Bison butchery at Cooper,a Folsom site on the Southern Plains

Cooper, a Folsom arroyo-trap bison kill site in northwest Oklahoma is composed of three large-scale kill episodes. The bison bones have been examined for butchering evidence and exploring the butchering pattern. Damage categories to cortical bone are indentation, cut mark, helical fracture, and impact blow. The 99 elements damaged are from 36 carcasses across all three kills, and damage morphology indicates both lithic and bone expediency tools were used in the butchering. Animals are being butchered in an upright position on their stomachs, with transverse and abdominal muscles the focal point. Experimental butchering of a bison replicates the reconstructed sequence and underscores a gourmet butchering style for the Cooper kills.     

Fairy Beliefs and other Folklore Notes from County Leitrim

Recent writing on the medieval origins of the concept of the witches' sabbath have emphasized the importance of beliefs in nocturnal processions or cavalcades of spirits, known in modern times by the umbrella term of the ‘Wild Hunt’. This article suggests that the modern notion of the Hunt was created by Jacob Grimm, who conflated different medieval traditions with modern folklore. It further argues that a different approach to the study of medieval spirit processions, which confines itself to medieval and early modern sources and distinguishes between the types of procession described in them, results in different conclusions, with regard both to the character of the Hunt and to its relationship with the sabbath.     

Serfs and peasants: A West African example?

William Derman (with the assistance of Louise Derman). Serfs, Peasants, and Socialists: A Former Serf Village in the Republic of Guinea. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973. x + 282 pp. Appendixes, glossary, bibliography, and index. $12.00     

Reviews

Studies in Folk-Song-and Popular Poetry. By Alfred M. Williams, with a Prefatory Note by Edward Clodd. 8vo; pp. vi., 329. Elliot Stock, 1895.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Translated by C. H. S. Davies. Putnam Sons, New York. By Joseph Jacobs.

Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri. First Series, IVth to XIIth Dynasty Edited Flinders Petrie, Hon. D.C.L. Illustrated by Tristram Ellis. London, Methuen &; Co. 1895.

Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World collected from oral tradition in South-West Munster by Jeremiah Curtin. David Nutt, 1895.     

Fearing Food: The Influence of Risk Perceptions on Public Preferences for Uniform and Centralized Risk Regulation

Public opinion features prominently in policy research because it sets bounds on the definition of policy problems and acceptable policy solutions. We contend that public opinion is also important for setting bounds on the level of government at which policy hazards are regulated by shaping preferences for uniformity of regulation and, relatedly, preferences for centralization. We offer a theoretical argument for why risk creates pressures for uniform standards and examine the extent to which preferences for uniformity and centralization are the product of fairly stable individual-level predispositions (e.g. partisanship and ideology) versus more fluid attitudes like perceptions of risk, which vary in response to crises, new information, and issue framing. We test our argument using survey data in the policy domain of food safety and find that individuals who anticipate greater risk from food-borne illness prefer more uniform food safety regulation, which translates into preferences for federal-level policymaking. Our results imply that contextual circumstances and strategic communications that influence risk perceptions can create not only generalized public demand for more regulatory policy but specific demand for uniform, centralized regulation.