Risky business: historical archaeology of the Dutch salt enterprise on La Tortuga Island,Venezuela (1624–38)

SUMMARY: In the decades of the 1620s and 1630s the Dutch engaged in salt extraction on the island of La Tortuga, Venezuela, erecting a wooden fort, portable cannon emplacements, jetties and semi-industrial solar saltpan production facilities. The relative paucity of the archaeological record juxtaposed with the wealth of detailed documentary data and fieldwork experiences led to the operationalization of the heuristic tool of ‘scapes’. A critical construction of these socially alive portions of the island landscape and seascape demonstrates 1) how north-western European conceptions of the cultural control of nature were embodied in Dutch orderliness and industriousness; 2) how the strategy of maximization of extractive practices and minimization of risk was evidenced in the overall ephemerality of structures; and 3) how these structural imperatives were imbricated in the prose of human life and death that was unfolding from one small-scale event to another on this desolate island.     

Charcoal from a prehistoric copper mine in the Austrian Alps: dendrochronological and dendrological data,demand for wood and forest utilisation

During prehistory fire-setting was the most appropriate technique for exploiting ore deposits. Charcoal fragments found in the course of archaeological excavations in a small mine called Mauk E in the area of Schwaz/Brixlegg (Tyrol, Austria) are argued to be evidence for the use of this technology. Dendrochronological analyses of the charcoal samples yielded calendar dates for the mining activities showing that the exploitation of the Mauk E mine lasted approximately one decade in the late 8th century BC. Dendrological studies show that the miners utilised stem wood of spruce and fir from forests with high stand density for fire-setting and that the exploitation of the Mauk E mine had only a limited impact on the local forests.     

Planning education in a globalized world

Five aspects of planning education at the turn of the century are discussed in this comment on Leonie Sandercock's well argued paper. The dominance of English as lingua franca and the advance of the Anglo‐American approach to planning education in a globalizing world are seen as facts which give long standing regional traditions in other cultures little chance to transfer their experience and knowledge to the English speaking planning world. Despite global convergence in planning and planning education the adaptation to regional characteristics is still essential to move from knowledge to action in urban and regional development. Training students to develop creative competence is considered as a crucial and indispensable component in planning education. However, returning to physical planning and urban design as taught in many European schools, is considered to be deadly for the future of planning schools in Europe. This danger and the never‐ending departmental disputes among planners coming from different academic backgrounds about planning education makes planning educators the most dangerous enemies of forward looking planning education. This brief comment to Leonie Sandercock's inspiring paper is written with an optimistic outlook. The optimism is based on a scenario of two quite different concepts of planning education: a global, more theoretical concept aiming at advancing knowledge in the field, and a regional, more professional one which strives for better local and regional life spaces in a globalizing world, dominated by global markets and a global value system.