Review of \u3cem\u3eThe Principles of Islamic Political Economy.\u3c/em\u3e Masudul Alam Choudhury and \u3cem\u3eComparative Development Studies: In Search of the World View.\u3c/em\u3e Masudul Alam Choudhury. Reviewed by James Midgeley, Louisiana State University.

Masudul Alam Choudhury. The Principles of Islamic Political Economy. New Yorlc St. Martin\u27s Press, 1992. $79.95 hardcover. Masudul Alam Choudhury. Comparative Development Studies: In Search of the World View. New York: St. Martin\u27s Press, 1993.$69.95 hardcover

Review of \u3cem\u3eSocial Corporatism: A Superior Economic System.\u3c/em\u3e Hukka Pekkarinen, Matti Pohjola, and Bob Rowthorn. Reviewed by James Midgeley, Louisiana State University.

Jukka Pekkarinen, Matti Pohjola and Bob Rowthorn (Eds.). Social Corporatism: A Superior Economic System. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. $95.00 hardcover

A simulation of the Neolithic transition in Western Eurasia

Farming and herding were introduced to Europe from the Near East and Anatolia; there are, however, considerable arguments about the mechanisms of this transition. Were it people who moved and outplaced the indigenous hunter- gatherer groups or admixed with them? Or was it just material and information that moved-the Neolithic Package-consisting of domesticated plants and animals and the knowledge of its use? The latter process is commonly referred to as cultural diffusion and the former as demic diffusion. Despite continuous and partly combined efforts by archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, paleontologists and geneticists a final resolution of the debate has not yet been reached. In the present contribution we interpret results from the Global Land Use and technological Evolution Simulator (GLUES), a mathematical model for regional sociocultural development embedded in the western Eurasian geoenvironmental context during the Holocene. We demonstrate that the model is able to realistically hindcast the expansion speed and the inhomogeneous space-time evolution of the transition to agropastoralism in Europe. GLUES, in contrast to models that do not resolve endogenous sociocultural dynamics, also describes and explains how and why the Neolithic advanced in stages. In the model analysis, we uncouple the mechanisms of migration and information exchange. We find that (1) an indigenous form of agropastoralism could well have arisen in certain Mediterranean landscapes, but not in Northern and Central Europe, where it depended on imported technology and material, (2) both demic diffusion by migration or cultural diffusion by trade may explain the western European transition equally well, (3) [...]Comment: Accepted Author Manuscript version accepted for publication in Journal of Archaeological Science. A definitive version will be subsequently published in the Journal of Archaological Scienc