Standing Posts and Special Substances: Gathering and Ritual Deposition at Feltus (22Je500), Jefferson County,Mississippi

Because it immediately precedes the Mississippi period, Coles Creek (A.D. 700–1200) culture is often viewed through the lens of Mississippian social organization. In particular, early platform mound-and-plaza complexes have long been understood as elite compounds due to their physical similarities with later sites. However, evidence regarding the construction and use of the monumental landscape at the Feltus site (22JE500) in Jefferson County, MS, suggests that platform mound construction was but one aspect of a broader ritual sequence aimed at gathering the dispersed Coles Creek community. In addition to mound building, this sequence included the setting and removal of freestanding posts, ritual feasting, and burial of the dead and focused on explicit deposition of meaningful objects and substances. Archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic analyses of the objects and substances included in the ritual deposits at Feltus suggest that they helped forge relationships between an extended kin network, including non-human fictive kin and non-living human kin. In this context, we find a metaphor of gathering to be useful in understanding the archaeological remains of a ritual sequence focused on bringing together social, cosmological, and temporal domains. This provides a distinctly different take on the meaning and use of platform mounds based on a review of Native beliefs and practices that looks beyond the traditionally relied upon sources.     

Joseph Dennie and The Farmer's Weekly Museum: Readership and Pseudonymous Celebrity in Early National Journalism

The early national period witnessed an explosion in newspaper journalism in terms of both the quantity of publications produced and their geographic reach. This essay examines these issues through the case of an editor, Joseph Dennie, who worked in New Hampshire in the late 1790s. Dennie is an early (although not an original) example of the dedicated, white-collar editor, and his Weekly Museum and Lay Preacher articles achieved widespread notice. Dennie did not, during his New Hampshire career at least, become a household name, by virtue of publishing exclusively under pseudonyms. The essay looks at the opportunities that this presented and what it allowed him to get away with.     

Laboratories of (In)equality? Redistributive Policy and Income Inequality in the American States

Prior literature has emphasized demographic, economic, and political explanations for increasing income inequality in the United States, with little attention paid to the role of state‐level policy. This is despite great variation across states in both the level of inequality and the rate at which it is rising. This paper asks whether differences in state policy choices can help explain this variation; specifically, we examined a range of state redistributive policies enacted between 1980 and 2005 and identified four common approaches likely to impact inequality: taxes on the wealthy, taxes on the poor, spending on the poor, and labor market policies. We used pooled cross‐sectional time‐series data and a fixed‐effects model to assess the relationship between states’ use of each policy approach and two measures of market income inequality: the Gini coefficient and the income share of the top 1 percent. We find policies played a significant role in shaping income inequality in the states. For three of these four policy approaches, we found less inequality following expansions of state redistributive policy. Yet, for another, we identified the opposite pattern. These findings highlight the importance of state policy choices in shaping market inequality, and have implications for designing state policies to reduce income inequality since the success of these efforts depends on the policy approach used to redistribute income and wealth.     

‘I feel like this is a good place to be’: children's experiences at a community recreation centre for children living with low socioeconomic status

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the experiences of children living with low socioeconomic status (SES) at a community recreation centre using the framework of place attachment [Scannell, L., and R. Gifford. 2010. “Defining Place Attachment: A Tripartite Organizing Framework.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (1): 1–10. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.09.006]. Seven children took part in semi-structured interviews and drawing activities. Additional data were collected through observations, field and reflective notes, documents and a staff focus group interview. The overarching theme of having opportunities emerged from a thematic analysis of the data. The children, as they shared about their experiences at the centre, talked about having opportunities in three main ways: opportunities to do, opportunities to connect and opportunities to be. The findings are discussed broadly within the framework of place attachment and through the literature on after-school programming, children's geographies, place and SES.     

Murujuga,Northwestern Australia: When Arid Hunter-Gatherers Became Coastal Foragers

ABSTRACT

The Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) in northwestern Australia is a rich rock art province located in an arid-maritime cultural landscape. The archipelago juts into the Indian Ocean just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. When people started inscribing this rugged granophyre landscape it was an inland range more than 100 km from the coast. Murujuga rock art is contextualized by a 47,000-year-old occupation sequence from the Pilbara, a model for stylistic change, and a predictive model that envisages how people may have adapted to this eventual seascape. Initial testing of an outer island suggests that highly mobile coastal foragers took advantage of interior ranges across the Abydos Plain as sea levels rose after the Last Glacial Maximum. This article describes for the first time evidence for Australia's earliest domestic stone structures (dated to between 8063 and 7355 cal BP) and tests the predictive model. Rosemary Island is an inscribed landscape that reveals the emergence of an arid island and provides insights into the dynamics of mobile arid hunter-fisher-gatherers in the early Holocene. It adds to the body of Australian evidence for island abandonment with insulation, but with minimal evidence for subsequent (re)colonization.     

Book reviews

CHINA

JUSTIN JON RUDELSON. Oasis Identities, Uyghur Nationalism along China's Silk Road. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. xv, 209 pp. Acknowledgments, maps, illustrations, bibliography, index. US$42.50, hardcover; US$16.50, paper.

ROSS TERRILL. Mao: a Biography. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1995. 524 pp. Bibliographic note, reference notes, index. A$24.95, paper.

ROSS TERRILL. Madame Mao: the White‐Boned Demon. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1995. 466 pp. Bibliographic note, reference notes, index. A$24.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

EIJI OGUMA. Tan'itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen [The origins of the myth of the homogeneous nation]. Tokyo: Shinyosha, 1995, 1997. 450 pp. ¥3800, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

H. Th. CHABOT. Kinship, Status and Gender in South Celebes. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996. 291 pp. Author's biography, author's bibliography, appendix, bibliography, three indexes, photographic illustrations. No price given, paper.

GREG POULGRAIN. The Genesis of Konfrontasi: Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia 1945–1965. Bathurst: Crawford House Publishing; London: C. Hurst and Co Ltd, 1998. xxvi, 322 pp. Foreword by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, introduction, map, photographs, index. A$29.95, paper.

M. J. C. SCHOUTEN. Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa, 1677–1983. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998. xiv, 334 pp. Index. No price given, paperback.

GENERAL ASIA

KERRIE L. MACPHERSON (ed). Asian Department Stores. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1998. x, 309 pp. Preface, introduction, notes, references, index. £40.00, hardcover.

PETER P. ROGERS, KAZI F. JALAL, BINDU N. LOHANI, GENE M. OWENS, CHANG‐CHANG YU, CHRISTIAN M. DUFOURNAUD and JUN BI. Measuring Environmental Quality in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Asian Development Bank's Office of Environment and Social Development, distributed by Harvard University Press, 1997. vii, 368 pp. Foreword, preface, acknowledgments, notes on contributors, abbreviations and acronyms, appendices. US$30.00, paper.     

Reviews

Australian

Don Aitkin, Brian Jinks and John Warhurst (eds), Australian Political Institutions, 4th edn, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1989. $4.99 (paper)

F. G. Castles, Australian Public Policy and Economic Vulnerability, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1988, pp. 184. $19.95 (paper)

Ian C. Marsh (ed.) Australia Can Compete, Melbourne Longman Cheshire, 1988, pp. 261. $19.95 (paper)

Glyn Davis, Breaking up the ABC, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1988 pp. 150. $14.95. (paper)

Evatt Research Centre, State of Siege: Renewal or Privatisation for Australian Public Services?, Lei‐chardt, NSW, Pluto Press, 1989. pp. 496. $29.95 (paper)

Keith Hancock (ed.), Australian Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. pp. 258. $25.00 (paper)

J. B. Hirst, The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1988. pp. 305. $19.95 (paper)

Keith McConnochie, David Hollinsworth and Jan Pettman, Race and Racism in Australia, Social Science Press, Wentworth Falls, NSW, 1988. pp.259. $19.95 (paper).

Martin Painter, Steering the Modern State: Changes in Central Co‐ordination in Three Australian State Governments, Sydney, Sydney University Press, 1987. pp.208. $25.00 (paper)

Comparative and International

John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson (eds), Can the Government Govern!, Washington D.G, Brook‐ings, 1989. pp.339. US$29.95 (paper)

Timothy E. Cook, Making Laws and Making News: Media Strategies in the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington D.C, Brookings, 1989. pp.210. US$26.95 (cloth)

Richard Crockatt and Steve Smith (eds) The Cold War Past and Present, Winchester, MA., Unwin Hyman, 1987. pp.272. US$14.95 (paper)

Leon Gordenker, Refugees in International Politics, New York, Columbia University Press, 1987. pp. 227. US$30.00 (cloth)

Stephen Hess, Organizing the Presidency, 2nd edn, Washington, D.C., Brookings, 1988. pp.273. US$10.95 (paper)

Eric Hobsbawm, Politics for a Rational Left, London, Verso, 1989. pp. 250. £8.95 (paper)

Robert A. Katzmann (ed.), Judges and Legislators: Towards Institutional Comity, Washington, Brookings, 1988. pp. 200. US$10.95 (paper)

Fred Krinsky (ed.), Crisis and Innovation: Constitutional Democracy in America, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988. pp.158. $34.95 (paper)

Philip Laundy, Parliaments in the Modem World, Aldershot, Gower, 1989. pp.166. £25.00 (doth)

Stanley Bach and Steven S. Smith, Managing Uncertainty in the House of Representatives: Adaptation and Innovation in Special Rules, Washington D.C., Brookings, 1988. pp. 140. US$22.95 (cloth)

Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988. pp.218. US$42.50 (cloth)

Carol M. Mueller (ed.) The Politics of the Gender Gap: The Social Construction of Political Influence. Newsbury Park, California, Sage, 1988. pp.316. US$ 16.95 (paper)

John Newhouse, The Nuclear Age: From Hiroshima to Star Wars, London, Michael Joseph, 1989. pp.486. £15.95 (cloth)

Richard Rose, Ordinary People in Public Policy. Newbury Park, California, Sage, 1989. pp.189. US$8.95 (paper)

Richard Rose, The Postmodern President: The White House Meets the World, Chatham, New Jersey, Chatham House, 1988. pp. 349. US$14.95 (paper)

William E. Rosenbach and Robert L. Taylor (eds) Contemporary Issues in Leadership, 2nd edn, Boulder, Westview, 1989. pp.248. US$16.95 (paper)

Angus Mclntyre (ed.) Aging and Political Leadership, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1988. pp. 316. $35.00 (cloth)

Graham Little Strong Leadership: Thatcher, Reagan and An Eminent Person, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1988. pp. 289. $ 19.95 (paper)

Emile Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics Since 1967, Washington, D.C., Brookings, 1988. pp. 201. US$10.95 (paper)

Betty H. Zisk, Money, Media and the Grass Roots: State Ballot Issues and the Electoral Process. New‐bury Park, California, Sage, 1987. pp.279. US$12.95 (paper)

Political Theory and Methodology

Terrell Carver, Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship. Harvester Press, Sussex, 1983. pp. 172. $50.00 (cloth)

Levi, Margaret, Of Rule and Revenue, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988. pp.253. US$10.95 (paper)

Robert Paul Wolff, Understanding Marx: A Reconstruction and Critique of Capital, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1984. pp.235. US$8.95 (paper)