Ban Chiang and Northeast Thailand; the palaeoenvironment and economy

Beginning with a detailed presentation of the faunal spectra from Ban Chiang and related sites in Northeast Thailand, this essay reconstructs the palaeoenvironment during the period 3500 BC to the end of the prehistoric period. The evidence from the freshwater molluscs found in prehistoric layers suggests that the first occupants of Ban Chiang encountered a habitat with permanent lakes and clear, slow moving streams. Since the lakes contracted in the dry season, there were ideal conditions for practising wet swidden agriculture. From c. 1600 BC, the presence of water buffalo and associated changes in the faunal spectrum suggests the inception of wet rice cultivation. Such agricultural intensification, it is held, follows population pressure and accounts for subsequent settlement in the more arid plains of Thailand.     

A brief description of the ordnance survey,and some notes on the advantages of a topographical survey of South Africa

Early maps of Scotland at a national scale provide historical geographers with an important source of data. One of the most important of these maps but still relatively unexploited and poorly understood is the Military Survey of Scotland or Roy Map. Examination is made here of its two versions, the Protracted Copy and the Fair Copy, to check the veracity of the draughtsmen who produced the latter and most commonly consulted version. An examination is made by focussing on two areas of Fife.     

The bovid third phalanx and prehistoric ploughing

Plough agriculture is the basis of southeast Asian rice cultivation, and has profound social implications. Yet little if anything is known of its development in prehistory. In the absence of fossil fields, remains of ploughshares or of ploughing scenes, attention is focused on the bones of potential draught animals. A multivariate analysis of exostosis development in the third phalanx indicates that cattle at the site of Ban Chiang were gracile, while water buffalo were as robust as modern draught animals.