East Africa and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean world

The Indian Ocean has long been a forum for contact, trade and the transfer of goods, technologies and ideas between geographically distant groups of people. Another, less studied, outcome of expanding maritime connectivity in the region is the translocation of a range of species of plants and animals, both domestic and wild. A significant number of these translocations can now be seen to involve Africa, either providing or receiving species, suggesting that Africa’s role in the emergence of an increasingly connected Indian Ocean world deserves more systematic consideration. While the earliest international contacts with the East African coast remain poorly understood, in part due to a paucity of archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological studies, some evidence for early African coastal activity is provided by the discovery of early hunter-gatherer sites on offshore islands, and, possibly, by the translocation of wild animals among these islands, and between them and the mainland. From the seventh century, however, clear evidence for participation in the Indian Ocean world emerges, in the form of a range of introduced species, including commensal and domestic animals, and agricultural crops. New genetic studies demonstrate that the flow of species to the coast is complex, with more than one source frequently indicated. The East African coast and Madagascar appear to have been significant centres of genetic admixture, drawing upon Southeast Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern genetic varieties, and sometimes yielding unique hybrid species. The biological patterns reflect a deeply networked trade and contact situation, and support East Africa’s key role in the events and transformations of the early Indian Ocean world.     

Follow the Thing: Papaya

In a recent round table about Antipode 's radical geographies, contributors argued that the journal needed more papers which stimulated debate, were accessible to academics and non-academics alike, didn't "preach to the cognoscenti", were written to fit into radical teaching agendas, and were diverse and eclectic in style ( Waterstone 2002 :663; Hague 2002 ). This paper has been written to fit this bill. It outlines the findings of multi-locale ethnographic research into the globalization of food, focusing on a supply chain stretching from UK supermarket shelves to a Jamaican farm, and concluding in a North London flat. It addresses perspectives and critiques from the growing literature on the geographies of commodities, but presents these academic arguments "between the lines" of a series of overlapping vignettes about people who were (un)knowingly connected to each other through the international trade in fresh papaya, and an entangled range of economic, political, social, cultural, agricultural and other processes also shaping these connections in the early 1990s. The research on which it is based was initially energized by David Harvey's (1990 :422) call for radical geographers to "get behind the veil, the fetishism of the market", to make powerful, important, disturbing connections between Western consumers and the distant strangers whose contributions to their lives were invisible, unnoticed, and largely unappreciated. Harvey argued that radical geographers should attempt to de-fetishise commodities, re-connect consumers and producers, tell fuller stories of social reproduction, and thereby provoke moral and ethical questions for participants in this exploitation who might think they're decent people. This paper has been written to provoke such questions, to provide materials to think through and with, for geography's ongoing debates about the politics of consumption.     

Reconstructing Middle Horizon mobility patterns on the coast of Peru through strontium isotope analysis

The pre-Columbian coastal site of Ancón, Peru frequently has been interpreted as an important outpost of the highland Wari Empire, inhabited by individuals from the sierra and the coast. In order to test this hypothesis, bone–tooth pairs from 35 Middle Horizon (550 AD–1000 AD) Ancón skeletons were analyzed for strontium isotopes, which vary by geologic provenance. Results indicate that 34 of the 35 individuals have ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr enamel and bone values higher than Ancón's biologically available strontium isotope range. Nitrogen and carbon isotope data from a subset of the Ancón skeletons suggest that the higher than expected ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values among the Ancón sample likely reflects a diet rich in marine resources rather than migratory activity, and highlight the need to use multiple lines of evidence to track residence change at sites where individuals relied on resources other than locally grown terrestrial foods. The one remaining individual, a young female of elite status, has an enamel strontium isotope signature much lower than the available data for local fauna and soil indicating that she was not raised locally. Her enamel ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio fits well within the range of strontium isotope values established for the inland Wari site of Conchopata [Tung, T.A., Knudson, K.J. Social identities and geographical origins of Wari trophy heads from Conchopata, Peru. Current Anthropology, in press.], and suggests that highland, Wari immigrants may have been present at Ancón during the Middle Horizon.     

Intervention: Mapping is critical!

This intervention targets the much heralded demise of the map in geography and the recently proposed “rethinking” of maps. It comprises contributions from two political geographers, a military geographer, a political scientist, and two activist cartographers and argues that there is not so much a need to “rethink” maps, but to “re-engage” with the material practices of mapping, and above all to “re-make” maps.     

Rocks are heavy: transport costs and Paleoarchaic quarry behavior in the Great Basin

Central place foraging models are used to investigate assemblage variability at two Paleoarchaic (terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene) dacite quarries in the central and eastern Great Basin. Our analyses focus specifically on biface reduction and how varying degrees of reduction relate to the costs of transporting the resulting products upon departing the quarry. Our results suggest that when the distance to be traveled to a residential base is great, reduction will proceed further at the quarry than if the residential base is fairly close. Further, a residential site assemblage will consist of bifaces at later stages of reduction than its associated quarry.     

Assessing the Performance of Voluntary Environmental Programs: Does Certification Matter?

The promotion of voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) as alternative approaches to traditional environmental regulation has fueled numerous researchers to evaluate VEP performance. However, these studies have focused on assessing the environmental performance of a single VEP. As yet, we know little about the overall environmental benefits of these programs. Moreover, questions remain about whether VEPs designed with different monitoring regimes—related to whether programs are self‐monitored or undergo external certification—vary in their ability to improve environmental conditions. Using meta‐analysis methodology, this article evaluates the aggregated environmental outcomes of U.S. VEPs drawing on data from nine studies and over 30,000 firms. We show that collectively VEP participants do not improve their environmental performance over nonparticipants. Rather, nonparticipants improve their environmental performance by 7.7 percent more than VEP participants. Additionally, nonparticipants improve the environment 24 percent more than participants in self‐monitored VEPs, whereas participants in International Standards Organization 14001 as a group exhibit inconclusive environmental performance improvements.     

The application of microfossils in assessing the provenance of chalk used in the manufacture of Roman mosaics at Silchester

Microfossils recovered from chalk tesserae in mosaics from the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, modern Silchester, southern England, are used to suggest a provenance for the source-rock. The microfossils include foraminifera characteristic of late Cretaceous (Campanian) foraminiferal biozone BGS20 (quadrata macrofaunal biozone) and foraminiferal subzone BGS21i (basal mucronata macrofaunal biozone). Calcareous nannofossil assemblages from the same tesserae are poorly preserved, preventing precise age determination, but confirm an age of Santonian to Campanian. As indurated chalk beds of this age are not normally present in the stratigraphically higher chalks of southern England, it is probable that calcretised chalk, formed by secondary calcification beneath Palaeogene rock cover, was used to manufacture the tesserae. This suggestion is supported by a comparative analysis of chalk tesserae from the Norden Roman site in Dorset. Although the provenance of the chalk in some of the Silchester tesserae can be placed only within a broad geographical area of downland in southern England, others may have originated in the Dorchester–Swanage area, some 100 km to the southwest of Silchester, or the Portsdown area of southern Hampshire. None of the tesserae have been constructed from chalk found near Silchester.     

Chlorozyga,a new caenogastropod from the Early Carboniferous of Australia

Chlorozyga, a new genus of Australian Tournaisian (Early Carboniferous) caenogastropod, is proposed and assigned to the Imoglobidae. Chlorozyga has a larval shell like Imogloba from the Early Carboniferous of North America but differs in teleoconch morphology. As in Imogloba, the initial whorl of Chlorozyga is openly coiled, a feature unknown in Mesozoic and Recent caenogastropods. However, Chlorozyga and Imogloba belong to the Caenogastropoda, given their multi-whorled orthostrophic larval shells.     

Ronald Reagan's Indian Policy in Retrospect

This article examines presidential politics during the Reagan era with regard to the formulation, implementation, and aftermath of Reagan's Indian policy. Indian affairs proved to be a formidable testing ground for the drastic administrative budget cuts that transpired in the 1980s. Although the ill-effects of this policy were felt immediately in Indian Country, economic crisis inspired some tribes to seize control of their own political and economic destinies, ultimately influencing federal policy in their favor.