THE METALLURGY OF THE NAHAL MISHMAR HOARD RECONSIDERED

The Nahal Mishmar hoard, found in a cave in the Judean Desert in 1961, is a key find for the study of Chalcolithic metallurgy in Israel and the Levant. Recent analyses of Chalcolithic metalwork from sites such as Shiqmim in Israel raised doubts about the validity of published analyses from the hoard. Accordingly a programme of re-analysis was established using atomic absorption spectrometry and electron probe microanalysis. The new analyses confirmed the doubts and showed that the metallurgy of Nahal Mishmar was the same as that at the other sites. The alloys used for the cast products in the hoard were generally ternary arsenic-antimony copper alloys with up to 20% alloy content; less common were compositions with arsenic and nickel. The unusual metallography of these alloys is described. Some suggestions are offered as to the mode of manufacture of the alloys.     

THE HOPE HERAKLES RECONSIDERED

Summary. The Hope Herakles, hitherto thought to be a Roman copy of a statue by Skopas, is here shown to be a pastiche. The head is tentatively recognised as a classicising portrait, while the body type, having come down to us in a variety of reproductions carrying a different head, is associated with the Argive School of the late 5th c BC. A dating of the latter's prototype close to the plague of 429 as well as the Attic provenance of some of the copies suggest a possible connection with Hageladas'Herakles Alexikakos at Melite.     

THE ROMAN CHURCH AT SILCHESTER RECONSIDERED

Summary. The historical development of the current interpretation of the Silchester church is reviewed, and shown to reflect the prior notion that it was a church, to the detriment of other possible interpretations of its use. The interpretation as a church presents several problems, mainly to do with the probable date of construction of the building, in the late third or early fourth century, and its abandonment, in about the second third of the fourth century. Romano-Celtic temple architecture seems to have had some influence on the design of the building, but on balance, the best possibility for its use was for an eastern cult.     

晋中平原地区农村聚落扩展分析

在实地考察的基础上，章从规模、速度、形态和类型等方面分析了晋中平原地区农村聚落扩展的特点，并深入探讨了影响农村聚落扩展的因素，认为聚落扩展主要是人口增长和家庭规模变化、社会经济发展与收入增加、交通条件改善、农村地区工业化及其他因素共同作用的结果。最后指出了由于聚落扩展而带来的许多难以解决的问题。     

GLOBAL WARMING AND THE AGROCLIMATIC RESOURCES OF THE RUSSIAN PLAIN

Possible future USSR agricultural productivity, given a global warming scenario, is assessed on the basis of paleoclimatic reconstructions for optima of the Holocene and Mikulino interglacial, which may be analogs of the man-modified warm climate of the future. The calculations were made using a dynamic model of grain yields for 94 territorial units, for the most part coincident with the boundaries of oblasts. Three different indicators, which suggest that the warming trend of climate will be generally favorable for agriculture in the European USSR, are analyzed. The paper also provides insights into current spatial patterns of agricultural productivity. Translated by Larry Richardson, Glendale, CA 91202 from: Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, seriya geograficheskaya, 1990, No. 6, pp. 29-38.     

THE WELFARE ASPECTS OF SPATIAL PRICING POLICIES RECONSIDERED FOR A MONOPOLY CASE*

ABSTRACT. We reexamine the price structures and their welfare implications in three pricing regimes (mill, uniform and discriminatory) for a monopoly. We show that spatial price discrimination could provide the highest social welfare and, when consumers tastes are heterogeneous enough, also the highest consumer surplus. The superiority of spatial price discrimination is partially due to the larger output produced and partially due to differential treatment for consumers with heterogeneous tastes.     

THE EURASIAN ORIGINS OF EMPTY TIME AND SPACE: MODERNITY AS TEMPORALITY RECONSIDERED

Understood as a form of temporality, modernity is seen as consisting of empty time and space. However, careful examination of the origins of modern notions of empty time and space suggest they arose from background assumptions in wide use across Eurasia in the early modern period, and also that they arose prior to, and independent of, the emergence of the modern nation‐state. Here, various Eurasian versions of astronomy and philology are examined to show that they relied on such background assumptions and could therefore be readily translated and shared across the boundaries separating quite different cosmologies.     

GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS OF URBAN SPATIAL STRUCTURE. THE PORT-CITY MODEL RECONSIDERED*

In this paper, I consider a general equilibrium urban spatial structure in the setting of a port city by adopting Cobb-Douglas type functional forms for production and utility functions. Unlike previous port-city models, this one can generate four land-use patterns, that is, (1) monocentric, (2) completely integrated, (3) partially integrated (with integration at the center), and (4) partially integrated (with integration at the urban fringe) land-use patterns, and the last pattern suggests a new explanation of suburbanization of employment. The existence and uniqueness of each land-use pattern is proven in a simple constructive way.     

漫步蒲甘平原如在佛国云端

从缅甸曼德勒向南145公里,沿着伊洛瓦底江寻觅,一座堪称伟大的都城蒲甘深藏在平原之间.据说蒲甘古城最早在105年由卑谬人(缅甸南部民族)开建,9世纪中期开始成为一个统一缅甸的蒲甘王朝的首都. 阿难陀寺被称为蒲甘最优美的建筑,整个寺院呈正方形.院子正中心就是阿难陀,塔座是印度风格的正方形大佛窟,东南西北面各有一扇高大的柚木门,门内各有一尊高约10米的释迦立佛.在塔座之上屹立着70多米高的塔身,十分宏伟.     

LOWERING OF THE HUMUS CONTENT OF CHERNOZEM SOILS OF THE RUSSIAN PLAIN AS A RESULT OF HUMAN ACTION

The article surveys the extent and causes responsible for reduction in the humus contents of fertile chernozem soils in the European USSR. Comparison of a soil humus map compiled by V. V. Dokuchayev in 1883 with contemporary soil maps permits compilation of a map showing areas of most intensive humus loss over the late Tsarist and Soviet periods. Although the entire chernozem belt exhibited some degree of humus reduction, maximum losses have occurred in upland areas throughout the belt and in its eastern portion (translated by Andrew R. Bond).     

EARLY BRONZE AGE TROJAN METAL SOURCES AND ANATOLIANS IN THE CYCLADES

Summary. New chemical analyses of EB II copper-alloy artefacts from Troy show that about seventy per cent are of high tin, low arsenic, bronze; the remaining Trojan objects are of arsenical copper but contain no more than 3 per cent of arsenic. Lead-isotope analyses suggest that at this time the Trojans made use of at least five different copper-ore deposits and that at least two of these were not in the immediate vicinity of Troy itself.
At this period tin bronze was unknown in the Early Helladic, Cycladic or Minoan cultures. Low-arsenic tin bronzes do however constitute sixty-nine per cent of the copper-alloy artefacts excavated at the fortified hilltop EC IIIA settlement at Kastri on Syros, but lead-isotope analyses show that the copper in these objects is derived from three different ore deposits which are different from those exploited by the early Cycladic peoples on Amorgos, Paros, Kythnos and Chalandriani on Syros. For Kastri the alloy types are closely similar to and the copper ore sources used are identical with those employed in Troy II; in addition there are good Anatolian parallels for some of the metal types occurring at Kastri. Taken together with evidence from the pottery, the architecture and the nature of the site it seems inescapable that Kastri was a short-lived settlement of Anatolians who lived, perhaps, in somewhat uneasy juxtaposition with their Cycladic neighbours. These Anatolians came most probably from Troy or the Troad since tin bronze was virtually unknown at this period elsewhere in Anatolia, and certainly not in Cilicia, except at the central Anatolian sites of Ahlatlibel, Alishar and Alaca Hüyük.     

POST-COLONIZATION INTERACTION BETWEEN VANUATU AND FIJI RECONSIDERED: THE RE-ANALYSIS OF OBSIDIAN FROM LAKEBA ISLAND, FIJI*

PIXE–PIGME analysis of 19 obsidian artefacts from Lakeba Island in east Fiji identified contact with northern Vanuatu in the post-colonization period ( c. 2500–1000 bp ) of Fiji. The Lakeba obsidian is the only physical evidence for interaction across the 850 km water gap separating the archipelagos of Vanuatu and Fiji in the first millennium ad . New research on the Vanuatu obsidian sources with laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS) casts serious doubt on the validity of a long-distance inter-archipelago connection in the post-Lapita era. This paper presents the re-analysis of 18 obsidian artefacts from Lakeba using LA–ICP–MS and radiogenic isotope results that demonstrate that the Lakeba obsidian is not from Vanuatu, and it most likely derives from the Fiji–Tonga region. Geochemical evidence for long-distance interaction and migration between the West and Central Pacific in the post-Lapita era has yet to be identified.     

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN THE WEST SIBERIAN PLAIN

The various types of natural landscapes of West Siberia are analyzed in terms of the environmental impacts of the more common forms of human activity. These are natural gas extraction and reindeer herding in the northern tundra; oil extraction and logging in the middle taiga, and agriculture as well as manufacturing in the southern wooded steppe and steppe. The impacts of human activity on specific natural processes (cryogenesis, bog formation, salinization) are discussed. The territory of West Siberia is broken down into three types of environmental impact regions: regions of significant impacts (from oil and gas extraction and agriculture); regions of moderate impacts (from logging and reindeer herding); and a region in which natural landscape structures have remained virtually unaffected by human activity.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEOLITHIC AND COPPER AGE SETTLEMENT IN THE GREAT HUNGARIAN PLAIN PART II: SITE SURVEY AND SETTLEMENT DYNAMICS

Summary. Within the region of the Great Hungarian Plain (discussed in the first part of this article) the processes of settlement change can be followed in greater detail from site survey in the Szeghalom area. This central part of the Plain, drained by the Körös and Berettyó rivers, was a major focus of settlement in Neolithic times (6000-4000 BC), and its rising importance can be followed in the emergence of a series of wealthy 'supersites'. During the succeeding Copper Age, the character of sites altered as the role of the area in relation to the rest of the region began to change. Around 3500 BC a dramatic shift in settlement patterns coincided with the appearance of large tumuli of steppe type, which mark a new phase of land use in this region.