Population affinities of Parsis in the Indian subcontinent

The present study was an attempt to document changes in frequencies of dental morphology traits and understand phenetic affinities of Parsis, who migrated to the Indian subcontinent around the 8th century. Despite successfully integrating themselves into the Indian society, they have retained their ethnicity and distinct cultural practices. This study was conceived as a result of an excavation at the site of Sanjan, Gujarat which, as per historical records, is believed to be the first town in the Indian subcontinent with a large Parsi settlement thereby facilitating a diachronic comparison between the ancestral and extant Parsi groups. We compared and analysed dental traits between the two groups expecting a very close relationship between them owing to their ancestor–descendent relationship. Eleven discrete dental traits were selected and scored using the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS). Frequency changes were assessed by comparing trait frequencies; whereas phenetic affinity between Parsis was assessed by statistically comparing them with 13 populations using Smith's mean measure of divergence (MMD) statistic. Comparison of dental trait frequencies between Sanjan and extant Parsi samples show significant differences in incisor morphology, Carabelli cusp and Hypocone development. Trait frequencies, MMD values and 2D multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot indicate that extant Parsis and Sanjan samples are distantly separated from each other. Extant Parsis show closer affinity to low caste Mahars and tribal Madia Gonds than South and Central Asian groups. Sanjan is distant from all other groups including extant Parsis. It is likely that genetic drift accentuated by their small numbers and strict endogamy has resulted in divergence of Parsi groups. Similarly, their convergence with Maharashtran groups indicates admixture of Parsis with local groups, which supports earlier conducted mtDNA studies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Process of Kinship in the Paternal/Fraternal House of the Austronesian‐speaking Amis of Taiwan

In this essay, I will describe the traditional social organisation of the Amis peoples of Taiwan which previous ethnographers have portrayed as consisting of a matrilineal clan‐based system conjoined with a residential‐based male age‐set/grade system. Following David Schneider's critique of ‘kinship’ cross‐culturally and the ‘new kinship studies' which his work inspired, I will attempt a reinterpretation of overall Amis social organisation as instead a total kinship‐based system comprised of a paternal/fraternal system which integrates and encompasses the multiplicity of maternal‐focused houses constitutive of village communities. Rather than being a system composed of kinship and non‐kinship parts, I argue that Amis social organisation is comprehensively kinship‐based. Moreover, I shall describe how through paternal/fraternal relations generated by rites of male initiation and rebirth this overall integration of diverse matrifocal units is achieved. In the first section, I will describe the structure of the paternal/fraternal initiatory system. In the following section, I will draw upon the major anthropological theories of initiation including rites of passage and the literature on sacrifice to describe numerous aspects of initiation activities, showing how the classificatory father‐son and elder‐younger‐brother relations between and within the initiation sets are explicitly represented by the concepts and practices of the Amis.     

Crucibles of power: Forging copper and forging subjects at the Moche Ceremonial Center of Huaca Colorada,Peru

An analysis of copper production, architectural construction, and feasting rites as interrelated ritual activities at the Late Moche site of Huaca Colorada suggests that power asymmetries were embedded in a distinctive relational ontology and sacrificial worldview. Power was exercised not by alienating communities from their means of production or excluding the majority lower class from the diacritical symbols of power. Rather, the manufacture of copper items enabled subjects to directly contribute to Moche rites of regeneration and social reproduction; the skilled metamorphosis of copper into finished objects paralleled and symbolically reinforced the ritual re-formation of bodies and political subjectivities at Huaca Colorada. Ultimately, an examination of copper production at Huaca Colorada as a ritual of bodily transformation sheds light on the culturally specific structures of power characterizing the greater Jequetepeque region during the Late Moche Period.     

An Umm an‐Nar culture stone bas‐relief from Al‐Qutainah,Sultanate of Oman

The Al‐Qutainah stone with its bas‐relief decoration was found in a secondary position, reused through time. The object is clearly a facing stone, originally part of an Umm an‐Nar period tomb, and was subsequently repeatedly reused for making new engravings. While working out the sequence of images it became clear that the very first image was a pair of human figures. This artwork is associated to grave architecture and therefore dates to the Umm an‐Nar period. Two models of interpretation can be suggested, the image of a human pair or the image of a supplicant and deity. Changes in the original meaning of the image indicate conceptual changes in subsequent periods, most probably alterations in the underlying social structure. The importance of the Qutainah stone is not solely due to rare monumental human figurative expression of the period in Oman; furthermore, the find spot in the Adam region is at a distance from the central location of Umm an‐Nar culture that has so far emerged.     

Are new patterns of low‐income distribution emerging in Canadian metropolitan areas?

Recent studies on urban poverty in Canadian cities suggest a growing spatial concentration of poor populations within metropolitan regions. This article assesses trends in the intra‐urban distribution of the poor population from 1986 to 2006 in eight of Canada's largest cities. We consider five well‐known dimensions of segregation, as identified by Massey and Denton (1988) , in order to examine changes in the spatial distribution of poor populations within metropolitan areas: evenness, exposure, concentration, clustering, and centralization. These indices were calculated for low‐income populations at the census tract level using data from five Canadian censuses. Although each metropolitan area has distinctive characteristics, we were able to identify some general trends. The results suggest that, in 2006 compared to 1986, low‐income populations lived in more spatially concentrated areas, which were, at the same time, socioeconomically more homogeneous and more dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. In addition, we observed that over the last twenty years areas of poverty have been located, for the most part, in neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown cores. Nevertheless, we found that poverty has mostly increased in suburban areas located outside inner‐city neighbourhoods. Growing socioeconomic homogeneity and dispersion of low income areas in metropolitan areas reveal new spatial patterns of urban poverty distribution. These findings should be cause for concern as social isolation in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods could affect the life chances and opportunities for the residents of those areas.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE GEM‐BLUE GLAZE OF YE WANG'S KOJI POTTERY*

Koji pottery is a glazed ceramic art used widely for figurines. In early Taiwan, it was employed in temple construction for decorative purposes. Ye Wang (1826–87) is the first historically documented Koji artist of Taiwan and also the most prominent Koji pottery artist, noted for his modelling and glazing skills. Unfortunately, his unique technique was lost following his death in 1887. In order to provide vital information for ongoing conservation work on Koji pottery, this study analysed the physical and chemical characteristics of Ye Wang's gem‐blue glaze, to discover the glaze formula. DSC combined with the two‐thirds rule revealed that the firing temperature of Ye Wang's works of art was most probably around 878–923°C. EPMA revealed that the gem‐blue glaze has high alkali levels, and belongs to the PbO–K₂O–B₂O₃–Na₂O–SiO₂ system, deriving its unique colour from copper, iron, manganese and cobalt. This study found high potassium levels in the gem‐blue glaze, which are generally a characteristic of traditional Chinese glazes. In addition, a unique discovery of boron, commonly used in famille rose, was also identified in the glaze. By comparing spectra of historical and reconstructed glazes and adjusting the proportion of chromophoric elements, this study found a glazing formula with colours close to those of Ye Wang's gem‐blue glaze.     

Geographically Weighted Quantile Regression (GWQR): An Application to U.S. Mortality Data

In recent years, techniques have been developed to explore spatial nonstationarity and to model the entire distribution of a regressand. The former is mainly addressed by geographically weighted regression (GWR), and the latter by quantile regression (QR). However, little attention has been paid to combining these analytical techniques. The goal of this article is to fill this gap by introducing geographically weighted quantile regression (GWQR). This study briefly reviews GWR and QR, respectively, and then outlines their synergy and a new approach, GWQR. The estimations of GWQR parameters and their standard errors, the cross‐validation bandwidth selection criterion, and the nonstationarity test are discussed. We apply GWQR to U.S. county data as an example, with mortality as the dependent variable and five social determinants as explanatory covariates. Maps summarize analytic results at the 5, 25, 50, 75, and 95 percentiles. We found that the associations between mortality and determinants vary not only spatially, but also simultaneously across the distribution of mortality. These new findings provide insights into the mortality literature, and are relevant to public policy and health promotion. Our GWQR approach bridges two important statistical approaches, and facilitates spatial quantile‐based statistical analyses. En los últimos años se han desarrollado diversas técnicas para explorar tanto la heterocedasticidad (o no estacionariedad) espacial, así como para modelar toda la distribución de una variable dependiente. El primer tema ha sido abordado principalmente por la regresión ponderada geográficamente (Geographically Weighted Regression ‐GWR), y el segundo por la regresión por cuantiles (Quantile Regression‐QR). La combinación de ambas técnicas analíticas, sin embargo, ha recibido mucho menos atención. El objetivo de este artículo es llenar dicho vacío mediante la propuesta de una regresión geográficamente ponderada por cuantiles (Geographically Weighted Quantile Regression‐ GWQR). Los autores resumen brevemente las técnicas GWR y QR respectivamente, y luego esbozan sus propiedades sinérgicas. Luego presentan la nueva técnica propuesta: GWQR. Los autores abordan los temas de las estimaciones de los parámetros GWQR y sus errores estándar, el criterio de selección del ancho de banda de la validación cruzada (cross‐validation bandwidth), y la prueba heterocedasticidad espacial. Como ejemplo se aplica GWQR a datos de la tasa de mortalidad como variable dependiente y cinco determinantes sociales como variables independientes para los condados de los Estados Unidos. Los patrones espaciales se presentan en mapas con los resultados del análisis para los percentiles 5, 25, 50, 75, y 95. Los resultados muestran que las asociaciones entre la mortalidad y sus factores determinantes no sólo varían espacialmente, sino también de forma simultánea a través de la distribución de la tasa de mortalidad. Estos nuevos hallazgos coinciden con la literatura de los estudios de mortalidad, y son relevantes para aplicaciones de política pública y promoción de la salud. El enfoque GWQR representa un puente conceptual y metodológico entre dos enfoques estadísticos importantes a la vez que hace más factible el análisis estadístico espacial por cuantiles. 近年来,可用于探讨空间非平稳性和模拟回归变数分布的技术得到发展。前者主要用地理加权回归方法（GWR）处理,后者采用分位数回归（QR）处理。然而对这些分析技术的结合使用却很少关注。本文试图通过提出地理加权分位数回归（GWQR）来填补这一空白。在分别简要回顾了GWR和QR方法的基础上,基于两个方法的协同应用提出了GWQR新方法,进而讨论了GWQR的参数估计、标准误差、带宽选择标准的交叉验证和非平稳性检验。本文将死亡率作为因变量及五个社会因子作为解释变量,进行了美国县域单元的案例研究,绘制了0.05、0.25、0.5、0.75和0.95不同百分位点的分析结果图。研究发现,死亡人数不仅与解释变量的空间分布相关,同时也与其地理分布相关。这些新发现不仅可促进对死亡率相关成果的深入分析,同时也与公共政策和健康促进有关。GWQR方法架构了QR和GWR两种重要统计方法之间的纽带,也促进了基于分位数的空间统计分析方法的发展。     

MATCHING PAST AND PRESENT CERAMIC PRODUCTION IN THE BANDA AREA (GHANA): IMPROVING THE ANALYTICAL PERFORMANCE OF NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS IN ARCHAEOLOGY USING MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES*

The transfer of advances in chemometrics into archaeometric research opens up a wide range of new application possibilities in this rapidly developing field. Neutron activation analysis (NAA) of ceramic samples from the Banda Traditional Area (west‐central Ghana) combined with chemometrics allowed us to establish a link between current and ancient systems of ceramics production in the historic settlements of Kuulo Kataa and Makala Kataa. Principal component analysis (PCA) and the soft independent modelling of class analogy (SIMCA) method were applied to the Das Dores Cruz data set in order to unequivocally determine the geographical origin of the diverse archaeological samples. After global autoscaling pretreatment, PCA analysis showed a clear difference between samples from different locations. The classification models obtained by SIMCA showed a classification ability of 100% and a prediction ability of 97.7%, with a mean sensitivity of 84% and a specificity of 100% for the three categories. The application of SIMCA showed that some NAA variables (elements) were more important than others in terms of geographical classification. With the class models that we obtained, we were able to determine the origin of the ancient remains. SIMCA has proved to be a powerful technique for the class modelling of archaeological data.