RADIOCARBON DATES FOR BEESWAX FIGURES IN THE PREHISTORIC ROCK ART OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA

Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon ages have been taken for a test suite of small samples of material removed from some of the ‘beeswax’art figures found in rock shelters in northern Australia. The results indicate that we can reliably date this unique form of rock art with no noticeable damage. We had not expected to find figures of any great antiquity, and so we were surprised to find that the ages obtained spanned the time period from the recent past to about 4000 BP.     

旅游客源预测的神经网络方法

对旅游业来说,客源是赖以存在和发展的关键因素。根据游客人数的多少,旅游接待地可相应确定旅游接待服务设施规模,因此对游客数量进行预测是很重要而且是十分必要的。本文提出了一种基于人工神经网络的旅游客源预测方法,用以对旅游客源进行预测。文中首先介绍了神经网络的基本原理,以及BP算法的运算过程。在此基础上,针对入境旅游人数预测的特定问题构造了一个神经网络模型,对近些年入境旅游人数进行了较为准确的预测,并将其结果与传统方法进行了比较。结果表明:该方法能有效地对旅游客源进行预测,结果优于传统方法,具有很高的准确性和鲁棒性。     

The Trade Goes,and the Flag Follows? British State Intervention and Natural Resource Extraction in Colombia, 1989–2010

During the 1960s, agents of the Colombian state began carrying out a counterinsurgency campaign against elements of the domestic population considered ‘subversive’. Subversion, according to US counterinsurgency manuals, largely translated to involvement in social organisation. As a result, trade unionists, political activists and human rights defenders in Colombia became aggressively targeted. While violence in Colombia's past has been widely documented, recent British involvement has not. The official justification for British military and police assistance, beginning in 1989, was within the context of the drug war. By drawing on a wide range of sources including newly declassified documents from the UK National Archives in Kew, this article posits that British counter-narcotics assistance was contentious in nature and ineffective in outcome. Meanwhile, this assistance lent structural and active support to the counterinsurgency conflict. In this light, the protection of British capital interest in Colombia – specifically that of British Petroleum – is analysed as a persuasive underlying motive for British military and police assistance. Finally, British Petroleum's private security strategy in Colombia is investigated as a case study in the utilisation of counterinsurgency, with the result of the near-total elimination of social organisation within its areas of operations.     

The Cutting Edge of Accumulation: Neoliberal Risk Mitigation,the Baku‐Tbilisi‐Ceyhan Pipeline and its Impact

Abstract: Adopting a historical materialist position, this article looks at new methods deployed to expand processes of accumulation and the impact that this has at different scales. Focusing upon the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline (traversing Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey), the article pays particular attention to the technocratic tools of “social neoliberalism” and corporate social responsibility, which variously incorporate environmental and social impact assessments, community investment programmes and voluntary codes of conduct. While such approaches seek to relegitimise the efforts of capital and its assistants and mitigate their risks, the assessment below details how these approaches actually assist in facilitating an increase in risk for many people. The article begins by looking at the accumulation drive pushing BTC and then provides an account of how new approaches to pipeline governance have both emerged and been incorporated into the project. The article then details what it is that these approaches have actually facilitated at four scales—the local, the national, the regional and the supra‐regional.     

BP神经网络在我国入境旅游人数预测中的应用

入境旅游人数的预测结果对于旅游管理部门和政府部门有着重要的参考意义,寻求科学合理的预测模型是保障预测结果准确可靠的关键。针对这一问题,作者利用人工神经网络理论建立了BP（Back．Propagation）网络预测模型,并与logistic模型、指数平滑模型、自回归模型的预测结果进行比较,结果表明应用BP神经网络对入境旅游人数进行预测精度更高、效果更好。     

Human activity and its impact on the landscape at the Xishanping site in the western Loess Plateau during 4800–4300 cal yr BP based on the fossil charcoal record

The taxonomic identification of fossil charcoal can be a useful archaeobotanical tool, as it can reveal information about prehistoric humans' use of plant resources and other factors. In this study, we quantify the fossil charcoal in a cultural sequence from Xishanping in the western Loess Plateau of China representing 4800–4300 cal yr BP to consider aspects of humans' impact on this landscape. The fossil charcoal assemblages reveal that the relative abundances of Picea, Betula, Acer, Ulmus and Quercus decreased markedly after 4600 cal yr BP. This suggests a marked decline in the mixed coniferous-broadleaved forest after this time. Concurrently, an increasing abundance of Bambusoideae charcoal has been suggested to reflect the expansion of the bamboo forest. The marked changes in the vegetation after 4600 cal yr BP were not obviously influenced by climate; they may be a better reflection of the results of human activity. Furthermore, other genera that provide important resources to humans also increased after 4600 cal yr BP, including Castanea, Cerasus, Padus and Diospyros. It is nearly certain that nuts and berries were an important food resource and that fruit trees were managed by prehistoric humans in the late Neolithic. This work suggests that the scale of prehistoric human impact on the western Loess Plateau landscape during the late Neolithic was much greater than was previously believed.     

Analysis of suspected human coprolites from Terra Amata, Nice, France

Dietary analyses were conducted on 400,000 yr old specimens recovered during the excavation of the Terra Amata Palaeolithic site in Nice, France and initially identified as coprolites. The results of our analyses demonstrate that the identification of these specimens as coprolites is difficult to confirm due to the age of the samples. Consequently, they provide no new data pertaining to the suspected dietary habits of prehistoric man.