Broad Chronology Research Articles

Grasslands and Thickets: Bush Encroachment and Herding in the Kalahari Thornveld

Abstract This paper addresses bush encroachment around Kuruman, South Africa. The 'received wisdom' is that bushes result from overgrazing, displace the climax community, and lower carrying capacity. In contrast, this paper is informed by non-equilibrium ecological and range management science, as well as recent challenges to degradationist interpretations about environmental change in Africa. To what extent has bush encroachment occurred? Has a consequent drop in sustainability contributed to dependence upon wage labour among black households? Using documentary evidence, the paper establishes a broad chronology for change. It asserts that because of non-human and human factors black herders live in a bushier environment than they did when the first travellers arrived around 1800. It concludes with oral evidence to consider the effects of the change. Interviews show that people do not consider bush encroachment to be an environmental problem. They are too poor to keep many grazing cattle, and the browsing small stock and donkeys they can afford are well suited to bushes. Also, because bushes survive drought better than grass, they are valued fodder for all animals. Dependence upon wage labour results from wider social factors and this environmental change has not degraded livelihoods.

Ten years on: an appraisal of New Zealand’s economic restructuring 1984‐1994

Assesses and appraises New Zealand’s economic restructuring between 1984 and 1994. Provides an historical overview of the country’s economic performance and looks at past governmental policies. Examines the impact of the return to power of the Labour Party in 1984 and provides a broad chronology of the reform measures as they have evolved. Examines the compatibility of micro‐ and macro‐economic policies and then looks at possible achievements.

Iron age occupation in the Méma region, Mali

The recent archaeological campaign (regional site survey and excavations at the mound complex of Akumbu) has demonstrated that the Mema, a dry Sahelian region with a scattered population, was intensively occupied during the Iron Age. This intense occupation, certainly associated with better environmental conditions, extends back to the Late Stone Age. During the regional survey more than 100 Iron Age sites and nearly 30 Late Stone Age sites were identified; their size, surface material and features, and location on geomorphological zones were recorded. A series of radiocarbon dates spanning the fourth to fourteenth centuries ad obtained from the excavations at the Iron Age mound complex of Akumbu and a preliminary analysis of the pottery from both the excavations and the survey permitted the determination of a broad chronology of occupation. Numerous slag heaps (associated with smelting furnace remains) found during the survey and imported goods uncovered during the excavations at Akumbu indicate that both iron production and long-distance trade played an important role in the Mema economy.

Leisure, culture and the historian: reviewing the first generation of leisure historiography in Britain

A comprehensive and critical review of 15 years or more of scholarly production in the social history of leisure in Britain, c. 1700 to the present, under three headings: the broad chronology or developmental schema suggested by historians, their various and disputed interpretations of the major forces and relationships in modern leisure formation, and an overall assessment of the field and suggestions for future work. The review notes historians' growing appreciation of the complexity of leisure's role in social change and class relationships, their attention to the significance of continuities amid change, and their broadening understanding of cultural dynamics, but argues that the field needs some recharging from more imaginative and theoretically informed approaches to leisure as text, discourse and performance.

Dissected alluvial fans in southeast Spain

Summary This paper deals with the geomorphology and sedimentology of hitherto undescribed dissected Pleistocene alluvial fans of the Benidorm/Alicante region of southeast Spain. A coalescent fan complex is described in detail and two main phases in its development are identified. The early phases, predominantly of fan accumulation culminated in the formation of large coalescent fans where upper surfaces are capped by a well developed caliche crust. Deposition was by fluvial processes, both within channels and on open fan surfaces, and by mass movement. There were spatial and temporal variations in sedimentation with periods of caliche formation on fan surfaces between periods of deposition. There is evidence of numberous cut and fill sequences during the fan accumulation, some of which appear to be local and others which appear to reflect major environmental changes. One such sequence occurs towards the end of the accumulation phases when large channels were cut in the fan surface then filled with gravel. The later phases of fan development were predominantly of fan dissection but include major valley cutting and filling sequences, which postdate the formation of the main caliche crust on the upper fan surfaces. The dissection sequences differ between the various valleys trenched into the fans, the most complex of which has four distinct valley fills, two of which are widespread. A broad chronology is suggested, based in part on the relationships between fan deposits and Pleistocene marine and aeolianite deposits. The accumulation phases appear to be pre-Wurm and the dissection phases Wurm and Holocene in age. The chronology of fan sequence is complicated by the problems of differentiating between the results of major environmental change and those of a complex geomorphic response, characteristic of fan environments in semi-arid areas. These problems are illustrated in relation to the modern morphology on a small fan. Localised erosion and deposition are seen in relation to channel form and slope, but the locations of dominant erosion or deposition have changed during the more recent phases of fan development.

The Economic History of Modern Britain

There is now a rough consensus of opinion among English economic historians about the broad chronology of English population history. According to this chronology there were three main phases of rapid growth. The first occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and was brought to an end by a marked fall in population in the fourteenth century. The second phase occupied most of the sixteenth century and the early seventeendi, after which there was some slowing down in the later seventeenth century and possibly an absolute check in the 1720's and 1730's. And finally tliere was the sustained cumulative increase that started in the later eighteenth century.