Contestability of Australian Federal Elections

Using data on federal elections for both the Upper and Lower Houses in Australia and the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), we explore whether the contestability/concentration varies across elections. Our results show significant movements in contestability over time. The results also imply a smaller degree of concentration than we would expect to find in a two-party system. To the extent that the Upper House (Senate) – until the 2004 election – is not controlled by the executive, this implies a greater level of political competition, and choice for voters, than that associated with two-party systems.     

Quanzhou Archaeology: A Brief Review

The city of Quanzhou in coastal Fujian Province, southeastern China, rose to prominence as an international trading port in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries A.D. This paper reviews its published archaeological record which includes the Kaiyuansi Temple, several mosques, Hindu sites, a Manichaeist temple at Huabiao, several types of tombs, the Houzhu and Fashi sunken ships, and kiln sites.     

Obsidian hydration dating on the South Coast of Peru

We compare over 230 obsidian hydration readings from 30 individual site components from the Southern Nasca Region (SNR) with independent age estimates based on radiocarbon dates and temporally diagnostic artifacts. Although there are problems with small sample sizes, and readings must be adjusted for elevation, a very strong relationship accounting for nearly 90% of the total variation in the data set is found. This suggests that obsidian hydration dating (OHD) works in the SNR and is a viable means of independently estimating age. Residual values from our regression suggest that hydration age estimates are usually within 15% of the radiocarbon estimates. Finally, we present an equation other scholars can use to estimate age for Quispisisa obsidian in the SNR.     

An Archaeological Contribution to the Kalahari Debate from the Middle Limpopo Valley,Southern Africa

Journal of Archaeological Research - The Kalahari debate deals primarily with the influence that contact with incoming groups had on San communities in southern Africa. Two schools of thought...     

Expanding women's rural medical work in early modern Brittany: the Daughters of the Holy Spirit

During the eighteenth century, orders of nursing sisters took on an expanded role in the rural areas of Brittany. This article explores the impact of religious change on the medical activities of these women. While limits were placed on the medical practice of unlicensed individuals, areas of new opportunity for nuns as charitable practitioners were created by devout nobles throughout the eighteenth century. These nuns provided comprehensive care for the sick poor on their patrons' estates, acting not only as nurses, but also in lieu of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. This article argues that the medical knowledge and expertise of these sisters from the nursing orders were highly valued by the elites of early modern Brittany.     

Striking similarities: representing South Asian women's industrial action in Britain

The focus of this article is two significant episodes in British labour politics. The first is the Grunwick strike between 1976 and 1978; the second a dispute at Gate Gourmet that began in 2005. In both disputes, women of South Asian origin were the key actors and their legacy has been constructed through striking imagery as one in which against the odds exotic or passive Others became unexpected heroines of industrial struggle. These representations retained their power, despite significant social, economic and political changes in ‘post-Fordist’ Britain, including in the political rights of strikers, and in the participation and position of both women and minority workers in the labour force. Drawing on interviews with South Asian women involved in each dispute, this article challenges these representations and their significance in accounts of the action, documenting the complex, multiple motives of South Asian women involved in labour politics in the UK.     

Poverty in the Modern City: Retrospects and Prospects

The outcome of over fifteen years research on large urban assemblages from the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne is discussed in terms of approaches to the archaeology of the modern city as they have evolved over the period. To better understand the archaeology of urban poverty we require innovations in both methods and ideas, the most far-reaching being a transnational archaeology of urban poverty founded on the analysis of migration, consumption and class formation.