The Archaeology of Regions: From Discrete Analytical Toolkit to Ubiquitous Spatial Perspective

In the 1970s and 1980s, regional analysis was an influential part of archaeological research, providing a discrete set of geographical tools inspired by a processual epistemological and interpretive perspective. With the advent of new technologies, new methods, and new paradigms, archaeological research on regional space has undergone significant changes. This article reviews the state of regional archaeology, beginning with a consideration of its history and a discussion of the fundamental issues facing regional investigations before focusing on developments over the last several years. On one hand, the diversification of archaeological theory has created new paradigms for thinking about human relationships with one another and with the physical environment across regional space; in this regard, historical ecology, landscape archaeology, and evolutionary theory have been particularly influential in recent years. This has led to a corresponding diversification of the traditional methods of regional analysis. Most notably, the advent of powerful digital technologies has introduced new tools, especially those from the geographic information sciences, that build on the quantitative methods of past approaches. The investigation of regional data is no longer based on a discrete toolkit of simple mathematical and graphical procedures for representing spatial relationships. Instead, regional archaeology has matured into a diversity of multiscalar spatial and geostatistical techniques that inform many areas of archaeological inquiry.     

Some spatial analyses of Chalcolithic settlement in Southern Israel

This paper is a brief investigation of one of the outstanding problems in Chalcolithic archaeology in the Negev desert of Israel: that of the spatial distribution of sites and the possible relationships between these sites that may be inferred. Although the region is rich in archaeological data for the Chalcolithic period, very little work has thus far been undertaken in terms of the quantification of the archaeological data – a necessary prerequisite for complex spatial analysis. Nevertheless, simple analysis of settlement patterns using the data presently available for 403 Chalcolithic sites in the Negev is given as an example. Autocorrelation tests measuring clustering and dispersion of sites show that the overall impression of clustering is a factor of access to farming land, water, grazing and Mediterranean maquis, but that smaller scale analysis suggests that settlement patterns were essentially random. This makes it difficult to argue in favour of settlement hierarchies or structured settlement of any kind.     

The Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy and the Post-War Consensus

The post-war settlement among the policy elite is central to much historical literature. This article considers the rise and fall of the idea of ‘industrial democracy’, and its relationship to this settlement. The elite failed to respond coherently to claims for workplace democracy. The notion that politicians could work with ‘the unions’ and ‘industry’ was shown to be deficient. The unions contained numerous views, many hostile to industrial democracy in the form proposed by Bullock and the TUC. Industry was almost uniformly antagonistic. The notion of consensus ostensibly underpinned the attempts of Labour and Conservative politicians to progress this issue. In truth, this was a curious approach. The debate over Bullock was, at root, an argument over whether the owners of capital should cede some of their power in favour of organised labour. There was never likely to be agreement on this. The inconclusive debate over Bullock ultimately showed how fragile the consensus was. The political elite could not forever smooth over underlying disagreements between capital and labour, or between groups of workers with differing interests.     

Environmental impacts around the time of Norse landnám in the Qorlortoq valley,Eastern Settlement,Greenland

Palynology, radiocarbon dating, and open-section stratigraphies from archaeological trenches are used to examine the impact of human activity around the time of Norse landnám on vegetation and landscape associated with a small farm (Ø34) in the Qorlortoq valley, Eastern Settlement, Greenland (61° N 45° W). Peat deposits from a mire abutting the Norse ruins revealed a discontinuous palaeoenvironmental record containing a possible hiatus from ca. AD 410–1020. Palaeovegetational data were recovered either side of this period. Pollen assemblages suggest that open Salix scrub dominated the landscape during the pre-settlement phase. The later phases of landnám resulted in the creation of hay fields and heavily-grazed grassy heath. Site abandonment is reflected by a re-expansion of Salix. This occurs shortly before the onset of deposition of a Sphagnum peat, dated to cal AD 1420–1630 (2σ) and reflecting an increase in mire surface wetness, probably in response to a deteriorating climate. Radiocarbon dates were obtained on peat and plant macrofossils sampled from either side of the proposed hiatus at two different but closely-spaced (<20 m) locations across the mire. These produced significantly different dates for the cessation of peat formation in the pre-landnám period (cal BC 2130–1770 and cal AD 240–410 respectively), but near-synchronous dates for the recommencement of peat growth (cal AD 890–1150 for peat and a probably more reliable interval of cal AD 1020–1190 based on plant macrofossils). It is suggested that this hiatus may represent the first direct evidence for peat cutting in Norse Greenland.     

Policy Networks in Complex Governance Subsystems: Observing and Comparing Hyperlink,Media, and Partnership Networks

Methods for observing policy networks have not kept up with the development of new network analytic techniques required to understand governance in complex settings. We compare three unobtrusive methods for observing policy networks based on hyperlinks between policy actor web sites, on media reports, and on public policy partnerships. Observations of one complex local water policy arena with all three methods provide a comparison of the general as well as actor‐specific network characteristics in the three observed networks. The core network of actors observed by all methods has similar network level statistics, highly correlated relationships measured by Quadratic Assignment Procedures models, and the same significant network microstructures as measured by Exponential Random Graph Models. The full networks including actors observed by any method also exhibit similar actor‐level characteristics, although the correlations across networks are stronger for bridging capital measures than for bonding capital measures, and each method has different apparent biases. Once biases are accounted for, similarities suggest that these methods may provide useful proxies for each other and for other relationships that are more difficult or impossible to measure, particularly when combined to offset each method's biases. If so, they can extend the range of policy networks observable with limited resources across space and time.     

云南滇池地区聚落遗址2008年调查简报

经国家文物局批准,云南省文物考古研究所与美国密歇根大学人类学系签订为期3年的合作协议,进行"滇池区域史前聚落形态考古调查"项目,目的是通过开展全面的区域系统调查,寻找并确认与石寨山文化(亦称滇文化,时代约从春秋时期至西汉末期)有关的遗址和聚落[1],揭示这些聚落的     

Immigration,the Celtic Tiger and the economic crisis

Abstract

This article addresses the puzzle of why Ireland has proved so open to immigration. It compares responses to immigrants in the Republic of Ireland during the Celtic Tiger era and during the post-2008 economic crisis and finds no evidence of a political backlash during the latter period even though opinion polls suggest that opposition to immigration had increased and other evidence suggested that there had been an increase in racist incidents within Irish society. Nor did the resumption of large-scale emigration trigger political hostility to immigrants. The outcome of the 2004 Referendum on Citizenship, which removed a constitutional right to Irish citizenship to the Irish-born children of immigrants, suggested that that nationalism still matters hugely and a latent tendency towards ethnic chauvinism amongst the host population. Yet, a decade after the 2004 Referendum it looked as if the old mono-ethnic sense conception of the Irish nation had been disrupted, at least a little bit.     

Iron Age Landscapes of the Benue River Valley,Cameroon

The Iron Age settlements of northern Cameroon were dispersed across the landscape, taking advantage of different eco-climatic zones to exploit a variety of natural resources. Situated at the interface of the upper and lower terraces of the Benue River, mound sites in the area around Garoua have occupation histories spanning multiple centuries. The site of Langui-Tchéboua displays evidence for rapid accumulation of sediments approximately 700 years ago, which may have been a deliberate construction strategy that would have allowed the site’s inhabitants to exploit resources in both floodplain and dryland contexts. The combined use of multiple dating methods and micromorphology provide novel insights into both the mechanisms of anthropogenic landscape change and possible motivations governing those choices.     

The Great Dog Massacre in Late Qing China: Debates,Perceptions, and Phobia in the Shanghai International Settlement

Modern assessments of a well-known sign in a Shanghai park that stated “Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted” have established that the dog aspect of it was not true, but the sign remains highly visible in the Chinese historiography of Western imperialism. Such reassessments do not seem to recognize that the sign might have meant something considerably different to Chinese and foreigners in late Qing Shanghai than it would have in later periods of modern Chinese history. Dog–human relations had changed through a mix of two processes: dog-keeping as a social practice and the challenges of rabies in the management of urban space. Under the rule of the Shanghai Municipal Council, animals, health, and imperialism converged in the Shanghai International Settlement to destabilize the traditional roles of dogs and introduce modernity through the disciplining of both animal and human bodies and the demarcation and management of new urban spaces.     

The fractal geometry of ancient Maya settlement

Ancient Maya settlement patterns exhibit fractal geometry both within communities and across regions. Fractals are self-similar sets of fractional dimension. In this paper, we show how Maya settlement patterns are logically and statistically self-similar. We demonstrate how to measure the fractal dimensions (or Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimensions) of several data sets. We describe nonlinear dynamical processes, such as chaotic and self-organized critical systems, that generate fractal patterns. As an illustration, we show that the fractal dimensions calculated for some Maya settlement patterns are similar to those produced by warfare, supporting recent claims that warfare is a significant factor in Maya settlement patterning.