Bøker av Patrick Schmidt

Through interviews with many of the most noteworthy authors in law and society, Conducting Law and Society Research takes students and scholars behind the scenes of empirical scholarship, showing the messy reality of research methods. The challenges and the uncertainties, so often missing from research methods textbooks, are revealed in candid detail. These accessible and revealing conversations about the lived reality of classic projects will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to those embarking on empirical research, ranging across the full array of disciplines that contribute to law and society. For all of the ambiguities and challenges to the social 'scientific' study of law, the reflections found in this book - collectively capturing a portrait of the field through the window of the research efforts - individually remind readers that 'good research' displays not an absence of problems, but the care taken in negotiating them.

This book looks at the transformations that intentional heat treatment causes in silica rocks when used as lithic raw material. Heat treatment, known from the Middle Stone Age on, is an important step in the evolution of techniques, and the way humans perceived the materials available to them. The study shows an experimental approach, not only to understanding what happens, but also to understanding the range of temperatures and heating speeds at which these transformations take place. The results yield quantitative data that help with the recognition of techniques and procedures that silica rocks, such as flint and other cherts, were subjected to in heat-treated processes.