Functional Analysis of Three Unusual Assemblages from the Cape Dorset Area, Baffin Island

A brief survey of the Cape Dorset area, Baffin Island recovered surface collections from three very similar, but unusual quartz assemblages. This paper hypothesizes that these assemblages represent a consistent set of activities. In testing this hypothesis, the author uses an approach to functional analysis that has several important advantages over other methods. This approach can help solve problems in eastern arctic prehistory involving a relationship between environmental change and cultural change

Preface

Archeological research in the North American Arctic and Subarctic has long been a co-operative effort between U.S., Canadian, Danish and other European scholars. Throughout the history of this international collaboration, publications resulting from scholarly meetings and conferences have contributed greatly to our understanding of Arctic prehistory. ... The most recent gathering in this tradition was a joint Canadian Archaeological Association/Society for American Archaeology (CAA-SAA) symposium held in Vancouver, B.C. on April 25 and 26, 1979, subtitled "Recent Research in Eskimo Archaeology." Following the meeting in Vancouver all symposium participants were invited to submit their manuscripts for publication in a special issue of the journal Arctic. ... The past decade has seen a tremendous increase in arctic archaeological research. The current rate of data gathering almost defies attempts at synthesis. ... The papers in this volume cover a vast geographical area and show a variety of theoretical orientations and methods. ... Archaeological resource management and protection is a topic of major and urgent concern and an increasing number of arctic specialists have become involved with the development of more effective management and control of northern cultural resources. Included in this volume are several papers dealing with research in an applied setting. This volume presents a useful sample of current research which will provide the reader with a perspective on the "state of the art." With many authors from a variety of backgrounds and a broad geographical, topical and methodological scope, the symposium conveys a lively sense of both the strengths and the weaknesses of current work. The papers also offer suggestions for new directions in arctic research by providing clues to potentially weak and incomplete areas in current research. ..

Of babies and bath water: Is there any place for Austin and Grice in interpersonal pragmatics?

This paper discusses a particular strand of interpersonal pragmatics that may be known as ‘discursive’ pragmatics and attempts to delineate what is entailed in such an approach. Some scholars may characterise it as placing emphasis on participant evaluations, others may foreground the analysis of contextualised and sequential texts, while still others consider it to include both of these. In general, though, discursive pragmatics often seems to involve a reaction to, and a contrast with, so-called Gricean intention-based approaches. In this paper I argue that, far from discarding the insights of Grice, Austin and others, a discursive approach to interpersonal pragmatics should embrace those aspects of non-discursive pragmatics that provide us with a ‘tool-kit’ and a vocabulary for examining talk-in-interaction. At the same time, I will argue that the shortcomings of the speaker-based, intention- focused pragmatics can be compensated for, not by privileging hearer evaluations of meaning, but by taking an ethnographic and, to some extent, ethnomethodological approach to the analysis of naturally-occurring discourse data. By providing a critique of Locher and Watts’ (2005) paradigmatic example of a discursive approach to politeness and then a sample analysis of interactional data, I demonstrate how a combination of insights from Gricean pragmatics and from ethnomethodology allows the analyst to comment on the construction and negotiation of meaning in discourse, without having recourse to notions of either intention or evaluation

Historic Land Use Processes in Alaska's Koyukuk River Area

Northern Athabaskans with extensive knowledge of their traditional history and culture are increasingly interested in preserving their heritage. The authors are working with Allakaket area Koyukon people in Alaska to record data on important historic sites and events, but they are also using ethnoarchaeological approaches, particularly Binford's models of settlement systems and site mobility, to help make the information they gather more valuable to both local Native people and archaeologists. Drawing on their preliminary data, as well as existing research, they describe changes in the late winter part of the seasonal round, showing how, over time, the Koyukon become more logistically organized as they become more sedentary. These changes have interesting archaeological implications, including effects on site mobility patterns. The Koyukon belief system, with an intricate set of traditional beliefs and practices, has significant, though largely unexplored potential for influencing archaeological variability.Key words: Alaska, Athabaskans, archaeology, belief systems, boreal forest, ethnoarchaeology, historic archaeology, historic sites, Koyukon, Koyukuk River, landscape use, settlement patterns, SubarcticMots clés: Alaska, Athabaskans, archéologie, systèmes de croyances, forêt boréale, ethnoarchéologie, archéologie historique, sites historiques, Koyukon, rivière Koyukuk, utilisation de la topographie, schémas de peuplement, subarctiqu

Exploring the difference in performance between UK/European venture capital funds and US venture capital funds

Investment returns of European venture capital (VC) funds have consistently underperformed US VC funds. This has led to reduced allocations of funds raised for European venture from traditional institutional investors and consequently less finance available for investment into high-growth entrepreneurial companies in Europe. The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that may give rise to a performance difference between European and US VC funds in the attempt to explain the reasons for the gap in performance. Potential factors are structural resulting from characteristics of the funds themselves, operational such as the investment practices of the VC firms which manage the funds and wider environmental such as culture and attitude to risk and the wider ecosystem in which the funds operate. The characteristics of the better performing funds in Europe and US are also investigated. Previous studies offer incomplete explanations on the reasons for the difference in performance. Studies have focused on the UK in comparison to US and have not included continental European funds. There are no studies that have reviewed the entire investment process from sourcing deals to exiting deals, specifically contrasting Europe and the US in the context of the variables pertaining to the investment process and the impact on the fund performance gap. Previous studies have been largely quantitative in approach and influences that cannot be quantified, such as the cultural dimension, are therefore not captured in the analyses. The study engages a critical realist philosophy and embraces an engaged scholarship, qualitative approach with some 64 semi-structured interviews with separate VC firms in UK, continental Europe and USA and 40 interviews with other stakeholders from those geographies who are related to the VC industry, including limited partner investors, entrepreneurs and advisors. Key findings of the research are that US VC firms have proportionately more partners with operational and entrepreneurial backgrounds than do European firms, they use a theme approach to identify future areas for investment, pursue a “home run” investment strategy, do most of their due diligence in house, have entrepreneurially friendly terms in their term sheets and are more proactive in achieving optimal exits for their investments than European VCs. The research has had impact in that the findings have been shared and discussed with the UK professional VC association

Current Perspectives on Western Boreal Forest Life: Ethnographic and Ethnohistoric Research in Late Prehistoric and Historic Archaeology - A Preface

At the 1987 Society for American Archaeology Meetings in Toronto, several scholars gathered to present their most recent research using ethnographic and ethnohistoric information to study late prehistoric and historic Athabaskan archaeology in the western subarctic interior. ... The papers from this symposium make up the rest of this volume; this preface provides the reader with some background for better appreciating the papers that follow. The preface begins with a short historical summary of recent Athabaskan archaeology, including the use of ethnohistoric and ethnographic approaches. It continues with very brief summaries of the six papers as context for the subsequent comments, presented at the session by the symposium's two discussants, Polly McW. Quick and Donald W. Clark. Their comments touch on several important issues, including adaptation to environmental variability, the importance of explicit linkages between ethnographic information and archaeology, the value of oral history, the difficulties of projecting findings from recent historic sites back even to more distant historic sites, the promise and problems of interpreting social groupings from structural remains, the value of having northern researchers who live and work throughout the year in the North, and the need for better frameworks for linking ethnographic and ethnohistoric information with archaeology to permit some generalization. The preface closes with a discussion of future research directions and priorities. ...Key words: Alaska, archaeology, Athabaskans, boreal forest, Canada, ethnoarchaeology, ethnography, ethnology, ethnohistory, historic period, research priorities, Subarctic, symposiumMots clés: Alaska, archéologie, Athabaskans, forêt boréale, Canada, ethnoarchéologie, ethnographie, ethnologie, ethnohistoire, période historique, priorité dans la recherche, subarctique, symposiu

Seasonal dynamics of above- and below-ground biomass and nitrogen partitioning in Miscanthus × giganteus and Panicum virgatum across three growing seasons

The first replicated productivity trials of the C4 perennial grass Miscanthus × giganteus in the United States showed this emerging ligno-cellulosic bioenergy feedstock to provide remarkably high annual yields. This covered the 5 years after planting, leaving it uncertain if this high productivity could be maintained in the absence of N fertilization. An expected, but until now unsubstantiated, benefit of both species was investment in roots and perennating rhizomes. This study examines for years 5–7 yields, biomass, C and N in shoots, roots, and rhizomes. The mean peak shoot biomass for M. × giganteus in years 5–7 was 46.5 t ha−1 in October, declining to 38.1 t ha−1 on completion of senescence and at harvest in December, and 20.7 t ha−1 declining to 11.3 t ha−1 for Panicum virgatum. There was no evidence of decline in annual yield with age. Mean rhizome biomass was significantly higher in M. × giganteus at 21.5 t ha−1compared to 7.2 t ha−1 for P. virgatum, whereas root biomass was similar at 5.6–5.9 t ha−1. M. × giganteus shoots contained 339 kg ha−1 N in August, declining to 193 kg ha−1 in December, compared to 168 and 58 kg ha−1 for P. virgatum. The results suggest substantial remobilization of N to roots and rhizomes, yet still a substantial loss with December harvests. The shoot and rhizome biomass increase of 33.6 t ha−1 during the 2-month period between June and August for M. × giganteus corresponds to a solar energy conversion of 4.4% of solar energy into biomass, one of the highest recorded and confirming the remarkable productivity potential of this plant

A discursive approach to the analysis of politeness data

This paper aims to provide an exemplification of the way that the discursive approach can work in relation to the analysis of data. As such, it argues for the validity of the discursive approach to politeness. Because the discursive approach has been seen as difficult to employ in the analysis of data, in recent years, there has been a proliferation of research returning to Brown and Levinson’s approach. Although discursive approaches to politeness have functioned successfully as a critique of Brown and Levinson’s work, they are not seen as a means of analyzing politeness and impoliteness in their own right. By tracing the development of the discursive approach to politeness, and by addressing the critiques that there have been, we argue that although the critical role of the discursive approach is paramount to the development of the field, discursive approaches are more than just a critique, and should be seen as constituting an approach to the analysis of politeness as well. As a case in point, we illustrate what a discursive approach consists of through analysing an intercultural interaction between a group of close friends of Dutch and Italian origin