Post-glacial environmental change and hunting-gathering societies of the southern Prairie Peninsula

Evidence from several disciplines supports the proposition that following the Wisconsinan and an initial but brief moist phase of the Holocene, there was a gradual drying trend in the mid-continent Prairie Peninsula that peaked about 7000 years ago, a pattern that was not reversed until about 4000 years ago. Except for minor perturbations, conditions during the past four millennia have essentially been similar to those of the present. Studies in palynology and geomorphology have shown that the climatic regimes of the early/mid Post-glacial had a marked influence on both the biota and landscape erosional patterns, especially along the margins of the Prairie Peninsula. Measurable changes in the landscape and attendant biota show a time-transgressive pattern of drought related phenomena recorded palaeo-ecologically from west to east.Few studies of archaeological sites in the Prairie Peninsula have examined the evidence in and around the sites themselves for data reflecting local environmental dynamics. In fact, earlier models proposed for explaining the evolution of food-procuring systems in eastern North America virtually ignored potential changes in the natural environment. This paper examines data from two archaeological sites along the prairie-forest border in Missouri that contain long cultural sequences. Evidence is presented that pronounced changes in the natural environment occurred and that these biophysical variables are indeed critical for understanding the evolution of food-procuring societies in the American Midwest.     

Rural China in ruins: The rush to urbanize China's countryside is opening a moral battleground (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

China has officially become a predominantly urban country, with over 50% of the population now registered as urban residents. Its urbanization process has been described as the most managed in human history. The Chinese government manages the building of new cities, regulates the housing of displaced people and controls squatters. As an historically poorer area, the west of China has been the target of ongoing efforts at infrastructural development. Describing urbanization as managed however masks the conflicts and contradictions involved in a process which is far from smooth. Although villagers are usually seen to be largely the powerless victims of these initiatives, it is clear that many try to take advantage of the situation, while others are unable to do so. Based on recent fieldwork and eight years of visits to one village undergoing urbanization, this article looks at the complex dynamics involved and at the moral battleground which they lay bare.     

Vom Denken in Analogien

Analogy as a scientific method has been criticized during the last decades; only for heuristic purposes it has been accepted. On the other side especially proportional analogies have a long tradition in European thought since Plato and Aristotle, for, as Aristotle puts it, analogies allow a connection between different and unbridgeable ontological areas. As examples for such connections the analogia entis of Thomas of Aquino and the Kantian Analogies of Experience are discussed. They give us hints for a new view of analogies, which during the Middle Ages were not only of heuristic value, but were accepted as a proof: Analogies do not only produce hypotheses, moreover, they build up new views of the world, they are the background of paradigms, for they create structures by introducing similarities and proportions.     

TESTING THE SPATIAL SCALE AND THE DYNAMIC STRUCTURE IN REGIONAL MODELS (A CONTRIBUTION TO SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC SPECIFICATION ANALYSIS)*

This article addresses the problem of specification uncertainty in modeling spatial economic theories in stochastic form. It is ascertained that the traditional approach to spatial econometric modeling does not adequately deal with the type and extent of specification uncertainty commonly encountered in spatial economic analyses. Two alternative spatial econometric modeling procedures proposed in the literature are reviewed and shown to be suitable for analyzing systematically two sources of specification uncertainty, viz., the level of aggregation and the spatio-temporal dynamic structure in multiregional econometric models. The usefulness of one of these specification procedures is illustrated by the construction of a simple multiregional model for The Netherlands.