Technological Innovation in China's High-Tech Sector: Insights from a 2008 Survey of the Integrated Circuit Design Industry in Shanghai

An intensive investigation of China's high-tech sector led by a noted Hong Kong—based geographer examines the patterns of cooperation between firms and local governments (so-called "state-firm strategic resonance") as an alternative to knowledge spillover in an effort to explain why certain firms are more likely to innovate than others within an economic cluster. As a case study, they select the integrated circuit design industry (a key in the development of more efficient computing and thus a critical element of the digital revolution) in Shanghai, one of the most advanced metropolitan regions in China. A systematic analysis of firm-level data obtained inter alia from the authors' 2008 survey and interviews revealed a significant pattern of variation in innovation that could not be explained by inter-firm interactions in the process of industrial clustering. The authors argue that the uneven pattern of technological innovation is contingent on a state-built institutional and market environment designed to stimulate firms' innovative activities, and demonstrate how firms respond to that environment in a Chinese metropolis. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H700, L630, O310, P230, R280. 5 figures, 7 tables, 57 references.     

THE SHELBY FOREST SITE IN SOUTHWEST TENNESSEE AND EARLY MISSISSIPPIAN RED-FILMED POTTERY IN THE CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

Abstract

The Shelby Forest site in southwest Tennessee is an Early Mississippian component characterized by Varney Red Filmed ceramics. Comparison to other sites in the Reelfoot Lake area of west Tennessee and the Upper St. Francis Basin of Missouri and Arkansas allows refinement of the direction, timing, and characteristics of influences from these areas northeastward to American Bottom and southward into the Yazoo Basin of Mississippi. Subsequent influences from the Cahokia area into the southern Yazoo Basin and northeast Louisiana are also discussed.     

An evolutionary model of social change in the Middle Ohio Valley: Was social complexity impossible during the late woodland but mandatory during the late prehistoric?

We present an evolutionary model of social change in the Middle Ohio Valley during the Fort Ancient period (AD 1000–1650), primarily relying on an application of Winterhalder’s (1986) and Kelly’s (1995) evolutionary ecology model of cultural responses to environmental variability. We predict changes in social organization, political complexity, and patterns of stylistic similarity. As the environmental background for our model we employ recently published moisture data. By iteratively applying the synchronic Winterhalder–Kelly model we are able to predict a sequence of general trends that agree with much current interpretation of Fort Ancient development. Specifically, the model leads us to expect increasing village size, the development of regional traditions, and the development of leadership roles and a region-wide style Horizon around AD 1400. However, our model provides the ability to make testable predictions that deviate from the accepted cultural history and predicts that the Middle Ohio Valley and the groups referred to as Fort Ancient were far from homogenous.     

Sources of archaeological dacite in northern New Mexico

For years archaeologists in New Mexico, particularly in the northern Rio Grande region have noticed a very fine-grained what appeared to be mafic or basalt raw material source in late Paleoindian and Archaic contexts in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Indeed, a number of Folsom, Cody, Plainview, and Archaic bifaces are produced from this material. It appeared that there were at least two possible very fine-grained volcanics that could be the sources for these raw materials – San Antonio Mountain in far northern New Mexico, in the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field, and Cerros del Rio, on the east side of Bandelier National Monument right above the Rio Grande. After reconnaissance collections at the two probable sources, the short story is that the vast majority of “basalt” artifacts were indeed produced from one of these sources, but they are petrologically dacite and silicic volcanic rocks. An additional dacite source, called here the “Newman Dome”, also in the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field was discovered in the 1980s, but remained mainly discussed in the gray literature by CRM archaeologists. Examination of various Paleoindian and Archaic collections from the northern and middle Rio Grande indicates a strong preference for this silicic rock for the production of chipped stone tools, and in concert with obsidian source provenance studies has increased our ability to reconstruct procurement and range in these preceramic periods. These high-alkali dacite sources are easily discriminated with their trace element compositions, and based on this study, procurement seems to be dominantly restricted to these three sources in the region. Here I discuss the petrology, geochemistry, and some of the archaeological issues of these sources and their utility in the Southwest archaeological endeavor in an effort to bring these important prehistoric raw materials into the published realm.     

Site Management: An Application to Wadilmeluk (the Valley of the Kings)

‘Value has always been the reason underlying heritage conservation. It is self‐evident that no society makes an effort to conserve what it does not value.’ ¹ 1. de la Torre and Mason, Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage, 3–4. However, assessing the value of a cultural heritage asset as a representative sample of our tangible and intangible heritage for present and future generations is a difficult concept to deal with. It is, therefore, the aim of the researchers to help the conservation decision process by attempting to make an assessment of the values attributed to the cultural heritage assets of one of the most notable heritage sites in Egypt: the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.     

Paleoclimate,Geology, Geomorphology,and Middle Holocene Settlement Systems in the Delice Valley of North-Central Anatolia

The Delice Valley in north-central Anatolia is one of the regions where Hatti societies lived during the Early Bronze Age. This region has rarely been explored in terms of its geology, geomorphology, and human-environment interactions throughout the Bronze Age. The focus of the Delice Valley Survey is to build a holistic approach to assess complex socio-ecological dynamics in the region from the perspective of the longue durée. This paper examines the paleoclimatic conditions, the settlement systems, the production capacity of agropastoral systems, and the changes in the political economy in the Delice Valley during the Early Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The results of the first season of fieldwork suggest that the Delice Valley was settled intensively only during certain periods. Although paleoclimatically suitable for denser settlement, the area showed significantly lighter settlement patterns during the Middle and Late Bronze ages.     

Silver lining: evidence for Inka silver refining in northern Chile

Prehistoric silver purification using lead cupellation has been documented in multiple places throughout the Andes, but direct evidence of the Inka use of this technology has remained elusive. In this study, we use X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscopy, and electron-microprobe analysis to document direct evidence of Inka period (AD 1400–1532) silver purification using lead cupellation in the Tarapacá Valley of northern Chile. Local metalworkers used wind-driven huayra furnaces to produce pure lead metal, sustaining temperatures of ca. 900–1100 °C to smelt lead-bearing ores that may have included galena. The lead metal was then used in open-vessel cupellation of silver-bearing ores, some of which may have been cupriferous and derived from the nearby Inka mines at Huantajaya. Phase analyses of the slagged interiors of bowl-shaped ceramic vessels used for cupellation indicate that the metalworkers maintained the oxidizing environment and temperatures between 800 and 1100 °C requisite for cupellation. We argue that the Inka introduced this technique to Tarapacá metalworkers. The absence of finished silver artifacts in local valley contexts suggests that the refined silver was removed from the valley for use elsewhere in the empire.     

Miocene wood from the LaTrobe Valley coal measures,Victoria, Australia

An initial study of a collection of fossil conifer wood is reported from the late early Miocene Yallourn Clays, an interseam unit intergrading into the base of the early to middle Miocene Yallourn seam of the LaTrobe Valley, Victoria in southeastern Australia. The fossil wood shares characteristics with the modem genera Dacrycarpus and Dacrydium. On the basis of contiguous, uniseriate tracheid pitting and 1–2 podocarpoid cross field pits, it is placed in the form genus Podocarpoxylon, and the new species P. latrobensis. The wood is compared with extant Podocarpaceae and other Australian fossil woods. Its ring anatomy is consistent with low temperature or rainfall seasonality in the early Miocene.     

Polities, territory and historical change in Postclassic Matlatzinco (Toluca Valley, central Mexico)

Historical interpretation of political dynamics in pre-conquest central Mexico from indigenous records is fraught with difficulties. Beyond the basic challenges involved in interpreting fragmentary evidence is the fact that the majority of evidence comes from the dominant imperial polity (Tenochtitlan) and paints a biased and overly generalized view of political and social dynamics in provincial areas. We present a reconstruction of the political geography of the Toluca Valley of central Mexico in Aztec times that avoids these biases by focusing not on the events described in native histories, but on the individual towns and their spatial locations. We find that a theoretical perspective that defines political entities by networks and relations among people more adequately captures the historical situation than traditional models that define polities based on territory and boundaries.     

Human skeletal and mummified remains from the AD1854 siege of Mugombane,Limpopo South Africa

In 1854 Chief Mugombane and members of his Kekana Ndebele chiefdom took refuge in what is now known as Historic Cave, in the Makapan Valley, South Africa. The chiefdom retreated into the cave following an attack on a party of Trekboers. The subsequent siege of the cave, which lasted just under a month, ended in the death and surrender of its occupants and their dispersal among the Trekboers and their African auxiliaries. However, the number of people and the composition of the group that hid in the cave, as well as factors that led to the demise of the Kekana became blurred in the various renderings of the historical event. During the 1980s researchers began to cast doubt on the original Trekboer documents and the magnitude of the event when it became apparent that the Kekana oral histories remained silent on the matter. Between 2001 and 2007 the material remains of the siege were excavated to provide new data from which to judge the scale and impact of the siege event. Human remains, the primary focus of this paper, afford this perspective. This paper provides the result of the analysis of the human remains excavated from the cave, as well as an account of those remains that have been recorded or are housed in collections. The study of two naturally mummified individuals removed from the caves and stored in collections is also presented.