RURAL RETAIL BUSINESS THRESHOLDS AND INTERDEPENDENCIES*

ABSTRACT. The occurrence of rural retail activity may be related to the concept of threshold, which suggests the direct relationship between surrounding populations and the hierarchical functions provided. Empirid studies have typically examined individual categories of retail firm concentration or multiplication in isolation of the extent of other retail activities. This study develops models of retail business concentration for sparsely populated rural markets, and emphasizes proper statistical treatment of the discrete firm-count data. The analytical approach specifies systems of multivariate count data models that can capture the interdependencies among merent types of retail firms. The degree of interdependence is tested and shown to be a significant statistical feature of the model of rural retail firm counts.     

Cultural beginnings: Plio-Pleistocene archaeological occurrences from the Afar,Ethiopia

In the time interval between approximately 2.5 million years and 1.5 million years ago and against a background of changing environmental conditions and the emergence of highly diversified populations of early hominids, the earliest archaeological occurrences have been documented from a number of localities in the Rift Valley of East Africa. These have been attributed to the Oldowan Industrial Complex. More recently, broadly comparable archaeological occurrences have been discovered from Hadar and the Middle Awash located in adjacent areas of the Afar, in Ethiopia. This paper summarizes the age, context and characteristics of these occurrences and offers preliminary comments on their contribution to greater understanding of early hominid adaptive patterns of behavior.     

Book reviews

English Maps: A History. By Catherine Delano‐Smith and Roger J. P. Kain. London: The British library, 1999. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. ISBN 0 7123 4609 0 (cloth); 0 7123 4660 0 (paper). Pp. xiv, 320, illus., col. plates. STG£25.00 (cloth).

Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas: Essays Commemorating the Quadricentennial of his Death, 1598–1998. Edited by Marcel van den Broecke, Peter van der Krogt and Peter Meurer. Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1998. ISBN 90 6194 388 4. Pp. 430, illus.,. 19 col. plates. DFL371.00(cloth).

A Biographical Index of East India Company Maritime Service Officers 1600–1834. By Anthony Farrington. London: The British Library, 1999. ISBN 0 7123 4647 3. Pp. 886. STG£85.00 (cloth).

Catalogue of East India Company Ships’ Journals and Logs 1600–1834. By Anthony Farrington. London: The British Library, 1999. ISBN 0 7123 4646 5. Pp. 789. STG£85.00 (doth).

Ordnance Survey Small‐Scale Maps: Indexes: 1801–1998. By Roger Hellyer. Kerry, Newtown, Montgomeryshire: David Archer, 1999. ISBN 0951757954. Pp. xxiv, 264, illus. STG£35.00 (cloth). [David Archer, Kerry, Wales SY16 . 4PD.]     

Material Choices for Fibre in the Neolithic: An Approach through the Measurement of Mechanical Properties

Studies of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Europe have focused on plants and animals exploited for food. However, the exploitation of plants for fibres underwent a significant change with the addition of domestic flax as a fibre crop. While the technology of flax fibre processing is increasingly understood by archaeologists, its material value as a fibre crop in comparison to indigenous fibre is less well explored. We examine the mechanical properties of flax and two indigenous fibres (lime bast, willow bast), by testing fibre strips for tensile properties and discuss the results in the light of material choices in these periods.     

Spatial Autoregressive Models for Geographically Hierarchical Data Structures

This article discusses how standard spatial autoregressive models and their estimation can be extended to accommodate geographically hierarchical data structures. Whereas standard spatial econometric models normally operate at a single geographical scale, many geographical data sets are hierarchical in nature—for example, information about houses nested into data about the census tracts in which those houses are found. Here we outline four model specifications by combining different formulations of the spatial weight matrix W and of ways of modeling regional effects. These are (1) groupwise W and fixed regional effects; (2) groupwise W and random regional effects; (3) proximity‐based W and fixed regional effects; and (4) proximity‐based W and random regional effects. We discuss each of these model specifications and their associated estimation methods, giving particular attention to the fourth. We describe this as a hierarchical spatial autoregressive model. We view it as having the most potential to extend spatial econometrics to accommodate geographically hierarchical data structures and as offering the greatest coming together of spatial econometric and multilevel modeling approaches. Subsequently, we provide Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms for implementing the model. We demonstrate its application using a two‐level land price data set where land parcels nest into districts in Beijing, China, finding significant spatial dependence at both the land parcel level and the district level.