Early Evidence for Domestic Chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) in the Horn of Africa

Domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus L. 1758) are one of the most valued farm animals in the world today. Chickens are widespread and economically and socially significant in Africa. Despite their importance, little is known about the nature of their introduction and subsequent integration into African economies. One reason for this is the morphological similarity of domestic chickens to wild galliform birds in Africa such as guineafowl and francolin. Here, we present direct dates and morphological evidence for domestic chickens recovered from Mezber, a pre‐Aksumite (>800–450 BCE) rural farming settlement in northern Ethiopia. Key morphological markers differentiated these domestic chickens from francolins. The Mezber direct chicken element accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates of cal 820–595 BCE and indirect/charcoal AMS dates of cal 921–801 BCE constitute the earliest osteological evidence for chickens in Africa. Chicken bones in the domestic food waste of an early rural settlement at Mezber and their presence in later Aksumite urban contexts show that chickens were integrated into diverse Ethiopian highland settings. The Mezber specimens predate the earliest known Egyptian chickens by at least 550 years and draw attention to early exotic faunal exchanges in the Horn of Africa during the early first millennium BCE. These findings support previous archaeological, genetics and linguistic data that suggest maritime exchange networks with South Arabia through ports along the African Red Sea coast constitute one possible early route of introduction of chickens to Africa. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Counting Carbon: Calculative Activism and Slippery Infrastructure

The environmental movement in the global North is in a state of impasse. It appears that despite the renewed international focus on climate change, and the actions of innumerable social movements, a “solution” to the problem appears as one, without a viable solution. It is the contention of this paper that climate change has no clearly viable solution as it is a seemingly impossible problem. This paper investigates how the problem of climate change is constructed as a global object of political action and how it functions to render politics into a matter of calculative action, one that seeks—but fails—to take hold of a slippery carbon infrastructure. It concludes by suggesting one possible solution to this dilemma is to turn away from the global scalar logic of climate change and towards a situated focus on questions of infrastructure, or what Dimitris Papadopoulos calls “thick justice”.     

The moral ecology of colonial infrastructure and the vicissitudes of land rights in rural Pakistan

For the last 10 years, the Pakistan army has not been able to collect rent from tenant farmers on its military farms in central Punjab. In this article, I analyse the historical and cultural significance of this contested land by using insights from recent literature on the politics of infrastructure to examine the contingency of rule in Pakistan, a postcolonial state, which is dominated by its army. I illustrate these dynamics by exploring the challenge brought up by a peasant movement to tacit cultural understandings about land and political subjectivity in central Punjab, the folkloric heartland of Pakistani nationalism. I argue that place-based movements, like the Punjab Tenants Association, can radically challenge our sense of place by giving a relational account of land as both a material substance and a crucial link in the set of relations that define moral, economic and political life. This approach broadens the emerging study of infrastructures by engaging insights from science/technology studies and subaltern studies to examine how cultural legacies of colonial infrastructure projects shape state–society relations in Pakistan.     

Changing patterns of carnivore modification in a landscape bone assemblage, Amboseli Park, Kenya

This study compares the landscape-scale taphonomic signal of carnivore modification to the surficial bone assemblage in Amboseli Park, Kenya as it was in 1975 and 2002–2004. Change in predator abundances over time provides a means of assessing the taphonomic signal of carnivore-mediated bone consumption and destruction under differing ecological conditions and varying levels of conspecific competition for resources. The landscape assemblage indicates taxonomic variation in the patterning of carnivore modification to ungulates of different size classes as well as within equivalent size classes. Analyses of long bone elements indicate that the differential destruction of limb ends and the strength of the correlation between limb end abundance and bone mineral density provide an indication of the intensity of carnivore modification to a faunal assemblage. The ability to infer levels of carnivore modification based on limb elements can provide faunal analysts with the tools to determine whether the taphonomic signals in the fossil record relate to carnivore modification, hominin transport of appendicular elements, or both.     

Predicting the Fate of Artefacts in Energetic, Shallow Marine Environments: an Approach to Site Management

A poor understanding of the physical environment often hinders management of marine artefacts. A study was conducted of an early-18th-century shipwreck to test whether the wreckage could have settled through ∼3.5 m of substrate. Results indicate that the wreck could have settled via episodic scour processes driven by storms and tidal inlet migration. A numerical model, modified to include characteristics of the underlying geology, predicts continued scour under moderate waves. Scour processes appear to have been interrupted by an erosion-resistant underlying layer, so that the wreck now remains exposed, subject to degradation. A generalized approach to predict burial or exposure of other shallow-water artefacts is developed.
© 2006 The Authors     

The Economics of Rural Households in Russia: Impact of Village Location

An American specialist on Russia's agrarian sector and two collaborators explore the effects of distance to nearby urban markets on the agricultural output and income of Russian rural households. Unlike previous studies that have largely tested such effects on the basis of household distance from relatively large oblast administrative centers, the authors adopt a micro-level scale of analysis, focusing on distance from smaller rayon centers. Comparison of two sample populations (near vs. remote from rayon center) from a larger survey population of 900 households in nine representative regions of Russia reveals marked differences in household incomes, commodity output, and real holdings of land that are statistically verified by a linear regression model. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, P32, Q15, Q18. 4 tables, 46 references.     

China's Infrastructure Investment Boom and Local Debt Crisis

A noted Hong Kong-based economist addresses the emerging financing problems prompted by debt-laden local governments in China in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. More specifically, using the most recent data available, he traces the root of China's local debt overhang to a protracted debt-financed infrastructure investment boom in which several key institutions (the cadre evaluation system, the land management regime, and the banking sector) have created an environment that draws local governments into a land-infrastructure-leverage trap. The author argues that the resulting high levels of debt may ultimately impede the country's efforts to mitigate structural imbalances in its economy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H600, H700, P200, P300. 3 figures, 9 tables, 121 references.     

Effects of distance from stone source on landscape-scale variation in Oldowan artifact assemblages in the Paleo-Olduvai Basin,Tanzania

Ongoing excavations at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, reveal tremendous variability among stone artifact assemblages across the Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Lake Basin during Bed I and lower Bed II times. Theoretically, stone artifact traces of Oldowan hominin land use are determined by the distribution of larger mammal carcasses and arboreal refuge from predation as well as proximity to stone material sources.     

Bone frequencies: differential transport, in situ destruction,and the MGUI

Human transport of bones with high food values, and destruction of bones with low density values are the traditionally invoked explanations of the frequencies of bones in archeological contexts. The manner in which these two explanations have been used suggests archaeologists assume the explanations to be independent of one another. The transport explanation is operationalized as the modified general utility index (MGUI) of Binford, and the destruction explanation is operationalized with measures of bone density. Statistical correlation of the MGUI with bone density, while weak, indicates that many high utility bones have low density values while many low utility bones have high density values. Because low density bones tend to be destroyed more readily than high density bones, inferences of human utility strategies derived from bone frequencies and based on the MGUI may be inaccurate. The utility strategies suggested by three archaeofaunas are compared to bone density, and two of these faunas are shown to potentially be the result of differential destruction and not human transport as measured by the MGUI.     

“A handshake across the Himalayas:” Chinese investment,hydropower development,and state formation in Nepal

Abstract

This article examines contemporary patterns of Chinese infrastructure development in Nepal’s Rasuwa District and the ways in which Nepali actors engage with Chinese investments to advance projects of state formation. Particularly in the wake of political volatility and natural disaster, Chinese interventions support the material and imaginative projects of a Nepalese state seeking stability, security, and economic growth. Long perceived as peripheral to the state center, Rasuwa is rapidly becoming central to Sino-Nepal relations, particularly in the context of bilateral investments in hydropower and transportation infrastructure. Drawing on data generated from 30 months of fieldwork in Nepal, we argue that Chinese development in Rasuwa: a) undergirds territorializing practices of the Nepalese state; b) represents a “gift of development” that connects Nepali ambitions of bikas (development) with Chinese anxieties over exile Tibetan populations; and c) reflects a strategic reorientation of geopolitical alliances between Nepal, China, and India. Challenging studies that depict Chinese development as an overwhelming extractive force, we instead show how small states like Nepal in fact use Chinese interventions to advance domestic projects of state formation and national security at home. On the basis of this study, we expand understandings about the place and priority of infrastructure in national state-making agendas, illustrate uneven local experiences with international development interventions, and highlight new configurations of Chinese investment and development abroad – characterized in Nepal as a “handshake across the Himalayas.”