This thesis presents a comprehensive characterisation of the Palaeolithic occupation of the Thar Desert, which is located in western India and south-western Pakistan. This is achieved through a combination of extensive syntheses of existing palaeoenvironmental and archaeological evidence and the development of new, interdisciplinary evidence for Upper Pleistocene hominin occupation in the Thar Desert through surface survey and excavation. Patterns of environmental variability in the Thar Desert are described to identify when and where the Thar Desert may have been habitable to hominin populations. Evidence for over 900 Palaeolithic sites is synthesised to identify existing spatial, typological and chronological patterns in the Thar Desert. Typo-technological descriptions of new Palaeolithic assemblages are described, and placed within chronological and environmental contexts based upon associations with previously studied sediment formations. The results of chronological, environmental and archaeological analyses from a new excavated site, Katoati, are described, which presents a significant new benchmark for Palaeolithic studies, both for the Thar Desert and southern Asia. The excavated assemblages from Katoati indicate a Middle Palaeolithic occupation of the Thar Desert during episodes of enhanced humidity >91ka, and a further Middle Palaeolithic occupation 65-55ka. These Middle Palaeolithic assemblages indicate considerable cultural continuity and offer a chronometric framework for the results of the surface survey. The identification of a number of technologically and typologically distinct artefacts in both excavated and surface contexts indicate significant similarities with Middle Stone Age assemblages from Arabia and the Sahara and Middle Palaeolithic sites in South Asia. As a result, the Thar Desert can be identified as a pivotal location for investigating major changes in Upper Pleistocene hominin demography between Africa and across southern Asia.

The study of terrorism has been both broad in scope and varied in approach. Little work has been done, however, on the territorial aspects of terrorist groups. Most terrorist groups are revolutionary to one degree or another, seeking the control of a piece of territory; but for the supportive population of a terrorist group, how important is the issue of territory? Are the intangible qualities of territory more salient to a given population than other factors? Are territorially based terrorist groups more durable than their ideologically or religiously motivated cohorts? This paper aims to propose the validity of the territorial argument for the study of political terrorism.

This study focuses on female entrepreneurship in Afghanistan as a relatively new phenomenon in the country. It captures women entrepreneurs’ lived experiences and investigates their motivations, the factors affecting their businesses, the challenges they face, and their survival strategies. It also explores entrepreneurship's impacts on women’s lives, particularly affecting their ascribed gender roles and contributions to social transformation. The findings of this research, based on qualitative interviews with 19 female entrepreneurs in Afghanistan, suggest that female entrepreneurship could be an effective way of involving women in social and economic development. This thesis also contributes to women’s empowerment and increases job opportunities for other women. It also has the potential to address women’s previously unmet needs. I argue that in conservative societies, entrepreneurship brings about social change by normalizing women’s presence in the public sphere, particularly in business, and therefore it should be supported and promoted.

As many scholars have noted, in the immediate years after the First World War, the British Empire faced important challenges to its future survival, not least of which was the growth of three key movements: Bolshevism, Islamism and nationalism. This thesis examines how Britain coped with these problems, by exploring the internal government debates regarding foreign policy formulation towards South Asia, specifically in the countries of Persia and Afghanistan. It is the contention of this work that the current literature on this subject suffers from certain flaws, the first being that not enough writers have discussed the interrelation of these three movements. Secondly, there has been a lack of focus on how officials in London and in Delhi thought quite differently on the issue of Britain’s foreign policy in South Asia after 1918. This thesis will address these, and other, gaps in the literature. It will contend that there were those within the Home government who displayed a particular mode of thought – a ‘Great Game mentality’ – towards this region. This mentality was influenced by the legacy of the earlier, 19th-century rivalry between Britain and Russia, and resulted in a tendency to over-emphasise the threat of Russian Bolshevism to Britain’s imperial interests in South Asia, whilst at the same time under-emphasising the threat of nationalism and pan-Islamism across Persia, Afghanistan and India. When the Indian government questioned this Great Game mentality, it was largely ignored and frequently maligned. The work will demonstrate how those of the Great Game mind-set dominated the creation of Britain’s policy towards Persia, Afghanistan and adjoining regions in 1918 and 1919, how events of 1920 and 1921 forced London to reassess this Great Game thinking, and how (by 1922 and 1923) this re-evaluation had developed into re-formulation of British foreign policy in South Asia.

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The United States has a long-standing interest in the political events of South Asia. This research focuses specifically on U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic nations of this region, Pakistan and Afghanistan (Referred to as Islamic South Asia). This research examines a variety of primary and secondary sources in an effort to understand the historical context and theoretical framework of U.S. policy. It has been suggested by scholars that the age of realism has come to an end. This study seeks to verify this claim. Does realism provide the theoretical base necessary for policy success in Islamic South Asia? If it does, then can it continue to serve as the theoretical guide in the post-Cold War era? U.S. policy actions and the logic supporting them are examined in an effort to critique realism and to assess the policy toward this region. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the continued use of the realist theory is substantiated, based on its record of past policy successes and failures. One of the core arguments against realism is that the level of analysis is too rigid, thus failing to recognize internal constraints in state affairs. Of the many internal issues facing a state, none outweigh the role of culture within the social context of this region. This is exemplified in the case studies of the three most pivotal events influencing U.S. policy. Having examining the foundation and application of the realist based policies toward the region, this study will then evaluate the success or failure of U.S. policy. This evaluation is based on an analysis of the stated goals compared to the results of policy actions. Considering the dangers on the horizon, this research also offers several guidelines for creating a more successful long-term strategy toward Islamic South Asia. Having already witnessed the collapse of the state in Afghanistan and the potential for state failure in a nuclear Pakistan, the concerns relating to this region are extensive. Weapons of mass destruction, environmental crisis, and social instability are just few of the problems addressed in this study. The variety of potential disasters emanating from this region makes this region and U.S. policy towards it a paramount concern.

This thesis characterizes the mass and chemical composition of the fine particle air pollution over several cities in South Asia and quantifies how major sources impact the observed levels by using Chemical Mass Balance modeling with organic compounds as tracers. During February 1999, as part of the INDOEX program, a study was conducted to measure the size distribution and chemical composition of the fine particles in a remote island in Maldives off the coast of India. We found that the fine particle concentrations were comparable to those found in major cities in the United States, and were surprisingly high for a background site. 10-day backwind trajectories pointed the source region towards the Indian subcontinent; other INDOEX studies confirmed the presence of a thick haze layer over the Indian Ocean and the subcontinent during the time of the experiment. Motivated by these findings, a detailed analysis of ambient PM2.5 was carried out in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chandigarhfour cities located upwind of the island in Maldives. Seasonality of the fine particle concentrations was observed in each of these cities with the highest concentrations occurring during the wintertime and the lowest concentrations during the summer. Size distribution and chemical composition of the fine particle emissions from five Bangladeshi biomass (rice straw, coconut leaves, dried cow dung, synthetic biomass log, and jackfruit wood) and three Asian coals (Bangladeshi, Indian, and Chinese) were characterized and important source signatures were identified. Finally, recently developed chemical tracer techniques were applied to the ambient samples from North India to differentiate between the contributions from the many different source types. The emission profiles and source signatures from the source tests conducted previously along with the ones conducted using the Indian Subcontinent fuels were used as inputs to the model. These results serve several purposes. First, they provide a description of the mass and detailed inorganic and organic chemical characteristics of fine particulate matter conducted for the first time ever in this region. Second, the source apportionment study will help to define the relative importance of those sources that should be included within an air quality control program. Chemical tracer techniques are particularly attractive for application in regions that have not been studied previously because they are able to yield rapid insights into the causes of a local air pollution problem before the completion of an accurate emissions inventory. Third, the source tests results will prove useful in constructing and evaluating regional emission inventory and assessing source impacts on air quality. Fourth, this work has been carried out with collaborations from Georgia Tech and several other Indian research institutions where pollution control personnel in India was trained in the operation of air sampling equipments that were left for continued monitoring, thus contributing to technology transfer and knowledge transfer from the US.

Two kinds of tsunami models are used in this thesis to simulate tsunami propagation in the ocean. One is the linear dispersion tsunami model developed by Port and Airport Research Institute (PARI), Japan. The other is COrnell Multigrid COupled Tsunami model (COMCOT) developed by the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, that carries on the tsunami run-up computation to the nearshore region. Two kinds of tsunami models have the same mechanism of initial wave profile, which is the vertical seabed displacement as the initial tsunami profile proposed by Mansinha and Smylie (1971). Both models describe the tsunami by the same shallow water equations. At first, the feasibility of the PARI model is established by comparing with the record in Maldives during the South Asia tsunami in December 2004. Then, the COMCOT model in applied to the Pingtong earthquake in December 2006 and is validated by comparing with the tidal station records. Possible submarine fault activities around Taiwan and the Western Pacific ring is simulated by the The PARI model based on moment magnitude scale (¢Ûw) close to the South Asia tsunami. Seven sources are chosen: the Hokkaido, the East Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, the Guishan Island in Taiwan, the Fukien of mainland China, the Luzon Island and the New Guinea. The results suggest the northeast and southwest part of Taiwan have potential tsunami risk. Finally, we simulate the fault activity between Taiwan and Luzon islands by the COMCOT model. The inundation area extends northward to the Tso-Ying and San-Min districts, eastward to the Siao-Gang district and Fengshan city. The Kaohsiung harbor can resist tsunami hazard for moment magnitude scale (¢Ûw) up to 7.58 with maximum wave height of 5.5 meters.

Doctoral thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

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