LASER ARGON DATING AND GEOLOGICAL PROVENANCING OF A STONE AXE FROM THE STONEHENGE ENVIRONS*

The recently-developed laser microprobe ⁴⁰argon-³⁹ argon technique has been used to give a geological date for a rhyolitic tuff stone axe fragment from the Stonehenge environs. The method requires only milligramme-sized samples and gives dates of sufficient accuracy to aid in provenancing artefacts to sources, as well as information on the heating history of samples. The axe sample is of Lower Carboniferous date (341 ± 5 Ma) and this limits possible sources to outcrops within the Scottish Midland Valley and small altered exposures in Dartmoor. X-ray fluorescence analysis of the axe suggests the Scottish Midland Valley as the more likely source. The laser argon analysis also shows that the implement had not been heated in antiquity. Laser argon-argon dating can, therefore, be a useful tool in artefact study.     

Tourism and Foreign Investment in Australia: Trends,Prospects and Policy Implications

Processes of internationalisation and structural economic change have had profound impacts on the pattern of regional economic activity in Australia. The 1980s was a decade of rapid growth in foreign investment, reoriented to the property and services sector, including tourism. It was also a boom time for international tourism, which emerged as the nation's leading export industry. In addition to the national gateway city of Sydney, the rapidly growing coastal cities of Gold Coast and Cairns in Queensland emerged as major international tourism destinations underpinned by significant levels of foreign investment, particularly from Japan. The 1980s boom years for tourism and foreign investment are revised and raises policy implications raised for the longer-term development of tourism and the role of foreign investment.     

BEYOND INTERMARRIAGE: THE ROLE OF THE INDIGENOUS ITALIC POPULATION AT PITHEKOUSSAI

Debate has long raged over the nature and extent of contact and cooperation between the Greeks and the Levantines at the site of Pithekoussai on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. The native Italic population, however, has been largely overlooked or viewed as a marginal or fringe element. Italic fibula types, which are found extensively in the cemetery, have been traditionally interpreted as evidence for the intermarriage of Italic females into the colonial settlement. This concept has limited our understanding of the role or impact of the Italic population at the site, effectively obscuring any more nuanced or balanced interpretations of their activity. A detailed analysis of several tombs from Pithekoussai, which contained iron tools or instruments, indicates that the Italic population was more actively involved in the creation of material culture at the site than has previously been supposed. Parallels for the practice are found widely on the Italic mainland and have often been associated with elite customs or funerary rituals. The presence of such practices at the site of Pithekoussai indicates the active impact of the native Italic population and the dynamic effect that diverse members of the community had on the creation and promulgation of a uniquely Pithekoussan identity.