Some problems of regional planning in predominantly rural environments; the French experience in Corsica

Mortality data for ischaemic heart disease and lung‐bronchus cancer in the 29 metropolitan boroughs of London and the 37 electoral wards of Glasgow are standardised for age and sex relative to an all‐U.K. norm. The standardised mortality ratios (S.M.R.) obtained, when expressed in map form, reveal marked spatial inequalities. A relationship with social class and concomitant housing and living standards is indicated.     

‘She's always the person with a very global vision’: The Gender Dynamics of Migration,Narrative Interpretation and the Case of Jamaican Transnational Families

Migration and gender are two areas in which oral history and life story evidence has been recognised as having a special potential. The article begins with a review of social and historical research on migration, indicating that there has been a surprising lack of in‐depth research published on gender in migration. It then looks at the contribution of oral historians to this literature, and suggests that the focus on narrative styles may not always help us to understand the gender dynamics of migration. Next it presents a case study of Jamaican families who migrated to Britain and North America, showing how women were as often autonomous migrants as men, and that some women, unlike men, were activators of multiple family migration. In conclusion, it argues for more comparative research, using a broader methodological approach.     

Archaeology and the Bible Revisited: A Review Article

David and Solomon, a new book by Israel Finkelstein and Niels Asher Silberman, through their discussion of Palestinian archaeology's current understanding, proposes to provide evidence to prove the accuracy of Frank Cross's more than 30 year old revision of Martin Noth's theory of a “Deuteronomistic History.” The authors attempt to confirm the history of the redaction of the biblical narratives about Saul, David and Solomon, involving seven distinct oral and four written strata of tradition. Their argument moreover claims the warrant to assert the historicity of each of these legendary kings of Israel. The present article argues to the contrary that the “archaeological evidence” proposed does not support such a redaction history nor establish the historicity of either the biblical figures or their stories, but that the harmony of biblical and archaeological issues is circular and illegitimate by the standards of historical research. It argues, moreover, that the claim of an oral tradition, reflecting original memories of an historical David or Saul is an entirely unnecessary and unlikely explanation for the origins of both the figures and their tales in the stories of 1-2 Samuel and 1 Kings. It moreover argues that the hypothesis of a redaction history in a succession of four cumulative revisions, beginning in the eighth century and completed in the sixth to fourth century, BCE—lacking as it does reference to a readable text—is neither critical nor falsifiable. Finally, Finkelstein and Silberman's book is judged as an unsuccessful attempt to return to the methods of “biblical archaeology” that were legitimately impeached in the mid-1970s.