Environmental limitations on prehistoric pastoralism in Africa

In several areas of Africa, pastoralism that existed prehistorically no longer survives today. Two such areas, the Southwestern Cape of South Africa and the Sahara, are discussed here, outlining methodologies for reconstruction of adaptive strategies on the basis of environmental parameters that constrained the pastoral economies.

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Résumé En plusieurs régions d'Afrique, le pastoralisme qui existait en temps préhistorique a maintenant disparu. L'article discute de deux de ces régions, le cap sud-ouest de l'Afrique du Sud et le Sahara, donnant un aperçu des méthodologies qui visent la reconstruction des stratégies adaptatrices en se fondant sur les paramètres écologiques qui ont contraint les économies pastorales.

     

POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF ALTERNATIVE AGRICULTURE

This paper suggests that there has been a small shift in American agricultural practices, and more importantly in policy making in this area, toward what can be called organic or alternative agriculture. These policy changes are partially due to triggering devices, exogenous forces that have led to changes in the policy agenda. Two major exogenous factors are reviewed–the energy “crisis” and environmental factors. Both sets of forces have resulted in farmers beginning to turn to alternative agricultural techniques, in government officials changing their attitudes about alternative agriculture, and new research activities in this direction being undertaken by various government bodies.     

Computer analysis of an inconsistent data source: the case of probate inventories

Computers are becoming increasingly popular for analysing data in historical geography and are being applied to an extending range and variety of historical sources. The methods described in most computer texts for geographers and historians, using the langueage allied to punched cards, are only suitable for numeric data which are in a standardized and consistent form. Rather than attempting to apply these methods to sources not organized in this way, it is more sensible to tailor a technique to a particular class of data.This paper considers some advantages of computer analysis, using English probate inventories as an example. Limitations of conventional methods are discussed and a technique is described for dealing with sources whose information is inconsistent between records. The method relates the logical structure of inventories to the storage and use of data by the computer, and considers the forms data can take for input to the machine. An example from the analysis of inventory data prepared by this method is briefly presented, describing two aspects of agricultural change in East Anglia between 1580 and 1740.