Stromatolite recognition in ancient rocks: an appraisal of irregularly laminated structures in an Early Archaean chert-barite unit from North Pole,Western Australia

The word ‘stromatolite’ should only be applied to organosedimentary structures predominantly accreted by sediment trapping, binding and/or in situ precipitation as a result of the growth and metabolic activities of benthic, principally prokaryotic, micro-organisms. Structures of uncertain origin that resemble stromatolites should be called ‘stromatoloids’. This cautious approach would eliminate the currently common assumption that structures with mesoscopic morphological similarities to microbially accreted sedimentary structures must be biogenic, a misconception that hampers investigations into the antiquity of life.

A hierarchical series of meso- and microstructural attributes of stromatolites can be used to assign gradually increasing probabilities of biogenicity to stromatoloids. This method is particularly useful for interpreting ancient noncolumnar stromatoloids with poor microstructural preservation. In a range of Early Archaean pseudocolumnar, nodular and stratiform stromatoloids from North Pole studied using this method, none could be proved to be stromatolites and only a few are probable or possible stromatolites. As these stromatoloids closely resemble previously reported structures from North Pole interpreted as stromatolites, we consider that the evidence for the existence of life c. 3500 my ago at North Pole is less definitive than previously supposed.     

Book reviews

The World on Paper. By David R. Olson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xix + 319 pp. £17.95/$24.95 cloth.

Milton and the Revolutionary Reader. By Sharon Achinstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) xv + 272 pp. £27.50/$35.00 cloth.

The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. By Rodney Stark (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) xiv + 246 pp. £16.95/$24.95 cloth.

The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation. By Christopher J. Berry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xiv + 271 pp. £45.00/$69.95 cloth, £17.95/$24.95 paper.

Will to Live: One Family's Story of Surviving the Holocaust. By Adam Starkopf (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995) 242 pp. $14.95 paper.

Meditations of a Holocaust Traveler. By Gerald E. Markle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 185 pp. $12.95 paper.

Nazism and German Society. 1933–1945. Edited by David C. Crew (London: Routledge, 1994) xii + 316 pp. £11.99 paper.

Women in Ancient Greece. By Sue Blundell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) 224 pp. $19.95 paper.

The Dear Purchase: A Theme in German Modernism. By J. P. Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 445 pp. $64.95 cloth.

An Introduction to Political Ideas. Edited by Peter M. R. Stirk and David Weigall (London: Pinter Press, 1995) xv + 385 pp. £14.99 paper.

André Malraux: Politics and the Temptation of Myth. By Gino Raymond, Avery Series in Philosophy (Aldershot: Avebury, Ashgate, 1995) vi + 212 pp. $59.95 paper.

Collingwood Studies, Volume 1: The Life and Thought of R. G. Collingwood. Edited by David Boucher (Swansea: R. G. Collingwood Society, 1994) xiii + 211 pp. paper.

Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory. By Joel Whitebook (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995) 350 pp. $29.95 cloth.

A Vindication of the Rights of Men with a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Sylvana Tomaselli, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) £8.95/$ 10.95 paper, £25.00/$44.95 cloth.

Utopias of British Enlightenment. By Gregory Claeys, History of Political Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xli +305 pp. $19.95 paper.

Baroque Personae. Edited by Rosario Villari, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 357 pp. £37.95/ $54.75 cloth.

The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Boll: Social Conscience and Literary Achievement. Edited by Michael Butler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xv + 280 pp. £37.50/$59.95 cloth.

La Rochefoucauld and the Language of Unmasking in Seventeenth‐Century France. By Henry C. Clark, Histoire des idees et critique littéraire, vol. 336 (Genève: Droz, 1994), 232 pp. paper.

Jane Austen and the Representation of Regency England. By Roger Sales (London: Routledge, 1996) xxii + 283 pp. £13.99 paper.

Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. By R. J. Crampton (London: Routledge, 1994), xx + 475 pp. £14.99 paper.

What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth‐Century Answers and Twentieth‐Century Questions. Edited by James Schmidt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) xiii + 563 pp. $50.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. By Joan Wallach Scott (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) 256 pp. $27.95 paper.

Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge. By Henry Plotkin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1994) xviii + 269 pp. $26.95 cloth.

Rediscovering History: Culture, Politics, and the Psyche. Edited by Michael S. Roth (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994) xv + 535 pp. $16.95 paper.

Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. By Larry Scanlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xii+ 378 pp. £40.00/$64.95 cloth

Retreat from the Modern: Humanism, Postmodernism and the Flight from Modernist Culture. By N. J. Rengger (London: Bowerdean, 1996) vi+ 122 pp. $14.95 paper.

Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle's Politics. By Fred D. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) xvii + 424 pp. 40.00 cloth.

Hauptsache Europa: Perspectiven für das Europäischen Parlament. By Peter Schönberger (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994), Dokumente und Schriften der Europäischen Akademie Otzenhausen, vol. 72, 130 pp. DM 88.00/AS 687/ sFF 88.00 paper.

A Proper Dyaloge betwene a Gentillman and an Husbandman. Edited by Douglas H. Parker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) ix + 291 pp. £33.75/$55.00 cloth.

The Genesis of the French Revolution: A Global‐Historical Interpretation. By Bailey Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 268 pp. $49.95/ £37.50 cloth $14.95/£11.95 paper.

Britain in the European Union Today. By Colin Pilkington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995) 260 pp. £35.00 cloth £9.99 paper.

Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence. By Cornelis Augustijn, translated by J. C. Grayson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991)x + 239 pp. £13.00/$19.95 paper.

Jean‐Jacques Rousseau: Music, Illusion and Desire. By Michael O'Dea (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995) viii + 284 pp. $59.95 cloth.

The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics. Edited and translated by Frederick C. Beiser, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) £37.50/$54.95 cloth, £13.95/$18.95 paper.

Wollstonecraft's Daughters: Womanhood in England and France, 1780–1920. Edited by Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996) x + 206 pp. $69.95 cloth.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. By Jeremy Bentham, edited by J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart, with a new introduction by F. Rosen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) cxii + 343 pp. £17.99/$32.00 paper.

Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis. By Cary J. Nederman (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1995) 161 pp. $22.95 paper, $57.50 cloth.

Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition. By Clare Cavanagh (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995) xii + 365 pp. $39.50 cloth.

God and Government in an “Age of Reason.” By David Nicholls (London: Routledge) 1995, xi + 278 pp. £45.00 cloth.

Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution. By Katerina Clark (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) xii + 377 pp. $39.95 cloth.

Histoire du suicide: la société occidentale face à la mort volontaire. By Georges Minois (Paris: Fayard, 1995) 421 pp. FF 150.00 paper.

Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. By Lorraine Daston (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) xviii + 432 pp. $19.95 paper.

Daedalus (Winter, 1996) “Social Suffering.” Edited by V. Das, A. Kleinman, and M. Lock 283 pp. $7.95 (Canada)/ $10.35 (U.S.) paper.

Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. By Irina Livezeanu (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995) 340 pp. £35.50/$45.00 (U.S.)/ $49.50 (foreign) cloth.

The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, vol. 2, 1914–1919. Edited by Ernst Falzeder and Eva Brabant, translated by Peter T. Hoffer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) xlvi +397 pp. $45.00 cloth.

Biologists Under Hitler. By Ute Deichmann, translated by Thomas Dunlap (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) xviii + 468 pp. $45.00 cloth.

The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914. By E. H. H. Green (London: Routledge, 1995) xiv + 412 pp., £50.00 cloth.

Marx: Later Political Writings. Edited by Terrell Carver, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) xxxiii + 260 pp. £a27.95/$24.95 cloth £9.95/$ 12.95 paper.

A Small City in France: A Socialist Mayor Confronts Neofascism. By Françoise Gaspard, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge‐Harvard University Press, 1995) xi + 194 pp. $32.50 cloth $15.95 paper.

Reading Henry James in French Cultural Contexts. By Pierre A. Walker (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995) xxiv+ 230 pp. $28.50 cloth.

The Glory of van Gogh: An Anthropology of Admiration. By Nathalie Heinich, translated by Paul Leduc Browne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) 218 pp. $29.95 paper.

Poor Women and Children in the European Past. Edited by John Henderson and Richard Wall (London: Routledge, 1994) xiii + 347 pp. £45.00 cloth.

Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History and Musical Genre. By Jeffrey Kallberg Convergences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) xiii + 301 pp. $45.00 cloth.

After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States. By Anatoly M. Khazanov (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) xxi + 311 pp. $24.95 cloth.

Reflections on Violence. By John Keane (London: Verso, 1996) 200 pp. £16.95 paper.

Fortuna, Money, and the Sublunar World: Twelfth‐century Ethical Poetics and the Satirical Poetry of the Carmina Burana. By Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, Bibliotheca Histories 9. (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1995) 188 pp. paper.

La Pensée politique de Raymond Aron. By Stephane Launay, Recherches politiques (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995) x + 243 pp. 158 FF paper.

Psychoanalysis and Gender: An Introductory Reader. By Rosalind Minsky (London: Routledge, 1996) xv + 317 pp. $69.95 cloth/$27.75 paper.

Un ?Intellectuel? avant la lettre: le journaliste Pierre Bayle (1647–1706). L'actualité religieuse dans les Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (1684–1687). By Hubert Bost. Etudes de l'Institut Pierre Bayle, Nijmegen (Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA—Holland University Press, 1994) xii + 584 pp. 150 cloth.     

Reviews

THE PAPUA‐NEW GUINEA ELECTIONS 1964. David Bettism, Colin Hughes and Paul van der Veur (eds.) Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1965. Pp. xi + 545. $A 9.00.

SEARCH FOR NEW GUINEA'S BOUNDARIES: FROM TORRES STRAIT TO THE PACIFIC. Paul van der Veur. Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1966. Pp. xii + 178. $A 6.30.

DOCUMENTS AND CORRESPONDENCE ON NEW GUINEA'S BOUNDARIES. Paul van der Veur. Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1966. Pp. 212. $A 3.90.

BURMA: FROM KINGDOM TO INDEPENDENCE. Frank N. Trager. London, Pall Mall Press, 1966. Pp. xiii + 455. $A 10.90.

THE POLITICS OF THE THIRD WORLD. J. D. B. Miller. London, Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1966. Pp. xiv + 126. $A2.15.

IRONIES OF HISTORY, ESSAYS IN CONTEMPORARY COMMUNISM. Isaac Deutscher. Oxford University Press, 1966. Pp. vii + 278. $A 5.80.

SOVIET AFFAIRS NUMBER FOUR. St. Antony's Papers No. 19. Michael Kaser (ed.). Oxford University Press, 1966. Pp. 156. $A5.10.

A DECADE OF COMMONWEALTH 1955–1964. W. B. Hamilton, Kenneth Robinson and C. D. W. Goodwin (eds.). Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1966. Pp. xx + 567. (US) $12.50.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE‐COMMONWEALTH. Robin W. Winks (ed.). Durham N.C., Duke University Press, 1966. Pp. xiv + 596. (US) $12.50.

TEST BAN AND DISARMAMENT: THE PATH OF NEGOTIATION. Arthur H. Dean. New York, Harper and Row, 1966. Pp. xiii + 153. (U.S.) $3.50.

DETERRENCE AND THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE. Albert Legault. Toronto, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, 1966. Pp. xv + 103. $2.00 (Canadian).

STRATEGIC POWER AND SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY. Arnold L. Horelick and Myron Rush. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1966. Pp. xii + 225. (U.S.) $5.95.

NEW FEDERATIONS: EXPERIMENTS IN THE COMMONWEALTH. R. L. Watts. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1966. Pp. xii + 417 + Maps. $A 10.90.     

‘The women's lobby’: Networks,coalition building and the women of middle Australia

The ‘women's lobby’ or the ‘powerful feminist lobby’ has been held responsible for a range of evils including the undermining of the traditional family, public expenditure on community services, social engineering and the imposition of ‘political correctness’. To what extent is there a ‘women's lobby’ working from inside or outside government to influence public decision‐mating? In this paper we explore this question, using data from a social network analysis of the Australian women's movement conducted in 1992–3.

Our findings are that there is a large, very loosely connected network of organisations engaging in advocacy on behalf of women. Density of ties is less than is found in a comparable study of the Canadian women's movement but there are more ties between non‐government groups and government agencies. Issues of organisational philosophy have inhibited the development of a ‘peak body’ for the non‐government women's movement and led to reliance on issue‐specific coalitions. Latterly, awareness of increasing fragmentation has led to a series of attempts to create more effective national networking.     

A high status burial from Ripon Cathedral,North Yorkshire,England: differential diagnosis of a chest deformity

Excavations beneath the crossing at Ripon Cathedral in North Yorkshire recently revealed a burial radiocarbon dated to the late 15th century AD. The burial was that of a young adult female; the location of the grave suggests a person of relatively high status. The very well preserved skeleton revealed abnormal changes to the bones of the thoracic cavity including anterior bowing of the sternum, flattening of the spinous processes of thoracic vertebrae three to nine against the processes below each one, and changes to the ribs that suggested anterior displacement of the rib cage. The skeletal changes are described and differential diagnoses presented. Treatment to an underlying chest deformity, ‘pectus carinatum’, is thought to be the underlying cause of the skeletal changes; this study may lend direct insight into the concepts of body image in the Medieval period. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.