Post-glacial environmental change and hunting-gathering societies of the southern Prairie Peninsula

Evidence from several disciplines supports the proposition that following the Wisconsinan and an initial but brief moist phase of the Holocene, there was a gradual drying trend in the mid-continent Prairie Peninsula that peaked about 7000 years ago, a pattern that was not reversed until about 4000 years ago. Except for minor perturbations, conditions during the past four millennia have essentially been similar to those of the present. Studies in palynology and geomorphology have shown that the climatic regimes of the early/mid Post-glacial had a marked influence on both the biota and landscape erosional patterns, especially along the margins of the Prairie Peninsula. Measurable changes in the landscape and attendant biota show a time-transgressive pattern of drought related phenomena recorded palaeo-ecologically from west to east.Few studies of archaeological sites in the Prairie Peninsula have examined the evidence in and around the sites themselves for data reflecting local environmental dynamics. In fact, earlier models proposed for explaining the evolution of food-procuring systems in eastern North America virtually ignored potential changes in the natural environment. This paper examines data from two archaeological sites along the prairie-forest border in Missouri that contain long cultural sequences. Evidence is presented that pronounced changes in the natural environment occurred and that these biophysical variables are indeed critical for understanding the evolution of food-procuring societies in the American Midwest.     

Water power and the plan of St Gall

An analysis of the scale used by the designer of the Plan of St Gall allows for no other conclusion than that the mill and mortars shown on this Plan were water driven. Because of the paradigmatic nature of the Plan this means that hydraulically operated mills and mortars were by the makers of the Plan considered to be standard equipment of a Carolingian monastery — a conclusion supported by a wealth of other documentary source material available for this period.The Romans knew the water mill, but made little use of it. Its general adoption and diffusion in Merovingian and Carolingian Europe is in this study attributed to the rise and spread of Benedictine monasticism. It received its primary impetus from the need to provide milled and crushed grain in bulk for communities of considerable size, including a leisure class of men who had to be freed from the normal chores of toiling for life so that their energies could be directed to their primary task: the Work of God (Opus Dei). Water-powered trip hammers were in use in China before the birth of Christ. Their portrayal on the Plan of St Gall suggests that they were introduced in western Europe, not by Marco Polo, as some propose, but in the age of folk migrations or the early Carolingian Period.     

Do municipal unions improve cost efficiency for the social function? A quasi-experimental endogenous stochastic frontier approach

Homogeneous national policies can generate heterogeneous effects on the territory. This paper aims to verify the impact of the entry of single Italian municipalities into an inter-municipal association on the unitary costs of the social services supplied to the local communities. Panel cost stochastic frontier model in the presence of endogeneity has been introduced based on two pillars: a counterfactual setting to verify the aggregation effects concerning a set of similar municipalities and the use of a cost efficiency estimation methodology which considers the endogeneity of output with respect to cost. The results of our analysis show that the effects of adopting associated forms of service delivery can be very multifaceted and diversified according to the typology and the degree of implementation of the Municipal Union itself. The analysis sheds light on the effects of municipalities' organisational choices, addressing the consolidation of small municipalities not in binary terms but also—and above all—suggesting that it is the type of union that impacts the possibility of convergence towards greater cost efficiency.