Book reviews

AN AUSTRALIAN IN INDIA. By the Rt. Hon. R. G. Casey. 1947. (London: Hollis and Carter, p. 120.)

Arnold J. Toynbee: A STUDY OF HISTORY. Abridgment of Volumes I‐VI by D. C. Somervell, 1946. (Oxford University Press, pp. 617).

AUSTRALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT. By T. P. Fry, 1947. (University of Queensland Papers; Faculty of Law, Volume I, No. 1, pp. 21).

EDUCATION IN FASCIST ITALY. By L. Minio‐Paluello. 1946. (Oxford University Press, pp. xiv and 236).

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IN DEPENDENT TERRITORIES. (Journal of Negro Education. The Yearbook Number XV. Published for The Bureau of Educational Research, Howard University, by The Howard University Press, Howard University, ‘Washington 1, D.C.) 1946. pp. 263–578.

COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION BY EUROPEAN POWERS. A series of papers read at King's College, London, 14th November to 12th December, 1946; by Jose de Almada, Robert Godding, Lord Hailey, A. M. Joekes, and H. Laurentie, 1947. (Royal Institute of International Affairs, pp. xiii +96).

THE LOST WAR: A Japanese Reporter's Inside Story. By Masuo Kato. 1946. (New York: Knopf, pp. 264).

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF SOVIET RUSSIA: Volume I. 1929–36. By Max Beloff. 1947. (Oxford University Press, pp. xii +261 and map).     

The Earliest Harbour Installations on Aegean Foreshores

This article aims to raise awareness of a few newly discovered prehistoric harbour facilities in Crete. In particular is an unusual, if not unique, slipway suggesting how large ships were hauled up on to the land at Middle Minoan II Kommos. Also, there are huge, successive structures (Buildings T and P) with long galleries that served as shipsheds inviting close scrutiny, as well as comparison with the later Classical shipsheds sheltering elite warships of the Greek city states. The three newly excavated Minoan buildings fit historically into the beginning of a now extended tradition of Classical shipsheds. The latter are compared here with their prehistoric counterparts and briefly discussed concerning origin, development, and aspects of cultural or historical significance.     

Descent of Iron Age Farmers in Southern Africa During the Last 2000 Years

Ethnographies from southern Africa indicate that patrilineal descent dominates Bantu-language speakers. With great differences in material culture suggesting sociopolitical and economical changes between the earliest farmers that settled in the region in the first millennium AD and those described from ethnographies, it is very likely that descent patterns did not remain static over the course of nearly 2000 years. With major sociopolitical and economical changes, it is not surprising to suggest that other forms of descent also existed amongst farmers of southern Africa in the past. Although it remains ambiguous to establish descent patterns from archaeological remains in the absence of human burials, in this paper I investigate herding practices and the nature of farming as ways to infer descent. The results indicate that at least matrilineal descent was common in southern Africa before the arrival of ancestral Nguni and Sotho-Tswana speakers in the region during the Late Iron Age in the second millennium AD. Other forms of descent were likely present alongside matrilineal descent during the Early and Middle Iron Ages, when widespread evidence for patrilineal descent is absent.     

ENCOUNTERING INDIGENEITY: RE-IMAGINING AND DECOLONIZING GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT. In an era of postcolonialism and postcolonization, Indigenous struggles continue. Within 'settler societies' issues of dispossession—particularly of lands—remain largely unresolved. As part of the discipline of geography's active movement away from its colonizing project, this introduction to this special edition of Geografiska Annaler B seeks to (re)focus a disciplinary lens, and (re)open a dialogue—and potential research trajectory - about 'indigenous geographies'. As the papers in this special issue demonstrate, new cultural geographies have begun a process of re-engagement with issues of indigeniety through careful, sensitive, inclusive, representative and emancipatory research projects.