湖北荆门左塚楚墓群出土金属器研究

利用XRF、金相显微分析等手段对湖北省荆门市境内左冢楚墓群出土的金属器,特别是青铜器进行了测试分析,XRF分析表明该楚墓群出土的青铜器多为铜、锡、铅三元合金,且容器的锡含量低于兵器和工具,而铅含量则相反。金相分析显示左冢楚墓群出土青铜器多为铸造组织,其中3件铸后经过不同程度的加热;而热锻成形的器物有4件,其中有一件在锻后进行了冷加工。结果显示,此批青铜器合金成分比较科学、制作工艺比较先进。     

湖北郧县乔家院墓地出土战国及东汉铜器的成分与金相分析

2006年3 ～12月,在南水北调中线工程中,湖北省文物考古研究所等单位对郧县五峰乡乔家院墓群进行了考古勘探和发掘工作.限于考古发掘材料和学者关注度等因素,利用科技手段对该墓地出土战国及东汉时期青铜器的研究尚未见报道.同时,关于鄂西北地区出土古代青铜器的科学分析研究目前并不多见.鉴于此,本研究利用金相显微镜、XRF等方法分析了湖北省郧县乔家院墓地出土的14件战国及东汉时期铜器样品.分析表明除铜壶镶嵌丝为低锡二元(Cu-Sn)合金外,其他13件均为Cu-Sn-Pb三元合金;其制作工艺以铸造为主,另外还采用了热锻、热锻后冷加工、铜质芯撑、错红铜等工艺.以上分析数据为湖北地区战国及东汉时期青铜合金构成及成型工艺积累了相关数据.     

山东新泰周家庄墓地出土薄壁青铜容器制作特征分析

2003—2004年山东新泰周家庄墓地出土一批薄壁青铜容器,壁厚多在0.3～1毫米之间。将其中26件做为研究样本,利用金相显微镜、X光探伤机、X射线荧光光谱仪(XRF)进行分析。结果表明该批容器为铜锡铅三元合金铸造而成,且铅含量较高,发现了镴焊、补铸及使用加强筋和大量细小垫片等制作特征。这与目前已发现多为锻造而成的薄壁青铜容器有明显区别,为深入研究薄壁青铜器多元化制作工艺提供了新的实物资料。     

甘肃崇信于家湾西周墓出土青铜器的金相与成分分析

为探索先周时代以至西周初年周人的活动地域和陇东地区先周文化的发展历史,运用光学金相显微镜、扫描电子显微镜和能谱仪,对甘肃崇信于家湾出土的先周至西周早中期16件青铜器的金相组织、合金成分和制作工艺进行研究。发现有13件为低锡青铜,3件为高锡青铜;就制作材质而言,共有锡青铜5件,铅锡青铜8件,铅青铜、CuS- nPbAs四元合金和CuSnPbFe四元合金各1件;其中4件经热锻加工制成,12件为铸造加工制成。5件铜盆中的4件是目前经金相分析确认的最早的锻打成形青铜容器。本工作为甘肃地区先周至西周时期青铜器和青铜文化研究提供了重要的科学信息。     

随州叶家山西周墓地M65出土铜器的金相实验研究

本文利用金相显微镜和扫描电镜能谱仪对湖北随州叶家山西周墓地M65出土的42件青铜器进行了金相实验研究,结果表明其中的31件材质为铅锡青铜,10件为锡青铜,仅有1件为铅青铜;铜器制作主要采用铸造工艺,仅个别兵器在局部进行了热锻加工;具有相同铭文、纹饰风格一致的铜容器的合金成分、金相组织和铸造技术等方面也较为一致。这些结果为研究M65出土青铜器的生产组织问题提供科学资料。     

涪陵小田溪墓群出土部分青铜器科技分析

重庆市文物考古所科研人员利用科技手段,检测分析了重庆涪陵小田溪墓群出土部分青铜器的金相和合金配比,发现青铜容器普遍含有较高的铅(7~22%),兵器含有较低的铅(3%左右),符合青铜器的铸造要求。另外,其中一件青铜甬钟含有13.86%的铅,表明这一地区在钟类乐器制做方面具有一定的地域特征。     

湖北襄阳陈坡M10出土金属器的初步科学分析

对湖北襄阳陈坡墓地M10出土14件金属器的金相组织检测与成分分析结果表明:这批金属器的材质包括青铜、纯铅、纯锡、铅锡合金、银(含铜)、金银合金(含铜)等多种,其中青铜器包括两种合金,即铜锡二元合金和铜锡铅三元合金;制作工艺主要以铸造为主,另外还采用了热锻、热锻后冷加工、错金银等方法.这批新的分析数据为研究战国时期襄阳地区的金属技术提供了重要的实证资料.     

山西定襄中霍墓地出土铜器的初步科学分析

中霍墓地出土青铜器是研究春秋晚期和战国早期青铜文化特征、制作技术以及探讨该时期中原和北方少数民族相互关系等学术问题的重要资料。为进一步揭示该墓地出土青铜器所包含的科学信息,对该墓地出土17件铜器的37个样品进行了科学分析检测。结果显示,这批青铜器的制作工艺以铸造为主,另外还有热锻、热锻后冷加工等;其合金成分有铜锡二元合金和铜锡铅三元合金两种,铜锡二元合金全部用于制作工具,铜锡铅三元合金用于制造容器。这显示中霍墓地铜器的合金成分和器物类型之间的关系明显,表明制作者已经能根据青铜器的用途而选择合适的制作材料。研究结果对研究中原和北方少数民族冶金术及在此基础上的文化交流有较大的指示性意义。     

襄阳余岗墓地出土青铜容器的金相及成分分析

对襄阳余岗墓地出土的部分青铜容器进行金相分析与成分测定。这批青铜容器以铅锡青铜为主,进入春秋晚期,含锡量升高,低锡容器消失,合金配比趋于稳定。大部分器物为铸造成型,有三件枳经过热锻加工,这类枳是目前所见较早的锻制青铜容器,在青铜器的工艺发展过程中有重要地位。     

安徽南陵出土部分青铜器研究

安徽省南陵县是长江下游地区最早而且规模最大的冶炼中心之一,其古代矿冶遗址可上溯至西周晚期。本研究对南陵出土的不同年代和类别的青铜器样品进行了金相检测及合金成分定量分析。结果表明,只有容器存在铜铅二元合金和铜锡铅三元合金,但是热锻淬火的容器却不含铅,含锡量恰好位于适合该工艺操作并具有良好性能的区间。兵器、工具、车马饰均为铜锡二元合金,说明当时的工匠对于合金成分配比与性能的关系有明确的认识。越式鼎腹部样品具有热锻淬火马氏体组织,同样的金属结构还见于汉代铜锣等乐器、峡江地区战国中晚期青铜剑、江都大桥镇南朝青铜器窖藏出土的多件青铜容器,而镇江地区出土吴国青铜戈则具有铸造淬火组织,工艺稍有差别。这些器物中发现高锡青铜淬火组织不是偶然的,高锡青铜热锻淬火技术至少可以上溯至春秋战国时期,用以改善高锡青铜的机械性能。     

Telling small stories: spaces of knowledge and the practice of geography

This article examines how the practice of learning geography, and the arenas in which knowledge-making takes place, can be usefully positioned within changing histories of the discipline. It contends that networks of action – understood through the intersection of social sites, subjects and sources – present a conceptual framework and narrative focus for the re-consideration of specific episodes from geography's past. The interventions made here are informed and illustrated by a 'small story' about the doing of geography. Based on different personal accounts, the story revives a series of events, encounters, dialogues and images dating back to the winter of 1951 at Glenmore Lodge, Scotland. This educational institution in the Cairngorm mountains offered children from urban areas the opportunity to learn field studies and the skills of 'outdoor citizenship'. Initially, the focus falls on Margaret Jack, a 14-year-old field-course participant. Her learning experiences are traced through personal letters, a diary and a field journal dating from that time, and her recent recollections of this event. Margaret's account dovetails with the story of her field studies instructor, Robin Murray. Robin's role is traced through his learning experiences as a geography undergraduate at Aberdeen University, and the recent recollections of Catriona Murray, his wife.     

Das Wissen der Schulden. Recht,Kulturtechnik und Alltagserfahrung im liberalen Kapitalismus

The Knowledge of Debt: Law, Media Technique, and Everyday Experience in Liberal Capitalism. Performing an object such as ‘the economy’ hinges on practices of formatting knowledge. The article proposes to look at such instituting moments in connection with social conflicts over the legitimate rules of exchange. This is exemplified by way of recounting the story of the codification of Swiss bankruptcy law in 1889. In order to homogenize the legal procedures of debt collection and bankruptcy, two subject categories were instituted: ‘merchants’ and ‘non-merchants’. These different categories were thought to account for the diverging temporalities and spaces of credit exchange in everyday economic life. The introduction of the commercial register, a media-technical apparatus, enabled a formal distinction between ‘merchants’ and ‘non-merchants’. However, this boundary was contested and proved to be porose.     

Two radiocarbon dates for freshwater shells from hierakonpolis: Archaeological and geological interpretations

Shells of two species of freshwater bivalve (Unio willcocksi Bullen Newton and Etheria elliptica Lamarck) from the predynastic Gerzean (Nagada II) Decorated Tomb at Hierakonpolis, Egypt have given dates of 5000±90 bp for the tomb, and 12,900±120 bp for an episode of Nile terrace accumulation (correlated here with the Sahaba-Darau aggradation event). The archaeological and geological significance of these results is discussed, together with an outline of problems associated with radiocarbon dating of shell. Comparisons are made with the few other radiocarbon dates available for the Predynastic period in Egypt and possible reasons for the presence of shells in the tomb are considered.     

Some chronological implications of a fossil molluscan assemblage from a neolithic site at Brook,Kent, England

The later post-glacial history of a valley in the chalk escarpment near Brook, Kent, is described, based on molluscan stratigraphy, archaeological evidence and radio-carbon dating. Differences in size and colour banding, respectively, of fossil and living representatives of two species of land snails, Pomatias elegans (Müller) and Cepaea nemoralis (L.), are correlated with climatic change during the post-glacial period. The problems of the use of fossil shells of these species as samples for radiocarbon dating are discussed.     

China's Dynamic Industrial Sector: The Internet Industry

A Singapore-based economic geographer explores and analyzes the spatially uneven evolution of the Internet industry in China, arguing that the country's immense regional disparity in the provision of Internet services is best explained by the interplay of place- and path-dependence. The author demonstrates how the highly uneven regional endowments in relevant industrial and entrepreneurial resources have led to the substantial and persistent regional imbalance within China's emerging "new economy." His initial survey of the country's 100 leading Internet content providers (firms), identified from a listing of ca. 11,700 commercial websites, is selectively augmented to reflect an increase of over 70 million Internet users in 2007, reaching a total of 253 million in June 2008, and thus overtaking the United States as the world's largest Internet market. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L10, L86, O30. 6 figures, 1 table, 53 references.     

The 1911 International Exposition in Rome: architecture, archaeology, and national identity

This paper discusses the 1911 International Exposition in Rome and illustrates how this patriotic celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Italian Sate utilized symbolic landscapes of architecture and archaeology to promote nationalist sentiments of italianità and romanità centered on the young capital of Rome. Through modern art exhibitions at the Valle Giulia, scientific conferences at the Castel Sant’Angelo, archaeological exhibits on the Roman Empire in the Baths of Diocletian, and regional Italian pavilions in the Piazza d’Armi, exposition officials offered a complex representation of Italian national identity that was modern yet ancient, cosmopolitan yet bucolic, European yet regional, and imperial yet developing.     

The Rise and Fall of Alexander the Great – The Need for Medical Analysis: Reply to Commentaries

Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. from an unknown cause. By elucidating the nature of his death, we can better interpret various aspects of Alexandrian history. Alexander’s death may have ensued from the sequelae of a congenital scoliotic syndrome. It would therefore be of significance to note that one of the greatest leaders in history who conquered much of the then known world may have been suffering from a physical disability.     

Hospital Drama: Visual Theatres of the Medical Rendezvous from Asylum to Hospital with Reference to Specific Works by Anna Furse

Abstract

This paper is informed by Furse’s practice as a theatre maker in two fields of output that are connected by two factors: first, the presence of the woman patient — hysteric/subfertile respectively — within the clinical gaze; second, the significance of the womb to each pathology. In the treatment of each (explored in Furse’s theatre), lens based technologies play their part, whilst the cultural and medical can be seen to have overlapped to produce specific meaning with regard to Her body and its spectacularity. The article presents an overview of some of the key issues in precisely how the woman’s body becomes spectacular within this prosthetic medical gaze and how the medical — and theatrically designed spaces to represent these — become meaningful and potent proxemics that in turn inform medical/ theatrical spectatorship. Overarching nineteenth-century protocols at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (where Furse’s Augustine (Big Hysteria) is set) to contemporary imaging technologies used in the treatment of subfertility with Assisted Reproduction Technologies (the topic of her Art of A.R.T. projects), it examines the way in which photography develops through cinema to X-Ray, ultrasound and then 3D/4D ultrasound to ‘capture’ the woman’s body in ways by which she becomes muted and exposed. These occular technologies that extend the gaze, first to an exterior subject and then, eventually, traversing the flesh without knife, lend specific performativity to the ‘patient’ women, within the context of hysterias and reproductive impairments respectively. Finally, issues of suspension of disbelief are addressed. The spectator’s faith in the screen-based image of Her spectacular body is interrupted in Furse’s work, which is also keenly interested in the effect of such imagery on the woman’s sense of Self. The historical and cultural leaps in this article argue that there is indeed a trajectory through the history of medical imaging since the first application of photography to anatomy to the more advanced scoping technologies of medical imaging today, and that in each era, the production of these images remain fraught with cultural implications.     

The Death of Alexander the Great – A Spinal Twist of Fate

Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. from an unknown cause. Physical depictions of this historical figure reveal the likelihood of a cervical scoliotic deformity. This is substantiated with the medical history and is correlated with his untimely death. For the first time, it is concluded that Alexander’s death may have ensued from the sequelae of a congenital scoliotic syndrome.