Laser scanning for conservation and research of African cultural heritage sites: the case study of Wonderwerk Cave,South Africa

The ‘African Cultural Heritage and Landscape Database’ project, initiated and directed by the senior author and administered by Aluka (www.aluka.org), is aimed at the creation of a digital library of spatial and non-spatial materials relating to cultural heritage sites in Africa. The archaeological site of Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa) is one of the 19 sites documented to date using laser scanning, conventional survey, digital photogrammetry and 3D modelling. To date, it is one of the few archaeological caves worldwide to be fully scanned. This paper explores the different uses to which the spatial data derived from this cave have been, or will be, put – for historical and educational purposes, scientific research and site conservation and development.     

Enemy of the people: Simmel,Ibsen, and the Civic legacy of Nietzschean sociology

The fall of Communism continued an ongoing weakening of Marxist ideology, which had been hegemonic among the European Left since the Great War. While the decline of Marxist thought can be justly seen negatively as the historical correlative of globalization, this decline has also produced cultural space for a re-evaluation of non-Marxist critiques of capitalist civilization. One example of a powerful non-Marxist critique of capitalist civilization is Georg Simmel's sociology of money culture. Before turning to Simmel's radical critique, this essay explains how Simmel came to be viewed as a conservative. Simmel's presumed conservatism is challenged via a re-examination of the civic implications of his Nietzschean sociology. A central question is whether Simmel's ethical individualism is conservative. This question is finally answered through an analysis of Ibsen's Enemy of the People. The choice of Ibsen is not random, for it amplifies the close ethical and historical affinity of Naturalist drama and Simmel's philosophy.     

The Chromatic Traveling-Salesmen Problem and Its Application to Planning and Structuring Geographic Space

The classical traveling-salesman problem involves the establishment of a tour around a set of points in a plane such that each point is intersected only once and the circuit is of minimal total length. When the length of a salesman's tour cannot exceed a specified constant, the problem becomes that of finding the fewest number of salesmen such that every city is visited by a salesman and the length of each salesman's tour does not exceed a specified constant. This is the chromatic traveling-salesmen problem. An algorithm for this problem is developed and is used to create periodic markets in parts of Sierra Leone. Fifteen rural areas were examined from Sierra Leone, and weekly market places were identified in each area. Salesmen were to be assigned to an area so that each market place was visited and each tour (or periodic ring) did not exceed forty hours. The chromatic traveling-salesmen algorithm was used to minimize the number of periodic rings needed for each area and provide the specific tour for each ring.