Spread Of Settlement Research Articles

A commerce of taste: church architecture in Canada, 1867-1914

In the late-nineteenth century the circulation of pattern books featuring medieval church architecture in England facilitated an unprecedented spread of Gothic revival churches in Canada. Engaging several themes around the spread of print culture, religion, and settlement, A Commerce of Taste details the business of church building. Drawing upon formal architectural analysis and cultural theory, Barry Magrill shows how pattern books offer a unique way of studying the relationships between taste, ideology, privilege, social change, and economics. Taste was a concept used to legitimize British - and to an extent Anglican - privilege, while other denominations resisted their aesthetic edicts. Pattern books eventually lost control of the exclusivity associated with taste as advances in printing technology and transatlantic shipping brought more books into the marketplace and readerships expanded beyond the professional classes. By the early twentieth century taste had become diluted, the architect had lost his heroic status, and architectural distinctions among denominations were less apparent. Drawing together the history of church building and the broader patterns of Canadian social and historical development, A Commerce of Taste presents an alternative perspective on the spread of religious monuments in Canada by looking squarely at pattern books as sources of social conflict around the issue of taste.

Spatial and temporal variety of prehistoric human settlement and its influencing factors in the upper Yellow River valley, Qinghai Province, China

We report an investigation of forty-two prehistoric sites in the upper Yellow River valley located in Guide, Jianzha, Hualong, Xunha and Minhe, Qinghai Province, China, including forty-four new radiocarbon dates from twenty-four sites, review published archaeological surveys and radiocarbon dates, analyze landform features and discuss the reasons for spatial and temporal variety of regional prehistoric human settlement. Our results suggest that people occupied the upper Yellow River valley during the early Holocene, but a continuous archaeological record begins only after about 5500 Cal yr BP. Thereafter, the intensity of prehistoric human settlement in the area is varied. Neolithic human settlement spread northwestward to high altitude areas of the upper Yellow River valley during early-mid Majiayao and Qijia periods, but moved southeastward to lower locations in the area during late Majiayao period. During the Bronze period, two coeval archaeological cultures, the Kayue and Xindian, occupied the upper Yellow River Region. Kayue archaeological sites are numerous and widely distributed in the high areas of the upper Yellow River, while Xindian sites are restricted to the lowest basin of the region. Variation in site density and location are likely the result of changing paleoclimate and technology.

Razvitak naselja na kvarnerskim otocima - primjer Dobrinja

The paper discusses the urbanistic development of Dobrinj, one of the medieval castle settlements on the island of Krk, which developed in the shadow of the town of Krk - an ancient urban and Episcopal centre with unbroken continuity of occupancy since Roman times and proto-history. Although situated away from the sea, from Dobrinj it was possible to survey the Vinodol Channel in the direction of Kotor, its counterpart on the mainland of the neighbouring Vinodol, founded above the mouth of the river Dubračina. From Dobrinj it was also possible to control indirectly the salt-works of the Dukes of Krk in the nearby Saline Bay. Dobrinj’s location on an isolated mountain ridge caused the characteristically linear development of its oldest part, the downtown area of Dolinji Grad. In spite of subsequent significant remodelling which updated the originally modest buildings, even today it is possible to recognize the characteristic rows of rectangular residential single-floor structures with a single-room layout. The houses’ façades faced each other and the ground floors were separated by narrow passageways. However, on the first floor level they were joined by barrel-vaulted structures which supported roof terraces. The rows of houses along the outskirts of Dolinji Grad adopted a fortification function through their predominantly block-like exteriors. Representative residential structures were concentrated around the Plokat square, below the parish church of St Stephen. Numerous pieces of information are provided by comparative analyses: in particular comparison with other settlements on the island of Krk, but also in combination with written sources and toponomastic research. From the confined area of Dolinji Grad, the settlement spread from the parish church towards the south. Here, around the field which stood in front of the settlement, the inhabitants built churches from the middle ages onward and a graveyard gradually developed. During the sixteenth century, this area was gradually transformed into Placa, the new communal centre, following the example of the main square at Krk, which was developed by the Venetians. Although few material remains survive in situ, it can be observed that in this area Renaissance houses were provided with the characteristic door-cum-window openings (called "na koljeno") indicative of shops on the ground-floor level. Written sources reveal that in the sixteenth century religious building focused on Placa. The beginning of the seventeenth century saw a further contraction in the area of Dolinji Grad, and the completion of the work on the parish church which had begun in the second half of the sixteenth century. From the second half of the seventeenth century, following the end of the dangers posed to Dobrinj by the Uskok War, the settlement spread out in a horse-shoe shape southward into the area of the upper town - Gorinji Grad. The process continued in the eighteenth century and thus the example of small and urbanistically underdeveloped Dobrinj demonstrates that this late period of Venetian rule does not necessarily stand for urbanistic stagnation.

A review of the evidence for potential impacts of black rats (Rattus rattus) on wildlife and humans in Australia

The black rat (Rattus rattus) is among the world’s worst invasive species, having spread across the globe in close association with the spread of human settlement. It is the source of some of the worst diseases affecting humans and is thought to have had a devastating impact on native wildlife, especially in island ecosystems. Black rat is likely to have arrived in Australia with the first European settlers, making it among the first of many alien species to invade the continent, and it is now widespread. Yet, its impacts on local wildlife have largely been overlooked. Here, we review the potential for black rat impacts in Australia in terms of its role as a source of disease and threats to wildlife and humans. We first summarise the global evidence for black rat impacts as background to the potential threats it poses and then focus specifically on emerging evidence available for Australian systems. We found a significant gap in our understanding of the ecology of black rats and the ecological role that it plays in Australia. This is despite its role as a source of a diverse range of diseases affecting humans and wildlife and its actions as a predator and competitor of native wildlife in Australia and elsewhere.

Settlers and the state: The creation of an Aboriginal workforce in Australia

White settlement of Australia began a process whereby the Aboriginal people who had settled the Australian continent for 40,000 years were dispossessed of their land, economy, society and often their lives. Henry Reynold's 'Law of the Land'' demonstrates the impact of the application of the doctrine of 'Terra Nullius' on Aboriginal society and the subsequent development of black-white relations in Australia. Land was the foundation of Aboriginal life - of an economic, religious and cultural system centred on hunting and gathering which provided a basis for a sustainable and stable society. The alienation of Aboriginal land and the resulting conflict as Aborigines resisted the spread of white settlement destroyed the economic base of that society and left the survivors in a marginal and dependent relationship with the European society that replaced it.

The Impact of Microtopography and Drainage on Land Use and Settlement Development in the Hungarian Drava Plain

The physical environment and society are closely interrelated and the role of physical conditions can be detected in the economic development and spreading of settlements in the Hungarian section of the Drava Plain. Throughout the history of the region, land use has always been fundamentally controlled by the topographic and hydrographic situation. Even relief of a metre or two has been decisive in delimiting areas suitable for fishing, gathering, forests or crop cultivation. Although the flow regulation of the Fekete-viz and the drainage of swamp-lands at the end of the 19 th century reduced flood hazards and made new land available for cultivation, at the same time, they made the traditional life-style of gathering, fishing and hunting unfeasible for the poorer layers of society. Settlements formed on the higher-lying flood-free mounds (ormany-s). The paper employs GIS techniques in the study of spatial expansion of the largest of the settlements, the town of Sellye. It is concluded that the areas below 100 m elevation could only be developed following drainage measures.

Biotope mapping of the Kumodraz stream watershed

Increasing negative changes in the biosphere, many of them irreversible, impose the need for the recording of the state of abiotic and biotic environmental factors in order that, with adequate measures, left over significant areas protect, degradation process slows down and lost area compensation accordance with possibilities. Therefore, for ecological planning in many developed countries, method of mapping and assessment of biotopes was introduced, firstly in rural areas and later in urban zones as well. Due to characteristic position in the transition direction from the city frindge to towards its core, area of the Kumodraz watershed area offered good basis for the application and examination of urban biotope mapping procedures. Different ways of land use, preservation of the relatively large area of open urban areas between two types of build structures and part of the free course of the Kumodraz stream offer good base for the assumption that habitats worth being preserved can be expected. The paper present results of the investigations carried out in 2006, which were compared with previous investigations as well as with the state in 2009. Prominent heterogeneity of and use, spreading of illegal settlements, but also existence of structures, which can be significant for encasement of the system of green and open spaces indicate on inadequate development of this area and also need for further investigations, which would lead to adequately planning solutions. By the mapping of the whole stream waters head and collection of attributes which characterize biotopes in details information bases for the further work on the assessment of the town biotope was obtained, as well as for argumentation for the directing the development towards protection of the remaining green areas of the city fringe.

Modelling the long‐term sustainability of indigenous hunting in Manu National Park, Peru: landscape‐scale management implications for Amazonia

Summary 1. Widespread hunting throughout Amazonia threatens the persistence of large primates and other vertebrates. Most studies have used models of limited validity and restricted spatial and temporal scales to assess the sustainability. 2. We use human‐demographic, game‐harvest and game‐census data to parameterize a spatially explicit hunting model. We explore how population growth and spread, hunting technology and effort, and source–sink dynamics impact the density of black spider monkeys Ateles chamek over time and space in the rainforests of south‐eastern Peru. 3. In all scenarios, spider monkey populations, which are vulnerable to hunting, persist in high numbers in much of Manu National Park over the next 50 years. Nonetheless, shotguns cause much more depletion than traditional bow hunting by Matsigenka (Machiguenga) indigenous people. 4. Maintenance of the current indigenous lifestyle (dispersed settlements, bow hunting) is unlikely to deplete spider monkeys and, by extension, other fauna, despite rapid human population growth. This helps explain why large, pre‐Colombian human populations did not drive large primates to extinction. When guns are used, however, spider monkeys quickly become depleted around even small settlements, with depletion eventually reversing the short‐term harvest advantage provided by shotgun hunting. Thus, our models show that when guns are used, limits on settlement numbers can reduce total depletion. 5. Synthesis and applications. Our framework lets us visualize the future effects of hunting, population growth, hunting technology and settlement spread in tropical forests. In Manu Park, the continued prohibition of firearms is important for ensuring long‐term hunting sustainability. A complementary policy is to negotiate limits on new settlements in return for development aid in existing settlements. The advantage of the latter approach is that settlement numbers are more easily monitored than is hunting effort or technology. Similar policies could help to reduce landscape‐scale depletion of prey species in human‐occupied reserves and protected areas throughout the Amazon.

History Matters: Relating Land-Use Change to Butterfly Species Occurrence

Western European landscapes have drastically changed since the 1950s, with agricultural intensifications and the spread of urban settlements considered the most important drivers of this land-use/land-cover change. Losses of habitat for fauna and flora have been a direct consequence of this development. In the present study, we relate butterfly occurrence to land-use/land-cover changes over five decades between 1951 and 2000. The study area covers the entire Swiss territory. The 10 explanatory variables originate from agricultural statistics and censuses. Both state as well as rate was used as explanatory variables. Species distribution data were obtained from natural history collections. We selected eight butterfly species: four species occur on wetlands and four occur on dry grasslands. We used cluster analysis to track land-use/land-cover changes and to group communes based on similar trajectories of change. Generalized linear models were applied to identify factors that were significantly correlated with the persistence or disappearance of butterfly species. Results showed that decreasing agricultural areas and densities of farms with more than 10 ha of cultivated land are significantly related with wetland species decline, and increasing densities of livestock seem to have favored disappearance of dry grassland species. Moreover, we show that species declines are not only dependent on land-use/land-cover states but also on the rates of change; that is, the higher the transformation rate from small to large farms, the higher the loss of dry grassland species. We suggest that more attention should be paid to the rates of landscape change as feasible drivers of species change and derive some management suggestions.

Generating Settlement Structures: A Method for Urban Planning and Analysis Supported by Cellular Automata

Previous models for the explanation of settlement processes pay little attention to the interactions between settlement spreading and road networks. On the basis of a dielectric breakdown model in combination with cellular automata, we present a method to steer precisely the generation of settlement structures with regard to their global and local density as well as the size and number of forming clusters. The resulting structures depend on the logic of how the dependence of the settlements and the road network is implemented to the simulation model. After analysing the state of the art we begin with a discussion of the mutual dependence of roads and land development. Next, we elaborate a model that permits the precise control of permeability in the developing structure as well as the settlement density, using the fewest necessary control parameters. On the basis of different characteristic values, possible settlement structures are analysed and compared with each other. Finally, we reflect on the theoretical contribution of the model with regard to the context of urban dynamics.

Variable effects of cinder-cone eruptions on prehistoric agrarian human populations in the American southwest

Two ∼ 900 BP cinder-cone eruptions in the American Southwest affected prehistoric human populations in different ways, mostly because of differences in the eruption styles and area affected. Primary pre-eruption cultural factors that may have led to successful adaptation to the eruptions include decision-making at the family or household level, low investment in site structures, dispersion of agricultural sites in varied environments, and settlement spread over a large area so that those who were less affected could shelter and feed evacuees. Sunset Crater, near Flagstaff, Arizona, produced about 8 km 2 lava flow fields and a ∼ 2300-km 2 tephra blanket in an area that had been settled by prehistoric groups for at least 1000 years. Local subsistence relied on agriculture, primarily maize, and > 30 cm tephra cover rendered 265 km 2 of prime land unfarmable. This area was apparently abandoned for at least several generations. A > 500-km 2 area was probably marked by collapsed roofs and other structural damage from the fallout. If the eruption occurred during the agricultural season, the fallout would also have significantly damaged crops. The eruption did have some benefits to local groups because lower elevation land, which had previously been too dry to farm, became agriculturally productive due to 3–8 cm of tephra ‘mulch’ and some temporary soil nutrient improvements. This previously uninhabited land became the site of significant year-round settlement and farming, eventually containing some of the largest pueblo structures ever built in the region. New agricultural techniques were developed to manage the fallout mulch. The eruption also affected ceramic production and trading patterns, and volcano-related ritual behavior – the production of maize-impressed lava-spatter agglutinate – was initiated. Little Springs Volcano, about 200 km northwest of Sunset Crater, is a small spatter rampart around a series of vents that produced about 5 km 2 of lava flow fields, about 1 km 2 of land severely affected by ballistic fall, and no significant tephra fall. The small area affected resulted in much less disruption of human activities than at Sunset Crater. Farming was still possible right up to the edge of the lava flows, which became attractive sites for settlements. Most sites along the lava flows have habitation and storage structures at the base of the flow and a series of small, apparently little-used, structures on the blocky lava flow above. These lava surface structures may have been defensive in nature. In addition, trails were constructed on the blocky lava flow surface. These trails, whose access points are difficult to recognize from below, appear to have been used for rapid movement across the flows, and may also have been defensive in nature. Spatter-agglutinate blocks containing ceramic sherds within them, similar to the maize-impressed spatter agglutinate at Sunset Crater, were made at Little Springs and carried to a nearby habitation site. In arid and semiarid lands such as northern Arizona, tephra fall is a mixed blessing. Thick cinder blankets (> 20–30 cm) render land uninhabitable, but thinner (3–8 cm) deposits can serve to conserve soil moisture, regulate soil temperature (thus lengthening the growing season), and, by lowering soil pH, provide a temporary (decades to a century or two) increase in available phosphorus, an important nutrient for growth. The mulch opened up new lands for settlement but likely only lasted for a century or two before reworking reduced its effects.

Evolution and Spread of Settlements in the Esan Area of Edo State

AbstractThe study focused on the pattern of settlements evolution and spread in the Esan area of Edo State. The catastrophic theory and the infilling concept are very useful in explaining the evolution and spread of settlements in the study area. The settlements in the study area were founded by migrants from Benin Kingdom in 14th century during the reign of OBA EWARE. The Oba’s only two sons died mysteriously on the same day and to mourn them the Oba enacted some laws forbidding; cooking, dancing, sexual intercourse etc., Those who could not abide by these laws have to flee or migrate into the jungle. Those who migrated and settled in the jungle - North east of Benin kingdom are the ancestral fathers of the Esan people. However, the hardship encountered in the jungle — high mortality rate due to the malaria, fever, wild animals and slave riaders forced the settlers to re-migrate to the EGWALES (villages with traditional ruler) for security. In 1807, slave trade was abolished. The consequent freedom and s...

Nancy Rowe and George Curtis: Deaf Lives in Maine 150 Years Ago

PREVIOUS ACCOUNTS OF EARLY DEAF SETTLEMENT in New England have focused on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (Groce 1985), and on southern New Hampshire (Lane, Pillard, and French 2000). This article is based on some findings in larger project concerned with settlement in Maine. Maine is the site of one of the oldest and largest extended families in the United States: the Lovejoy-Jellison-Berry family (Jones 1996). However, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, many extended families lived in Maine. Examining the 1850 census, the first government census to identify all of the household members who were Deaf and Dumb, will give us some idea of the number. We retain only those names that are identified as Deaf and and that occur twice, as an approximate way to identify those hereditarily Deaf. Twenty-nine family names occurred at least twice in twentyseven towns. In those families were 113 people, for an average of 3.9 persons per family. Some of these families (those from Martha's Vineyard and others that had come directly from England) had ancestors in Kent, where, Groce (1985) has suggested, recessive gene associated with being was widespread. No doubt other settlers came as the word spread of settlement in Maine, and some no doubt landed there for reasons unrelated to their being Deaf. This article recounts intermarriage and family life in nineteenthcentury extended family in Maine: the Rowes and the Curtises. It draws on letters between Nancy Rowe, George Curtis, and members of their families, letters that have fortunately been preserved (Women in History Project, n.d.) In New Gloucester, Maine, Nancy Rowe (1815-1895) hailed from large family whose ancestors came from Devonshire in England. On immigrating to America, they settled first in Gloucester, Massachusetts. When tract of land in the Maine wilderness (then part of Massachusetts) was granted to the inhabitants of Gloucester in 1735, several families moved there. The town of New Gloucester also received settlers from Martha's Vineyard (Poole 1976). Figure 1 presents the Rowe family with an indication of their ties to the Curtis and Reed families, for whom only members are shown. Nancy Rowe had five brothers and two sisters. She also had five hearing siblings, of whom Nathaniel and two others died in infancy. (Birth and death dates for all Rowe and Curtis names cited in the text appear in table 1.) Nancy's parents were hearing and distantly related. Her paternal grandparents were both Rowes, and one of her mother's ancestors married one of her father's forebears. Thus we infer that Nancy and her seven siblings were because of recessive pattern of transmission. That both of Nancy's parents were hearing is consistent with that hypothesis but the fact that more than half of their children were is not. On average, only one-fourth of the children should express recessive trait. The odds that chance alone explains that there were as many as eight children in this family of thirteen are less than 1 in 100 (chi square = 9.3 p At age thirteen, Nancy entered the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the and Dumb in 1829 and graduated four years later; five of her seven siblings would also be educated there. In 1833 the principal, Lewis Weld, gave her certificate testifying that she had been a pupil of the American Asylum, [and] made good attainments in the knowledge of written language and other branches of common education. When she was twenty-four, Nancy Rowe married George Curtis, from Leeds, Maine, and moved there to live with him. Four children, all hearing, would be born to the couple over the next fifteen years. If George and Nancy were because they both had two copies of the same recessive gene, then all of their children should likewise have been Deaf. That they were not suggests that the parents had different recessive genes. …

Notes on the evolution and organization of the urban ecosystem

The continual spread of human settlements over the world’s surface has transformed the natural environment on a global scale. Human’s intervention has changed primary ecosystems (protoecosystems or euecosystems) into anthropoecosystems. The spread of urban ecosystems, cultivated surfaces (agroecosystems), and various areas differentiated by their level of anthropization has facilitated the progressive reduction of euecosystems. The evolution of urban areas over the course of history with transformations of cities and surrounding territory, has created very complex mosaics. A proper study of the city, drawing together historical, cultural, social, and other factors, as well as abiotic ones (urban climate, soil, water, air), requires appropriate, uniform terminology for expressing the complex relationships existing among these factors. We therefore propose that the city (or metropolis) be considered as a set of ecosystems, a “synecosystem”. The entire urban area should be termed a “synbiotope”. It is divided into numerous partial biotopes (macro-, meso- and microbiotopes), the result of modifications wrought through the historical and cultural vicissitudes of the human population. Urban biotopes host not only humans, but also a characteristic vegetable and animal component, the “biosyncoenosis”, formed of numerous plant and animal communities, selected on the basis of the environmental conditions of the individual biotopes, which differ from each other in structure, dynamics, age, and position in the urban space. This terminology should facilitate study of the biotic component and its connection to the urban territory, as well as interpretation of results obtained in the different disciplines in terms of the human population’s quality of life.

‘The last frontier’: rationalizing the spread of farming into the boreal woods of Canada, c. 1910–1940

As the twentieth century opened, there were rumours that the cheap land underpinning the dramatic spread of settlement in the previous century might be running out. There were strong motivations, generated particularly by the large body of land seekers with a passion for farming, to hold off the demise of the famous agricultural frontier. Also wedded to the continuation of a frontier were politicians and civil servants across the country. Whether it was a subconscious expectation that the frontier would simply continue or a fear that its disappearance would lead to unpredictable social disturbance, politicians encouraged expansion beyond what was known to be good farmland. The major source of new land, from c. 1910, was the boreal forest. There was a steady accumulation of information about the North that was readily available to government officials but only indirectly to ordinary land seekers. Although the news about farming conditions in the boreal margin was unpromising except for a few pockets, independent and assisted farm settlements continued into the 1930s. The typical two‐thirds of farm failure within one generation in most of the new boreal settlements caused a great deal of settler grief and forced reluctant officials to respond to the negative scientific evidence and to reassess frontier nostalgia. The Second World War provided both a denouement of the northern farm settlement and a reason for many people to depart the ‘last frontier’.

The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries (review)

Reviewed by: The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries Bonnie D. Irwin The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries. By Paul Wheatley. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pp. xviii + 572, preface, 26 illustrations, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography, index.) The culmination of a career's worth of research and published posthumously, The Places Where Men Pray Together is a wide-ranging study of the Middle East's urban centers from the earliest days of Islam through the tenth century. Paul Wheatley applies history and urban studies methodologies to the data collected and described by the tenth-century Arab geographer al-Maqdisi. Thus the book provides not only a modern analysis of the growth and development of urban centers in Islamic lands, but also a means for English-speaking readers to access economic, political, and cultural information collected ten centuries ago. Wheatley addresses the admittedly vexed question: What made a Muslim city Muslim in the medieval period? His approach is to discuss changes in structure and function of thirteen urban centers between the pre-Islamic period (the jahiliyah or "Age of Ignorance") and the tenth century. These thirteen centers extend from al-Mashriq in the East, which includes what is now Iran and Afghanistan, to al-Maghrib in the West, now southern Spain and North Africa. Wheatley readily admits the difficulty inherent in studying history and cultural geography of the earliest centuries of Islam. Like medieval folklorists, he must depend on scattered manuscript sources, archaeological remains, and early geographers such as al-Maqdisi for his data, despite the fact that he studies the most populated and well-known regions of the Islamic world. Within each of the thirteen urban systems, Wheatley looks at marketing and service centers, transportation, industrial and craft centers, religious centers, and fortified settlements. He identifies three components that determine settlement in a region: first, the spread of settlements around a center that can provide goods and services; second, a linear component along transportation routes; and third, a clustering around specialized industrial or cultural centers. Muslims created very few cities, choosing rather to modify existing urban centers. One change was the introduction of the mosque, a center not only for prayer, but also for other communal gatherings. In cities that Muslims founded, mosques could be found in central districts. In cities that were conquered, mosques were often established in places where churches or synagogues had been built, sometimes in the same structures, and usually in the central district, if the city had one. [End Page 493] Not all cities developed along the same patterns, owing to the fact that geography varies widely in Islamic regions. In cities such as Baghdad or Alexandria, situated on rivers and lakes, growth of the urban center followed geographical imperatives as much as cultural ones, with smaller cities sprouting up along the same bodies of water. In regions such as the Arabian Peninsula (al-Jazirah), entirely Muslim and predominantly Arab, settlement patterns and urban development were influenced more heavily by religious forces, as the numbers of people undertaking the pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah increased in each of the first four centuries of Islam. Wheatley includes an enormous amount of cultural data in this book, which includes 159 pages of notes. Those interested in the possible transmission routes of folklore during the seventh through tenth centuries can find information on travel routes, settlement patterns, and population changes through the Islamic region. The volume is especially helpful for those studying the material culture of this period or region. A material folklorist would be well-advised to read the "Industrial and Craft Centers" section of each of the chapters on the thirteen regions. One learns the distribution of a variety of industries, such as mining, which clearly influenced jewelry and art as well as the manufacture of tools; leather-working and textile manufacture, which led to centers of clothing and housewares production; and agricultural products, which influenced foodways. The difficulty nonexpert readers will encounter with this volume is that Wheatley relies heavily on Arabic terms, usually only translating them when they first appear in the text. The glossary mitigates...

A sustainable transport structure as a problem of choosing intelligent indicators

The current approaches to city and regional planning state that there is a need to accelerate travel speed between functions at a local level, as well as within regions, or even continents, to gain advantages from free competition. This assumption, however, leads to a separation of functions and the spreading of settlements followed by considerable negative effects on ecological and social aspects. The raising of speed in the transport system therefore should be more sophisticated, since at the local level accessibility is the main indicator to describe mobility. Mobility is defined by the number of trips per day, independent of the modes of transport used, i.e. also walking. Defined in this way, mobility is rather a constant because of limited purposes of trips. However, there are two possibilities to reach a mobile society. On the one hand we can attempt to increase velocity to reach destinations even far away (which is not sustainable because the short term effects of reducing travel time are compensated by a lot of feedbacks within short periods as well as long term changes of settlement patterns). The alternative approach is to keep the destinations of necessary trips to a short distance, and only by that, can the operation possibilities of alternative modes of transport be optimized. Within a complex system, built by a lot of feed back loops, the human ability to perceive such system effects is overstrained. Therefore it is useful to orientate on proved ecological principles. In analysing complex systems, we have to bear in mind that human beings are preconditioned to assess directly effective local factors which are consciously perceived by the individual (e.g. time savings, noise, safety) as rather high. On the other hand, indirect effective indicators (such as energy, flora and fauna, waste of space) which are perceived unconsciously are rated very low. The effect of this weighting problem can be demonstrated on simulations of assessment procedures. For the covering abstract see ITRD E129315.

The chronology of building and physiognomy of the Danube basin leisure and recreation settlements on the Miroc mountain

Brief review has been presented in the introduction on the related foreign researches, of the greater holiday resorts concentration, which are situated on the attractive localities, within the reach of the usual trip-recreational movements of the urban population, from many industrial European centers. It has also been underlined that along the coastal part of our Danube-Basin following Grocka-Kladovo direction, 49 localities are to be found on the already formed settlements for holiday and recreation. The very same are, in that area, considerably unbalanced territorial distribution, since that they are present in an uneven number at the outskirts of the municipal territories that touch the coastal Danube line. They are much further from its coastal zone. The exception is the locality of Petrovo Selo which is located in the north-western territory part of the municipality of Kladovo. Three clearly close holiday resorts ("Dobra Voda", "Bare" and "Poljana") have been gathered spatially on relatively low (400-450 m altitude), north-eastern slopes of mountain Miroc. Thus they make the region of Miroc very attractive for resort and recreation, which is being treated mainly from the aspect of important geographical touristic characteristics. They are consisting of different number recently built and previously inhabited old houses, which have been refurbished (remodeled). They are also distinctive regarding their spatial disposition, considering its particular settlement spreading. Therefore they are mutually differentiated as by their chronological characteristics of building, general spatial physiognomy so in the respect of morpho-typological modification in the sub-mountain terrain of mountain Miroc.

The Fauna of King Island A guide to identification and conservation management

The spread of European settlement across the Australian continent has affected not only the faunal and floristic components of the mainland, but has also influenced our island assemblages of native animals. The Fauna of King Island; a guide to identification and conservation management, provides an overview of the history, ecology and conservation management of the King Island fauna. The book discusses both vertebrate and invertebrate fauna for the terrestrial and freshwater habitats of the island and serves as a foundation for identification and management.

Mapping Antebellum Euro-American Settlement Spread in Southern Lower Michigan

During the first half of the nineteenth century, thousands of Euro American agricultural settlers immigrated to the southern portion of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, occupying the region and dramatically altering its appearance. These settlers transformed the aboriginal landscape as they established new farms and settlements and created an infrastructure of trade and communications capable of supporting an economy increasingly devoted to commercial production. The new landscape of Michigan reflected the nature of its colonization, a process that shaped the patterning of settlement and the distribution of population. Understanding why Michigan's colonization took the form it did demands that we ascertain the spatial history of its large scale setdement.