Political Decoupling: Private Implementation of Public Policy

Where policy goals can be achieved through regulation of private firms, private provision of public services allows governments to separate public policies from their political costs by shifting those costs to the private sector. Over the past three decades, financial decoupling has emerged as a regulatory strategy for promoting conservation, especially in the energy sector. Decoupling refers to the separation of a firm’s revenues from the volume of its product consumed, which allows companies to pursue resource efficiency free from financial risk. Similarly, when private firms provide public services, they separate public policies from their political costs. This political decoupling allows governments to pursue controversial policies while avoiding their attendant political risks. Applied to environmental policy, this theory implies that potentially unpopular conservation policies are more likely to be adopted and succeed when implemented through private firms. As an initial test of the theory, we analyze California water utilities and their responses to that state’s drought from 2015–2017. Analysis shows that, compared with those served by local government utilities, private utilities adopted more aggressive conservation measures, were more likely to meet state conservation standards, and conserved more water.     

Action research for tourism planning in rural areas? Examining an experience from the Couto Mixto (Galicia,Spain)

This paper reviews a tourist planning experience developed for the Couto Mixto in 2007–2008. The Couto Mixto is a small territory of three hamlets situated in Galicia (Spain) and bordering Portugal that, until the end of the 19th century, used to be a virtually independent state of 25 km². This tourism planning process is compared and contrasted with the well‐described Action Research (AR) approach. The paper begins by providing the conceptual foundations of tourism planning which were used as a framework for the research. Then, the tourism planning experience is introduced in detail, focussing on the results of the interviews conducted to identify the tourism resources of the area. Therefore, 23 resources were inventoried and further audited to determine their various degrees of potential for the purposes of tourism planning. Previous AR experiences and the tourism planning initiative developed for the Couto Mixto share a common objective to facilitate change in communities in trouble. However, the case‐study tourism planning experience was not fully compliant with genuine AR in several respects. We conclude by recommending AR as a worthy approach for tourism planning as a way to effectively put the local community in focus.     

Experimental study of cut marks made with rocks unmodified by human flaking and its bearing on claims of ∼3.4-million-year-old butchery evidence from Dikika, Ethiopia

In order to assess further the recent claims of ∼3.4 Ma butchery marks on two fossil bones from the site of Dikika (Ethiopia), we broadened the actualistic-interpretive zooarchaeological framework by conducting butchery experiments that utilized naïve butchers and rocks unmodified by human flaking to deflesh chicken and sheep long limb bones. It is claimed that the purported Dikika cut marks present their unexpectedly atypical morphologies because they were produced by early hominins utilizing just such rocks. The composition of the cut mark sample produced in our experiments is quite dissimilar to the sample of linear bone surface modifications preserved on the Dikika fossils. This finding substantiates and expands our earlier conclusion that—considering the morphologies and patterns of the Dikika bone surface modifications and the inferred coarse-grained depositional context of the fossils on which they occur—the Dikika bone damage was caused incidentally by the movement of the fossils on and/or within their depositional substrate(s), and not by early hominin butchery. Thus, contrary to initial claims, the Dikika evidence does not warrant a major shift in our understanding of early hominin behavioral evolution with regard to carcass foraging and meat-eating.     

Archeoseismicity and environmental crises at the Sialk Mounds,Central Iranian Plateau,since the Early Neolithic

During the long-lasting cultural sequences of the Shurābeh and Sialk archeological mounds (6200–550 BC) the inhabitants encountered numerous diversified crises along a narrow fertile passageway at the edge of the Central Iranian Plateau Great Desert. Some of the threats may be attributed to earthquakes, drastic climatic changes, and man-made environmental deterioration, which possibly led to the settlement withdrawing at different stages toward a more suitable location. Our study identified the occurrence of a large-magnitude earthquake around 3800 BC along the Kāshān fault, which is well-documented by various lines of circumstantial evidence, including: (i) numerous contemporaneous smashed skeletons and artifacts underneath collapsed walls and ceiling debris in several different areas; (ii) tilted and collapsed walls; (iii) nearly N–S oriented fallen large storage jars; and (iv) nearly vertical deep ground fractures cutting walls and floors of the Sialk III₅ South Mound settlement. Archeological data also shows additional stratigraphic discontinuities and damages that may be attributed to earthquakes. However, damage features in limited exposed trenches are less conclusive and require additional careful excavations. Apparent ancient paleo-architectural innovative attempts to enhance the coherency/elasticity of the structures and minimize earthquake damage to buildings were also noted, suggesting the indigenous earthquake hazard mitigation endeavor. There seems to be a correlation between some site abandonment dates and possible drastic regional draught/cooling events. The natural and anthropogenic impacts addressed in this study constituted major threats to the sensitive archeological settlements at the fringe of the desert and the vicinity of the Kāshān active fault since antiquity.     

Regional Externalities And Growth: Evidence From European Regions*

Abstract. This paper models externalities of production across regional economies. Under the assumption that knowledge diffuses without political or administrative barriers, we derive externalities that affect the steady state and the process of growth of each economy. The empirical counterpart of the reduced form equation summarizing the process of growth allows us to test for the presence of regional spillovers and to measure their magnitude. Our results for a sample of European regions show that spillovers are far from negligible, are robust to the consideration of variables within each region, and may cause nondecreasing returns at the spatial aggregate level. The paper also relates previous empirical evidence on spatial dependence in growth studies to the externalities modeled here.     

The history of stones: behavioural inferences and temporal resolution of an archaeological assemblage from the Middle Palaeolithic

Behavioural issues are a main focus of current Palaeolithic research, especially where the archaeological record of archaic hominids is concerned. Often these issues are approached using archaeological assemblages that are palimpsests defined exclusively by stratigraphic criteria. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether such assemblages are adequate for solving behavioural questions. As a case study, we will present the lithic provisioning strategies documented in level L of the Abric Romaní Middle Palaeolithic site. The results of this study suggest that the number of events and/or the amount of time included in the archaeological assemblages could be relevant when explaining the interassemblage variability, given that palimpsests tend to reduce the behavioural variability. If we want to approach the behavioural domain, we need archaeological assemblages of higher temporal resolution, defined through the identification of single activity events.     

Holocene fire history of black colluvial soils revealed by pyrolysis-GC/MS: a case study from Campo Lameiro (NW Spain)

The colluvial soils of Galicia (NW Spain) are records of Holocene environmental change. In spite of the omnipresence of charcoal fragments in these soils, the effect of fires on the development of the Galician landscape and the potential role of past societies are poorly understood.     

Public Opinion,National Integration and National Identity in Spain: The Case of the Barcelona Olympic Games

Abstract. This article analyses the impact of the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games on national integration and national identity in Spain with respect to the conflict of interests that developed around the Games between the centre and Catalonia. We argue that polarisation along nationalist lines was limited in large part because national identity in Spain today is not predominantly a unitary and exclusive entity. Dual identity, loyalty to both Spain, on the one hand, and to one's region, or nation as in the case of Catalonia, on the other, and inclusive nationalism that does not aim at complete national independence, increasingly have tended to predominate in the last decade and a half. The Olympics, then, not only polarised relations between Catalonia and Spain, they also served to accommodate antagonisms between them and thus to maintain a delicate, fragile balance of power in the new España de las autonomías.     

Milling Cereals/Legumes and Stamping Bread in Mauretanian Tamuda (Morocco): An Interdisciplinary Study

African Archaeological Review - Recent archaeological excavations (2016–2019) in the city of Tamuda (northern Morocco) yielded evidence of commercial milling and bread-making facilities dated...