Empires and resources: Central Anatolian obsidian at Urkesh (Tell Mozan,Syria) during the Akkadian period

Almost all of the obsidian used to craft stone tools in the Near East from the Palaeolithic onward originated from volcanoes in two geographic regions: Central Anatolia and Eastern Anatolia. Five decades of obsidian sourcing has led to the view that Central Anatolian obsidians largely followed the Mediterranean coast and rarely reached farther east than the Middle Euphrates, whereas Eastern Anatolian sources almost exclusively supplied sites east of the Euphrates. This paper discusses the identification of Central Anatolian obsidian artefacts at the Bronze-Age site of Tell Mozan (Urkesh) in northeastern Syria. Most of the obsidians at Tell Mozan (97%) came from the Eastern Anatolian sources, as expected from established distribution models. Artefacts of Central Anatolian obsidian, however, were excavated from one well-constrained context: the deposits on a palace courtyard that date to the height of the Akkadian empire's influence at this third-millennium Hurrian religious and political centre. In particular, the obsidian came from the Kömürcü source of Göllü Da?. Potential explanations for this exotic obsidian are discussed. This obsidian might have “piggybacked” on the distribution of Central Anatolian metals or arrived at this city as royal gifts or prestige items. Other discussed mechanisms include Akkadian-linked changes in either territoriality involving pastoral nomads responsible for the arrival of Eastern Anatolian obsidians or identity construction of elites based on involvement in Central Anatolian economic and political networks.     

Urban-rural demographic contrasts in Highland Ecuador: town recession in a period of catastrophe 1778–1841

An investigation of three Andean towns in their regional setting forms the basis for an assessment of urban-rural demographic differences. The towns are found to have been ethnically distinct, with a larger proportion of whites than the mainly Indian rural areas. The urban populations also had a larger surplus of women, lower average marriage ages for women but lower proportions married, a higher illegitimacy rate and a slightly older age structure. Trends in urban districts differed from those in rural areas. The towns suffered major population losses, and their share of the regional population fell from nearly 10% in 1778 to around 5% in 1841. The factors affecting population trends are examined in order to identify those which had a differential urban-rural impact. Earthquake and warfare were of key significance. In a regional context of economic depression and population stagnation, these two catastrophes instigated a major urban recession. The three towns shared in the urban decline experienced in many parts of Latin America, but their recession was particularly pronounced owing to the impact of catastrophes.     

Public policy,local labor demand,and migration in Sweden, 1979-84

"A model of private local labor demand and interjurisdictional migration is presented and estimated using data from Swedish counties and municipalities for 1979-84. Our goal is to compare the effects on local labor markets of distinctive public-sector programs with those of traditional market variables. We find that local income taxes and tax-equalization grants have important effects on local labor markets; regional development policy measures and geographical-mobility subsidies do not. Thus, recent efforts scaling back some of these programs may not materially alter the regional economy's performance. Wages and other traditional market variables are also often found to influence significantly local labor markets."     

Mapping population data from zone centroid locations

The author describes the difficulties associated with the use of maps to represent census data. "A review of the problems associated with population mapping is followed by a discussion of [an alternative method known as] a raster method for handling census data, based on population-weighted centroids, and its implications for GIS "[geographic information systems]." The geographical scope is worldwide, with an example provided using data for Wales.     

Minimum-Cost Distances in Spatial Analysis

An axiomatic approach to distance is developed which focuses on those behavioral concepts of distance related to movement in space. In particular, spatial movement by behaving units is postulated to involve a choice from among some set of abstract trips in space, and implicitly, to involve the minimization of some relevant notion of trip costs. In this context, the relevant behavioral notion of distance in space is taken to be the minimum-cost distance generated by this choice process. These trip-cost concepts extend the classical notions of paths, path lengths, and shortest paths in metric spaces. Hence many of the analytical results of the paper involve extensions of classical shortest-path distance properties to minimum-cost distances. In addition to these extensions, a characterization theorem is given which specifies the possible functional relationships between trip costs and their associated path lengths. These relationships include most functional forms which are commonly employed in the literature.