Temporal nature and recycling of Upper Paleolithic artifacts: the burned tools from the Molí del Salt site (Vimbodí i Poblet,northeastern Spain)

Recent research in Paleolithic archeology has stressed the importance of temporal issues in assemblage interpretation. Archeological assemblages are temporal constructs, formed by the addition of an unknown number of depositional events. This temporal dimension is also evident at the artifactual level, since single artifacts may undergo different events of modification and/or uses over time. The recycling of previously discarded blanks for tool production is one of the best examples of the temporal nature of artifacts. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the importance of recycling in a Late Upper Paleolithic site, examining a type of artifact – burned tools – that has up to now been little used to approach this issue. Our results suggest that recycling was probably a significant component of Upper Paleolithic provisioning behavior, with important implications in site formation processes and the typological variability of assemblages. The expedient or curated character of recycling is also discussed.     

An Index of Social and Economic Development in the Community's Objective-1 Regions of Countries in Southern Europe

In this article we calculate an indicator of social and economic development using the DP₂ distance method to measure the disparities in Objective-1 regions of southern European countries for 2006. In addition to per capita income, socio-economic components such as health, education, employment, scientific and technological development and infrastructure provision have been incorporated into the index. We examine the issue of whether the Europe Union regions included in the Convergence Objective achieved a lower level of development than the regions no longer covered in this objective for the 2007–2013 programming period by establishing a territorial classification based on the value yielded by the variables of the DP₂. Our indicator constitutes a novel contribution insofar as it was constructed using a large number of variables. In essence, we show that not all the regions of the Convergence Objective presented a lower level of economic and social development than those that lost this consideration between 2007 and 2013 and the opposite.     

THE EFFECTS OF ZONING IN SPATIAL COMPETITION

ABSTRACT This paper considers a location model to illustrate the effect of zoning on competition. A planner is in charge of designing a city in a circular space where firms and consumers are located on different sides. With this type of market configuration, equilibrium in location under concave transport costs is proved. Then, a welfare function with different weights attached to consumer and firm surpluses is introduced to highlight zoning regulation as an influential competition policy tool. Depending on the regulator's political profiles and the demand, it is shown that zoning can lead to strong, weak, or moderate competition.     

Technological, elemental and colorimetric analysis of an engraved ochre fragment from the Middle Stone Age levels of Klasies River Cave 1, South Africa

It is generally accepted that abstract and iconographic representations are reflections of symbolic material culture. Here we describe a fragmented ocherous pebble bearing a sequence of sub-parallel linear incisions. These were produced by a lithic point and may represent one of the oldest instances of a deliberate engraving. The object was recovered from Middle Stone Age II levels of Klasies River Cave 1, South Africa, and is dated to between 100,000 and 85,000 years ago. Microscopic analysis reveals that the surface of the object was ground until smooth before being engraved with a sequence of sub-parallel lines made by single and multiple strokes. X-ray fluorescence and colorimetric analysis of the object and a sample of twelve additional ochre pieces from the same level reveals that the brown colour and Manganese-rich composition renders the engraved piece distinct. This suggests that a particular type of raw material may have been selected for engraving purposes. Although the purpose of marking this object remains uncertain, its detailed analysis adds relevant information to previously published occurrences of Middle Stone Age engraved objects and contributes to clarify their distribution through time and space.     

Acoustics and Levantine rock art: auditory perceptions in La Valltorta Gorge (Spain)

This article explores the relevance of acoustics as a factor for in the production and active use of Levantine rock art in Spain. The renowned rock art area of La Valltorta Gorge serves as a case study. Two experiments are described; the first assessed whether the sites with the most painted motifs had better acoustics than those with fewer motifs. The second tested which areas in La Valltorta Gorge had better acoustics and whether there was a difference between the acoustics of the decorated area and the contiguous sectors of the Gorge where no paintings have been found. In both experiments different sounds and pitches were used. The results suggest a strong relationship between the painted areas and the sonority of the place, with the major sites generally having provided the best results, with the exception of the sonority when facing the rock art panels. It is suggested that La Valltorta Gorge was chosen to be decorated with a view to increasing the perceptual impact of the rituals that may have been held at rock art sites due to the amplification caused by the echoing and resonance.     

Counselling Citizens and Producing Patronage: AIDS Treatment in South African and Ugandan Clinics

Global health interventions to provide antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries have linked global and local actors in unprecedented ways. These uneven relationships have been described as creating new forms of citizenship that challenge the liberal understanding of rights and responsibilities bestowed by the state. A comparative case study based on fieldwork from South Africa and Uganda suggests different theoretical understandings of the link between technologies of AIDS treatment and relationships of belonging. Yet, ethnographic data from local clinics in both countries point to similarities that exist across AIDS interventions, and to the importance of counsellors in negotiating the rules of ARVs. Neither patients living with HIV nor the local providers of their AIDS treatment are ‘bare life’ subjects to be acted upon by a global development intervention. As ARV technologies are increasingly prescribed in developing country clinics, diverse social relationships are taught and negotiated as part of the pedagogy of biopolitics. The following discussion demonstrates how local counsellors and clients negotiate the rules of AIDS treatment together for mutual benefit. The article concludes that AIDS treatment creates relationships of therapeutic citizenship and clientship in ways that constrain the possibilities of citizenship and development.     

Reconstructing Iron Age Community Dynamics in Eski?ehir Province, Central Turkey

Current understanding of the Iron Age polity of Phrygia in Central Anatolia is primarily based on excavations and survey in the region of the Phrygian capital of Gordion. In order to expand our knowledge of the Phrygian polity, we assess the scale and nature of Iron Age communities in the western (Eski?ehir) region of Phrygia. We address the challenge of interpreting ceramics derived from large-scale archaeological survey by utilizing Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) of ceramics from 12 sites across the region collected by the Eski?ehir archaeological survey project as well as an excavated assemblage from ?ar H?yük. While the uniformity in ceramic technology and styles suggest the region is part of the larger Phrygian community, NAA results reveal that (a) ceramic production was regionally highly localized with limited evidence of standardization during the Iron Age and (b) based on evidence of community interaction it is possible to establish a partial chronological sequence of development. These results have implications not only for understanding the internal dynamics within the Phrygian core but also for developing a methodology for comparing ancient polities using commensurate units of interacting communities. The present study is part of the larger Anatolian Iron Age Ceramics project (http://www.une.edu.au/a-ia).     

Sourcing ceramics with portable XRF spectrometers? A comparison with INAA using Mimbres pottery from the American Southwest

Seventy-five intact Mimbres and Jornada pottery sherds from the American Southwest were analyzed by portable XRF and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). Examination of the data demonstrates that INAA and portable XRF results for elements common to both analyses can be used to construct similar compositional groups. When individual compositional groups are compared to one another, it is apparent that unambiguous separation of compositional groups is challenging by portable XRF given (1) the limited number of key discriminating elements that can be measured relative to INAA, and (2) the relative analytical precision and accuracy of portable XRF for measurements of intact heterogeneous ceramics. We conclude that sourcing intact ceramics by portable XRF is challenging and that bulk analytical measurements, such as INAA, remain a better approach for sourcing archaeological pottery.     

Archaeological magnetometry in an Arctic setting: a case study from Maguse Lake,Nunavut

Magnetometry has been little used on Arctic archaeological sites, but has great potential to help us understand site structure by identifying buried features and providing additional detail about the construction and use of visible surface features. In the Arctic environment, magnetometer surveys have to deal with the effects of permafrost activity on soils and the potential influence of glacial erratics of varying geological composition. Here, we present the results of magnetometer surveys of a non-cultural site with periglacial features and two archaeological sites located in the Canadian low Arctic. Despite considerable “noise” apparently caused by igneous erratics, the surveys successfully identified several frost features and a range of archaeological feature types. They also appear to have located buried archaeological features and identified activity areas within some dwellings. These preliminary results suggest that the technique is worth pursuing on northern sites.