CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE USSR: NEW INFORMATION ON DISTRIBUTION

Analysis of newly available data and recent newspaper reports on the corrective labor system reveals important distributional and spatial aspects to the problem of crime and its punishment in the USSR. The article supplies data on the major categories of offenses, notes the general similarity of crime rates between rural and urban areas and the significant interregional variations in overall and specific crime rates. Evidence is presented which indicates that the total crime rate in Siberia and the Far East greatly exceeds the USSR average. This is attributable to distinctive features of the region's population structure, the instability of its labor force, unsatisfactory living conditions, and the (relatively) still large number of inmates brought to corrective labor camps in Siberia from all over the country.     

Applying GIS tools to define prehistoric megalith transport route corridors: Olmec megalith transport routes: a case study

Applying spatial data management and analytical tools is an accepted method for investigating potential settlement patterns. This study applied Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to the study of Preclassic Olmec megalith transport in Mesoamerica. The GIS slope gradient tool was used to identify potential transport corridors with gradients of less that 1:10, which defines the limit of human effort needed to control these stones as demonstrated in ethnographic and replication experiments by various researchers. These outcomes were also used to refine transportation methods and likely start points that would be used to cross lowlands near to the San Lorenzo centre of Olmec society.     

The Elusive Maya Marketplace: An Archaeological Consideration of the Evidence

The modeling of ancient Maya economies has been a dynamic area of archaeological research in the past few decades, but in most cases there has been little attention on how goods actually changed hands. Through an overview of the literature, this paper considers marketplace exchange as one mechanism of distribution. Researchers have proposed a number of physical features and artifact characteristics that may be expected in association with marketplace activity, and new methods of data collection have been offered that can be used to build a case for marketplace exchange. What remains is the challenge of developing strategies to identify ancient Maya marketplaces convincingly through archaeological excavation.     

Book review

Michael Leifer. Indonesia's foreign policy. xix, 198 pp. London, etc: George Allen and Unwin for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1983. £15.     

Reviews of books

Historia, utopía y ficción de la Ciudad de los Césares. Metamorfosis de un mito. Por FERNANDO AINSA. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1992. Pp. 120.

Cultural Diffusion of Spanish Humanism in New Spain: Francisco Cervantes de Salazar's ‘Diálogo de la dignidad del hombre.’ By DIANNE M. BONO. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Pp. 161.

Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Economy of a Colonial Maya Rebellion. By KEVIN GOSNER. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 227.

La crisis del orden colonial. Estructura agraria y rebeliones populares de la Nueva España, 1750–1821. By ERIC VAN YOUNG. México: Alianza Editorial, 1992. Pp. 515.

Esthetic Recognition of Ancient Amerindian Art. By GEORGE KUBLER. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Pp. xvii, 276.

Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth‐Century New World. By IRVING A. LEONARD. Introduced by ROLENA ADORNO. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xlvii, 453.

Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822. By ALIDA C. METCALF. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xvi, 280.

Los naufragios. By ALVAR NUÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA. Edición crítica de ENRIQUE PUPO‐WALKER. Madrid: Castalia, 1992. Pp. 334.

Estudios de literatura hispanoamericana. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y otros poetas barrocos de la colonia. By GEORGINA SABAT‐RIVERS. Barcelona: PPU, 1992. Pp. 355.

Vida i sucesos de la monja alférez. Autobiografía atribuida a Doña Catalina de Erauso. Edición, introducción y notas de RIMA DE VALLBONA. Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1992. Pp. 236.     

Research on the post‐communist world: An overview and an Agenda

The collapse of communism has left many specialists on the former communist world depressed and pessimistic about their own future role. This article starts by identifying five major reasons for depression—the problem of the ‘fellow‐traveller'; ‘redundant’ research; unfamiliar instability; the marginalised ‘go‐between'; non‐prediction. Counterarguments to—alternative perceptions on—each of these is then provided. In the concluding section, I propose a nine‐point agenda for research, and argue that, in some ways, the outlook has never been more challenging or exciting.     

The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

In her 2005 article, "The Long Civil Rights Movement and thePolitical Uses of the Past," Jacquelyn Dowd Hall called on scholarsto complicate the story of civil rights by looking beyond atraditional narrative that begins in 1954, ends in 1965, focuseson the South, and features Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leaderof a single-voiced chorus of interracial activists who overcameracial barriers nonviolently. The recent wave of histories aboutarts movements in African-American communities (e.g., Pointfrom Which Creation Begins: The Black Artists’ Group ofSt. Louis, by Benjamin Looker, 2004,