COMPACTNESS AND ELECTORAL BOUNDARY ADJUSTMENT: AN ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES

Spatial compactness has been proposed as a suitable criterion for assessing whether electoral boundaries reflect partisan interests. Although several different measures of spatial compactness have been developed, only limited efforts have been made to compare and evaluate them in the context of electoral redistricting. This paper assesses alternative spatial compactness measures and applies conceptually appealing measures to the provincial ridings proposed by British Columbia's Royal Commission on Electoral Boundaries (1988).     

Rare Himyaritic coins from Hadramawt

Three rare Himyaritic coins found in the territory of the ancient Hadramawt kingdom are published for the first time. Two of the coins bear the name of the king,'Amdan Bayyin, while the third has the name of Tha'ran Ya'ub.     

RARE EARTH ELEMENT DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS IN SHETLAND STEATITE - CONSEQUENCES FOR ARTIFACT PROVENANCING STUDIES

An attempt has been made to relate steatite artifacts to the source of rock from which they were manufactured, using the distribution patterns of rare earth elements. Radiochemical- and instrumental-neutron activation analyses of Shetland steatites suggest that the use of rare earth elements in artifact provenancing may be unreliable. Concentrations of rare earth elements in many Shetland steatites are too low to be measured reliably by a cost effective method. The relative importance of primary igneous and secondary metasomatic processes in controlling steatite rare earth element geochemistry is discussed and geological arguments against the existence of unique rare earth ‘fingerprints’ for steatite are presented.