Coastal hunter-gatherers and social evolution: marginal or central?

General accounts of global trends in world prehistory are dominated by narratives of conquest on land: scavenging and hunting of land mammals, migration over land bridges and colonisation of new continents, gathering of plants, domestication, cultivation, and ultimately sustained population growth founded on agricultural surplus. Marine and aquatic resources fit uneasily into this sequence of social and economic development, and societies strongly dependent on them have often been regarded as relatively late in the sequence, geographically marginal or anomalous. We consider the biases and preconceptions of the ethnographic and archaeological records that have contributed to this view of marginality and examine some current issues focusing on the role of marine resources at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition of northwest Europe. We suggest that pre-existing conventions should be critically re-examined, that coastlines may have played a more significant, widespread and persistent role as zones of attraction for human dispersal, population growth and social interaction than is commonly recognised, and that this has been obscured by hunter-gatherer and farmer stereotypes of prehistoric economies

Trade Union Strength

Spanish trade unions enjoy an uncomfortable mix of high coverage and very low membership base. This state of affairs has arisen primarily because of state support for the collective representation system. Union organisation in terms of the core and its branches and system. Union organisation in terms of the core and its branches and union finances are also heavily influenced by the structure of representation. The limited facts on union membership, organisation and finance are fleshed out in this paper. The impact of unions on three economic outcomes is assessed: pay/employment flexibility; pay dispersion; productivity growth. Although the data are quite limited, there is some suggestion that whereas unions are able to resist the pressure for widening pay dispersion, they are associated with somewhat poorer productivity performance. However, this research throws up as many unanswered puzzles about unions in Spain, as it does answer the previously unanswered. There is clearly a need for a representative survey of firms or workplaces to investigate both this and other aspects of Spanish industrial relations.

Embedding generic employability skills in an accounting degree: development and impediments

This paper explores and analyses the views of, and effects on, students of a project that integrated the development of employability skills within the small group classes of two compulsory courses in the first year of an accounting degree at a UK university. The project aimed to build, deliver and evaluate course materials designed to encourage the development of a broad range of employability skills: skills needed for life-long learning and a successful business career. By analysing students' opinions gathered from a series of focus groups spread throughout the year, three prominent skill areas of interest were identified: time management, modelling, and learning to learn. Further analysis highlighted the complex nature of skills development, and brought to light a range of impediments and barriers to both students' development of employability skills and their subject learning. The analysis suggests the need for accounting educators to see skills development as being an essential element of the path to providing a successful accounting education experience

Liquid Crystal Polarimetry for Metastability Exchange Optical Pumping of 3He

We detail the design and operation of a compact, discharge light polarimeter for metastability exchange optical pumping of 3He gas near 1 torr under a low magnetic field. The nuclear polarization of 3He can be discerned from its electron polarization, measured via the circular polarization of 668 nm discharge light from an RF excitation. This apparatus measures the circular polarization of this very dim discharge light using a nematic liquid crystal wave retarder (LCR) and a high-gain, transimpedance amplified Si photodiode. We outline corrections required in such a measurement, and discuss contributions to its systematic error