Early medieval regulations concerning marital sexual relations

During the early middle ages the Christian Church demonstrated an interest in regulating the expression of marital sexual relations. The regulations focused on the form of the sexual behaviour but particularly on its frequency. There is a growing body of regulations forbidding marital intercourse during such times as the major liturgical seasons, on particular days of the week, and before communion, among others. While some of these regulations may have been motivated by the procreative teaching regarding marital relations, others point to a fundamental difficulty of reconciling sexual behaviour with the ideals of Christian living.     

Sewn Boats of Southeast Asia: the stitched‐plank and lashed‐lug tradition

This article updates research into the sewn‐boat traditions of Southeast Asia with recent finds that provide evidence of the transition from stitched planks with lashed‐lug frames to planks fastened with dowels and locked dowels alongside lashed‐lug frames. The differences between Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Indo‐Arabic boatbuilding are discussed and the meaning of anomalies, such as the Maldivian dhonis, examined. Considering the known history of trade and exchange throughout the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, the lack of hybridization between boatbuilding traditions is noted.     

Geostatistical Analysis of County-Level Lung Cancer Mortality Rates in the Southeastern United States

The analysis of health data and putative covariates, such as environmental, socioeconomic, demographic, behavioral, or occupational factors, is a promising application for geostatistics. Transferring methods originally developed for the analysis of earth properties to health science, however, presents several methodological and technical challenges. These arise because health data are typically aggregated over irregular spatial supports (e.g., counties) and consist of a numerator and a denominator (i.e., rates). This article provides an overview of geostatistical methods tailored specifically to the characteristics of areal health data, with an application to lung cancer mortality rates in 688 U.S. counties of the southeast (1970–1994). Factorial Poisson kriging can filter short-scale variation and noise, which can be large in sparsely populated counties, to reveal similar regional patterns for male and female cancer mortality that correlate well with proximity to shipyards. Rate uncertainty was transferred through local cluster analysis using stochastic simulation, allowing the computation of the likelihood of clusters of low or high cancer mortality. Accounting for population size and rate uncertainty led to the detection of new clusters of high mortality around Oak Ridge National Laboratory for both sexes, in counties with high concentrations of pig farms and paper mill industries for males (occupational exposure) and in the vicinity of Atlanta for females.     

A HARMONIZATION OF FIRST AND SECOND NATURES*

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the joint impact of the first nature and the second nature forces on industry location. Toward this aim, we develop a two‐region new economic geography model where local factor congestion and location advantages compete with demand linkages and product market crowding. In particular, we study the case of absolute location advantage in a single industry model and the case of comparative advantages in a two‐industry model. We characterize the structure of industries and discuss the possibilities of catastrophic changes, endogenous industrial asymmetries and specialization. We find that absolute location advantage are associated with a smooth agglomeration process and comparative advantages with a catastrophic process.     

State Making and the Politics of the Frontier in Central Benin

Kopytoff's model of the African frontier has opened room for renewed approaches to settlement history, politics, ethnicity and cultural reproduction in pre‐colonial Africa. This interpretative framework applies well to central Benin (Ouessè). Over the long term, mobility has been a structural feature of the regional social history, from pre‐colonial times onwards. Movements of people, resources, norms and values have been crucial in the production and reproduction of the social and political order. The colonial intrusion and its post‐colonial avatars gave way to renewed relations between mobility and locality, in particular in the form of a complex articulation between control over labour force, access to land and natural resources, and out‐ and in‐migrations. This article argues that the political frontier metaphor provides a useful heuristic device to capture the logic of state making, as the changing outcome of organizing practices taking place inside and outside state and non‐state organizations and arenas. Governmentality in post‐colonial central Benin thus results from the complex interplay of mobility, control over resources and state‐led forms of ‘villagization’.     

Making EMU a success

One year has elapsed since the European Monetary Union was created between eleven of the fifteen European Union member states. During 1999 the economic prospects for euroland have dramatically improved, with projected growth in 2000 and 2001 well above earlier expectations. This article argues that the recovery, by itself, cannot solve Europe's unemployment problem, neither can monetary union per se, despite its substantial benefits. The authors discuss these benefits and assess the current economic situation in Europe. They recommend a bold, coordinated approach, a growth pact for Europe, based on the three complementary legs: substantial tax cuts; an accommodating monetary policy; and structural reform. They discuss the conditions in which such a pact would be successful.     

Hard core and cutting edge: experimental manufacture and use of Magdalenian composite projectile tips

The technology of the European Upper Palaeolithic yielded abundant evidence of the use of composite projectile heads, in the form of osseous points on the side of which one or several (micro)lithic elements are attached. Yet, little experimental work has been devoted to testing and assessing the parameters of use of this type of composite tips. In this paper we present a pilot experiment with replicas of Magdalenian composite spear tips, made of an antler point with one or two rows of flint backed bladelets. Two series of replicas were manufactured after the lithic and osseous record of, respectively, the Lower Magdalenian from southwest France (c. 20–18 Ky cal BP) and the Upper Magdalenian of Pincevent in the Paris Basin (c. 15–14 Ky cal BP). The 34 experimental composite heads were hafted to spears that were then shot with a spearthrower at the carcasses of two young deer. The results provide some insight into the performance characteristics of the osseous and lithic components, both in efficiency and durability. Finally, possible improvements of the experimental protocol are discussed, as well as the implications of our results for the understanding of projectile point variability in the Upper Palaeolithic.