Persistence of innovative activities in times of crisis: the case of the Basque Country

By drawing on a large sample of Spanish manufacturing and service sector firms, the changes in firms’ innovation expenditures that have taken place since the onset of the 2008 economic crisis are analysed, as is the relationship between such changes and the location of the company. Special focus is placed on firms in the Basque Country. Compared to other Spanish regions, the Basque Country differs in terms of its fiscal status, its earlier experience of crises, its innovation performance and its greater focus on innovation-related policies. Our results show that the impact of the crisis on firms’ innovation expenditures in the Basque Country has indeed differed from that in comparable Spanish regions. Even after controlling for sectoral differences and for detailed characteristics at the firm level, firms with R&D employment in the Basque Country showed a significantly lower probability of abandoning innovation activities and even a somewhat higher probability of increasing their innovation efforts. This regional effect is especially significant for small and medium-sized enterprises.     

Time, Space, and Image Making: Rock Art from the Dhar Tichitt (Mauritania)

Prehistoric images are particularly versatile and difficult to grasp. In a few cases of historical continuity, local cultural glosses provide researchers with a rich corpus of data and help in the interpretation of the imagery. Such approaches contribute to the interpretation of the material in a frozen time perspective. Their impact on the development of archaeological methodologies enabling researchers to deal with strictly prehistoric image making traditions without any known descendant communities remains to be felt. This paper is an attempt to develop a subtle and robust archaeological methodology for the study of prehistoric images. The suggested approaches are replicable, and conclusions are falsifiable.Les images préhistoriques sont particulièrement versatiles, et leur sens difficile à cerner en raison de leur polysémie. Dans une poignée de cas, là ou il y a continuité historique, les chercheurs ont reussi à constituer une riche documentation sur les pratiques culturelles liées à l'utilisation des images. Ils/elles parviennent ainsi à des niveaux d'interpretation très detaillée, dans une conception paradoxalement réifiée des sociétés en question, conservant des pratiques culturelles inchangées pendant des millénaires. L'impact de telles approches sur l'élaboration de bonnes méthodes archéologique est négligeable. Dans la plupart des cas, les images et les vestiges matériels sont le uniques témoins des sociétés préhistoriques étudiées. Cet article s'efforce de developper des méthodes, à la fois subtiles et robustes, permettant une analyse systématique des images préhistoriques. Les méthodes proposées sont réplicables, et les conclusions refutables.     

The Oudierin Drainage Archaeological Project: New Perspectives on the Saloum Delta Shell Middens (Senegal)

African Archaeological Review - Archaeological research on the Saloum Delta (Senegal) shell middens has had relative highs and lows since the first half of the twentieth century, but they are one...     

The cemetery of Houlouf in northern Cameroon (AD 1500–1600): fragments of a past social system

The research presented in this paper aims to study the transfer of patterns of social behaviours into mortuary contexts. It is an attempt to bring to light nested levels and conflicting aspects of human social actions during the relatively short time represented in the Houlouf archaeological record. Different parameters of mortuary evidence are considered at different levels of structuration using competing or alternative models to make sense of the diversity, variability and patterns observed. The studied cemetery appears to have emerged during a period of tension between competing peer-polities and to have been used for the inhumation of a small elite fragment of the whole society. This elite was composed of four groups interpreted as descent groups. Individuals belonging to this elite were divided into three main ranked occupational categories, and they were probably buried by a craft specialist; a blacksmith acting as undertaker and grave-digger.

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Résumé Les recherches présentées dans cet article visent à analyser la façon dont certains aspects des comportements humains sont transférés dans les contextes mortuaires. Il s'agit de mettre en lumière l'imbrication des multiples niveaux du système social, ses aspects conflictuels qui se manifestent dans le traitement et l'enterrement des morts pendant une séquence temporelle relativement courte de l'occupation de Houlouf. Different paramètres archéologiques du programme mortuaire sont étudiés et évalués à différent niveaux d'argumentation afin de comprendre et d'expliquer le sens de la diversité, de la variabilité et des configurations des vestiges observées dans le cimetière. Il apparaît ainsi que le cimetière étudié a été mis en place au cours d'une période particulièrement marquée par des tensions entre polities en compétition dans la plaine tchadienne. Ce cimetière était réservé à l'enterrement d'une fraction de la population, l'élite. Cette élite se composait de quatre groupes considérés comme groupes de descendance dont les membres étaient répartis en trois principales catégories de rôles. Le rituel funéraire et l'inhumation étaient vraisemblament exécutés par un forgeron-fossoyeur.

     

Alisa LaGamma (Ed.): Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara

African Archaeological Review -     

Comparing Outsourcing Patterns in Domestic and FDI Manufacturing Plants: Empirical Evidence from Spain

To fully understand the local linkages of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) plants, we argue it would be useful to analyze the outsourcing patterns of such plants in comparison to domestic plants. Consequently, we examined 1031 industrial plants, both domestic and foreign, located in Spain. The FDI plants show patterns similar to those of domestic plants with regard to the level of outsourcing, the incidence of outsourced production on the companies’ total sales and the economic content of outsourcing relationships. Further, our results show that levels of embeddedness in the local and regional economy of FDI plants are not significantly different from domestic plants. However, FDI plants are highly concentrated spatially in the largest industrial agglomerations. For such plants, Barcelona not only seems a preferred site for location but also for contracting manufacturing tasks.     

The Spatial Patterns of Networks,Hierarchies and Subsidiaries

This article reviews evidence and arguments linking the networking behaviour of firms with geographic distance, before examining the spatial relationships of electronics firms in the three major electronics centres in Spain. The focus is on the spatial pattern and extent of different types of inter-firm relations. Based on the analysis of 184 surveyed establishments, displaying different ownership and organization characteristics, the results show that while regional linkages are important, significant extra-regional linkages are also maintained by firms in regional clusters. The spatial extent of linkages depends on the mode of relations; arm's length, network and hierarchy relations show different spatial patterns, as do different types of cooperation. The importance of extra-regional linkages also varies with firm- and plant-specific characteristics. Extra-regional linkages are more common among larger and more R&D-intensive firms, firms with greater presence in the rest of the country and firms with more experience of cooperation and more stable relationships.     

Subsistence patterns of the Dhar Tichitt Neolithic,Mauritania

This paper examines the dynamics of the Neolithic occupation of the Dhar Tichitt region, southeastern Mauritania. On the basis of certain ecological constants, the growth cycle of plants, animal behaviour and patterns of settlement, the Dhar Tichitt Neolithic system appears to have been scheduled according to the seasonal availability of the most critical resource: water.

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Résumé Dans cet article, nous nous attelons à l'analyse de la dynamique de l'occupation néolithique de la région du Dhar Tichitt, située en Mauritanie sud-orientale. Cette analyse est effectuée à partir de certaines constantes du milieu écologique, du cycle de croissance des plantes exploitées, du comportement des animaux chassés et élevés et enfin de la structure de l'implantation de sites. Sous ces differents éclairages, le système néolithique du Dhar Tichitt paraît s'être structuré par rapport à la disponibilité saisonnière de l'eau, qui était alors la ressource critique.

     

Early West African Metallurgies: New Data and Old Orthodoxy

The debate on West African metallurgies cannot be properly understood without reference to the colonial template that featured Africa as the receiving partner in all crucial social, economic, and technological development. The interesting debate that took place in West Africa during the Colonial Period was more meta-theoretical than factual. These conflicting glosses, despite their lack of empirical foundations, have constrained the nature of archaeological research and oversimplified the dynamics of the many facets of technological innovation. The relative boom in archaeological research that took place from the 1960s onwards resulted in an exponential growth of factual information. Challenging evidence has emerged from Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, Togo, and Senegal. The picture that emerges from this survey calls for more sophisticated explanations for the origins of West African metallurgies away from the single non-African source hypothesis.