GONE, BUT STILL RESPECTED: SOME EVIDENCE FOR IRON AGE HOUSE PLATFORMS IN LOWLAND ENGLAND

Summary. This paper considers the apparent absence of house or settlement platforms in Iron Age lowland England. It demands that lowland sites be interpreted using criteria derived from suitable (lowland) contexts. The dangers of using upland-derived explanatory models are illustrated with selected examples. The Cat's Water subsite, Fengate, Peterborough provides examples of probable house-platforms, protected from plough-damage by alluvium; these, in turn, are used to provide criteria to recognise similar features on poorly preserved sites. Comparisons are drawn with recently excavated sites in the Netherlands. The paper concludes with some general observations on the nature of once-wet sites and the dangers inherent in their interpretation.     

Urban impoverishment and multiple modes of livelihood in Ghana

Many African countries experienced economic crisis in the 1970s and are currently restructuring their economies under the tutelage of the World Bank and the IMF. The restructuring process has had pervasive effects on the livelihood strategies of many people, as their established means of income generation have been disrupted. While survival of the urban poor has been studied, little is known of strategies of other social groups. Using Ghana as a case study, I argue that although urban poverty predates the implementation of structural adjustment program (SAP), the policies have created a favorable environment for the intensification of multiple livelihood strategies among of salaried employees. The paper finds that multiple livelihood strategies are practiced by a large number of salaried employees, but their involvement depends on many factors, including individual, family and household characteristics; access to capital and resources; opportunities offered by the urban economy; and the nature of formal employment.     

EXPERIMENTS WITH AN OLD CERAMIC BEEHIVE

Ceramic beehives are frequently identified on archaeological sites in Greece and occur in large numbers. Their existence is at odds with the accounts of Roman authors, who disdain the use of clay for beekeeping and praise materials like wicker and wood, which have left no archaeological traces. The reason for the rejection of terracotta hives is unanimously that they are too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, but temperature experiments with a nineteenth century ceramic beehive in Greece proved them to be within the norms experienced by bees. The results of this research thus indicate different traditions of beekeeping in Roman Greece and Italy and seek to explain why these may have developed.