How 'effectiveness', increasingly a measurement of value replacing a simple financial result, can best be judged across a wide variety of fields. The purpose of this volume is to examine the concept and measurement of 'effectiveness', now increasingly employed to evaluate the kinds of operations where success cannot be judged in monetary terms. A philosopher comments on thedevelopment of the concepts of 'cause' and 'effect' from classical times to the present; a systems engineer looks at the possibility of using the parameter for the evaluation of coherent systems; a restoration ecologist discussesthe parameters used in reforestation and their relation to effectiveness considered at different levels; a sociologist relates the methodologies used in this discipline to evaluate the effectiveness of health programs; an expertof education discusses the applicability of the measurement of effectiveness to the functioning of schools; a specialist in aid to developing countries describes the effectiveness of operations from the implementation of major projects to demining operations; a consultant on foreign aid highlights the cultural perception of efficacy in developing countries; finally, an anthropologist examines the relationship between 'effectiveness' and 'efficiency' in food intake and production between two different populations living in the same region, a semi-nomadic agro-pastoralist and a settled agriculturalist one. A concluding discussion notes the salience of the concept of effectiveness inmany 'living' phenomena, including sociocultural ones, and the possibility of using them better to understand their evolution.

'Studies on the Nature of War' aims to place in perspective the sociocultural variables that make outbreaks of war probable, and identify for policy-makers steps that can be taken to control these variables. This first volume of the series is designed to show the many effects that war produces on the societies that are addicted to them. Twelve papers describe the evolution from antiquity to modern times of the interpretation of the causes of war and of its effects; the causes of war among pre-industrial societies; war in an ancient empire, the Roman, in a modern one, the Austro-Hungarian, and in the Soviet empire; and the various aspects of the impact of war on society, for instance, the correlation between war and personal violence, the manipulation of public communication, and the costs of war. CONTRIBUTORS: G. AUSENDA, R. POZZO, C. DANDEKER, R. B. FERGUSON, R. L. CARNEIRO, J. A. TAINTER, T. J. CORNELL, N. RUDENSKY, A. AKLAEV, D. LESTER, P.M. TAYLOR, W. R. THOMPSON. BR> CONTENTS: The evolution of learned thinking on the significance of war from classical Greece to the Renaissance: A survey. G. AUSENDA and R. POZZO; The causes of war and the history of modern sociological theory. C. DANDEKER; The general consequences of war: An Amazonian perspective. R. B. FERGUSON; The role of warfare in political evolution: Past results and future projections. R. L. CARNEIRO; Evolutionary consequences of war. J. A. TAINTER; The effects of war on the society of ancient Rome. T. J. CORNELL; War and nationalities problems: The end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. G. AUSENDA; War as a factor of ethnic conflict and stability in the U.S.S.R. N. RUDENSKY; War and social stress and their effects on the nationalities in the U.S.S.R. A. AKLAEV; War and personal violence. D. LESTER; The effects of war on communications. P.M. TAYLOR; Assessing the costs of war: A preliminary cut. W. R. THOMPSON.

Essays examining the Langobards, with important conclusions for early medieval Italy. The Langobards or Lombards were the last Germanic group to invade the Roman Mediterranean, crossing the Alps into Italy in 568-9. They were nonetheless one of the longest-lasting, for their state survived Charlemagne's conquest in774, and was the core of the medieval kingdom of Italy. The incompleteness of their conquest of Italy was also one of the root causes of Italian division for over 1300 years after their arrival. But they present a challenge to the historian, for most of the evidence for them dates to the last half-century of their independence, up to 774, a period in which Langobard Italy was a coherent and apparently tightly-governed state by early medieval standards. How they reached this from the incoherent and disorganised situation visible in late sixth-century Italy is still a matter of debate. The historians and archaeologists who contribute to this volume discuss Langobard archaeologyand material culture both before and after their invasion, Langobard language, political organisation, the church, social structures, family structures, and urban economy. It is thus an important and up to date starting point forfuture research on early medieval Italy. Contributors: G. AUSENDA, S. BARNISH, S. BRATHER, T.S. BROWN, N. CHRISTIE, M. COSTAMBEYS, P. DELOGU, D. GREEN, W. HAUBRICHS, J. HENNING, B. WARD-PERKINS, C. WICKHAM.

A study of two Germanic tribes, the Baiuvarii and Thuringi, looking at their origins, development, and customs between the fifth and the eighth centuries. The large neighbouring tribes of the Baiuvarii and Thuringi, who lived between the Alps and the River Elbe from the fifth to eighth centuries, are the focus of this book. Using a variety of different sources drawn from the fieldsof archaeology, history, linguistics and religion, the contributions discuss how an ethnos, a gens, or a tribe, such as the Baiuvarii or Thuringi, might appear in the written and archaeological evidence. For the Thuringi tribal traditions started around the year 400 or even earlier, while the Baiuvarii experienced a much later ethnogenesis from both immigrants and a local, partly Romance population in the mid-sixth century. The Baiuvarii and Thuringi are studied together because of the astonishing connections between their two settlement landscapes. In the context of the row-grave civilisation the Thuringi belonged primarily to the eastern, the Baiuvarii to thewestern sphere. The kingdom of the Thuringi was assimilated into the Merovingian Empire after their defeat by the Franks in the 530s, which also changed their burial customs to the style of the western row-grave zone. In contrast,the Baiuvarii were not "Frankicised" until more than a century later and their grave customs remained more typically "Bavarian". The chapters highlight typical features of each region and beyond: settlements, agricultural economy, law, religion, language, names, craftsmanship, grave goods, mobility and communication. Janine Fries-Knoblach is a freelance archaeologist with a special interest in the fields of settlements, agriculture and technology of protohistoric Central Europe, and has taught at a number of German universities; Heiko Steuer is Professor Emeritus of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Middle Ages at Freiburg University, Germany, with a special interest in the social and economic history of Germanic tribes in Central Europe; John Hines is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University and is supervising the publication of the remaining volumes inthis series. Contributors: Giorgio Ausenda, Janine Fries-Knoblach, Heike Grahn-Hoek, Dennis H. Green, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Joachim Henning, Max Martin, Peter Neumeister, Heiko Steuer, Claudia Theune-Vogt, Ian Wood.

The work of top scholars in Visigothic studies... Using all evidence available, the volume addresses the evolution of the Visigoths in early medieval history. CHOICE Indispensable for all scholars of the Visigoths. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW Books on the Visigoths and Visigothic Spain in English are rare, so this is a welcome addition to their ranks... wide-ranging collection (which) has much to offer, not just to Spanish studies but to students of late antiquity in general. CLASSICAL REVIEW Between 376 and 476 the Roman Empire in western Europe was dismantled by aggressive outsiders, barbarians' as the Romans labelled them. Chief among these were the Visigoths, a new force of previously separate Gothic and other groups from south-west France, initially settled by the Romans but subsequently, from the middle of the fifth century, achieving total independence from the failing Roman Empire, and extending their power from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar. These studies draw on literary and archaeological evidence to address important questions thrown up by the history of the Visigoths and of the kingdom they generated: the historical processes which led to their initial creation; the emergence of the Visigothic kingdom in the fifth century; and the government, society, culture and economy of the mature' kingdom of the sixth and seventh centuries. A valuable feature of the collection, reflecting the switch of the centre of the Visigothic kingdom from France to Spain from the beginning of the sixth century, is the inclusion, in English, of current Spanish scholarship. Dr PETER HEATHERteaches in the Department of History at University College London.

Studies of the customs and beliefs of barbarian peoples who migrated westwards and settled in Western Europe from the close of the Roman empire to the ninth century. The decline of the Roman Empire was compounded by the spread westwards of tribes from Eastern Europe, settling areas from which the indigenous populations had been cleared by the spread of the power of Rome; those populations themselves, notably the Celts, were pushed to the fringes of the former empire. These migrations of barbarian peoples between the fourth and ninth centuries left no historical record in the accepted sense, but it is the recovery of the customs and beliefs of these populations that forms the common purpose of the studies in this book, for during these centuries the traits and attitudes developed which are at the root of present-day Europe: feudalism, the statuslevel achieved by the merchant class, the beginnings of an ideology that led to the separation of church and state, the demise of slavery as an inefficient mode of production, the origin of national identities. The late GIORGIO AUSENDA taught at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Social Stress, San Marino. Contributors: GIORGIO AUSENDA, JULIAN D. RICHARDS, JOHN HINES, DAVID TURTON, ROSS BALZARETTI, DENNIS H. GREEN, SVEN SCHUETTE, DAVID N. DUMVILLE, MORTEM AXBOE, IAN N. WOOD