Late Holocene Historical Ecology: The Timing of Vertebrate Extirpation on Crooked Island,Commonwealth of The Bahamas

We report eight new accelerator-mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates performed directly on individual bones of extirpated species from Crooked Island, The Bahamas. Three dates from the hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami), recovered from a culturally derived bone assemblage in McKay's Bluff Cave (site CR-5), all broadly overlap from AD 1450 to 1620, which encompasses the time of first European contact with the Lucayan on Crooked Island (AD 1492). Marine fish and hutia dominate the bone assemblage at McKay's Bluff Cave, shedding light on vertebrate consumption by the Lucayans just before their demise. A fourth AMS ¹⁴C date on a hutia bone, from a non-cultural surface context in Crossbed Cave (site CR-25), is similar (AD 1465 to 1645) to those from McKay's Bluff Cave. From Pittstown Landing (site CR-14), an open coastal archaeological site, a femur of the Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) yielded an AMS ¹⁴C date of AD ～1050–1250, which is early in the Lucayan cultural sequence. From a humerus in a non-cultural surface context in 1702 Cave (site CR-26), we document survival of the Cuban crocodile on Crooked Island until AD ～1300–1400, which is several hundred years later than the well-documented extinction of Cuban crocodiles on Abaco in the northern Bahamas. We lack a clear explanation of why Cuban crocodiles likely survived longer on Crooked Island than on a larger Bahamian island such as Abaco. One AMS ¹⁴C date on Crooked Island's extinct, undescribed species of tortoise (Chelonoidis sp.) from 1702 Cave is BC 790 to 540 (2740 to 2490 cal BP), which is ～1500–1700 years prior to human arrival. A second AMS ¹⁴C date, on a fibula of this tortoise from McKay's Bluff Cave, is AD 1025 to 1165, thereby demonstrating survival of this extinct species into the period of human occupation.     

Book Reviews

Australian Politics

Stephen Alomes and Catherine Jones (eds), A Documentary History of Australian Nationalism (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1991) pp.viii + 464. $29.95 ISBN 0 207 1634 2.

Ron Callus, Alison Morehead, Mark Cully and John Buchanan, Industrial Relations at Work: The Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Industrial Relations, AGPS, 1991) pp.xxii + 366. $24.95 ISBN 0 644 13429 1.

Anne Crichton, Slowly Taking Control? (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990) pp.xiii + 279. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 442166 4.

Greg Fry (ed.) Australia's Regional Security (Sydney: Unwin & Allen, 1991) pp.x + 221. $16.95 ISBN 0 04 302001 1.

Brian Galligan, Owen Hughes and Cliff Walsh (eds), Intergovernmental Relations and Public Policy (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991) pp.xiv + 389. $27.50 ISBN 0 04 442257 1.

Christine Jennett and Randal G. Stewart (eds), Hawke and Australian Public Policy: Consensus and Restructuring (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1990) pp.vii + 422.$29.9S ISBN 0 7329 0343 2.

Ian McAllister and Rhonda Moore, Party Strategy and Change: Australian Electoral Speeches Since 1946 (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991) pp.xiv + 332. $28.99 ISBN 0 582 86971 4.

Doug McEachern, Business Mates: The Power and Politics of the Hawke Era (Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1991) pp.xi + 168. $n.p. ISBN 0 7428 0520 6.

Allan Peachment (ed.), The Business of Government: Western Australia 1983–1990 (Sydney: The Federation Press, 1991) pp.xvi + 240. $25.00 ISBN 1 86287 046 2.

Chris Pirie and John Power (eds), Economic and Management Pressures on Australian Public Administration (Canberra College of Advanced Education in association with the Victorian Division of the Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration, 1989) pp.vii + 163. $n.p. ISBN 0 85889 338 X.

Comparative and International Politics

Christopher J. Bailey, The US Congress (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) pp.x + 175. $n.p. ISBN 0 631 15861 6.

Herman Bakvis, Regional Ministers: Power and Influence in the Canadian Cabinet (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) pp.xv + 378. $Can.22.95 ISBN 0 8020 6698 4.

Lester R. Brown et al, State of the World: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society (Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with W.W. Norton & Co./Worldwatch Institute [New York], 1991) pp.xvii + 254. $19.95 ISBN 86373 018 4.

Alistair Cole (ed.), French Political Parties in Transition (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1990) pp.xiii + 212. £29.50 ISBN 1 85521 012 6.

John Gittings, China Changes Face: The Road from Revolution 1949–1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp.xiv + 322. $19.95 ISBN 0 19 285165 9.

Harry Harding, China's Second Revolution. Reform After Mao (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989) pp.xx + 369. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 442106 0.

John W. Longworth (ed.), China's Rural Development Miracle With International Comparisons (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989) pp.xxiv + 457. $n.p. ISBN 0 7022 2264 X.

Emmanuel Todd (trans. A. and B. Forster), The Making of Modern France (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991) pp.x + 224. $37.95 ISBN 0 631 17948 8.

Achin Vanaik, The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India (London: Verso, 1991) pp.302. $32.95 ISBN 0 86091 504 2.

Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye (eds WJ.F. Jenner and Delia Davin) Chinese Lives: An Oral History of Contemporary China (London: Penguin Books, 1989) pp.xxii + 367. $14.99 ISBN 0 14 011625 7.

Political Theory and Methodology

S. Alomes and D. den Hartog (eds), Post Pop: Popular Culture, Nationalism and Postmodernism (Footscray: Footprint, 1991) pp.130. $np. ISBN 186297 012 2.

Clare Burton, The Promise & The Price: The Struggle for Equal Opportunity in Women's Employment (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991) pp.xiv + 184. $18.95 ISBN 0 04 442286 5.

Mark Cowling and Lawrence Wilde (eds), Approaches to Marx (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989) pp.xiv + 231. $29.95 ISBN 0 335 15621 5.

Robert Meister, Political Identity: Thinking Through Marx (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) pp.ix + 426. $45.00 ISBN 0 631 17746 9.

J.‐P. Fitoussi and E.S. Phelps, The Slump in Europe: Reconstructing Open Economy Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) pp.xiii + 145. $29.95 ISBN 0 631 17181 9.

William M. Johnston, Celebrations: The Cult of Anniversaries in Europe and the United States Today. (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1991) pp.xii + 187. $n.p. ISBN 0 88738 375 0.

Boris Kagarlitsky (translator: Rick Simon), Farewell Perestroika: A Soviet Chronicle (London and New York: Verso, 1990) pp.vii + 217. $29.95 ISBN 0 86091 5085.

Sonia Kruks, Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity and Society (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990) pp.xv + 215. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 4454570.

Martin Laffin, Managing Under Pressure: Industrial Relations in Local Government (London: Macmillan, 1989) pp.xvi + 207. $27.95 ISBN 0 333 44660 7.

Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman (eds), Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp.x + 288. $29.95 ISBN 0 7456 07505 5.

John Mathews, Age of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp.vxii + 278. $16.95 ISBN 0 19 554923 6.

Thomas E. McCollough, The Moral Imagination and Public Life: Raising the Ethical) Question (New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, 1991) pp.xv + 176. $US14.95 ISBN 0 934540 85 3.

Ephraim Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism: Theoretical Origins of a Political Crisis (London: Pluto Press, 1991) pp.x + 242. £27.50 ISBN 0 04 442286 5.

Peter Osbome (ed.), Socialism and the Limits of Liberalism (London: Verso, 1991), pp.299. $32.95. ISBN 0 86091 543 3.

Suri Ratnapala, Welfare State or Constitutional State? (Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies, 1990) pp.xii + 113. $12.95 ISBN 0 949769 54 1.

L.J. Sharpe, The Anglo‐American Lexicon of the Social Sciences (Oxford: Trulex, 1990) pp.vi + 146. £10.00.

A. Sivanandan, Communities of Resistance: Writings on Black Struggles for Socialism (London: Verso, 1990) pp.ix + 250. $34.95 ISBN 0 86091 514 X.     

Geographic Data Science

It is widely acknowledged that the emergence of “Big Data” is having a profound and often controversial impact on the production of knowledge. In this context, Data Science has developed as an interdisciplinary approach that turns such “Big Data” into information. This article argues for the positive role that Geography can have on Data Science when being applied to spatially explicit problems; and inversely, makes the case that there is much that Geography and Geographical Analysis could learn from Data Science. We propose a deeper integration through an ambitious research agenda, including systems engineering, new methodological development, and work toward addressing some acute challenges around epistemology. We argue that such issues must be resolved in order to realize a Geographic Data Science, and that such goal would be a desirable one.     

Education as a cultural process

John Collier, Jr. Alaskan Eskimo Education: A Film Analysis of Cultural Confrontation in the Schools. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. v + 130 pp. Illustrations, index and bibliography. $2.75 (paper).

Nancy Modiano. Indian Education in the Chiapas Highlands. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. 128 pp. Illustrations and index. $2.75 (paper).

Harry F. Wolcott. The Man in the Principal's Office: An Ethnography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. vii + 334 pp. Tables, charts and references. $4.95 (paper).     

Book reviews

Australian politics

David Corbett, Australian Public Sector Management (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992) pp.280. $24.95 ISBN 1 86373 312 4.

Chris James, Chris Jones and Andrew Norton (eds.), A Defence of Economic Rationalism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.194. $19.95 ISBN 186 3735348.

James Jupp and Marie Kabala (eds), The Politics of Australian Immigration (Carlton, Vic: Bureau of Immigration Research, 1993) pp.302. $n.p. ISBN 9 780644 272933.

H.P. Lee and George Winterton (eds), Australian Constitutional Perspectives (Sydney: The Law Book Company, 1992) pp.347. $55.00 ISBN 0 455 21085 3.

Ian McAllister, Political Behaviour: Citizens, Parties and Elites in Australia (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1993) pp.308. $24.99 ISBN 0 582 86987 0.

Stephen Mills, The Hawke Years: The Story from Inside (Penguin, 1993) pp.330. $19.95 ISBN 0 670 84563 9.

P. Molr and H. Eijkman (eds), Policing Australia: Old Issues; New Perspectives (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1992) pp.391. $34.95 ISBN 0 7329 0390 4.

Jocelyn Pixley, Citizenship and Employment: Investigating Post‐Industrial Options (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp.339. $29.95 ISBN 0 521 44615 5.

S. Nicholas Samuel and Desh B. Gupta, Issues in Applied Economics: An Australian Text (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1993) pp.247. $26.95 ISBN 0 7329 2019 1.

M. Sawer and M. Simms (eds), A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia, 2nd edition (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.345. $22.95 ISBN 1 86373 169 5.

Comparative and international politics

Tsuneo Akaha and Frank Langdon (eds), Japan in the Posthegemonic World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993) pp.295. $US17.95 ISBN 1 55587 385 5.

Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Level: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (London: Little, Brown, 1993) pp.498. $40.00 ISBN 0 316 90523 2.

John Coates, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948–54 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992) pp.223. $US45.00 ISBN 0 8133 1436 4

Rafe de Crespigny, China This Century (Hong Kong, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) pp.353. $19.95 ISBN 0 19 585164 1.

Geoffrey K. Fry, Reforming the Civil Service: The Fulton Committee on the British Home Civil Service, 1977–1968 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) pp.296. £45.00 ISBN 0 7486 0412 X.

Leslie Holmes, The End of Communist Power. Anti‐corruption campaigns and legitimation crisis (Cambridge: Polity, 1993) pp.358. $13.95 ISBN 0 7456 0580 X.

Joel Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (London: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp.1056. $59.95 ISBN 0 19 505934 4.

Brij V. Lal, Broken Waves: A History of the Fiji Islands in the Twentieth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992) pp.404. $US38.00 ISBN 0 8248 1418 5.

Malcolm McKinnon, Independence and Foreign Policy: New Zealand in the World Since 1935 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993) pp.329. $29.95 ISBN 1 86940 070 4.

Marina Ottaway, South Africa: The Struggle for a New Order (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1993).pp.250. $US34.95 ISBN 0 1857 6716 1.

Bob Tucker and Bruce Scott (eds), South Africa: Prospects for a Successful Transition (Kenwyn, South Africa: Juta & Co, 1992). pp.314. $n.p. ISBN 0 7021 2920 8.

Richard B. Spence and Linda L. Nelson (eds), Scholar, Patriot, Mentor: Historical Essays in Honor of Dimitrije Djordjevic (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1992) pp.422. $US51.00 ISBN 0 8803 217 4.

Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) pp.275. $US37.50 ISBN 0 674 07615 X.

Katherine Tate, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) pp.221. $32.50 ISBN 0 674 32538 9.

Howard Williams, Moorhead Wright and Tony Evans, A Reader in International Relations and Political Theory (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993) pp. 334. $39.95 ISBN 0 335 15667 3.

Political theory and methodology

F.G. Bailey, The Kingdom of Individuals: An Essay on Self‐Respect and Social Obligation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) pp.231. $US15–35 ISBN 0 8014 8078 7.

Alan Carling, Social Division (London: Verso, 1991) pp.442. $45.00 ISBN 0 86091 506 9.

James W. Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) pp.242 $29.00 ISBN 0 8018 4511 4.

Eva Etzioni‐Halevy, The Elite Connection: Problems and Potential of Western Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1993) pp.239. $39.95 ISBN 0 7456 1068 4.

Shaun Hargeaves Heap, Martin Hollis, Bruce Lyons, Robert Sugden and Albert Weale, The Theory of Choice (Blackwell: Oxford, 1992) pp. 398. $49.00 ISBN 0 63118322 1.

Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) pp.269. $US17.95 ISBN 0 8014 8072 8.

Paul Patton (ed.), Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.258. $24.95 ISBN 186373 445 7.     

The economic planning advisory council: The reality of consensus

The Hawke federal Labor government continued the process of national reconciliation and consensus‐formation begun by the National Economic Summit by institutionalizing group/government intermediation and consultation within the Economic Planning Advisory Council (EPAC). This paper looks at the development of the policy which led to the establishment of EPAC to determine what was expected of such a body. The objects and functions of the council are then examined to determine whether its operation increases the efficacy of consensus in government policy‐making. The formal institutionalization of interest groups into the policy process opens up questions about the relevance of theories of corporatism to this innovation in the Australian political system and the findings of this paper in regard to EPAC are discussed in this context to ascertain whether there is evidence of corporatism inherent in these arrangements. Finally, consideration has been given to the question of whether EPAC and consensus have changed the relationship between sectional interests and the government in the Australian political system.