Ethnoarchaeology of Domestic Space and Spatial Behaviour Among the Tiv and Ungwai of Central Nigeria

An attempt has been made in this paper to use ethnoarchaeology to clarify our understanding of aspects of domestic space and spatial behaviour among the Tiv and Ungwai peoples of Central Nigeria. Indeed, the work is in several senses, a comparative study of two ethnolinguistic groups who occupy a similar ecological niche with broadly similar sociopolitical organisation. This mode of organisation is non-centralized in character. In addition, the two peoples had a tradition of hilltop occupation in ancient times. Differences in topography (hilltops for the ancient settlers and lowlands for the present-day peoples) have affected not only the compound layout of each of these ethnic groups but also among other features, the architecture of their houses. Given the limited available archaeological data including charcoal samples for dating, one is not yet able to ascribe specific functions to some of the structures identified on the archaeological sites (hilltops). This will be better addressed as research progresses.Quelques tentatives ont ete faits dans cet article pour se servir de Iethnoarchaeologie pour expliquer les divers aspects de lespace domestique et des caracteres de loccupation lespace parmi les Tiv et les Ungwai de la region centrale du Nigeria. En fait, ce travail est en grandes measures une etude comparative des deux groupes ethnolinguistiques occupant le meme crenau ecologique ayant largement la meme organization socio-politique. Le mode dorganisation est du type non centralize. De plus les deux groupes ethniques ont une tradition de locucpation des peuples anciens centres sur le haut de la colline. Des differences en topographie (le haut des collines pour le anciens occupants et la plaine pour les habitants actuels) n ont pas seulement eu effets sur la generalite de la maniere dont les concessions des ces groupes ethniques se presentent mais aussi larchitecture de leurs maisons sont parmi les traits particuliers importants. A cause du numbrer restreint de donnees disponibles en ce moment, nous ne sommes pas encore en mesure dattribuer certaines functions aux structures identifiees aux chantiers archaeologigues (au sommet des collines). Ces functions seront mieux traitees au fur et a mesure que lon avance dans nos recherches.     

Application of Hurst Resecaling to Geophysical Serial Data

The empirical investigation of several geophysical time series indicates that they are composed of segments representing different natural regimes, or periods when events are strongly autocorrelated. Using a data transformation method developed by Hurst, these regimes are differentiated by rescaling the time series and examining the resulting transformed trace for inflections. As regime signals are not completely mixed and have rather long run lengths, Hurst rescaling produces a clustering of extremes of the same sign and elevates the Hurst exponent to values greater than 0.5. These regimes have a characteristic distribution, as defined by the mean and standard deviation, which differ from the statistical characteristics of the complete record. Analysis of sunspot numbers, monthly precipitation records from the midwestern United States, and annual watershed discharge yield regimes that correlate to well-documented periods of extreme activity. Rescaling appears to be useful in screening time series of unknown characteristics to differentiate periods dominated by regime-specific physical processes.     

Futures,intimacies, animisms: Unfinished anthropologies in the twenty-first century

This essay explores recent work in future-oriented anthropology that develops emancipatory, anticipatory, multi-modal, and participatory approaches. Through critiquing hegemonic assumptions in anthropology and in Western modernity, these works evoke both present complexity and future potentiality. Ultimately, the essay explores these works as redemptive strategies for an anthropology besieged by intolerance and authoritarianism while grappling with its colonialist underpinnings.     

Inclusiveness and Coherency in the History of the Neurosciences

The International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN) defines “neurosciences” broadly, and we want to encourage the widest possible range of scholarly approaches to our subject. However, this deliberate inclusiveness could potentially cause problems with internal coherency in our organization and in the scholarship that we are trying to create. In other words, we need to avoid the pitfalls of the internalistexternalist tension without losing the benefits of both perspectives. In fact, I think that there is a large and interesting “gray zone,” where the boundary between these supposedly separate approaches is both artificial and porous. This should be one of the most rewarding intellectual domains for the study of neuroscience history, because our subject is always culturally loaded by the mind/body problem and by the assumptions that it entails. Of course, neuroscience history is also influenced by all of the other cultural and scientific aspects of the milieus in which it is conducted. Understanding neuroscience history in all of its multiple historical contexts will require the participation of a wide range of scholarly viewpoints. To keep ourselves coherent in the process, we will have to educate each other.     

Neighborhoods and Fertility in Accra, Ghana: An AMOEBA-based Approach

Fertility levels remain high in most of sub-Saharan Africa, despite recent declines, and even in a large capital city such as Accra, Ghana, women are having children at a pace that is well above replacement level and this will contribute to significant levels of future population growth in the city. Our purpose in this paper is to evaluate the way in which neighborhood context may shape reproductive behavior in Accra. In the process, we introduce several important innovations to the understanding of intra-urban fertility levels in a sub-Saharan African city: (1) despite the near explosion of work on neighborhoods as a spatial unit of analysis, very little of this research has been conducted outside of the richer countries; (2) we characterize neighborhoods on the basis of local knowledge of what we call "vernacular neighborhoods"; (3) we then define what we call "organic neighborhoods" using a new clustering tool-the AMOEBA algorithm-to create these neighborhoods; and then (4) we evaluate and explain which of the neighborhood concepts has the largest measurable contextual effect on an individual woman's reproductive behavior. Multi-level regression analysis suggests that vernacular neighborhoods are more influential on a woman's decision to delay marriage, whereas the organic neighborhoods based on socioeconomic status better capture the factors that shape fertility decisions after marriage.     

Some thought concerning education

This article discusses the development of German Social Democratic Party strategy in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, as a result of the works of Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky. It ties the evolution of Marxist orthodoxy to the emergence of parliamentary democracy in different European societies. In particular, it discusses the way parliamentary conditions impacted on how the proletarian revolution was imagined. Revolution was newly defined as the establishment through parliamentary means of a new government representing a new social class. Also, the early Marxist strategy of ‘permanent revolution’, which had allowed proletarian-socialist minority rule, was abandoned.