Finis coronat OPUS?

THE INTENT OF TOYNBEE'S HISTORY: A co‐operative appraisal. Edited by Edward T. Gargan. Chicago, Loyola University Press, 1961. Pp. 224. Index. Price $5.00.

A STUDY OF HISTORY: Volume XII, Reconsiderations. By Arnold J. Toynbee. London, Oxford University Press, 1961. Pp. 740. Index. Price in Australia 64/9.     

Domesticated Landscapes: The Subsistence Ecology of Plant and Animal Domestication

Harvesting different species as foods or raw materials calls for differing skills depending on the species being harvested and the circumstances under which they are being taken. In some situations and for some species, the tactics used are mainly behavioral—that is, people adjust, or adapt, their own actions to fit the behavior and circumstances of the species they are taking. Under other circumstances and for other species, the skills and tactics used may call for greater environmental preparation or manipulation. Therefore, instead of trying to distinguish people today and in the past as either foragers or farmers, it makes sense to define human subsistence behavior as an interactive matrix of species and harvesting tactics, that is, as a provisions spreadsheet.     

The Role of Bubo virginianus magellanicus as Rodent Bone Accumulator in Archaeological Sites: A Case Study for the Atuel River (Mendoza,Argentina)

Micromammalian bone assemblages from modern pellets of the strigiform Bubo virginianus magellanicus, from the upper Atuel River (southern Mendoza, Argentina), were taphonomically analysed. The results allow us to place B. v. magellanicus in the category of intermediate modification (Category 2). This sample has also been compared with results from other members of this genus, in order to classify B. v. magellanicus as a taphonomic agent. The participation of the Bubo species in archaeological accumulations has been documented, but in Argentina, the role of B. v. magellanicus has been reported up to the present. It is partly because of the sequence of one archaeological site in the south of Mendoza Province called Laguna El Sosneado‐3 (LS‐3). However, considering the absence of a current taphonomic model of this owl, this participation was mentioned as a hypothesis. In the current investigation, archaeological and modern samples have been compared. The results indicate that the skeletal element assemblages recovered from LS‐3 were accumulated by strigiform birds. Taphonomical evidence of light modifications on units I and IV indicates that Tyto alba (Category 1) was probably the main species involved in these units, whereas the taphonomical evidence on skeletal element assemblages recovered from units II and III suggests the action of a strigiform with a major category of modification such as B. v. magellanicus. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ecological Functions and Functionings: Towards a Senian Analysis of Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services are part of a growing trend within environment and development to analyse environmental change within the context of socially valued outcomes. Yet, ecosystem services‐based policies and analyses are increasingly criticized for failing to connect with, or even for restricting, development outcomes. This article seeks to connect environmental analysis with development outcomes better by applying the capability approach of Amartya Sen and others. It demonstrates how scientific analysis of ecosystem services sometimes conflates pathways of ecosystem management with development outcomes, but that it can be reconfigured to include more diverse values and objectives. The article argues that ecosystem services should be identified more as ‘functionings’ (in the Senian sense of valued development outcomes) rather than ‘functions’ (in the sense of biophysical, apolitical ecosystem properties) in order to indicate that ‘services’ always reflect social values, and that values and scientific explanations of underlying biophysical properties evolve together. Environmental science for socially valued outcomes such as ecosystem services is therefore an important site of political inclusion and exclusion. The article illustrates this analysis with examples of ecosystem‐based adaptation to climate change from the World Bank and government of Bangladesh, and in contrast to differing approaches from the field of sustainability science.