The historical dimension of French geography

In France, the study of history behind regional geography has suffered a long decline since the late nineteenth century, but a new historical dimension is beginning to emerge. In the nineteenth century, historians showed how much regional character owed to remains from antiquity while historical geographers traced the history of exploration and discovery from ancient to modern times. Vidal de la Blache integrated historical reconstruction with social analysis in the study of regions. Vidal's followers not only characterized the distinctiveness of regional features but also demonstrated that differences in regional ways of life were more pronounced before industrialization and urbanization than later. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, historical investigations by geographers were neither sufficiently comprehensive nor sufficiently rigorous to explain spatial patterns. Historians of the Annales school obtained deeper understandings of social and economic changes and took a broader view of long-term psychological, cultural and geographical changes. Their interpretations of agrarian structures illuminated problems fundamental to the development of European civilization. In the 1970s, reacting against mechanistic analyses of spatial organization, young scholars again turned to historical geography to examine problems of social evolution. At the moment, this revival of historical interest among geographers has not attracted much attention from historians.     

On the Fractal Measurement of Geographical Boundaries

This paper has two main objectives. First, we review and evaluate four different computational methods for measuring the “fractality” of cartographic lines: these are known as the structured walk, the equipaced polygon, the hybrid walk, and the cell count methods. Second, because previous research has restricted the focus of fractal measurement exercises to isolated physical entities, the subject of our empirical study concerns the urban area of Swindon, United Kingdom, that comprises a mosaic of contiguous land-use parcels. In technical terms, the results pinpoint some of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the four methods, whilst our substantive conclusion is that fractal dimension appears to be a function of both scale and land-use type in our geographical study.     

ESR dating of the Neanderthal site, Kebara Cave, Israel

In 1985 a Neanderthal skeleton was found in the cave of Kebara in southern Mt. Carmel. Electron spin resonance (ESR) dates have been obtained on tooth enamel of gazelles found in layer X, just overlying the layer in which the skeleton was found. Assuming early uptake of uranium by the teeth, they yield an age of 60 ± 6 ka; assuming gradual, linear uptake of uranium yields an age of 64 ± 6 ka. Both age estimates are consistent with a previous estimate for the skeleton, based on TL dating of burnt flint, of 60 ± 4 ka.     

THE PROVENANCE OF DONKEY MILLS FROM ROMAN BRITAIN

Pompeiian-style (hourglass) grain mills are common at many Roman sites within the circum-Mediterranean countries. Three examples are known from Corfe Mullen, London and Hamworthy in southern Britain. Petrographic examination, chemical and microprobe analyses indicate that the Corfe Mullen millstone and the London donkey mill were imported from central France into southern Britain. The Hamworthy mill should be designated a ‘flat donkey mill’, and represents a recent (post-Roman) import from a volcanic source in Sardinia. There is no evidence of importation of Roman donkey mills from Germany or for transportation of such mills (or stylistic derivatives) north of London.     

INTERRELATIONAL INCOME-DISTRIBUTION MULTIPLIERS FOR THE WEST VIRGINIA ECONOMY*

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a set of Miyazawa interrelational multipliers, which measure how direct changes in the income of each income bracket result in indirect and induced income changes in all other brackets. The multipliers have been calculated for a 9-by-9 pairing of income brackets for West Virginia in 1982. Their estimation is based on a combination of survey and nonsurvey data in three forms: a 1982 West Virginia input-output table, a multisector income-distribution matrix, and an income disaggregated consumption matrix. The paper illustrates the usefulness of the multipliers by showing how they provide insight into the viability of trickle-down theory and the incidence of regional development policy.