Film review

The Mission (Ferestadeh). Written, produced, edited, and directed by Parviz Sayyad. Co‐production of New Film Group, New York, and Asia Film Production, Munich, Distributed by New Line Cinema, New York.     

Book reviews

Theory and Practice in Medieval Persian Government. By A. K. S. Lambton. London: Variorum Reprints, 1980. 332 pp.

The Fundamental Principles and Precepts of Islamic Government. By Abolhassan Banisadr. Translated from the Persian by Mohammad R. Ghanoonparvar. Lexington, Kentucky: Mazda Publishers, 1981. xiv & 103 pp.

Islamic Calligraphy. By Yasin Hamid Safadi. Boulder: Shambhala, 1979. 142 pp.; 163 black and white plates. $8.95 paper.

Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. 216 pp.; 12 color plates, 98 black and white. $25.00 cloth.     

Urban commons are more‐than‐property

Urban commons are characterised in the literature as collectively shared property in the city shaped by a context of scarce resources, population density, and the interaction of strangers. In the broader commons literature, commons appears as a verb, a noun, and a process made by practices of commoning—albeit still with a focus on property. In this paper, I argue that an understanding of urban commons as more‐than‐property is needed to recognise how present but elusive urban commons are. I use examples from interviews and observations conducted at a Women's Library to discuss how the access, use, benefit, care, responsibility, and ownership of this urban commons bring it into being through particular practices of commoning. By questioning current ways of defining urban commons, urban scholars gain a grounded understanding of the role of property, and other practices, in maintaining an urban commons over time.     

Re-evaluating the Neolithic: The Impact and the Consolidation of Farming Practices in the Cantabrian Region (Northern Spain)

Research projects undertaken in the Cantabrian region since 1980 have produced new, high-quality information about the neolithisation process(es) in this area. It is now necessary to review this archaeological information and test the main hypotheses put forward to explain it. This paper presents an update on the archaeological evidence (sites, chronological dates, archaeozoological, archaeobotanical and technological information) for the early Neolithic in the Cantabrian region. It summarizes recent research on neolithisation in the region, and assesses the impact of this process during the early Neolithic, and its later consolidation. Although the available information is still incomplete, it is now possible to identify the focal point of the introduction of elements characteristic of the Neolithic way of life in the region. Current evidence suggests that it is in the eastern sector, where the earliest arrival of domesticates and new technologies such as pottery has been attested. The existence of continuities—such as sustained reliance on hunting and gathering and the coexistence of old and new funerary rites—suggests the persistence of native populations, which gradually participated in the neolithisation process after an ‘availability phase’.