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Although the temporal overlap between human dispersal across Australia and the disappearance of its largest animals is well established, the lack of unambiguous evidence for human-megafauna interactions has led some to question a human role in megafaunal extinction. Here we show that diagnostic burn patterns on eggshell fragments of the megafaunal bird Genyornis newtoni, found at >200 sites across Australia, were created by humans discarding eggshell in and around transient fires, presumably made to cook the eggs. Dating by three methods restricts their occurrence to between 53.9 and 43.4 ka, and likely before 47 ka. Dromaius (emu) eggshell occur frequently in deposits from >100 ka to present; burnt Dromaius eggshell first appear in deposits the same age as those with burnt Genyornis eggshell, and then continually to modern time. Harvesting of their eggs by humans would have decreased Genyornis reproductive success, contributing to the bird's extinction by ∼47 ka.

Previous predictions of sea-level change subsequent to the last glacial maximum show significant, systematic discrepancies between observations at Tahiti, Huon Peninsula, and Sunda Shelf during Lateglacial time (~14,000 to 9000 calibrated years before the present). We demonstrate that a model of glacial isostatic adjustment characterized by both a high-viscosity lower mantle (4 x 1022 Pa s) and a large contribution from the Antarctic ice sheet to meltwater pulse IA (~15-meters eustatic equivalent) resolves these discrepancies. This result supports arguments that an early and rapid Antarctic deglaciation contributed to a sequence of climatic events that ended the most recent glacial period of the current ice age., The evolution of high-latitude global ice volumes, as inferred from observations of far-field sea-level change, serves as a fundamental constraint on ice-age climate models (1). In this regard, data from [...]

Robert Brenner's 'Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653' and David Harris Sacks's 'The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy: 1450-1700' explore the economic growth and influence of the Atlantic port cities, London and Bristol, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Brenner's study relies on old, outdated perspectives, while Sacks's history of Bristol makes use of the latest research materials. However, both studies, though important reading for 16th and 17th century historians, have failed to discuss how overseas trading influenced the socio-political and civic character of the cities themselves.

Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, eds. Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. ix, 363. $70.00. ISBN 0-521-82434-6. For many years [...]

City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective. Edited by JAMES D. TRACY (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2000; pp. 697. 50 £). ACROSS the world, many cities have been walled since [...]

Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early, Modern Society, ed. John Walter and Roger Schofield (Cambridge: U.P., 1989; pp. xiv + 335. |pounds~35) is a fine and fitting tribute [...]

Colchester was one of the leading centres of reformed religion in Tudor England. Marked by Lollardy and anti-clericalism before the Reformation, the town saw an early reception of Protestant ideas [...]

The Quiet Reformation: Magistrates and the Emergence of Protestantism in Tudor Norwich. By MURIEL C. MCCLENDON (Stanford, CA/Cambridge: U.P., 1999; pp. xii+340. 32.50 £). DR MCCLENDON has written one of [...]

Commonwealth and the English Reformation: Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483-1560. By Ben Lowe. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. [...]

ed. Beat Kumin and B. Ann Tlusty (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002; pp. 249. 45 £). The social history of alcohol has made surprisingly limited progress in this country in recent times--certainly [...]

Robert Tittler. Townspeople and Nation: English Urban Experiences 1540-1640. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2001. Pp. xi, 251. $19.95 paper. ISBN 0-8047-3869-6. This is a good and attractive book, happily available [...]

First the good points about Sybil M. Jack's Towns in Tudor and Stuart Britain (London: Macmillan, 1996; pp. xixx + 236. 37.50 £; pb. 11.99 £). For undergraduates it provides [...]

Organizational Memory Studies (OMS) is limited by its managerialist, presentist pre-occupation with the utility of memory for knowledge management. The dominant model of memory in OMS is that of a storage bin. But this model has been rejected by psychologists because it overlooks the distinctly human subjective experience of remembering, i.e. episodic memory. OMS also fails to take account of the specific social and historical contexts of organizational memory. The methodological individualism that is prevalent in OMS makes it difficult to engage with the rapidly expanding sociological and historical literature in social memory studies, where a more social constructionist approach to 'collective memory' is generally favoured. However, for its part social memory studies derived from Maurice Halbwachs neglects organizations, focusing primarily on the nation as a mnemonic community. From a critical perspective organizations can be seen as appropriating society's memory through corporate sites of memory such as historical visitor attractions and corporate museums. There is scope for a sociological and historical reorientation within OMS, drawing on social memory studies and focusing on corporate sites of memory, such as The Henry Ford museum complex, as well as the mnemonic role of founders and beginnings in organizations. Taking a social constructionist, collectivist approach to social remembering in organizations allows connections to be made between memory and other research programmes, such as organizational culture studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]