Review articles

Jeff Halper, Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv of Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century, Boulder, Westview Press, 1991, xii+290 pp.

Svante Lundgren, Moses Hess on Religion, Judaism and the Bible, n.p., Åbo Academy Press, Åbo, 1992, x+206 pp.

Derek J. Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of the Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870–1918, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991, xiii+210 pp.

Yaakov Ariel, On Behalf of Israel: Fundamentalist Attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865–1945, Brooklyn, New York, Carlson, 1991, xv+172 pp.

Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Angb‐Jewish Community, Britain, and the Russian Revolution, Frank Cass, London, 1992, 312 pp.

Bernard Wasserstein, Herbert Samuel: A Political Life, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1992, xv+427 pp.

Menahem Kaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership: Non‐Zionists and Zionists in America, 1939–1948, Jerusalem, Magnes University Press, 1991, 418 pp.

Bruce J. Evensen, Truman, Palestine, and the Press: Shaping Conventional Wisdom at the Beginning of the Cold War, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1992, 243 pp.

Selwyn Ilan Troen and Moshe Shemesh, eds., Suez‐Sinai Crisis 1956: Retrospective and Reappraisal, New York, Columbia University Press, 1990, xiv+395 pp.

Arthur Hertzberg, Jewish Polemics, New York, Columbia University Press, 1992, xiv+259 pp.

Robert S. Wistrich, Between Redemption and Perdition: Modern antisemitism and Jewish identity, London and New York, Routledge, 1990, vi+283 pp.     

A Fast and Efficient Simulation of the Far-Fault and Near-Fault Earthquake Ground Motions Associated with the June 17 and 21, 2000, Earthquakes in South Iceland

The two M_w 6.5 earthquakes on June 17 and 21, 2000, respectively, in the populated South Iceland Seismic Zone (SISZ) significantly augmented the Icelandic database of strong ground motions, and several strong velocity pulses were recorded at near-fault sites. The strong motions are interpreted via the Specific Barrier Model (SBM) and a mathematical model of near-fault velocity pulses. The data indicates self-similar source scaling and significantly greater attenuation of seismic waves than in other interplate regions. Through inversion of the data a new attenuation function for the SISZ has been adopted, which results in unbiased simulations. For the first time, the characteristics of the recorded near-fault pulses have been identified and compared to the worldwide database of such records. The SBM and the near-fault pulse model combine naturally in a fast and efficient synthesis of realistic, broad-band strong ground motions in the far-fault and near-fault region. Such simulations are showcased for the June 2000 earthquakes and indicate that the modeling approach adopted in this study is an effective tool for the estimation of realistic earthquake ground motions in the SISZ.     

Panorama of the Basque Country and its Competence for Self-Government

The aim of this article is to present a panoramic view of the Basque Country's capacity and competence for self-government. We have analysed the historical process of industrialization, the effects of the industrial crisis and new possibilities for development of the area's own regional policy based on new institutions (Government and Provincial Councils) that emerged from administrative decentralization in Spain after 1980. In the following section, we analyse the scope of authority in EU regions. Some of the cultural and transport infrastructure projects backed by these Basque institutions are studied. These projects have had a considerable impact on the Bilbao Metropolitan Area. The changes observed in the nation state, specifically in Europe, show contradictory effects. However, they have reduced the State's sovereignty but at the same time have prompted the State to retain powers rather than transfer them to lower institutional levels. This clashes with the desire of some regions or historical nations to access greater shares of self-government, such as the case of the Basque Country.     

Impact of European Union development subsidies on Hungarian regions

Since the collapse of the communist system, regional inequalities have increased in Central European Countries. This paper describes an assessment of the impacts of regional development programmes on the development of Hungarian regions at a highly disaggregated level between 2002 and 2008. We construct a multi-dimensional composite indicator to estimate the overall development of rural regions and capture social, economic and environmental dimensions. The impacts of rural development programmes were investigated through counterfactual analysis in combination with Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences approaches. There has been considerable variation with increasing concentration in the level of subsidies distributed during the analysed period. From a policy perspective, the results are disappointing. Irrespective of the subsidy measures or methodology employed, the impact of the former is very close to zero or non-significant. Our findings cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of development policy and the long-run convergence of European regions.     

Urban regeneration in Poland’s non-core regions

ABSTRACT

After many years of efforts aimed at reaching a cohesive and inclusive socio-economic development, Poland keeps witnessing some significant disparities in the distribution of wealth. Moreover, these disparities intensified in the course of the post-socialist transition and they have not been diminished by the regional policy of the EU. In this light, urban regeneration appears as an important, emerging sphere of public intervention intended to support the less developed regions. The objective of this study is twofold: first, to characterize the place of urban regeneration in the Polish strategic planning system, and second, to carry out an in-depth analysis of planning strategies and practices of urban regeneration at the regional level and conclude with recommendations for planning. The latter is achieved by examining the Polish experience with urban regeneration practices in the 1999–2015 period using Wielkopolska region as a case study. In order to reach this objective: (a) all strategic documents related to urban regeneration have been collected and analysed, (b) a survey has been conducted in 100 cities and towns of the region and finally (c) 50 interviews have been carried out with various stakeholders involved in the urban regeneration process. The article concludes with recommendations for planning and further urban regeneration projects aiming to alleviate the development disparities between core and non-core regions.     

Animal Exploitation in the Early Prehistory of the Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands were the last large islands in the Mediterranean to be settled, with colonization not occurring until the third millennium cal BC. The richest assemblages of zooarchaeological data for reconstructing patterns of animal exploitation and management come from Mallorca, Menorca, and Formentera and date to the late third and second millennia cal BC. In this article, I consider these exploitation and management strategies from the perspective of human ecodynamics. In general, the early settlers of the Balearic Islands adopted economic strategies which remained very conservative throughout the Early and Mid Bronze Age (i.e., 2500/2300–1200 cal BC). On Mallorca and Menorca, animal resources were derived mainly from domesticated fauna, with the evidence supporting a mixed-farming model wherein cultivation is complemented by small-scale and relatively unspecialized animal husbandry. In contrast, on Formentera there is a diversification of the faunal economy, with fish and wild birds providing an important contribution to the diet; this probably relates to the extreme marginality of the Formenteran environment. This case of initial human settlement and flexible adaptation to the Balearics highlights one of the core aspects of human ecodynamics: the ability for colonizing populations to both uniquely respond to and affect ecological conditions in island environments.     

Kinetic effect of carbonic anhydrase enzyme on the carbonation reaction of lime mortar

The effect of carbonic anhydrase enzyme on the precipitation kinetics and phase transformations of calcium carbonate, and on the strength development of lime mortars has been investigated with saturated lime solutions, lime pastes and lime mortars under atmospheric conditions. The results clearly show that carbonic anhydrase catalyzes the reaction between carbon dioxide and aqueous lime, and increases the rate of calcium carbonate crystallization, the yield of the carbonation reaction and mortar strength at early ages. This is most likely a kinetic effect associated with the increased rate of carbonate ions supply to the solution by the enzyme. In addition, this enzyme favors the formation of stable calcite and significantly modifies its morphology by developing new crystal faces. These results suggest a novel approach for accelerating the hardening of lime mortars using carbonic anhydrase enzyme, which may offer a potentially novel approach with significant benefits on the applications of lime mortars in architectural heritage conservation as well as in construction.     

The Baelo Claudia Paradigm: The Exploitation of Marine Resources in Roman Cetariae

The Roman city of Baelo Claudia (Baetica, Hispania) is one of the best known halieutic sites of the Mare Nostrum, dating from between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD. Recent archaeological investigations have included the discovery, excavation and interdisciplinary study of two new fish-salting factories (so-called “Conjuntos Industriales” XI and XII), providing valuable new information on the exploitation of marine resources. This paper provides the first synthesis of all of the available archaeological evidence for the first three phases of the fishing-product cycle (marine resources/fishing equipment/processing facilities and food products) at this unique site on the Strait of Gibraltar.     

Unraveling a Neanderthal palimpsest from a zooarcheological and taphonomic perspective

Practically all archeological assemblages are palimpsests. In spite of the high temporal resolution of Abric Romaní site, level O, dated to around 55 ka, is not an exception. This paper focuses on a zooarcheological and taphonomic analysis of this level, paying special attention to spatial and temporal approaches. The main goal is to unravel the palimpsest at the finest possible level by using different methods and techniques, such as archeostratigraphy, anatomical and taxonomical identification, taphonomic analysis, faunal refits and tooth wear analysis. The results obtained are compared to ethnoarcheological data so as to interpret site structure. In addition, activities carried out over different time spans (from individual episodes to long-term behaviors) are detected, and their spatial extent is explored, allowing to do inferences on settlement dynamics. This leads us to discuss the temporal and spatial scales over which Neanderthals carried out different activities within the site, and how they can be studied through the archeological record.     

Dietary patterns in human populations from northwest Patagonia during Holocene: an approach using Binford’s frames of reference and Bayesian isotope mixing models

The goal of this paper is to assess the variation in the proportional contribution of diverse resources to the diet of human populations from northwest Patagonia (Argentina) throughout the Middle-Late Holocene. Particularly, we assessed the variation among three geographic areas and two periods. We first estimated the expected proportions of terrestrial animals and plants and aquatic resources for each area according to the Binford’s frames of references approach. A Bayesian mixing method was then applied to calculate the proportion of plants and animals in the diets from stable isotopes (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) of human bone collagen. The isotope values suggest that the composition of diets differed spatially and temporally. Diets of South Mendoza were mainly composed of terrestrial animals (Rhea-Lama and rodents) with a greater incorporation of C₃ plants towards the later Late Holocene; in North Neuquén, Rhea and Lama represent a proportion of 0.84 of the diet consumed; and finally, the sample of Center Neuquén is the only one with high values of Araucaria in the diet. The isotopic values obtained for the three studied areas did not fit to the expectations of Binford’s model, North Neuquén being the area that departs most from the predicted proportions of terrestrial animals and plants and aquatic organisms in the diet. These findings open up new questions about the local conditions that influenced regional variation in the diet of prehistoric hunter-gatherers.