected and valued. I assess the banks’ progress towards identifying and eliminating discriminatory disabling barriers. I close with a discussion of workplace climate and locate the Act in the context of a broader network of change that includes challenging ableism.     

Taxonomic, anatomical, and spatio-temporal variations in the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions of plants from an African savanna

Stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope ratios are commonly used to reconstruct palaeodiets and palaeoenvironments. The method is based on our knowledge of isotopic patterns in plants, which are subject to taxonomic and environmental variability. While previous researchers have addressed isotopic variability amongst plants, no studies have looked extensively at a broad suite of taxa over multiple temporal scales from within the savanna biome so as to provide baseline data for palaeodietary and palaeoenvironmental studies. Here we document variations in the isotopic compositions of plants collected over two years from the Kruger National Park, South Africa, with respect to species and anatomical differences, and the influences of geological substrate and spatio-temporal shifts in climate. Results show that environmentally-induced carbon isotopic variations in plants within this region are generally smaller than 2‰, which is lower than what has been previously reported for plants compared across multiple habitat-types. These data suggest that δ¹³C differences of 2‰ or more (or 1‰ if the diet is predominantly C₄) between animals from a given area reliably indicate real dietary differences. Plant δ¹⁵N values vary greatly between different microhabitats (by up to 4‰), responding to a range of environmental influences that may, in turn, significantly influence variation in animal δ¹⁵N values.     

Bureaucratic Leverage over Policy Choice: Explaining the Dynamics of State-Level Reforms in Telecommunications Regulation

While state governments have enjoyed greater control over regulating local telephone service providers since 1984, movement toward efficiency-based policy reform (e.g., adoption of competitive markets) has proceeded slowly. We investigate this pattern by addressing how the degree of policy discretion held by state public utility commissions (PUCs) affects reform of local telephone exchange regulation. Using precise measures of both PUC discretion and state policy changes over time, we find that states with "stronger" PUCs (more policymaking authority) are significantly more likely to move toward efficiency-based policy regimes and away from traditional rate-of-return regimes. Greater PUC discretion systematically related to state adoption of efficiency-based reforms over time suggests that regulators are using updated information about policy impacts to inform their policymaking activities. Our findings contradict a common presumption that regulatory bureaucracies are simply motivated by a desire to increase their control over policymaking. Instead, state PUCs are a key source of telecommunications policy reform in the states.     

Land-Use Conflict and the Rate of the Transition to Agricultural Economy: A Comparative Study of Southern Scandinavia and Central-Western Korea

Although the forager–farmer interaction model successfully explains the gradual transmission of farming technology to foraging groups, it fails to explain rapid, abrupt transition to agricultural economies. This paper suggests that interaction between farmers and foragers often includes conflict and competition over land and that this conflict between different land-use strategies may lead to a rapid, discontinuous transition of subsistence economy. Comparing southern Scandinavian and central-western Korean cases, this paper suggests that the rapid transition to an agricultural economy in central-western Korea was a consequence of the appearance of territoriality of farmers in mobile, land-sharing context, resulting in a decrease in number of resource patches available to foragers.     

Opportunistic versus target mode: Prey choice changes in central-western Korean prehistory

Human decision-making processes are usually hierarchical in that higher-level decisions impose constraints on lower-level decisions. As a result, prey choices during individual foraging trips are governed to a large degree by higher-level decisions regarding how to supply resources to satisfy demands, with higher-level decisions typically made prior to foraging trips. Resource selectivity and search bias sometimes take place in this context. By dividing resource procurement modes into opportunistic and target, I discuss how choice of mode on the basis of an overall economic plan affects prey choice during foraging trips and faunal assemblage composition resulting from those trips. An analysis of taxonomic diversity in shellmidden assemblages from the central-western Korean Late Chulmun Period (3500–1300 BC) and Middle and Late Mumun Period (700–100 BC) shows that Late Chulmun people adopted a target mode, while Middle/Late Mumun people adopted an opportunistic mode in their exploitation of marine resources. A decrease in the importance of marine resource in Middle/Late Mumun produced a change in taxonomic diversity by increasing the opportunistic cost of marine resource exploitation.