Humans in the Environment: Plants,Animals and Landscapes in Mesolithic Britain and Ireland

Environmental archaeology has historically been central to Mesolithic studies in Britain and Ireland. Whilst processual archaeology was concerned with the economic significance of the environment, post-processual archaeology later rejected economically driven narratives, resulting in a turn away from plant and animal remains. Post-processual narratives focused instead on enigmatic ‘ritual’ items that economic accounts struggled to suitably explain. Processual accounts of landscapes, grounded in economic determinism, were also rejected in favour of explorations of their sociocultural aspects. However, in moving away from plant and animal remains, such accounts lacked the ability to rigorously explore the specificities of particular landscapes and humans actions within them. This paper will bridge this gap by considering how palaeoecological and zooarchaeological analyses can be used to explore human interactions with plants and animals, which were key in developing understandings and relationships that ultimately structured landscapes, influenced past human actions and shaped archaeological assemblages.     

Envisioning Future Landscapes in the Environmentally Sensitive Areas of Scotland

Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) designated under EC Structure Regulation 797/85 now cover 1.4 million ha of the Scottish countryside and are likely to make a substantial contribution to the regulation of landscape change. Visual changes to landscapes with (policy on) and without (policy off) the ESA programme in two Scottish ESA areas, Breadalbane and the Machair, are predicted through impact-assessment procedures and computer manipulation of photographic images. The methodological requirements for such predictions are outlined and substantial differences in landscape characteristics under policy on/off scenarios are revealed. Such approaches to landscape change are an essential foundation for the development of environmental cost-benefit analyses and will contribute to public consultation processes.     

Mapping schools' NAPLAN results: a spatial inequality of school outcomes in Australia

This article identifies spatial dimensions of educational outcomes using maps of the 2016 Grade 5 reading results for Australia's National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy for all Australian schools. A geographical information system (GIS) was used to overlay schools' results onto suburbs' advantage or disadvantage to visualise spatial patterns. We then examined the extent to which school results “cluster” in socio‐economically advantaged and disadvantaged suburbs and considered the consistency of spatial patterns for results across major cities. That work illustrates both how GIS can foreground educational inequality and how “the spatial” is more than corollary for student socio‐economic status. Results show substantial differences between urban and remote areas and towns of different size. Maps of cities visualise spatial “clustering” patterns of school results, with most schools in advantaged suburbs having high results and almost no schools in disadvantaged suburbs having high results. Educational outcomes strongly align to local socio‐demographic characteristics, and parallel host communities’ levels of advantage or disadvantage. Differences between public and private schools are less significant than within‐sector differences for schools in advantaged or disadvantaged locales. Patterns in all cities are consistent—schools in advantaged suburbs predominantly have high results, whereas non‐government schools generally perform better than government schools in disadvantaged suburbs. Most concerning is the persistent and increasing trajectory of results in advantaged, and more so in disadvantaged suburbs, of all cities since the first National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy in 2008. Ameliorating spatial inequality between primary schools is one of the greatest challenges for Australians.     

The Newcastle Upon Tyne Peace Society (1817–50)

The 1816 foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace in London was followed by the creation of a number of Auxiliary societies throughout the country. This paper analyses the history of the Newcastle Auxiliary, covering its establishment in 1817, its disaffiliation from the London Society in 1840, and its subsequent re-affiliation in 1850. After an initial period of quietism after their formation, the paper demonstrates how the radical pacifism of the society developed in the 1830s and 1840s, placing their activities in relation to the specificities of Newcastle’s political history, wider transformations in the British peace movement, and the influence of transatlantic networks of American peace advocacy and anti-slavery activism. The local Richardson family of Quakers personified these transformations, even as anarchists such as Joseph Barker represented a militant outer fringe of the society. Ultimately, however, the society struggled to garner wider support in Newcastle, clashing with local Chartists and with the town’s militarist merchants and businessmen in 1848. The paper therefore demonstrates how the Auxiliary societies need to be thought of active, agential organisations which negotiated the contradictions between their pacifist ideologies and the local and regional milieus within which they were enmeshed.     

Publications briefly noted

SUEHIRO KITAGUCHI (trans. Alastair McLauchlan). An Introduction to the Buraku Issue: Questions and Answers. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1999. 213 pp. £35.00, hardcover.

WANG LING‐CHI and WANG GUNGWU (eds). The Chinese Diaspora: selected Essays. Two Volumes. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998. Vol. 1: xiv, 287 pp. US$39.00, hardcover; Vol. 2: xii, 300 pp. US$39.00, hardcover.

JOHN S. BOWMAN (ed). Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture. New York: Cornell University Press, 2000. US$85.00; £52.50, hardcover.

PHYLLIS L. THOMPSON (ed). Dear Alice: letters Home from American Teachers Learning to Live in China. Berkeley: The Institute of East Asian Studies, 1998. xiv, 337 pp. US$19.95, paper.

PAUL W. LEWIS and BAI BIBO (PIU BO). Hani‐English English‐Hani Dictionary. London: Kegan Paul International, 1996. 837 pp. £95.00, hardcover.

DONALD DENOON, PHILIPPA MEIN‐SMITH with MARIVIC WYNDHAM. A History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. xviii, 523 pp. US$60.00, hardcover; £16.00, paper.

WANG GUNGWU and JOHN WONG (eds). Hong Kong in China: the Challenges of Transition. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1999. 324 pp. Tables. No price given, hardcover.

JOHN McCREERY. Japanese Consumer Behavior: from Worker Bees to Wary Shoppers. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. 278 pp. Illustrations. £14.99, paper.

ENGELBERT KAEMPFER. Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. 545 pp. US$64.00, hardcover; US$34.95, paper.

HIROMITSU IWAMOTO. Nanshin: Japanese Settlers in Papua and New Guinea 1890–1949. Canberra: The Journal of Pacific History, 1999. 175 pp.

BARBARA BENNETT PETERSON (editor in chief). Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century. Armonk NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. 402 pp. US$74.95, hardcover.

JOSEPH CHENG (ed). Political Participation in Hong Kong: theoretical Issues and Historical Legacy. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 1999. xviii, 321 pp. Tables. US$34.00, paper.

NEIL J. DIAMANT. Revolutionizing the Family: politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China 1949–1968. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000. xviii, 440 pp. US$55.00, hardcover.

DONALD KEENE. Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century. A History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xiii, 1,265 pp. US$32.50, paper.

DONALD KEENE. World within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre‐modern Era, 1600–1867. A History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xv, 606 pp. US$25.00, paper.

WM. THEODORE DE BARY and RICHARD LUFRANO (eds). Sources of Chinese Tradition. Second Edition, Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. xviii, 636 pp. US$49.50, hardcover.

RAE YANG. Spider Eaters: a Memoir. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. xi, 285 pp. US$16.95, paper.