Learning by Experience: The Flint Mines of Southern England and Their Continental Origins

Since the discovery of prehistoric flint mines across Europe during the nineteenth century, mining has been recognized as a central component of the Neolithic ‘package’. In the south of Britain a small group of mines date to the early fourth millennium BC, posing a problem for traditional interpretations of the Early Neolithic, as they appear a significant period of time before other Neolithic monuments. This paper will look at evidence preserved in the mines of southern England, examining whether these sites demonstrate flint‐mining techniques already practised in Continental Europe. Central to the research is a notion that complex activities, such as mining, involve long periods of trial and error before evolving into an accomplished working methodology.     

SPATIAL EQUILIBRIUM WITH FOOTLOOSE FIRMS*

ABSTRACT. We determine the location equilibria in a duopoly model under a novel solution concept. Typically, spatial equilibrium is described as either a simultaneous price and location game, or else as a two-stage location-then-price game. We introduce a new alternative, a two-stage price-then-location game. It is well known that no (pure strategy) equilibrium usually exists under the two standard solution concepts when products are homogeneous. We show this is also true for the new concept. We then provide numerical results for a specific functional form (the logit model) which introduces product heterogeneity into the standard framework, restoring equilibrium when the degree of substitutability between products is not too small.     

Outside the Wage: Seeing Politics and Possibilities with Critical Comparisons

Emerging debates on the contemporary reconfigurations of work question previous understandings of the relationships among and between waged, unwaged, and reproductive labour, situated processes of value formation and/or enclosure, and the constitution and limits of contemporary capitalism. Taking Cindi Katz's notion of countertopographies and Gillian Hart's notion of relational comparison as inspirations, this Symposium draws attention to new and existing conceptual frames and modes of analysis to situate contemporary permutations of work within the shifting dynamics of uneven development in specific state, local, and institutional contexts. This Introduction summarises the interrelated and overlapping contributions that papers in this Symposium offer methodologically, analytically, and politically. The open-ended aspiration that emerges from these contributions is that close attention to heterogeneous formations of work outside the wage might help to multiply forms of vigilance and critical praxis necessary to resist the co-optation and enclosure of people's creative energies, and move toward realising the latent liberatory potentials that several of the contributions suggest.     

Reflections on North American Pacific Coast prehistory

The Pacific Coast of North America was occupied by many distinctive groups of coastal hunter-gatherers at the times of early contacts with Europeans. Despite significant cultural diversity, Pacific Coast peoples shared lifeways oriented toward generally similar marine, nearshore, littoral, and estuarine habitats. In this paper, we examine some major issues that guide much of the archaeology done along the Pacific Coast, then discuss some of the theoretical and methodological problems that limit the efficacy of archaeological reconstructions. Most archaeological research conducted on North America's Pacific Coast has been oriented toward the search for the origins and development of a variety of cultural patterns. A comparative review of California and Northwest Coast sequences provides interesting parallels and discrepancies in the approaches taken in studying some of the major issues in Pacific Coast prehistory.     

Preliminary geology, paleontology and paleoecology of a sangoan site at Andalee, Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia

A rich stone tool assemblage is described of the Sangoan-type from a potentially semi-primary site, in association with a well-preserved fauna, and in paleo-environmental context. The site appears to be late Middle Pleistocene and contains a high proportion of small to medium-sized mammals (e.g. rodents, monkeys) deposited in low energy conditions. The environment is suggestive of a fringing woodland or riverine forest contained in a subarid climate.     

Vicarious habitation – reinterpreting the role of peripheral living in a Nordic context

ABSTRACT

This article argues that some of the contemporary attention given to sustaining habitation of regions and communities beyond capacity and prospects of economic growth can be understood by introducing the concept of ‘vicarious habitation’. By this term is understood ‘the notion of rural habitation performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but, quite clearly, approve of what the minority is doing’. In many late modern societies, a substantial portion of the population seems willing to pay symbolically and politically to let a minority act on their behalf as caretakers of rural peripheries left behind by structural transformations. Signs of vicarious habitation occur that may vary in form and importance from country to country. Empirically, the argument is substantiated by Norwegian examples.