Variations in the Spatial Pattern of Settlement Locations: An Analysis Based on Proportional Hazards Models

Models based on hazard functions are used to analyze spatial trends in the distance intervals separating point locations. The proportional hazards model, which has been widely applied to analyze intervals of time, is used to investigate variation in the spacing of settlements in Nebraska. This model allows spatial trends in the intervals between settlements to be investigated under very general conditions regarding the interdependence of settlement locations and permits the coordinate locations of the intervals to be treated as spatially varying covariates. An empirical analysis reveals an East-West trend in the spacing of settlements.     

Disaggregate Migration Behavior and the Volume of Interregional Migration

Nested multinomial logit models are used to investigate migration behavior during the 1971–74 period for a large sample of the population of Ecuador. The nested form of the model makes it possible to test hypotheses about the importance of destination characteristics in conditioning the odds for out-migration. Our empirical results indicate that the odds for migration from each origin are conditioned by the expected utilities of the available set of destinations, as well as characteristics of the origins and the personal characteristics of potential migrants. The association between destination characteristics and the frequency of out-migration allows the total volumes of migration to be adjusted to interregional differences in place-specific utilities.     

With This Body I Thee Worship: Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity

Why do ancient writers tell us that sacred prostitutes massed on the citadel of ancient Corinth? What are we to make of Herodotus’ famous account of the ancient customs of Babylon? Beard and Henderson examine the formation of the discourse of sacred, or cultic, prostitution both in classical texts and modern scholarship. They take a sceptical position on the existence, in Greece and the Near East, of institutions traditionally envisaged as ‘sacred prostitution’ and explore the uses which have been, and are still, found for such myth-making with the bodies of women, whether in the form of a ‘marriage-market’ or of various kinds of ‘sacred prostitution’.