Foraging,Farming, and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A Review and Synthesis

The transition from foraging to farming of the Neolithic periods is one of, if not, the most important cultural processes in recent human prehistory. Integrating previously published archaeological materials with archaeological research conducted since 1980, the first half of this essay synthesizes our current understanding of archaeological data for the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 11,700–ca. 8400 B.P.) of the southern Levant, generally defined as including southern Syria and Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Autonomous Authority, Jordan, and the Sinai peninsula of Egypt. The second half of the essay explores how these data inform archaeologists about the processes by which social differentiation emerged, the nature of regional and interregional connections, and the mechanisms and processes by which the transition from foraging to food production first occurred in the Neolithic.     

From born to made: technology, biology and space

This paper is concerned with forging new links between geography and biology and technology by delivering a set of shocks to the meaning of accepted categories like 'nature' and 'technology'. To achieve these dual aims, the paper will double click on the icon 'intelligence'. 'Intelligence' prioritizes the active shaping of environments . It thereby allows space for the spaces of the world to themselves become a part of intelligibility and intellect as elements of distributed cognition and , as will become clear, pre-cognition. The paper argues that such a conception of sentience can provide a series of new perspectives, as well as a pressing ethical challenge.     

Russia and the IMF

Russia's economic crisis in the summer of 1998 has renewed debate as to whether the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has helped, hindered or been irrelevant to economic transition in the core of the former Soviet Union. The authors examine the relationship between the Fund and Russia over the past ten years, highlighting a mixed record of successes, failures and the limits of the Fund's role. They argue that the institution may well have also inadvertently facilitated the rise of political forces which are today opposed to the second phase of reforms which Russia so desperately needs. In conclusion, the authors question whether the IMF ought to continue to lead Western attempts to foster stability and growth in Russia.     

Book reviews

Katrien Polman. The central Moluccas: an annotated bibliography. XXVI, 324 pp. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1983. (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land en Volkenkunde. Bibliographical Series, 12.)

S. W. R. Mulyadi (ed.). Hikayat Indraputra: a Malay romance, vii, 315 pp., 6 plates. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1983. (Koninklijk Ihstituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde. Biblotheca Indonesica, 23.) Guilders 30.     

The Rolt Memorial Lecture 2017: Conserving the Waterways Heritage

ABSTRACT

This article describes the work of the Canal & River Trust in managing and conserving the heritage assets and the wider historic environment of the Trust's waterways in England and Wales. Various types of heritage assets are described, and the ways in which these assets are managed, including via archaeological recording, along with conservation-led repairs to historic engineering structures and other historic waterway-related buildings, are considered. New directions that offer effective and efficient ways of dealing with heritage assets are examined.     

A past and a future for diversification on farms? Some evidence from large-scale,commercial farms in South East England

Diversification has been identified as a common response to the agricultural crisis of the 1980s and to the changing ethos of agricultural policy in the closing decade of the twentieth century. In particular, farmers operating large-scale farms have been prominent in adopting this approach, just as they were innovative across a range of farming practices in the expansion and modernisation of their agricultural production in earlier decades. Can we identify serial diversifiers within this sector of the farming community, who are disposed to react in an entrepreneurial fashion to the changing fortunes of agriculture? The paper draws on results from a survey of large-scale commercial farmers in South East England and, by examining the sequence in which various forms of diversification were adopted, identifies a temporal pattern as farmers responded to the fluctuating fortunes of the agricultural industry over the past thirty years. But has the potential for diversification been exhausted? The paper also considers future prospects for diversification within the large-scale, commercially oriented sector of the agricultural industry.