The application of 3D laser scanning technology to the assessment of ordinal and mechanical cortex quantification in lithic analysis

Recent studies make use of cortex proportion as a proxy measurement for the impact of artefact transport on assemblage formation. Cortex in these studies is measured on an ordinal scale and analysed in relation to mechanical measurements of artefact size. Here we report on the use of a 3D laser scanner to obtain precise measurements from experimental lithic reduction sets. High-resolution measurements of cortex area are compared to measurements obtained through ordinal approximations of cortex proportion and mechanical approximations of artefact size. While the ordinal and mechanical measurements result in considerable error for individual artefacts, estimates improve significantly as sample size increases.     

Ancestral Puebloan mtDNA in context of the greater southwest

Ancient DNA (aDNA) was extracted from the human remains of seventy-three individuals from the Tommy and Mine Canyon sites (dated to PI-II and PIII, respectively), located on the B-Square Ranch in the Middle San Juan region of New Mexico. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups of 48 (65.7%) of these samples were identified, and their frequency distributions were compared with those of other prehistoric and modern populations from the Greater Southwest and Mexico. The haplogroup frequency distributions for the two sites were statistically significantly different from each other, with the Mine Canyon site exhibiting an unusually high frequency of haplogroup A for a Southwestern population, indicating the possible influence of migration or other evolutionary forces. However, both sites exhibited a relatively high frequency of haplogroup B, typical of Southwestern populations, suggesting continuity in the Southwest, as has been hypothesized by others (8, 9, 29, 45 and 57). The first hypervariable region of twenty-three individuals (31.5%) was also sequenced to confirm haplogroup assignments and compared with other sequences from the region. This comparison further strengthens the argument for population continuity in the Southwest without a detectable influence from Mesoamerica.     

Differential diagnosis and discussion of a large nasal neoplasm from a late Bronze Age Athenian male

An adult male from the late Bronze Age of Athens, Greece, was found to have a large neoplasm in the nasal cavity. The characteristics of the lesion suggest that it was an osteoma of the ethmoid. Secondary infections of the paranasal sinuses are present as a result of the tumour blocking the sinus drainage. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shortest-Path Distances: An Axiomatic Approach

An axiomatic approach to distance is developed which focuses on those concepts of distance related to movement in space. The most fundamental types of such distances generally involve some notion of shortest paths between points, where the relevant concept of path length can be any additive attribute of paths (such as physical miles, hours spent in traveling, or gallons of fuel consumed). In particular, the shortest-path distance between any two points in space is here taken to be the greatest lower bound on all path lengths between these points. This notion of shortest-path distance is shown to be formally equivalent to a quasimetric, i.e., a distance which satisfies only the classical triangularity axiom for metrics. The main analysis of the paper focuses on the question of whether or not such shortest-path distances can actually be realized, i.e., on whether there exist shortest paths in space. The central result is to establish a general set of conditions under which such shortest paths always exist. In addition, a condition for the uniqueness of these paths is also established.     

Book Notes

Michael Ghertman and Margaret Allen, An Introduction to the Multinationals, London, Mac‐millan, for the Institute for Research and Information on Multinationals, Geneva, 1984, pp.143. $11.95 (paper).

June M. Hearn and W.A. Howard, Australian Industrial Relations: Case Studies, South Melbourne, Macmillan, 1984, pp.vi, 136. $12.95 (paper)

Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984, pp.308. $10.95 (paper).

W.E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, second edition, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1983, pp. 257. $16.50 (paper)

W.E. Connolly (ed.), Legitimacy and the State, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp. 281. $15.95 (paper)

B. Guy Peters, The Politics of Bureaucracy, 2nd edition, London, Longman, 1984, pp. 294. $29.95 (paper)