Book reviews

INTERNATIONAL STABILITY: MILITARY, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS. Dale J. Hekhuis, Charles G. McClintock and Arthur L. Burns (eds.). New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964. Pp. xii + 296. £3.

THE AUSTRALIAN BALANCE OF PAYMENTS: A STUDY OF POST‐WAR DEVELOPMENTS. G. D. McColl. Melbourne University Press, 1965. Pp. xiii + 180. 45/‐.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR WORLD TRADE: PROCEEDINGS OF A. CHATHAM HOUSE CONFERENCE, BELLAGIO, 16–24 SEPTEMBER 1963. For the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Oxford University Press, 1964. Pp. 241. 49/6.

JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD TRADE. Warren Huns‐berger. New York, Harper & Row, for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1964. Pp. xvii + 492. $9.95.

MILITARY INSTITUTIONS AND POWER IN THE NEW STATES. William Gutteridge. London, Pall Mall Press, 1964. Pp. viii, 182. 25/‐.

AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE. T. B. Millar. Melbourne University Press, 1965. Pp. x + 198. 20/‐ (paperbound).

QUIET DECISION. A STUDY OF SIR GEORGE PEARCE. Peter Heydon. Melbourne University Press, 1965. 67/6.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDONESIA 1951–1963. Donald Hindley. University of California Press, 1964. Pp. xviii + 380. $8.50.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDONESIA. Justus M. van der Kroef. University of British Columbia, 1965. Pp. viii + 347. $5.50 (paperbound).

INDONESIA. J. D. Legge. New Jersey, Prentice‐Hall Inc., 1964. Pp. viii + 184. $1.95.

SOVIET JEWRY AND HUMAN RIGHTS. Isi Leibler. Melbourne, Human Rights Publications, 1965. Pp. 78. 10/6d.

THE CHINESE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. Victor Purcell. Second Edition, Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1965. Pp. xvi + 623. £6/6/‐.

THE THIRD CHINA. C. P. FitzGerald. F. W. Cheshire for the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Melbourne, 1965. Pp. vii + 109. 13/6.

SOUTH AND EAST ASIA SINCE 1800. Victor Purcell. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965. Pp. x + 228. 25/‐ stg.     

The Merovingian nobleman's home: castle or villa?

The physical appearance of the Merovingian villa has been ignored by most archaeologists and historians, largely because of the paucity of information. Three radically different images can be found in the sparse literature; something akin to a Roman villa, a forerunner of the medieval castle, or a village settlement such as the excavated site of Warendorf, Germany, to which a number of analogous sites have been found in the recent past. This article argues for the continuity of Roman traditions, if not the actual physical buildings. In particular the absence of fortification is discussed. Traditionally, violence and the development of castles are accepted as cause and effect, yet endemic insecurity did not give rise to a Merovingian castle. The common enclosures of Merovingian villas, far from being defensive, are seen as having symbolic meaning which was actively employed to define propriety, legal rights, and social relations. The maintenance of peace and personal safety depended on the adequate understanding by individuals of local politics and the ordering of their social world; an understanding expressed in the physical world of architecture.     

Non-destructive Provenancing of Ground-Edged Mafic Artifacts: A Holocene Case Study from the Sydney Basin,Australia

Ground-edged artifacts were an important part of the Australian Aboriginal toolkit. They had practical day-to-day uses, but some had symbolic and social values that led to their movement across great distances. Australian provenance studies document long-distance Aboriginal exchange systems extending over hundreds of kilometers. The size and complexity of exchange systems and social networks were contingent upon resources and the productivity of a region's environment. Along the fertile, well-watered lands east of the Great Dividing Range, movement of objects may have been geographically more circumscribed than in drier areas to the west. One hundred and twenty-one mafic, ground-edged artifacts from the New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast and 368 geological specimens from potential sources were non-destructively analyzed by portable X-Ray fluorescence spectrometry. Results indicate the existence of a well-used basalt source within the region at Peats Ridge-Popran Creek as well as multiple local and non-local sources up to 430?km from Mangrove Mountain on the NSW Central Coast.     

Production risk,inter-annual food storage by households and population-level consequences in seasonal prehistoric agrarian societies

Abstract

Using complementary behavioural and population ecological models, we explore the role of production risk, normal surplus and inter-annual food storage in the adaptations of societies dependent on seasonal agriculture. We find that (a) household-level, risk-sensitive adaption to unpredictable environmental variation in annual agricultural yields is a sufficient explanation for the origins of normal agrarian surplus and, consequently, of household-level incentives for inter-annual food storage; and, (b) at the population level, density-dependent Malthusian processes tightly constrain the circumstances under which this same mechanism can be effective in smoothing inter-annual fluctuations in household food availability. Greater environmental variation and higher levels of fixed set-asides such as seed requirements or transfer obligations to political authorities lead to more severe, periodic famines; however, outside of famine events, these same factors improve average population welfare by suppressing population density to levels at which Malthusian constraints have lessened impact. The combination of behavioural and population ecological modelling methods has broad and complementary potential for illustrating the dynamic properties of complex, coupled human–natural systems.     

Empire and the state: a critical theoretical assessment

In recent years there has been increasing use of the term ‘empire’ to describe US primacy in world affairs. This should not be viewed merely as an indictment of US power: there are genuine insights to be gained from the study of imperial formations in contemporary politics. Yet there remains confusion and disagreement over the true meaning of ‘empire’. Progressive schools of thought in the academic discipline of international relations can facilitate a fresh understanding of ‘empire’—one that is suited to the complexities of the contemporary global scene.     

Rock Art and Ritual: An Archaeological Analysis of Rock Art in Arid Central Australia

Rock art researchers throughout the world have explicitly or implicitly invoked ritual as an activity associated with the production of rock art but the articulation between the structure and composition of rock art assemblages and ritual behaviour remains poorly understood. Anthropologist, Roy Rappaport (1999) argued that all ritual, whatever the content or focus, has a universal structure. We review this proposition in the context of ritual studies and propose a method aimed at assessing the potential for identifying ritual structure in rock art assemblages. We discuss an archaeological analysis undertaken on the rock art assemblages in arid Central Australia, which aimed at distinguishing such a ritual structure among engraved assemblages, likely to have a Pleistocene origin, as well as more recent painted, stencilled and drawn assemblages. This analysis, despite its limitations, provides the foundation for developing a model, which will enhance the understanding of the relationship between the production of rock art and ritual.