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Agriculture in Aboriginal Australia: Why Not?
Get PDFMaterial and behavioural elements associated with the term Neolithic are almost completely absent in Australia. Among the few exceptions are the domesticated dog (originating in the Near East and reaching Australia by 3,500 years ago as the dingo), together with limited evidence for permanent settlements, food storage, long-distance trade and manipulation of wild resources in some areas. While it has been suggested that the latter developments represent independent local trends toward more complex societies that might have led to an Australian Neolithic if not for the arrival of Europeans, the Neolithic is essentially conspicuous by its absence. Particularly striking is the absence of agricultural practices, despite recent claims to the contrary. Also not present is another one of the original (though generally over-looked) defining attributes of the Neolithic: the weaving of textile fibres for clothing. Claims for indigenous Australian agriculture are reviewed here, and the few purported cases are found to be weak. An unconventional model for the transition to agriculture is presented, advocating a significant formative role for clothing, specifically textiles. This suggests that a typical absence of clothing (and total absence of textile clothing) provides a clue as to why agriculture did not develop in Australia
Ethological classification: A model for ordering the commercial workplace that draws on collective practice.
Get PDFWe would like to present a novel classification approach to the Idea mart, and receive feedback from colleagues. In certain circumstances an approach to classification may be useful that is based on repertoires of recurring activities and their associated documentation ('genre repertoires'); we label this 'ethological classification' (Davenport and Rosenbaum 2000). The approach offers an alternative to the search for 'deep structure' that organizes knowledge in a working group: as genres embody the practical understanding of such groups, they offer a 'surface' representation of knowledge that may be sufficient for some organizational purposes: finding groups to share activities, for example. As autogenic forms, genres may be taken as valid representations of the practical knowledge of the communities in which they emerge. The 'ethological' approach may solve some ofthe problems associated with recent attempts to design 'ecological work-based classification' schemes (Pejtersen and Albrechtsen, 2000) where the search for 'invariant structures' and their validation can be extremely resource intensive. The 'ethological' approach, a form of bricolage, which draws on knowledge that is to hand, offers a thrifty alternative
Evolutionary Order in the Classification Theories of C. A. Cutter and E. C. Richardson: Its Nature and Limits
Get PDFIn recent years, evolutionary order has been used as the favored mode of determining class sequence by classificationists using integrative levels as a theoretical framework for classification design. Although current advocates of evolutionary order are based in Europe, use of the concept in library and information science (LIS) can be traced back to two North American pioneers in classification theory, C. A. Cutter (1837–1903) and E. C. Richardson (1860–1939). Working in the heyday of evolutionism and influenced by the developmental classifications of the sciences of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, Cutter and Richardson introduced evolutionary order as an explicit principle into LIS classification theory, defining it as encompassing a conceptual progression from the general to the specific, the simple to the complex, and the past to the present. This idea proved influential, being appropriated by later theoreticians like H. E. Bliss; it also reinforced the realist tendency of early LIS classification theory. However, for Cutter and Richardson, application of evolutionary order to bibliothecal classifications proved problematic. Cutter applied the concept inconsistently; Richardson viewed it as theoretically ideal, but subject to so many exceptions for pragmatic reasons that it could not be attained in practice. Cutter’s and Richardson’s use of evolutionary order reveals the tension between enunciating a principle of classificatory ordering in theory and applying it in practice
Wittgenstein and web facets
Get PDFThe World Wide Web has grown exponentially in the last few years. The popularity of Web search engines has also grown in a similar manner. The task of a Web search engine is to provide the Web searcher with accurate and targeted information from the plethora of information available on the Web. This is a daunting task that requires the careful usage of language to ensure accuracy. As a result, the importance of the usage and meaning of language in the Web domain has become the focus of recent research. In this paper, the author will explore Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language as it applies to the language used in the search result pages of a Web search engine in an effort to broaden the understanding of language usage within this domain
Treatment of Georeferencing in Knowledge Organization Systems: North American Contributions to Integrated Georeferencing
Get PDFRecent research projects in North America that have advanced the integration of formal mathematical georeferencing and informal placename georeferencing in knowledge organization systems are described and related to visualization applications
Melvil Dewey’s Ingenious Notational System
Get PDFHistorically, the notational system of the Dewey Decimal Classification provided for non-institution-specific, relative location shelf arrangements, thus substantially reducing bibliographic classification effort. Today its decimal notation continues to provide the classification scheme with flexible granularity, is hospitable to expansion, expresses relationships, interfaces well with modern retrieval systems, and is internationally understood