The thesis explores the relationship between late Neolithic knappers and flint resources at the settlement of Rocca di Rivoli (Verona, Italy), a key site for the understanding of the late Neolithic in northern Italy. Approximately 8000 flint artefacts were recorded by means of an attribute-based relational database and subsequently analysed. The use of the \(chaîne\) \(opératoire\) method, combined with a social agency approach, provided a useful framework within which to discuss topics such as tradition, style and specialization in the context of the late Neolithic of northern Italy. The intrinsic nature of the site, characterized by secondary deposition in pits, challenged the potential retrieval of data and subsequent interpretation and resulted in the identification of fragmented \(chaînes\) \(opératoires\). In addition, the poor conservation of the finds and bias in accessibility procedures to the collection limited the choice of analytical methods available. Nonetheless, significant results were obtained. At Rocca di Rivoli there were clear preferences in terms of raw material: flint coming from the Maiolica outcrops was by far the preferred variety to be working with. It is suggested that raw material procurement possibly took place in different ways, but that a more precise identification in terms of its organization is not possible at this stage. The 16 \(chaînes\) \(opératoires\) identified at Rocca di Rivoli represent basic frameworks allowing for endless variations and additions taking place during the unfolding of flint knapping activity. It is argued throughout the present work that knapping was undertaken by both expert and non-expert knappers, including apprentices. Some aspects characterising the practice of flint knapping changed throughout occupation of the sire, possibly pointing at changes in social dynamics affecting the community of Rocca di Rivoli.

Thesis. 1978. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Louis E. Slesin. / Ph.D.

This thesis examines the relationship between the production of urban space and the reproduction of capital. Taking the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a case study, I conducted ethnographic research during the London 2012 Olympics and the Park's first 'Legacy' year. My research proceeded from an embodied walking practice (which prompted reflection on my transgender presentation as a complicating factor), and also included interviews and archival research. My analysis centres on Henri Lefebvre, situating his work on space within a concern for the relationship between everyday life and the concrete abstractions constituted therein. Taking this relationship as essential to the reproduction of capital, I explore the production of the Olympic Park as an actually-existing abstract space that mirrors the dual character of the value form. I open my account of this production with the Olympic festival, a total social moment mobilised towards the realisation of value. I then examine each of Lefebvre's three formants of abstract space in turn. I present the construction of the Park as the materialisation of an abstractly conceived space designed to incorporate a disordered post-industrial space into a new mode of accumulation. I frame the inhabitation of the Park in its Legacy era as a temporalisation of empty space, arguing that abstract time is co-constituted with abstract space in internally contradictory everyday practice. And I address the incorporation of the Park into a set of post-industrial, anti-urban, and leisureoriented spaces that form a representational space reflective of the movement of capital in its ascendant, financialised, form. I conclude with a discussion of the Olympic Park as 'catalyst', securing the reproduction of capital by encouraging further redevelopment, but also sharpening capital's contradictions as an abstract space in conflict with its own concrete content, predicated on the subsumption of the utopian potential of everyday life.

This thesis examines the relationship between Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) and Caboclo subsistence on the Middle Madeira River, Brazil. ADE are fertile anthropogenic (man-made) soils formed through practices of burning and waste disposal by pre-Columbian Amerindian populations. “Caboclo” is a social category that refers to the people of diverse origins that form the majority of the contemporary rural population of Brazilian Amazonia. Bitter manioc fields (roças) and homegardens (sítios) are the principal forms of Caboclo subsistence cultivation on ADE on the Middle Madeira River. Multi-sited ethnography shows that differences in historical ecology at both local and regional scales either enable or constrain Caboclo subsistence cultivation on ADE. At communities located on long-term landholdings with a history of egalitarian land-tenure and multi-generational kinship there is a rich body of local knowledge and practice relating to the cultivation of ADE. Interviews with 249 farmers in six localities demonstrate that bitter manioc cultivation in fertile soils (floodplain and ADE) tends to be characterised by intensive swidden systems with smaller fields, shorter fallows, and a predominance of what locals refer to as “weak” (low starch fast maturing) landraces. Bitter manioc cultivation in infertile soils (Oxisols and Ultisols) is characterised by more extensive shifting cultivation systems with larger fields, longer fallows and a predominance of what locals refer to as “strong” (high starch slow maturing) landraces. Interviews with 63 households at 16 communities show that homegardens on ADE combine the most common species of homegardens on Oxisols and in the Floodplain, with other species that occur most frequently on ADE. Homegardens on ADE exhibit significantly higher culturally salient species diversity when compared to homegardens on the other types of soil. Collectively, bitter manioc fields and homegardens constitute cultivated landscapes that show diverging agrobiodiversity on different soils, the outcome of an interplay between soil affordances, Caboclo agency and plant responses over time. These findings provide a springboard for some conclusions concerning the relationship between ADE and agriculture in the pre-Columbian period, drawing on what is known from the historical and archaeological record.

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