Static penetration assessment of stone weapon tip geometry metrics and comparison of static and dynamic penetration depths

Many factors governed the penetration efficacy of prehistoric projectile weaponry. Archaeologists broadly focus their efforts on understanding the effect of stone weapon tips because these specimens are often the only part of the weapon system that survives in the archaeological record. The tip cross-sectional area (TCSA) and perimeter (TCSP) of stone weapon tips have been shown to correlate with target penetration depth. Here, using results from both static and dynamic penetration testing, we compare TCSA and TCSP against other tip geometry metrics: lateral surface area (LSA) and volume (V). Our analyses broadly show that using a single-point geometry metric evaluated at multiple locations along the length of the point, or using multiple geometry metrics evaluated at a single location, better predicts required energy than using a single-point geometry metric evaluated at a single location. Our results also show that in the case where a single geometry metric evaluated at multiple locations is used LSA provided the most robust prediction models. Finally, our results show that for the case where all geometry metrics evaluated at a single location are used the location that provides the most robust prediction model is dependent on how far the point penetrated the target.     

Increasing Role of Services in Competitive Power and Innovativeness of Firms and Industrial Clusters

The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of different types of global services for industrial firms and clusters in terms of their economic competitiveness and innovative performance. The theoretical debates argue that globalization, deregulation and the new production organization make it necessary to use global services that are supplied easily with the help of new telecommunication technologies. The existing empirical studies provide some supporting evidence. However, they also indicate that global service firms can be attained by only smaller numbers of industrial firms and clusters. Still, in-house services besides temporal and informal mechanisms are important to meet the needs of the specialized services, even for the firms that try to become a part of the global production system. The paper focuses on three main questions: “What types of global services are becoming crucial for manufacturing firms and what type of services are still local and national? Is there a significant difference between the characteristics of firms that use the same type of services? To what extent is having access to global services important for the innovativeness of industrial firms and clusters? This paper looks for the answers to these questions based on existing case studies as well as this study of three industrial clusters in Turkey. The findings indicate that there is not a perfect match between theory and empirical evidence and there is a need for more refined theoretical discourses on industry–service relations.     

Hub Location Problem with Allowed Routing between Nonhub Nodes

In this study, we relax one of the general assumptions in the hub location literature by allowing routed flows between nonhub nodes. In hub networks, different flows are consolidated and routed via collection, interhub, and distribution arcs. Due to consolidation, some flows travel long paths despite closeness of their origin and destination. In this study, we allow direct flows by penalizing by a scalar factor of original cost of transshipment between these arcs. We present mathematical models for median, center, and set covering versions of the problem for single‐ and multi‐allocation cases. We test the models with the CAB and TR data sets. We discuss the properties of established direct connections for different models by using another mathematical model where the number of direct flows is bounded and interpret the effect of changes in problem parameters.     

Architectural Discourse and Social Transformation During the Early Neolithic of Southeast Anatolia

Within the Near Eastern research canon, the transition to more sedentary lifestyles during the Neolithic is often framed as an economic necessity, linked to plant and animal domestication, climatic change and population stress. In such a framework, an increasingly complex social structure, arising in response to the increasingly complex relations of agricultural production, is presumed. For example, some researchers would argue that feasting-based rituals became an arena of social control and an increasingly complex society began to emerge around ritual leadership and monumental ritual architecture. Yet the research projects conducted at many Near Eastern sites indicate neither that sedentism can be directly linked to the requirements of agriculture, nor that the presence of monumental architecture can be successfully associated with social control based on unequal redistribution of agricultural surplus. While ritual activity appears to be central during the Neolithic, two important questions remain to be explored: (1) what exactly did the rituals control, given that the societies under consideration are commonly perceived to have an ‘egalitarian’ ethos?; and (2) what happened to the ritual control in the second half of the PPNB, when ritual architecture completely disappears from the archaeological record at a time of increased reliance on agriculture? Through a critical review of the use of terms like ‘sedentism’, ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘ritual’, I argue that the architecture of the Early Neolithic is related to the management of social relationships through symbolic place-making activities. Based on a comparative review of burial activity, building continuity and the use of symbolic imagery, I examine the symbolic construction of some of the earliest examples of long-term occupational focus in southeast Anatolia, such as Hallan Çemi, Demirköy, Körtik Tepe, Hasankeyf Höyük, Gusir Höyük, Göbekli Tepe, Çayönü and Neval? Çori, in an attempt to understand the social factors behind the emergence and demise of Early Neolithic monumental architecture. The evidence from the above-mentioned sites suggests that Early Neolithic place-making reflects community formation at a variety of scales, at the center of which lay the continuous reinvention of kinship concepts. While some sites, with concentrations of burials, may have become the locus for construction of more intimate local place-based networks, other sites, such as Göbekli Tepe, may have integrated the extended networks. Arguably, the formation of large scale networks during the PPNA posed a threat to local groups. Thus, a focus on local group formation and close control of social exchanges may have begun during the early PPNB, and the places such as Göbekli Tepe may have fallen out of use during this process. In the context of the symbolism and figurine evidence, I further argue that sex and gender may have become important issues, both in the formation of place-communities during the late PPNA—early PPNB, and in the emergence of autonomous households during the later PPNB.     

The Role of Government Policies and Strategies Behind the Shrinking Urban Core in an Expanding City Region: The Case of Izmir

Over the last few decades, the term urban shrinkage has come to be accepted as a valid concept in international academic circles, and has gradually gained importance, with its causes the subject of well-documented discussion. While previous discussions of urban shrinkage have directed attention to cities shrinking as a whole, recent research started to recognize the case of shrinkage in growing cities and regions. As such, recent discussions of urban shrinkage indicate that patterns of shrinkage vary considerably from city to city, and from sub-region to sub-region, with the importance of local dynamics in responding to changing economic pressures given much consideration. Recent studies have tended to disregard the role of government policies and strategies put in place to facilitate the adaptation of the urban economies to the new conditions. Taking Izmir as an example, being a fast-growing metropolitan region in Turkey, this paper presents evidence of government policies and strategies aimed at enhancing the development of peripheral areas that have led to shrinkage of the metropolitan core. This paper focuses on this experience and discusses its implications.     

Determining suitable investment areas using multi‐variable statistical methods: evidence from the Black Sea region in Turkey

Investment is an important decision for economic development, balanced growth and public welfare. There are many factors influencing investment. Thus, investment must be evaluated with multidimensional methods. Using taxonomy and principal component analysis this study attempts to determine appropriate investment areas in planned provinces in the Black Sea Region. Analyses were based on a number of demographic, economic, health, education, employment and cultural indicators. Results indicated that provinces were grouped into four clusters. Gümü?hane and Bayburt were determined to have the highest priority for investment in the manufacturing industry.     

Not Only Helpless but also Hopeless: Changing Dynamics of Urban Poverty in Turkey,the Case of Sultanbeyli,Istanbul

This paper is an attempt to understand the changing characteristics of urban poverty in Turkey since 1980. First, it analyses how the urban poor in Turkey had adopted aggressive survival strategies by strengthening their solidarity networks on religious, ethnic and cultural bases until the 2000s. Then it sheds light on how those networks have dissolved later on thanks to a set of internal and external factors and concludes that Turkey now faces deepening poverty levels and engendering new forms and dynamics of poverty. This paper is based on the Sultanbeyli district of Istanbul, a district almost entirely composed of unauthorized houses whose population grew at an unprecedented rate after 1980; and it is a perfect case for the study of issues relating to migration, urbanization and poverty in Turkish cities.     

Remodeled human skulls in Köşk Höyük (Neolithic age,Anatolia): a new appraisal in view of recent discoveries

Between 1985 and 2007 overall nineteen human skulls dating to the Late Neolithic period were recovered at Kö?k Höyük, which lies within the borders of Bor, a district of the Ni?de Province in Central Anatolia. One of these skulls belongs to a child and the remainder to adult males and females. The plastered skulls may have been laid on or wrapped in mats and exposed either singly or in groups on a plaster surface inside the house. Among thirteen of these skulls the mouths, noses, eyes and ears were depicted with clay and painted with red ochre, while the remaining six were untreated. Two headless skeletons were also found in situ underneath the floor inside the house. One of these skeletons belongs to a child aged approximately 15–16 years old and the other belongs to an adult female. The modeled human skulls were encountered in the second and third cultural levels of the Late Neolithic period indicating that this characteristic mortuary practice lasted for quite a long time and likely disappeared by the Chalcolithic at Kö?k Höyük.     

Kuhn's Geometric Index of Unifacial Stone Tool Reduction (GIUR): does it measure missing flake mass?

Kuhn's GIUR is a set of measurements taken on a resharpened stone flake's edge. Its purpose is to estimate the amount of stone removed before the exhausted tool was abandoned. An experimental test of Kuhn's Index led Hiscock and Clarkson to suggest that it is an excellent estimator of flake mass loss. Our own tests, using different experimental procedures, reached much less optimistic conclusions. Here, we apply their own measurement procedures, and successfully duplicate their results. It does not follow, however, that our now-consistently high correlations have a causal connection. As GIUR values increase, they are less able to estimate the actual loss of flake mass. It appears, therefore, that incremental loss of flake mass need not be the sole driver of the GIUR value. If the correlation is an inevitable byproduct of the experiment's design, as it now appears, then analyses based on this high correlation will be misleading. The GIUR remains, however, and excellent gauge of flake edge exhaustion.     

An empirical test of the relative frequency of bipolar reduction in Beds VI,V, and III at Mumba Rockshelter,Tanzania: implications for the East African Middle to Late Stone Age transition

Mumba Rockshelter, Tanzania, is the only East African site spanning a continuous record of more than 100,000 years, including the Middle Stone Age (MSA) to Late Stone Age (LSA) Transition. Rather than examine the presence or absence of traditional markers of “behavioral modernity”, we have endeavored here to respond to the calls of Shea (2011) and Basell (2008) by examining the proportional similarity of a trait present throughout the MSA–LSA sequence at Mumba Rockshelter: the bipolar technique of lithic reduction. We use a quantified, experimentally derived proxy to track the relative amount of bipolar percussion among Mumba's Beds VI, V, and III, namely, waste shatter. Our examination of Mehlman's previously unanalyzed collections from Mumba demonstrates that in terms of bipolar production Bed V is statistically indistinguishable from the Late Stone Age (LSA) Bed III, but significantly different from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) Bed VI. Given that Bed V dates to 56.9 ± 4.8 − 49.1 ± 4.3 ka cal BP, this result is consistent with other evidence that the origins of the LSA in East Africa began well before 40 kya, and that Mumba Bed V represents one of the earliest manifestations of the LSA in East Africa. We conclude with a discussion of factors that may have influenced the increased dependence of bipolar production at the site.