Hi Iain!
I'd be eager to hear whatever you find.  My histarch request yielded
NO relevant examples, which I can't even believe to be true.  There
must be people doing this kind of thing, perhaps in economic history
or human geography.  I'm going to check on the stuff this week in some
electronic databases.  I have the kind of study in mind, modeled after
the work of Winifred Rothenberg in the US's New England farmers.  She
did a great study where she looked at seasonality in animal
slaughtering on rural farms to see if the patterns matched aggressive
market behavior or community exchange systems.  Really cool, and
directly relevant to zooarchaeological analysis.  Perhaps I will even
search for "economic historical geography" . . .

I hope things are well down there.  NPR reports that the paraolympics
were a smashing success, and I'm glad to hear it.  I'm not sure why
anyone is surprised.  Why is it a shock that Aussies like to get
together and drink a lot of beer and watch sports?  Anyway, in a
related vein, there has been much debate about suspending Utah's
arcane liquor laws during the 2002 winter games.  State law here is
that all beer sold at bars and grocery stores is 3.2 percent alcohol;
that wine, liquor, and real beer can only be sold at state liquor
stores (which have restricted hours); and that shots in bars are
really, really tiny (2/3 or 1/2 of a real shot).  Bartenders also have
contraptions attached to every liquor bottle that measures EXACTLY the
size of each shot in each drink, so they cannot bend the rules.
Customers cannot have more than one drink on the table at one time
(you have to finish your shot before the waitress can put down your
next beer.)  In addition, they have been debating over whether to
serve beer at Olympic events on property donated by the LDS church
(such as the Medals plaza!)  Can you imagine what is going to happen
when a bunch of Irish footballers are served 3.2 Guiness and the
French find out how outrageously high the taxes are on wine!  There's
going to be a riot.

Hope your well.  I'm frantically trying to finish my archive and
museum work for my dissertation.  I'm moving to Missouri in about
three weeks, so I'm really panicked!

Cheers,
Tim
----------------------------------
Timothy Scarlett
University of Nevada, Reno
Department of Anthropology / 096
Reno, NV 89557-0096

355 West 500 North
Salt Lake City, UT 84103
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
----------------------------------
"Pioneer 10 is now over 7 billion miles away from Earth and is headed
towards the constellation of Taurus The Bull. It will take Pioneer
over 2 million years to pass by one of the stars in the
constellation."
I can't wait...
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>From: Iain Stuart <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: GIS and consumption
>Date: Mon, Oct 23, 2000, 8:42 PM
>

>Tim and others,
>
>I had thought about a similar question when doing my thesis research. I had
>a diary that recorded where the author went and roughly the time he spent
>doing it. From this you could establish various seasonal patterns of
>movement as well social patterns and the occasional extraneous pattern such
>as chasing after stolen sheep or visiting people with a petition. Putting
>this on a GIS would be a very useful as a way of displaying data and working
>out patterns of movement.
>
>The thought did cross my mind that this was moving much more into human
>geography/anthropology than archaeology. In fact I had thought of a title
>"Passing the time at Cuppacumbalong" which goes to show something of my
>mental state at the time. Of course it was irrelevant to my thesis and
>remains something I will do later...
>
>However I think a trawl through the literature of human geography might be
>worthwhile in finding similar studies though probably not with GIS.
>
>Iain Stuart
>Principal, Archaeology and Heritage Management
>HLA-Envirosciences Pty. Ltd.
>