The Changing Face of Neolithic and Bronze Age Ireland: A Big Data Approach to the Settlement and Burial Records

This paper synthesizes and discusses the spatial and temporal patterns of archaeological sites in Ireland, spanning the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age transition (4300–1900 cal BC), in order to explore the timing and implications of the main changes that occurred in the archaeological record of that period. Large amounts of new data are sourced from unpublished developer-led excavations and combined with national archives, published excavations and online databases. Bayesian radiocarbon models and context- and sample-sensitive summed radiocarbon probabilities are used to examine the dataset. The study captures the scale and timing of the initial expansion of Early Neolithic settlement and the ensuing attenuation of all such activity—an apparent boom-and-bust cycle. The Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods are characterised by a resurgence and diversification of activity. Contextualisation and spatial analysis of radiocarbon data reveals finer-scale patterning than is usually possible with summed-probability approaches: the boom-and-bust models of prehistoric populations may, in fact, be a misinterpretation of more subtle demographic changes occurring at the same time as cultural change and attendant differences in the archaeological record.     

Book reviews

Australian politics

Sir John Cramer, Pioneers, Politics and People: A Political Memoir (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990) pp.viii + 231. $39.95 (hbk.) ISBN 0–04–442104–4.

Adam Graycar and Adam Jamrozik, How Australians Live: Social Policy in Theory and Practice (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1989, reprinted 1990) pp.xii + 314.

Ronald T. Libby, Hawke's Law: The Politics of Mining and Aboriginal Land Rights in Australia (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1989) pp.xxvii + 175. $25.00 (pbk.) ISBN 0–85564–301–3.

George Palmer and Stephanie Short, Health Care & Public Policy: An Australian Analysis (Macmillan) $29.95(pbk.) $59.95(hbk.).

Tom Sheridan, Division of Labour: Industrial Relations in the Chifley Years 1945–1949 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp.404. $45 00.

Gwyneth Singleton, The Accord and the Australian Labour Movement (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1990) pp.viii + 222. $24.95 (pbk.) ISBN 0–522–84421–9.

Hugh Stretton, Political Essays (Georgian House: Melbourne, 1987).

James Walter (ed.), Australian Studies. A Survey (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp.vi + 326. $24.95 ISBN 0–19–554773‐X.

Patrick Weller, Malcolm Fraser: A Study of Prime Ministerial Power in Australia (Penguin Books, 1989) pp.xvii + 440. $26.99 ISBN 0–14–012974‐X.

Anna Yeatman, Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats: Essays on the Contemporary Australian State (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990) pp. xiii + 197. $14.95 (pbk.) ISBN 0–04.442103–6.

Comparative and international politics

Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan (New York: Verso Press, revised edition 1989) (Translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan, with and introduction by Fred Halliday) pp.xvii + 306. $34.95 ISBN 0–86091–979‐X.

George Bailey, The Making of Andrei Sakharov (Allan Lane, Harmondsworth, 1989) pp.453. $55.00 ISBN 0–7139–9033–3.

Patrick Cockburn, Getting Russia Wrong: The End of Kremlinology (London: Verso, 1989) pp.vii + 228. $24.95 ISBN 0–86091–977–3.

Bernard Eccleston, State and Society in Post‐War Japan (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989) pp.xvi + 286. $32.95 ISBN 0–7456–0166–9.

Julius W. Friend, Seven Years in France, François Mitterrand and the Unintended Revolution, 1981–1988 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989) pp xiv + 249. $US34.95 (hbk.).

John Gaffney (ed.), The French Presidential Elections of 1988 (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1989) pp.241. £29.50 ISBN 1–85521–059–2.

Steven A. Hoffmann, foreword by Michael Brecher, India and the China Crisis (Berkeley/London: University of California Press, 1990) pp.324. $US39.95 ISBN 0–520–06537–9.

Thomas Mann (ed.), A Question of Balance: The President, The Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1990). pp.ix + 265. $US29.95 (cloth) $US10.95 (pbk.) ISBN 0–8157–5453–1.

Rosalind Marsh, Images of Dictatorship: Portraits of Stalin in Literature (London: Routledge, 1989) pp.267. ISBN 0–415–03796–4.

Ross M. Martin, Trade Unionism: Purposes and Form (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp.xiii + 296. $70.00 (cloth) ISBN 0–19–827710–5.

Richard Mulgan, Maori, Pakeha and Democracy (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp.viii + 159. $38.00 ISBN 0–19–558204–7.

William David Pederson, The ‘Barberian’ Presidency (N.Y.: Theoretical and Empirical Reading, Peter Lang, 1989) pp.xii + 265. ISBN 0–8204–0693–7.

Gerald M. Pomper et al, The Election of 1988: reports and interpretations (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1989) pp.vi + 221.

Edited by John Ravenhill, No Longer an American Lake? (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989) pp.285. $17.95 (pbk.) ISBN 0–04–372042–0.

Colin White, Russia and America: The Roots of Economic Divergence. (London: Croom Helm, 1987) pp.268.

Political theory and methodology

David Boucher, The Social and Political Thought of R.G. Collingwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) pp.xi + 300. $75.00 (hbk.) ISBN 0–521–36384–5.

Gregory Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990) pp.xiv + 257. $34.95(pbk.) ISBN 0–04–445090–7.

Steven M. DeLue, Political Obligation in a Liberal State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989) $US39.50 (cloth) ISBN 0–7194–0092–1.

Eva Etzioni‐Halevy, Fragile Democracy: The Use and Abuse of Power in Western Societies (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London, 1989) pp.xiii + 194. $US28.95 ISBN 0–88738–270–3.

David Held, Political Theory and the Modern State (Cambridge: Polity, 1989) pp.265. $29.95 (pbk.) ISBN 0–7456–0620–2.

Sue Curry Jansen, Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) pp.282. $70.00.

Philip K. Lawrence, Democracy and the Liberal State (Dartmouth: Aldershot, 1989) pp.213.

Ellen Meiksins Wood, Peasant‐Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy (London and New York: Verso, 1989), pp.210 + x, pbk, $29.95, ISBN 0–86091–911–0

Erik Olin Wright, Uwe Becker, Johanna Brenner, Michael Burawoy, Vai Burris, Gugliclmo Carchedi, Gordon Marshall, Peter Meiksins, David Rose, Arthur Stinchcombe and Philippe Van Parijs, The Debate on Classes (London and New York: Verso, 1989) pp.ix + 356. $34.95.     

Mary Ellis (1897–1907): Workhorse of the South Australian Mosquito Fleet

In 2006, as part of the Flinders University Maritime Archaeology Field School, Department of Archaeology staff and students excavated and recorded the remains of the Australian-built ketch Mary Ellis . Colonial-period Australian shipbuilding has, for the past 20 years, been considered one of the most important themes in Australian maritime archaeology. This paper presents a summary of field investigations and a preliminary interpretation of the shipwreck, which adds to the slowly-building dataset on this theme of Australian maritime archaeology.
© 2008 The Authors     

Harvesting the Seashores in the Late Mesolithic of Northwestern Europe: A View From Brittany

The shell middens of Brittany provide the last evidence of a Mesolithic way of life along the French Atlantic façade. This is partly a result of Holocene marine transgressions that prevent easy access to earlier coastal settlements. Nevertheless, the dependence on the sea seen in the Late Mesolithic seems to be a consequence of a long-established exploitation system. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures in human bone reflect a dominance of marine protein, while the zooarchaeological components of shell middens show a high species richness of exploited marine resources. Paleoenvironmental reconstruction suggests that more or less the whole range of resources exploited was accessible in the immediate vicinity of the sites. Seasonal aspects of the utilised and potentially available subsistence resources, along with stable isotope and lithic data, raise the possibility of restricted mobility for these populations, within relatively limited territories. The impression of extreme dependence of these coastal populations on the seashore might have been a key factor in their final disappearance, whether this is viewed as replacement or acculturation. Indeed, the Mesolithic communities of Brittany could have been caught between rising sea-levels and the arrival of Neolithic communities from the east and the south.