古典历史的基础:从国之大事到普通百姓的生活

由于古代史料的性质和近代早期历史写作目的的影响,从古代到近代早期的西方,古代史基本为政治和军事史以及大人物所统治,社会经济与普通人遭到忽视。21世纪的古代史写作,大多将政治史排挤到相对次要的地位,普通人及其日常生活成为主要内容,其笔下的古代世界,着重古希腊罗马公民的社会生活以及影响公民生活的诸种政治和经济因素。古代史主题变换与研究转型,既与学者们对史料的认识以及对社会科学方法的借鉴有内在联系,也与西方史学注重公民活动的传统相关。世界古代史研究仍需在掌握语言工具的基础上,更多地借鉴现代社会科学理论与方法,实现从理论、方法到内容的转型,深入古代社会的历史。     

在中外历史文化长河中徜徉——访刘家和教授

刘家和先生是学贯中西的著名学者,在世界古代史和中国古代历史文化的研究上都有卓著的成就。长期以来,他善于进行历史比较的理论思考和实证性研究,对希腊、印度、中国的历史文化进行过个案的研究;并致力于把中国古代历史纳入世界史的体系之中,同时在世界史的背景下对中国古代历史文化进行深入的探索。此外,对历史比较研究的方法论问题也有独到的见解。     

马王堆帛书与历史研究

马王堆帛书为我们研究历史提供了一些新的资料。根据马王堆出土的帛书,可校勘今本古籍的不当之处;通过帛书与传本书的对照研究,可以发现传世文献在流传过程及当时情况;通过马王堆帛书研究,还能使我们有确据地进行疑古、释古与信古,从而更好地开展学术史研究。这些都有力的推动了人们对历史的深入研究和再认识,也将对有关学科的研究起明显的推动作用。     

论《古书疑义举例》的成就及不足

俞樾的《古书疑义举例》在中国训诂学史上占有极为重要的地位,它既总结了传统训诂学,又开了近、现代训诂学的先声。本文对该书的成就及不足进行了深入地探讨,重点讨论了该书在传统的训诂学、语法学和修辞学上的贡献。     

Change and the Corporeal in Seventeenth‐ and Eighteenth‐Century Gender History: Or,Can Cultural History Be Rigorous?

This essay is a methodological evaluation of the procedures and presuppositions informing the social and cultural history of gender, as exemplified in recent scholarship about the transformations of sex and gender in Britain from the early modern period through the long eighteenth century. It suggests answers to two questions: how can we write the cultural history of gender while maintaining both rigour in the enterprise and an awareness of its limits? And where might we go when these limits suddenly appear to undermine the very foundational presuppositions on which the whole cultural‐historical project is built?     

Ancient history and contemporary political theory: the case of liberty

ABSTRACT

Providing an introduction to this special issue on the ancient notions of liberty and its modern perspectives, this essay contains, first, some reflections about the relation between the fields of ancient history and contemporary political theory. Building on the comments of the final roundtable with Kinch Hoekstra and Quentin Skinner, it then makes an attempt at extrapolating some theoretical understandings of liberty from a wide range of geographical and historical contexts covered in the contributions. Moving away from a strictly classical Graeco-Roman focus, these include investigations from the second millennium BCE polities in the Levant to the Byzantine empire in the fifth-century CE.     

Locating the “People Without History” in Histories of the Ancient Near East

Three books discussed here illustrate multidisciplinary approaches to studying ancient civilizations and a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives. They suggest that in addition to the traditional focus on elites and urban origins, we should analyze nonelites and smaller scale communities. I concur that focusing on elites gives an incomplete and inaccurate picture of life and culture in the ancient Near East. Instead, these books shed light on the “people without history” in the ancient Near East. This “social history” must be integrated into economic and political models of past cultures to fully understand ancient civilizations.     

The Qing Dynasty Ministry of Justice Memorials and “The New History”

The Qing Dynasty Grand Secretariat Archives are considered to be among the four great ancient texts discovered in modern Chinese history, and the memorials from the Ministry of Justice have garnered particular attention due to their well-preserved socio-economic content(s). From the 20th century onwards the New History, with its emphasis on drawing upon the social sciences’ discussions of citizens, communities and society, came to replace the more traditional “Imperial Genealogy” style of historiography, affording us a grander view of history. Progressing forward with “the times,” the New History continued to innovate and diversify the field; in terms of Qing dynasty social historical research, it brought about constant exploration and change within the field, first having shifted from socio-economic history to social history, then moving on to life history, the investigation of the “seeds of capitalism,” class relations, lower-class society, marriage and family relations, law and justice, gender studies, daily life (“life, livelihood and environment”), and so on, continually pushing the boundaries of academic research. Yet, underlying all this change was a close relationship between the use of the Ministry of Justice Memorials and the field’s overall development. This article not only introduces several findings made by academicians in using the Ministry of Justice Memorials, but also sets out to further reveal the relationship between the New History and the memorials themselves, probing into the deeper question of broader changes in historiography and their relationship with generational shifts in intellectual thought.     

从上博简《武王践祚》看战国时期的古史编撰

春秋战国时期古史编撰蔚然成风,那个时代的古史编撰,不仅有对于远古历史的追忆,还有对于那个时代的近古史的编写。上博简第七册的《武王践祚》给我们提供了当时编撰近古史的一个实例,让我们可以窥知当时人们的历史观念。当时的古史编撰尽量在现有材料的基础上增补情节,丰富内容,落实事件的时间、地点、人物、经过等,已经完备了述史记事的体例,将史影变为言之确凿的叙事。当时,古史编撰是采用改铸的方法进行的,这种改铸工作的重点是熔古今史影为一炉,创造出战国时人心目中的古史。     

Rethinking the Historiographical Impulse: The History of Ancient Israel as a Problem

The first part of this paper provides some insights into the problematic nature of the genre “history of ancient Israel”, both in terms of historiography and of historical epistemology. It is argued that the concept “history of ancient Israel” is essentially valid within a particular modern theological or biblical historiographical context. As such, this history of ancient Israel may indeed progress and generate new understandings but is nonetheless seriously limited by its main concern with “biblical Israel”. It is also proposed that in order to overcome these thematic and epistemological historical limitations, a wider history of ancient Palestine or the Southern Levant should be envisioned, into which to understand the epigraphic and archaeological realia of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, together with other contemporary polities in the region, and the later development of biblical traditions and texts. The second part of the paper addresses questions of ethnogenesis, socio-political organization and identity in the light of the previous discussion, setting the stage for an alternative history of Israel and other historical realities in ancient Palestine.     

唤醒沉睡的废墟——大遗址记忆的中国大历史扫描

我们的过去,都成为了历史。曾经的辉煌,曾经的精致,在历史的风雨中化作废墟,静静地沉睡在地下。 这些废墟经历了千百年乃至若干万年的风雨磨砺,昔日凝重的历史印记仍旧深深地铭刻在它们的上面。废墟变幻的本体,斑斓的色调,是一个时代、一族人群、一种文化留给后世的纪念。当考古人唤醒废墟的时刻,一段忘却的历史,一页缤纷的画卷,一曲悠远的长歌,便会豁然眼前,响亮耳畔。     

中国古代人与自然环境关系思想透视

在人类正面临生存环境的严重挑战的今天,中国古代人地关系思想的科学价值与现实意义受到中西方学者的高度重视。中国古代人与自然环境关系思想的突出特色在于,承认自然环境限制作用,强调在此前提下主动地适应自然环境,从以人为本的基点出发去保护自然环境、追求人与自然环境的和谐。这种人与自然环境相协调的人地观是中华民族在长期与开发利用自然环境的生产和生活实践过程中形成的,是中华民族悠久的文化传统的重要组成部分,也是中华文明得以延续的一个重要因素,它对现今社会的发展仍具有现实意义。     

Minimally destructive DNA extraction from archaeological artefacts made from whale baleen

Here we demonstrate the successful extraction and amplification of target species DNA from artefacts made of whale baleen collected from excavations of past palaeo-Eskimo and Inuit cultures in Greenland. DNA was successfully extracted and amplified from a single baleen bristle of 1.5 cm length dated based on archaeological context to the period of the Saqqaq culture, more than 4000 years ago and following decades of storage at room temperature at the National Museum. The results reveal ancient baleen in archaeological material as a potential source of DNA that can be used for population genetic studies. We conclude that genetic investigation of historical baleen collections can contribute to our knowledge of the prehistoric population genetics of baleen whales, for example by quantifying the impact of modern whaling on the genetic diversity of bowhead whales.     

交融与创生：西欧文明的三个来源

人类文明的多样性,不仅呈现在当代,同样呈现在过去的历史长河里,因此探究历史上不同文明的特殊性非常重要。西欧文明始于公元5世纪,初步成型于11—15世纪,源于古代日耳曼传统、古典希腊罗马文明和基督教不同质的文化。日耳曼人的马尔克村社制度是欧洲文明的胚胎;古典文明,尤其罗马法促使中世纪个人权利概念逐渐形成并进入公法领域,成为法治社会的广泛基础;基督教的政治哲学及政治斗争结束了神圣王权时代,有助于建构起上层政治框架。经过几个世纪的发展,在一定社会条件下,三要素熔为一炉。逐渐生成西欧文明的雏形。很明显,西欧文明是次生的、混合的文明,其创生过程也是不同文明的融合和嬗变过程;16世纪后衍生为资本主义文明,后者表现了不凡的创造力,冲击了整个人类社会,同时也显现了与生俱来的局限性。     

DNA analysis of archaeological sheep remains from China

Recent research has thrown considerable light on the history of the domestic sheep, but has not extended to ancient sheep specimens. In the present study, ancient DNA analysis was carried out on eight archaeological sheep remains recovered from Erlitou archaeological site in Henan Province (ca. 2100–1800 B.C.) to explore the genetic structure of ancient sheep and the phylogenetic relationship between ancient and modern sheep. We analyzed the control region sequences and coding regions of mitochondrial DNA from the remains by direct sequencing and restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, respectively. Our results reveal that all ancient sheep belong to lineage A defined by modern sheep sequences. Phylogenetic analysis shows that neither argali (Ovis ammon) nor urial (Ovis vignei) mtDNA is closely related to Erlitou ancient sheep. In addition, our results suggest that ancient DNA analysis can serve as a powerful tool in tracing prehistoric population movement.     

杨仁恺先生论古代书画（天津篇）（下）

97.杨文骢《山水图卷》（纸,墨）津2-058己卯（崇祯十二年,1639年,44岁）春日,范我词兄上款。枯笔。近垢道人。明末画中九友中之杨文骢,能诗文,兼长书画,惟绘画传世不多,且皆草草之笔,或以画石为题材,文人画气味殊为浓郁。今见其作于崇祯十二年春日《山水图》一卷,水墨枯笔描绘,相当花费功夫。此卷画风与垢道人近,然名款却为杨氏,无作伪嫌疑,或系同时人相互影响所致欤？书以待考。     

文明起源研究中的“国家”与“社会”

"古代国家"与"早期国家"在内涵上形成某些交集,其实体在"古代"可以并存,但它们是不同的两个概念,不可以混淆起来使用。"古代国家"之"古代",主要是社会史分期上的一个概念。"早期国家"之"早期",则是"国家"本身的一个发展阶段,它讨论的是人们之间一种特殊政治关系存续的时期。"古代国家"包括"早期国家"与"成熟国家",它们只存在于"古代"。"早期国家"却不仅存在于社会史分期上的"古代",而且也出现在这种分期上的"中世纪"与"近代"或"现代"。"酋邦"与"分层社会"也是两个不同的概念,在都是等级制社会这点上,它们有相似之处。但是,酋邦的等级是以血缘、辈分、年齿等为基础来划分的,它与经济关系并无必然联系;分层社会的等级或者说分层则是一种基于经济关系的划分,它以生产资料的占有不平等为基础。     

《中国史学名著评介》新版序

《中国史学名著评介》新版五卷本,是在1990年版三卷本基础上修订完善而成。这次修订主要有三方面内容:一是对原有86部史学名著的评介文章,进行校刊修改;二是补写了古代和近代14部史学名著,又新增了与史学有关的22部著作,包括笔记、目录、史学工具书、类书、丛书等;三是增补现代部分史学名著70部,遍布于史学研究各领域,分成四、五两卷。选入书目,主要考虑该书在史学界的地位、影响,或能够为广大读者提供必要的史学知识。     

THE POTENTIAL MOBILITY OF HUMAN POPULATIONS

Summary. The interpretation of the findings of archaeological surface survey involves making assumptions about the extent and limits to the mobility of communities, land, and individuals in past times. Recent work in medieval and early modern European history has established both the rates and the causes of mobility in a number of different communities. This paper assembles some rather less conclusive evidence from classical Greece to argue that relatively high rates of mobility of individuals, land and communities should not be excluded when a picture of the society of ancient Greece is conjured up.