Bachelor's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed February 23, 2010) Degree awarded 2007; thesis submitted 2006. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of English, School of English, Art Histoty, Film and Media, Faculty of Arts. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

This thesis examines variation within the microlith industries of the Later Stone Age (LSA) of Northwest Africa, around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) until the onset of the Holocene, between ∼25 - 11.5 ka. The traditionally held view is that whilst there is variation amongst the lithic assemblages, this can all be accommodated by a single definable industry, known as the Iberomaurusian. This thesis indicates an alternative scenario. Based on the typo-technological analysis of 16,689 lithic artefacts recovered from recent excavations at the site of Grotte des Pigeons (Taforalt, Morocco) and the re-analysis of published data using the multivariate statistical approach of correspondence analysis (CA), this thesis shows that there was much greater variation than previously proposed within the Pleistocene LSA. This thesis indicates that the LSA industries can be sub-divided into four chronologically distinct variants, an Initial LSA time-coincident with the first appearance of microlithic technology from ∼25 ka and lasting up until Heinrich event 2, a succeeding Early LSA at ∼22 ka that continued until Heinrich event 1, a Middle LSA marking a shift in technologies around this event at ∼16 ka, and an Upper LSA occurring with the climatic amelioration of the Bølling-Allørod at ∼14.5 ka. The proposed chronological model provides a new framework for categorising variation within the LSA, which is a necessary pre-requisite for potential future research addressing wider anthropological and archaeological issues, such as reasons for shifts in subsistence and settlement.

Since the euphoria of a hard-won independence and the hopes attached to socialist nation-building, Algeria has experienced liberalisation, increasing inequality and civil war. This thesis sets out to explore memories of post-independence nation-building in the 1970s, interrogating the past-present relationship, by asking how Algerians remember their own recent past, and what these memories reveal about contemporary subjectivities. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the low-income Algiers neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued, the research focuses specifically on memories of politics, urban space and sociability. While the authoritarianism of the period was rejected for its repression of civil liberties, the overwhelming narrative on the period was nostalgic, with the past routinely couched as more positive than the present. Memories of intense social mobility and rising living standards within the context of state-led development, competent urban management and warm neighbourhood relations governed by traditional morality and solidarity were used to critique the present; particularly the retreat of the state from its responsibilities since the 1980s and the fragmented, consumerist society that has emerged from civil conflict since the 1990s. However, social memory also translated a series of principles that demonstrated the continued relevance of the egalitarian claims made by postcolonial nationalism. Popular notions of social justice mapped future aspirations for the Algerian polity. Nostalgia was not only a matter of the past, but of the lost future of material plenty and equality promised by industrial modernisation that once seemed just over the horizon, but is now divorced from present experience. Such memories translated the passing of the dream of mass utopia, even though the modernist principles of equality, justice and progress continued to underpin both daily interactions and the political aspirations of the present.

Par leur capacité à créer, traiter et transmettre l’information en temps réel, les TIC jouent aujourd’hui un rôle majeur dans la structuration et le développement des territoires. La présente thèse vise à étudier la relation entre les TIC et les transformations de la forme urbaine du Grand Caire. Pour ce faire, la thèse implique une approche multidisciplinaire qui conjugue les deux méthodes quantitative et qualitative ; elle s’appuie sur le modèle de l’« urbanisme des réseaux » pour décomposer les TIC en trois niveaux : infrastructures, technologies de l’information et usages. Plusieurs ressources sont utilisées : rapports, articles et ouvrages spécialisés, données du terrain et ressources Internet y compris les Big data. Les principaux résultats sont les suivants : la distribution des réseaux des TIC (infrastructures, technologies de l’information et usages) a dessiné une zone étendue, un continuum, qui relie les grandes centralités formées pendant plusieurs périodes historiques du Grand Caire. En outre, les TIC, avec d’autres facteurs, ont mené à la formation dans la banlieue sud d’un centre économique/résidentiel, excentré et non planifié, le premier de ce type dans l’histoire millénaire du Grand Caire. Enfin, les résultats ont montré un rôle important des résidences fermées ; ces dernières semblent trouver dans les TIC le moyen pour mieux réaliser leur objectif : permettre de vivre et travailler au Grand Caire sans affronter les maux de son espace central. Globalement, Les TIC, malgré leur capacité à alléger plusieurs contraintes spatiales, sont parmi les facteurs qui ont consolidé la forme urbaine actuelle du Grand Caire avec tous ses problèmes majeurs. / With their ability to create, process and transmit information in real time, ICT are playing today a major role in the structuring and development of urban spaces. The present thesis aims to study the relationship between ICT and the transformations of the Greater Cairo’s urban form. To that end, the thesis draws on a multidisciplinary approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods; it is based on the model of "Urbanism of networks" that divides ICT networks into three levels: infrastructures, information technologies and uses. Many resources are used in this study: reports, specialised books and articles, data collected from the field and various Internet resources including the Big Data. The main results are as follows: at the metropolitan scale, the distribution of ICT networks (infrastructures, information technologies and uses) has drawn an extended area, a continuum, which connects the main urban centers formed during the several historical periods of Greater Cairo. Moreover, ICT, among other factors, have led to the formation in the southern suburb of an eccentric, unplanned economic/residential center, the first of its kind in the millennial history of Greater Cairo. Finally, the results showed an important role of the gated communities, these latter seem to find in ICT the way to better realise their objective: to allow living and working in Greater Cairo without facing the disadvantages of its central space. Overall, ICT, despite their ability to alleviate many spatial constraints, are among the factors that shaped the current urban form of Greater Cairo with all its major problems.