The land of parrots

An increasingly important contributor to the low fertility characteristic of many western societies now experiencing ‘the second demographic transition’ has been the availability of legal pregnancy termination, so much so that national rates of one abortion for every four or five births are not uncommon. Prior to the passage of the 1967 Act legalising abortion in the UK, abortion in Scotland was not actually illegal, but its availability was extremely limited in most areas outside the northeast. Although uptake had increased dramatically in all regions by the mid 1990s, inter‐regional differences in abortion rates remained pronounced. This paper charts regional changes in uptake rates through the period 1974–96 then outlines and tests the effectiveness of ecological models involving socio‐demographic and health‐service related variables in accounting for variations in abortion rates across the thirteen Scottish Health Board regions in 1996. Although deprivation levels, marital and educational status are significantly involved, regional variations in consultant attitudes and professional practice seem also to be important. If the move to free up the availability of the ‘morning‐after pill’ is accepted throughout Scotland such differentials may soon disappear.     

Implementing Cleaner Production Programmes in Changzhou and Nantong,Jiangsu Province

Cleaner Production (CP) has been advocated worldwide as a strategy for companies to obtain environmental and economic benefits simultaneously. This analysis of how city‐level CP programmes were implemented in Changzhou and Nantong (Jiangsu Province, China) finds that both cities failed to meet the Province's targets to implement CP at all large‐ and medium‐sized companies by the end of 2000. Ineffective vertical control, weak inter‐agency co‐ordination, and lack of alignment between CP requirements and the core missions and operating procedures of implementing agencies have impeded CP implementation in the two cities. The relatively few successful CP outcomes at companies are based on the professionalism and skills of individual implementing agents. However, successes that rely exclusively on individual agents may not last, and thus institutional changes will be needed if the government's CP programmes are to lead to broader CP adoption.     

Prehistoric copper production and technological reproduction in the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of Central Thailand

This paper concerns the identification and explanation of change in prehistoric extractive metallurgical behaviour in the Iron Age Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand. This metallurgical complex is amongst the largest in Eurasia and constitutes Southeast Asia's only documented pre-modern copper-smelting evidence. The two Iron Age smelting sites investigated, Non Pa Wai (NPW) and Nil Kham Haeng (NKH), provide a sequence of metallurgical consumption and production evidence from c. 500 BCE to c. 500 CE. The enormous quantity of industrial waste at these sites suggests they were probably major copper supply nodes within ancient Southeast Asian metal exchange networks. Seventy-six excavated samples of mineral, technical ceramic and slag from NPW and NKH were analysed in hand specimen, microstructurally by reflected-light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy and chemically by polarising energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The analytical data were used to generate detailed technological reconstructions of copper-smelting behaviour at the two sites, which were refined by a programme of field experimentation. Results indicate an approximately 1,000-year trend of Valley copper smelters' improving technical proficiency from what may be an experimental phase of production in the mid-first millennium BCE. This amelioration in production was accompanied by a substantial increase in the human effort of copper extraction. This shift in local ‘metallurgical ethos’ is interpreted as a response to rising regional demand for copper in late prehistory.     

Testing the ‘Laacher See hypothesis’: a health hazard perspective

It has recently been suggested that the Laacher See volcanic eruption, which occurred around 13,000 years ago, initiated significant demographic fluctuations along the northern periphery of Late Glacial human settlement and that these led to a number of material culture transformations. The origins of the Southern Scandinavian Bromme culture and the northeastern European Perstunian culture as well as the temporary abandonment of Central European regions have been linked to this eruption. However, it remains unclear precisely which aspects of the eruption stimulated Late Glacial foragers to abandon their traditional ways of life. Paradoxically, the culture–historical impact of the eruption appears greater further away from the eruptive centre. Here, we investigate one potential middle-range link between the Laacher See eruption and Late Glacial fauna and foragers: tephra as a health hazard. We use laser-diffraction particle-size analysis to quantitatively investigate tephra from one site with a secure Late Glacial archaeological deposit. In addition, we use values previously reported in the literature and a predictive model to calculate the hazard potential along a transect of two of the three major Laacher See tephra fans. Our results show that the Laacher See tephra may have posed a potential health hazard and that its hazard potential may have increased with distance from the vent. To our knowledge this is the only study that attempts to quantify the changing grain-size composition of tephra fall-out longitudinally in this way, at least with regard to a prehistoric eruption. We close by discussing, more speculatively, other possible health-pertinent effects of the Laacher See eruption and suggest ways in which future work can further evaluate the impact of this eruption on Late Glacial populations.