People who inject drugs are at risk of acute bacterial and fungal injecting-related infections. There is evidence that incidence of hospitalizations for injecting-related infections are increasing in several countries, but little is known at an individual level. We aimed to examine injecting-related infections in a linked longitudinal cohort of people who inject drugs in Melbourne, Australia. A retrospective descriptive analysis was conducted to estimate the prevalence and incidence of injecting-related infections using administrative emergency department and hospital separation datasets linked to the SuperMIX cohort, from 2008 to 2018. Over the study period, 33% (95%CI: 31–36%) of participants presented to emergency department with any injecting-related infections and 27% (95%CI: 25–30%) were admitted to hospital. Of 1,044 emergency department presentations and 740 hospital separations, skin and soft tissue infections were most common, 88% and 76%, respectively. From 2008 to 2018, there was a substantial increase in emergency department presentations and hospital separations with any injecting-related infections, 48 to 135 per 1,000 person-years, and 18 to 102 per 1,000 person-years, respectively. The results emphasize that injecting-related infections are increasing, and that new models of care are needed to help prevent and facilitate early detection of superficial infection to avoid potentially life-threatening severe infections.

The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia emphasises that children's own identity is constructed within their given context of family and community. This article presents the findings of a multiple case study project undertaken within five remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, Australia. Community Elders were concerned that while their children had a positive sense of self during their prior-to-school years, on entry into formal schooling they experienced a disjuncture between those experiences and the expectations of a Western curriculum. The project involved partnering one university academic to work with each community, exploring ways of improving 4-year-old children's pre-reading and numeracy skills to enhance their capacity to engage with expectations on entry into formal schooling. Elders were determined to have the children be successful at school and saw success there as inextricably interwoven with their sense of efficacy to explore and to learn. Outcomes included positives such as children demonstrating increased pre-reading and numeracy skills and, importantly, the engagement of the whole community in the project. Foundational to the success was making Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing key components of learning opportunities provided to the children, supporting awareness of their social and cultural heritage.

This article discusses social interaction in the Epipalaeolithic of southwest Asia. Discussions of contact, social relationships and social organization have primarily focused on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and are often considered to represent typical hallmarks of emergent farming societies. The hunter-gatherers of the final Pleistocene, in particular those of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic, have more rarely been the focus of such discussions. In this article we consider evidence for interaction from the Azraq Basin of eastern Jordan, to question the uniqueness of the Neolithic evidence for interaction. We argue that interaction between differently-constituted groups can be traced within the Early Epipalaeolithic of the southern Levant, suggesting that it is of far greater antiquity than previously considered.

Few prehistoric developments have received as much attention as the origins of agriculture and its associated societal implications in the Near East. A great deal of this research has focused on correlating the timing of various cultural transformations leading up to farming and village life with dramatic climatic events. Using rigorously selected radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites and palaeoenvironmental datasets, we test the predominate models for culture change from the early Epipalaeolithic to the Pottery Neolithic (c. 23,000–8000 cal. bp) to explore how well they actually fit with well-documented and dated palaeoclimatic events, such as the Bølling-Allerød, Younger Dryas, Preboreal and 8.2 ka event. Our results demonstrate that these correlations are not always as clear or as consistent as some authors suggest. Rather, any relationships between climate change and culture change are more complicated than existing models allow. The lack of fit between these sources of data highlight our need for further and more precise chronological data from archaeological sites, additional localized palaeoclimatic data sets, and more nuanced models for integrating palaeoenvironmental data and prehistoric people's behaviours.

This paper reports on the work carried out during the 2009 field season of the prehistory sub-theme of the Desert Migrations Project. The work consisted of detailed survey and small-scale excavations in two wadis that drain the Messak Settafet, near the town of Jarma. Both wadis were found to contain evidence of Palaeolithic and Neolithic occupation, as well as of having been used as migratory routes between the Ubari and Murzuq sand seas. One of the wadis (WJAR-E-O1) was surveyed intensely along a few kilometers of its tributary margins. This revealed archaeological material ranging from Oldowan (Mode 1) to historic. The distribution of the various industries and structures had a distinct spatial patterning; the Palaeolithic scatters were spatially discrete, but Holocene remains were often found superimposed on earlier industries. Among the finds were a spatially discrete Oldowan assemblage, an extensive Acheulean industry which included the exploitation of fossil wood as a raw material, the identification of at least five major outcrops of fossil trees, and a number of more recent structures dating from Neolithic to Islamic times and consisting of graves, cairns, rock engravings, and stone features. Middle Stone Age lithics, so predominant over the surface of the Messak plateau, were absent. The second wadi (WJAR-W-02) was geomorphologically different, being comparatively narrow and deeply incised, and containing a number of terraces on the wadi bed resulting from cut and infill processes in the past. The surface of these terraces contained an extensive Aterian lithic industry, while evidence of late Holocene use of the area was also recorded in the form of Tifinagh inscriptions, rock engravings, cairns and graves. Besides mapping the archaeological distributions, a number of trenches were dug at the edge of the river terraces. These revealed an in situ stratigraphic sequence, within which Aterian lithics were found at a depth of > 1 m. Samples for OSL dating were taken. Overall, the work of the 2009 field season was extremely successful in that, besides the fascinating range of archaeological material recorded and studied, it provided important insights into the role of the north-south wadis that cross the Messak, the southern boundary of the area being explored by the DMP, and their differential use in prehistory.

The palaeoanthropological and geomorphological sub-projects of the Desert Migrations Project (DMP) focus on the Pleistocene and early Holocene environment and prehistory of Fazzan so as to assess the timing and extent of hominin and human movement across the Sahara through time. This paper reports on the findings of the 2008 field season, with a focus on the prehistoric evidence along the northern margin of the Ubari sand sea.

The geomorphological record of the area preserves evidence of at least five past episodes of lake formation. The exact chronology of these, as well as the spatial extent of these lakes, remains the focus of further study.

The archaeological record of hominin and human occupation of Fazzan prior to the establishment of the Garamantian civilisation is extraordinarily rich. Between 2007 and 2008, the DMP palaeoanthropological project surveyed thirty-five localities along the northern margin of the Ubari sand sea, recording a range of assemblages spanning all Palaeolithic industries. Most of the archaeological remains found consisted of stone-tools, while grinding stones were comparatively restricted geographically. Mode 1/Oldowan tools were found at two localities, contrasting with the widespread presence of Mode 2/Acheulean, Mode 3/Middle Stone Age and Mode 5/microlithic artefacts. This indicates that, although hominin presence in the area is probably earlier than previously thought, populations were comparatively sparse until the Middle Pleistocene. Twenty-one localities within the Ubari sand sea, as well as seven south of the Messak Settafet were also surveyed between 2007 and 2008. The detailed study of the lithics from these areas will be carried out next year, but preliminary results stress the different nature of the assemblages found within interdune corridors — very low frequency of cores, no Mode 1 and extremely rare Mode 2 lithics (found at a single locality).

The 2009 field season will focus on obtaining further samples of palaeolake sediments for dating, on the evidence of Mode 1 assemblages south of the Messak, as well as on the refining of the archaeological indicators that may distinguish the different phases of hominin and human occupation of Fazzan during the Later Pleistocene and Holocene.

The Desert Migrations Project is a new interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional collaborative project between the Society for Libyan Studies and the Department of Antiquities. The geographical focus of the study is the Fazzan region of southwest Libya and in thematic terms we aim to address the theme of migration in the broadest sense, encompassing the movement of people, ideas/knowledge and material culture into and out of Fazzan, along with evidence of shifting climatic and ecological boundaries over time. The report describes the principal sub-strands of the project's first season in January 2007, with some account of research questions, methods employed and some preliminary results. Three main sub-projects are reported on. The first concerns the improved understanding of long-term climatic and environmental changes derived from a detailed palaeoenvironmental study of palaeolake sediments. This geo-science work runs alongside and feeds directly into both archaeological sub-projects, the first relating to prehistoric activity and mobility around and between a series of palaeolakes during wetter climatic cycles; the second to the excavation of burials in the Wadi al-Ajal, exploring the changing relationship between material culture, identity and ethnicity across time, from prehistory to the early Islamic period (the span of the main cemetery zones). In addition, some rock art research and a survey of historic period sites was undertaken in the Wadi ash-Shati and Ubari sand sea.