An experimental micromorphological investigation of bedding construction in the Middle Stone Age of Sibudu,South Africa

We conducted experiments to compare the micromorphological signatures of modern burnt sedge and grass bedding to laminated layers of carbonized material and phytoliths in Middle Stone Age deposits at the shelter, Sibudu. The experiments were designed to clarify the formation processes associated with the laminated layers and to investigate whether these previously identified layers of bedding were deliberately burned or not. The results indicate that the laminated layers were most likely produced by human activity related to the construction, maintenance and burning of bedding. Furthermore, our experiments demonstrate that large volumes of vegetal material could have produced the relatively thin, archaeological deposits of burnt bedding.     

Sourcing ceramics with portable XRF spectrometers? A comparison with INAA using Mimbres pottery from the American Southwest

Seventy-five intact Mimbres and Jornada pottery sherds from the American Southwest were analyzed by portable XRF and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). Examination of the data demonstrates that INAA and portable XRF results for elements common to both analyses can be used to construct similar compositional groups. When individual compositional groups are compared to one another, it is apparent that unambiguous separation of compositional groups is challenging by portable XRF given (1) the limited number of key discriminating elements that can be measured relative to INAA, and (2) the relative analytical precision and accuracy of portable XRF for measurements of intact heterogeneous ceramics. We conclude that sourcing intact ceramics by portable XRF is challenging and that bulk analytical measurements, such as INAA, remain a better approach for sourcing archaeological pottery.     

The Study of Local Public Economies: Multi‐organizational,Multi‐level Institutional Analysis and Development

One important extension of the IAD framework has been to the study of local public economies. These are multi‐organizational, multi‐level arrangements defined as the set of governmental jurisdictions, public and nonprofit agencies, and private firms that interact in various patterns to provide and produce public goods and services within a specific locality or region. Commonly, the localities or regions studied from this perspective have been U.S. metropolitan areas, often defined as a central city and its surrounding or adjoining county. Localities can be delineated, however, on various terms, and in the IAD framework, it is the geo‐physical nature of a locality that, in substantial part, drives the analysis. One of the strengths of the approach is its capacity to explain local variations in public organization as a function of the geo‐physical diversity of localities, while at the same time developing empirical generalizations and normative principles that apply across diverse regions. What, for example, might the organization and governance of a complex metropolitan area have in common with the organization and governance of a complex protected area, such as the greater Yellowstone eco‐region or the Adirondack Park? Construing both sorts of regions as local public economies can enhance our overall understanding of public organization at the same time that it permits a more nuanced understanding of diverse localities. Such work contributes to the ongoing IAD project of “understanding institutional diversity.”     

Book reviews

In the context of a shift away from municipal multiculturalism towards community cohesion, and in the light of renewed debates around difference, national identity and Britishness, this article sets out a geographically informed theoretical framework which focuses upon the spatial (re)construction of racial and ethnic identities. The article develops the idea of the everyday as a way of viewing the spatially contingent, complex and negotiated state of inter-ethnic relations in a specific UK city. Not only does this reveal the manner in which strong and stubborn boundaries between social groups are entrenched through the (re)enforcement of spatialised relations of power, but also how accommodations across, between and within difference are realised. Through the employment of empirical material from Leicester, England, the article contends that everyday solidarities emerge from a number of intersecting spatial influences which do not equate to abstract or fixed versions of national belonging.     

New maps and charts

Note on The Lake‐Dwellings of Europe.

The Realm of Nature—An Outline of Physiography. By Hugh Robert Mill, D.Sc., Edin., F.R.S.E. London : John Murray, 1892. Price 5s.

Galloway in Ancient and Modern Times. By P. H. M'Kerlie. Edinburgh : William Blackwood and Sons, 1891. Price 7s. 6d.

The Trade Policy of Imperial Federation from an Economic Point of View. By Maurice H. Hervey, Principal of Illawarra College, New South Wales. London : Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1892. Pp. x. + 182. Price 2s. 6d.

Two Happy Years in Ceylon. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. Illustrated, in 2 vols. Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sons, 1892. Price 30s.

Travels in the Mogul Empire, 1656–1668. By François Bernier. Edited by Archibald Constable, M.As. Soc. Beng., F.S.A. Scot. Vol. I. of Constable's Oriental Miscellany. Westminster : Archibald Constable and Co., 1891. Pp. li + 498. Price 6s. net.

The Real Japan : Studies of Contemporary Japanese Manners, Morals, Administration, and Politics. By Henry Norman. London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1892.

Japanese Girls and Women. By Alice Mabel Bacon. London : Gay and Bird, 1891. Pp. 333. Price 5s.

Coomassie and Magdala. The Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa. By Henry M. Stanley. New Edition. Pp. x + 402. Price 3s. 6d

The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North‐West of America. By Colonel W. F. Butler, C.B., F.R.G.S. Fourteenth Edition. Pp. x + 386. Price 3s. 6d. London : Sampson Low, Marston, &; Company, Limited, 1891.

Untrodden Jamaica. By Herbert J. Thomas. Kingston : Aston W. Gardner and Co., 1890. Pp. 90.

The New Jamaica. By Edgar Mayhew Bacon and Eugene Murray Aaron, Ph.D. New York : Walbridge and Co. Kingston: Aston W. Gardner and Co., 1890. Pp. xi + 243.

The Statesman's Year‐Book, 1892. Edited by J. Scott Keltie, Assistant‐Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society. Pp. 1151. Price 10s. 6d.

The Northern Counties Red Book and Chronicle Almanac for 1892. Inverness: Northern Chronicle Office. Pp. 88. Price 3d.

Smith American Railways. Argentina and Uruguay. By J. K. Carter, F.G.S. London : Fred. C. Mathieson &; Sons, 1891. Pp. xii.+ 204. Price 2s. net.

Britannic Confederation : A Series of Papers by Sir John Colomb, Professor Edward A. Freeman, George G. Chisholm, Professor Shield Nicholson, Maurice H. Hervey, and the Bight Honourable Lord Thring. Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Silva White, Secretary and Editor, Eoyal Scottish Geographical Society. With a new map of the British Empire. London: George Philip and Son, 1892. Pp. 180. Price 3s. 6d.     

“A Permanent and Even European Reputation”: The Lost Work of the Reverend Walter Gregor

Vincent Thomas Sternberg's The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire appeared in March 1851 and was the first book to make use of W. J. Thoms' coinage of folklore (dating from 1846) in its title. It was sufficiently successful a publication to call for a second edition that same year, although with the title changed to The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire with Warwickshire Legends and Traditions. The content, however, remains the same. This second edition has hitherto not been noticed by bibliographers of English folklore and copies are scarce; for instance, COPAC records just a single copy of this book at the University of Liverpool.     

CBC'S “THE WORLD AT SIX” LOOKS AT THE U.S.–CONTENT ANALYSIS AS AN AID TO UNDERSTANDING THE MEDIA

The bi-national conference on mass media news flow between Canada and the United States, held September 23–25, 1976, in Syracuse, New York, featured many prominent news and government personnel from both sides of the border. While stimulating, the conference was hampered by the lack of scientific and dispassionate factual evidence. This article reports the findings of an exploratory analysis of the CBC radio program “The World At Six” in order to demonstrate how content analysis can add an objective, systematic and quantitative dimension to discussions of U.S.-Canada news flow. Thoughts and papers presented at the Syracuse conference are reviewed. A call is made for longitudinal content analyses of the mass media content of communications media on both sides of the border.     

The German Argentines between Nazism and Nationalism: The Patagonia Plot of 1939

Abstract

When seizing control of the US embassy In Tehran in November 1979 during the Iranian revolution, militant students not only took sixty-one US citizens hostage, but also captured thousands of pages of official documents. During the 1980s, they published seventy-seven volumes of selections in order to prove to the world that the United States had colluded with the Pahlavi regime, and to discredit Iranian moderates by revealing their former ties to US officials. In keeping with the militants' perception of the embassy's role in Iran's domestic politics, they entitled the publications Documents from the US Espionage Den (Asnad-i Lanah-yi Jasusi).¹ Surprisingly, among the papers published is one by Harvard University anthropologist Michael M. J. Fischer entitled ‘Religion and Progress in Iran’, apparently written for a state department colloquium on Iran held on 25 May 1979. In the introduction, Fischer characterizes the Islamic Republic as a ‘challenge to modernization theory’: ‘Iran has been a major test case for modernization theory throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It was the case where the constraint of capital was theoretically removed, and therefore the case where transformation from the third world into the first world was expected to be most feasible.’²