Chronostratigraphy of an Eroding Complex Atlantic Round House,Baile Sear,Scotland

A high-resolution chronostratigraphy has been established for an eroding Atlantic round house at Sloc Sàbhaidh (North Uist, Scotland), combining detailed OSL profiling and dating of sediments encompassing the main bracketing events associated with the monument, radiocarbon AMS dates on bone recovered from excavated features and fills within it, and TL dates on pottery and burnt clay. Concordant OSL and radiocarbon evidence place construction of the wheelhouse in the first to second centuries AD, contemporary with dates from the primary occupation. Beneath the wheelhouse, clay deposits containing burnt material, attest to cultural activity in vicinity to the monument in the preceding second to first centuries BC. At a later date, the southern wall collapsed, was rebuilt, and the interior spaces to the monument re-structured. The chronology for the later horizons identified from the sediment luminescence dates extends to the second half of the first millennium AD, which goes beyond the range of the radiocarbon dates obtained. The data from ceramics encompass both periods. The juxtaposition of the dating evidence is discussed relative to short and longer chronologies for this Iron Age monument. Corollaries of this research are the implications that based on the long chronology, some of the ecofacts (bone) appear to be residual, and that the temporal duration of Hebridean Coarse Ware may extend into the second half of the first millennium AD.     

Scoping and conceptualising retailer internationalisation

The impacts and activities of international retailers have beenlargely ignored in the globalisation discourse. A possible reasonfor this is the absence, in international retailing, of conceptand theory that does not hang on the coat-tails of internationalproduction. The paper attempts to consider international retailingin its own right. Three linked questions are explored. Has theinternationalisation process of the large retailers resultedin an increase in the global concentration of sales? In whatways does the process of retailer internationalisation differfrom the internationalisation of production? What does the committedinternational retailer transfer to the host country during theinternationalisation process?     

Book reviews

THE PHILIPPINES

FILOMENO AGUILAR. Clash of Spirits—the History of Power and Sugar Planter Hegemony on a Visayan Island. Ateneo de Manila University Press and University of Hawaii Press, 1998.

CHINA

BENJAMIN VANG. Deng: a Political Biography. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. 360 pp. Bibliography, index. US$59.95, hardcover; US$21.95, paper.

CHING KWAN LEE. Gender and the South China Miracle. Two Worlds of Factory Women. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. xiii, 210 pp. Bibliography, index. £12.95, paper.

LINDA BENSON and INGVAR SVANBERG. China's Last Nomads: the History and Culture of China's Kazaks . New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. 270 pp. Index, photographs, maps, charts, bibliography. US$63.95, hardcover; US$ 24.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

TESSA MORRIS‐SUZUKI. Re‐inventing Japan: time, Space, Nation. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. US$21.95, paper.

DAVID MYERS and KOTAKU ISHIDO (eds). Japan at the Crossroads. Tokyo: Seibundo, 1998. xv, 253 pp. Bibliography. ¥3000, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

LINDA CONNOR, PATSY ASCH and TIMOTHY ASCH.

Films: A Balinese Trance Séance (30 mins). Jero on Jero (16 mins). The Medium is the Masseuse (31 mins). Jero Tapakan (26 mins). Produced and distributed by the Ethnographic Film Unit, Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, ANU, Canberra. 16mm (VHS cassette). Colour. English subtitles. A$80.00.

CARL A. TROCKI (ed). Gangsters, Democracy, and the State in Southeast Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1998. 94 pp. No price given, paper.     

Measuring the effectiveness of Parks Canada's environmental management system: a case study of Riding Mountain National Park

In 1996, the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization released its ISO 14001 guidelines for environmental management systems (EMSs). By implementing an EMS, an organization is better situated to manage the environmental effects of its operations which, in turn, should lead to better environmental performance. However, research on EMS performance has only recently begun to emerge, and the relation between EMSs and genuine improvement in environmental performance has not been clearly established, particularly for organizations such as Parks Canada, whose principal mandate is to protect the natural environment. While EMSs are gaining recognition amongst parks as a systematic approach for dealing with the environmental aspects of park operations, there has been very little investigation as to the effectiveness of EMSs in improving the environmental performance of park operations. This paper presents the results of a case study of the effectiveness of Riding Mountain National Park's (RMNP's) EMS and its contribution to environmental improvement. The results confirm EMS experience elsewhere in that RMNP's EMS has been only moderately successful at best and that there exists no clear link between the EMS and the environmental improvement of park operations.     

The Marriage of Marx and Darwin?

Recent attempts to develop scientific research strategies for cultural evolution have mostly drawn upon evolutionary biology, but within anthropology there is also an influential tradition of non-biological evolutionary thought whose basic principle is adaptation to the environment. This article is mainly concerned with the "cultural materialist" school of Marvin Harris, but also treats the recent attempt of Jared Diamond to create a more radical model of evolutionary ecology. I argue that the ecological tradition does not represent a real alternative to neo-Darwinism and is in fact a pseudo-Darwinist theory. I also suggest that the bias in favor of materialistic explanation in cultural evolution may not be justified.