Geoarchaeological investigations at the Topper and Big Pine Tree sites,Allendale County,South Carolina

The Topper and Big Pine Tree sites are located along the central Savannah River in South Carolina. Both sites contain significant Clovis horizons and the Topper site is reported to contain a pre-Clovis assemblage characterized by a smashed core and microlithic industry. The stratigraphic position of the early assemblage at Topper is indeed below Clovis and radiocarbon and luminescence ages support its pre-Clovis age. However, the human origin of the proposed artifacts has not been conclusively proven. The late Quaternary stratigraphic sequence developed for this segment of the Savannah River provides support for a regional pattern of river metamorphosis over the last 50,000 years in southeastern U.S. streams.     

Key West's Conch Republic: Building sovereignties of connection

This article examines the Conch Republic, a semi-farcical micro-state that was established in Key West, Florida in 1982. Although the Conch Republic has its origins in a direct challenge to state power, it is now a relatively depoliticized statement of the island's eclecticism as well as a marketing tool for the island's all-important tourism industry. Thus, the Conch Republic could easily be dismissed as an entity that has little in common with actual sovereign states.In this article, however, three literatures that shed light on Key West's culture and economy – the queer theory, tourism, and critical island studies literatures – are used to reframe sovereignty not as a stable category but as a strategic tool that is employed to improve the environment in which one engages in interactions. The story of the Conch Republic thus is used to demonstrate how sovereignty is sometimes less about the power to isolate and exclude than it is about the right to maintain some degree of control, or at least dignity, in a world of connections, inclusions, and fragmented, unstable identities.     

神灵、教派、香头——地方文化中的宗教知识

文学和文书中随处可见神灵致病与治病的故事。在河北沧县,狐仙力量与动机的知识,以及香头特殊的治疗技巧,都是当时当地的文化产物。多数沧县农民经由本地香头借助狐仙治愈的故事了解狐仙。这类故事反映神界的直接性,发生在邻近村庄,产生于当今。地方信仰关注疾病、神灵、香头的效力和技艺,反映出书面文化的影响,但这远非教条。相反,由于经发展中的口头传统传播并塑造,宗教知识被不断重塑为当前地方文化中富有意义的部分。     

Support for Women Officeholders in a Non-Arab Islamic Democracy: The Case of Indonesia

Recent work argues that the relationship between Islamic faith, the lack of support for gender equality and democratization is spurious. This paper analyzes the correlates of individual support for increasing the number of women serving in Indonesian legislatures. Indonesia is a relevant case because it is an emerging democracy, outside of the oil-rich Middle East, where over 85% of the citizenry registers a Muslim faith. We find that the willingness of Indonesians to support or oppose gender equity in politics is only minimally rooted in their faith or culture. This result buttresses the conclusions of cross-national studies that question the appropriateness of treating predominantly Muslim nations in the same way when studying questions of gender equity and democratization.     

Prehistoric copper production and technological reproduction in the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of Central Thailand

This paper concerns the identification and explanation of change in prehistoric extractive metallurgical behaviour in the Iron Age Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand. This metallurgical complex is amongst the largest in Eurasia and constitutes Southeast Asia's only documented pre-modern copper-smelting evidence. The two Iron Age smelting sites investigated, Non Pa Wai (NPW) and Nil Kham Haeng (NKH), provide a sequence of metallurgical consumption and production evidence from c. 500 BCE to c. 500 CE. The enormous quantity of industrial waste at these sites suggests they were probably major copper supply nodes within ancient Southeast Asian metal exchange networks. Seventy-six excavated samples of mineral, technical ceramic and slag from NPW and NKH were analysed in hand specimen, microstructurally by reflected-light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy and chemically by polarising energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The analytical data were used to generate detailed technological reconstructions of copper-smelting behaviour at the two sites, which were refined by a programme of field experimentation. Results indicate an approximately 1,000-year trend of Valley copper smelters' improving technical proficiency from what may be an experimental phase of production in the mid-first millennium BCE. This amelioration in production was accompanied by a substantial increase in the human effort of copper extraction. This shift in local ‘metallurgical ethos’ is interpreted as a response to rising regional demand for copper in late prehistory.     

TOWARDS A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF PLACE ATTRACTIVENESS: A MIGRATION PERSPECTIVE

The attractiveness of places is currently gaining a high policy salience in policymakers' efforts to draw mobile capital. Yet, while there are a growing number of empirical studies considering the migration of people and the attractiveness of places, there is an acute lack of conceptual understanding of the phenomena that hamper discussions between researchers and policymakers. This article suggests a conceptual framework whereby place attractiveness can be better understood from a migration perspective. The empirical material for this article mainly draws upon interviews that were carried out with migrants who seem to have considered at least one alternative in their search for a suitable destination. The conceptual framework, which comprises the main result of the article, illustrates that needs, demands and preferences are central and empirically identifiable components for properly appreciating place attractiveness in a migration context. It is argued that the attractiveness of places increases with the successive fulfilment of these factors; but on the other hand, the more factors a migrant seeks to fulfil in his or her destination selection, the fewer the choice possibilities. The article moreover shows how a life-course perspective needs to be integrated in such analyses since not only do migrants' needs, demands and preferences depend upon their current life-course phase situation, their resources and constraints are also likely to correlate with the life-course. The conceptual framework can be used to ease understanding between researchers and policymakers in issues related to place attractiveness and the migration of relatively affluent migrants with choice opportunities.     

“满洲国”的孝子——国家、宗教以及守墓行为的适应性变化

<正>1938年10月23日,以"李孝子"闻名的李中三结束了三年的守墓生活,离开了他母亲墓旁的小屋。在他守墓期间,这处位于吉林省中部九台乡间的墓地以"孝子坟"闻名于世,在当时日本占领的满洲国腹心地带,这只是几座孝子坟中的一处。每天都有上百个朝圣者从满洲各地来到这里祈祷、烧香,并且从坟头带走一把被赋予了神奇力量的土壤。李期满脱孝的时候,这一事件被当作一个正式的儒家仪式举行,几千人前来参加,并由一干满洲国的政治名流主持完成。     

Book reviews

WAR AND THE MINDS OF MEN: By Frederick S. Dunn. Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper Bros., N.Y.

HOW CANADA FACES A NEW WORLD: A History of Canadian External Relations. By G. P. de T. Glazebrook. Oxford University Press.

THE BRITISH YEAR BOOK OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1949. Issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute, of International Affairs. Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press. 569 pp., including Table of Cases and Index.

CENTRAL AND SOUTH‐EAST EUROPE, 1945–1948. Edited by R. R. Betts, Masaryk Professor of Central European History in the University of London, Royal Institute of International Affairs. (Oxford University Press, pp. viii 227, index and maps).