Mexican rotating credit associations

Vélez‐Ibañez, Carlos. Bonds of Mutual Trust: The Cultural Systems of Rotating Credit Associations Among Urban Mexicans and Chicanos. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983. 180 pp. Illus. $22.50.     

The uses of biology

Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. vii + 331 pp. including references and author and subject indices. $29.95 cloth.

Butterworth, George, Julie Rutkowska, and Michael Scaife, eds. Evolution and Developmental Psychology. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. xxiv + 205 pp. including chapter references and index. $27.50 cloth.     

The peoples of Africa

Nurse, G. T., J. S. Weiner, and Trefor Jenkins. The Peoples of Southern Africa and Their Affinities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. vi + 409 pp. including tables, bibliography, glossary, author index, and subject index.

Cavalli‐Sforza, Luigi Luca, ed. African Pygmies. Orlando: Academic Press, 1986. ix + 461 pp. including tables, bibliography, and index.     

Guillaume postel — Prophet of the restitution of all things — His life and thought

The article starts from an examination of the authorship of the ‘Geleitwort’, the programmatic statement which appeared in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft when it came under new editors in 1904. Recently scholars have begun to view it as an important text by Max Weber recovered from obscurity, but this is a mistake. Examination of major contemporary works by Weber and Werner Sombart – the obvious co-author – as well as the first public disclosure of an entirely new MS. by Weber, show that in all probability the text was drafted by Sombart and then revised fairly lightly by Weber. This story of a combined, if unequal, authorship leads into two broader seams of intellectual history: the relationship between Weber and Sombart, and the history of the Archiv as a journal. An unusual starting point thus casts fresh and unexpected light on some of the most central figures and episodes in German social science at the beginning of the 20th century, not least Weber's seminal essay on “Objectivity” in social science.     

Stable isotope dietary analysis of prehistoric populations from the Minusinsk Basin,Southern Siberia,Russia: a new chronological framework for the introduction of millet to the eastern Eurasian steppe

We report the results of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of 354 human and faunal samples from five archaeological cultures of the Minusinsk Basin, Southern Siberia – Afanasyevo, Okunevo, Andronovo, Karasuk and Tagar (ca. 2700–1 BC) – a key location in Eurasia due to its position on a northern corridor linking China and central Eurasia. The results indicate that the diet of Eneolithic to Middle Bronze Age (Afanasyevo to Andronovo) populations was primarily C₃-based, with C₄ plants only becoming an important component of the diet in the Late Bronze Age Karasuk and Early Iron Age Tagar cultures. Freshwater fish seems to have been an important constituent of the diets in all groups. The findings constitute the earliest concrete evidence for the substantial use of millet in the eastern Eurasian steppe. We propose that it was probably introduced from Northwestern China during the Karasuk culture at the start of the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1500 BC. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for the nature of pastoralist economies on the steppes.     

From charting to mapping: Russian military mapping of Corfu in the early nineteenth century

Abstract

This paper concludes the overview of the Russian Navy's chart making published in Imago Mundi, Volume 52 (2000). In the present paper attention is drawn to the way the emphasis shifted in the early years of the nineteenth century from charting by naval surveyors to land mapping by the Army. The need for specialized military topographical education had led to the founding of the Map Depot in 1797 in St Petersburg. The first major survey undertaken by the Depot was of the island of Corfu (1804–1806), in anticipation of further Russo‐Turkish hostilities (the Third Russo‐Turkish war, 1806–1812).     

TOGETHER WITH ACADEMICIAN N.I. VAVILOV

A colleague at the Institute of Crop Breeding many years ago, S. V. Zonn, recalls the fame abroad of N.I. Vavilov in contrast to the oblivion to which for a time he was consigned in the Soviet Union. Vavilov opposed the harmful adventuristic projects announced by the evil paranoid “scientist” Lysenko. Among the many contributions of Vavilov, those to research for the development of deserts, largely forgotten, are here recalled. Vavilov organized the Office of Deserts, which established the Aral', Repetek, and Kara-Kalinsk experiment stations, which made major contributions to desert studies and which attracted able productive scientists. In practical work he organized work to provide fresh vegetables and fruits and green amenities to workers at the Balkhash copper combine and the urgently needed vegetables and vitamins to workers at the Bekdash salt works of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol of the Caspian Sea. He advocated scientific principles and applications free from the opportunism and adventurism which at one time flourished in Soviet biological sciences but which should not be repeated. “Recalling all that has happened to N.I. Vavilov, we preserve in our hearts his bright and uncompromising manner, which was devoted to science and society” (translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington DC 20005).