Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory

This paper examines the intellectual traditions and recent advances in the archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Ages of the South Caucasus. The first goal of the paper is to provide an account of the scholarly traditions that have oriented research in the region since the mid-nineteenth century. This discussion provides a detailed case study of an archaeological tradition that arose within the context of Russian and Soviet research—traditions still poorly understood within Western archaeology. Yet archaeology in the South Caucasus was strongly influenced by international research in neighboring southwest Asia, and thus the region’s intellectual currents often diverged from the debates and priorities that predominated in Moscow. The second goal of this paper is to outline the primary issues that orient contemporary work in the region from the Neolithic through the Urartian period. My interest here is both didactic and prognostic. While I am concerned to fairly represent the primary foci of contemporary regional scholarship, I also make an argument for a deeper investigation of the constitution of social life. Such studies are critical to the advancement of archaeology in the South Caucasus over the coming decade.     

Gendered Space: A New Look at Turkish Modernisation

This article examines how an understanding of gender has challenged and changed the perception of ‘modernisation’ and its relation to Western culture. In so doing it also shows how the traditional division of disciplines, especially between political and social history and historical demography, has limited insights into beliefs and behaviours of both women and men. The decline in the numbers of children born within a family was accompanied by many shifts in daily living, not least in the way housework was structured as indicated by the spatial patterns of both formal social life and domestic labour. A detailed examination of these issues, including the use of various types of household labour – slave, free, waged and the ‘adopted daughter’(evlatlök), and poor relation – brings into sharp focus how the leading segment in the process of modernisation, the urban middle class, was active in and responded to such major changes. Women's involvement in education, politics and the labour market was intimately intertwined with these aspects of family and domestic life – but so, in very different ways, was men's.     

审视中美关系的一个视角

中美关系不是一对孤立的双边关系,而是东亚国际关系的一部分,两是互相影响的,论论述了近代早期、后近代时期、冷战时期和后冷战时期两的互动关系,对《望厦条约》、蒲安臣的合作政策和蒲安臣使团、门户开放政策进行了重新阐释。对在不同时期日本、苏联、朝鲜和越南对中美关系的影响进行了剖析。并对美国当前能否对中国实施遏制政策发表了自己的见解。     

华人网络的再认识：一个空间的视角

现有关于华人跨国网络的研究,为我们描绘了华人网络的三张面孔,即作为“文化载体”、“社会纽带”和“经济圈”的华人网络。本文从空间的角度,对以上研究进行了补充。它以香港及其邻近的东南亚地区的华人移民经验为依据,在检讨了滨下武志、王赓武和和斯金纳等人有关中国社会经济地理、文化中心和市场结构理论的基础上,提出了一个东南亚华人网络空间结构的理论模型。该模型以国际大都会为中心,形成了“去中心”、“多层次”和“多维度”的钻石型网络结构。在该模型中,华人网络的经济、社会和文化的面向获得了互动和统一。若干类似的子网络相互联结,共同构成了全球华人网络的宏观地域系统。     

宋元明时期雅州碉门新证

本文在大量研读和踏访的基础上,论证出在宋元明时期川藏茶马古道上的重要关隘和贸易口岸——碉门(寨),并非位于清初以来认定的雅安市天全县城,而是位于雅安市区近郊的对岩镇.从而还原清代以前的碉门历史和位置,区域地理情况,政区疆界划分等,并有助于重新梳理我国西南边疆地区的古代交通线路,进而明确驿站设置,贡道、茶马互易路径以及历...     

Postgraduate Essay Prize Winner for 2005 * A New Look at the Affluent Worker: The Good Working Mother in Post-War Britain

The number of married women working outside their homes afterthe Second World War rose rapidly despite widespread criticismof working wives and mothers. This article discusses three maintrends associated with this change. First, many women reactedto the discourse criticizing working mothers by trying to changethe view of ideal motherhood as exclusively domestically bound.They defended their actions by arguing that a good mother wasnot solely one who stayed at the beck and call of her family,but one who nurtured their self-reliance and independence bynot being constantly available and provided goods and pleasuresotherwise out of reach of the family. Second, the criticismof working mothers combined with the dual burden that most womenfaced in choosing employment to create an unprecedented demandfor part-time jobs. The change in women's work force participationsince World War II is almost entirely attributable to the risein part-time workers. Third, because observers and the womenthemselves so often described wives’ work as providingextras for the family, the value of women's work was debased.This obscured women's role in creating the affluent societyand allowed the male breadwinner ideal to continue unaffecteddespite major social change, as the public still generally viewedmen as having primary responsibility for family support.     

The Limits of Power: Revisiting Elijah at Horeb

When the story of Elijah at Horeb (1 Kgs 19,3–18) is held in narrative continuity with the preceding showdown between Elijah and the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs 18,1–39), it reads as a compelling lesson on the limitations of power. Whereas power is clearly the means of persuasion on Mount Carmel, the “still small voice” (1 Kgs 19,12, NKJV) at Horeb introduces a revised perception of transcendence within which power is no longer the central element.     

A Look Back at the Dred Scott Decision

Thank you for inviting me to deliver the 2009 Annual Lecture of the Supreme Court Historical Society. I am a great admirer of the Society's commitment to preserving the history of the Supreme Court and to increasing the public's awareness of the Court's contributions to our nation's history.     

A Look Back at the Steel Seizure Case

During every national emergency, the system of checks and balances designed, as James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, to prevent a power grab by any of the three branches by giving each “the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others,” comes under great pressure. ¹ After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the public looked to the President to take extraordinary measures. Congress quickly moved to expand executive powers to meet the emergency, confirming the view of a leading textbook on the presidency that “it has become the dominant institution in a system designed for balanced government.” ²     

力行哲学的思想脉络

力行哲学是20世纪三四十年代中国的官方哲学。它的提出,适应着当时社会的某种政治需要,也和蒋介石的哲学思路密切相关。力行哲学从王(阳明)学及孙中山“知难行易”观念中借用了大量的现成概念和思想资源,同时,为适应其现实目标,蒋又对之进行了加工、改造,并由此引发了概念的混乱及哲学基本精神的冲突。力行哲学以“行”为中心,而“行”的概念本身就是复杂、含混的,“行”的落实也困难重重。当然。作为一种政治化的哲学思想,概念的清晰和统一并不是提出真正关注的问题;力行哲学的出现及其目标,和现实的政治要求息息相关。     

Controlling the Waters of Granducal Florence: A New Look at Stefano Bonsignori's View of the City (1584)

ABSTRACT

A striking feature of Stefano Bonsignori's Nova pulcherrimae civitatis Florentiae topographia accuratissime delineata, printed in 1584, is the pre-eminence of the Arno River and the detailed depiction of a variety of often quite minor water-related structures. This large (nine-sheet) map was dedicated to Francesco I de' Medici, Granduke of Florence. Contemporary initiatives and legislation as well as works of art and literature reveal that water management had been an important aspect of the policies of Francesco's father, Cosimo I, whose achievements had transformed the city's landscape and whose efforts earned the Medici ruler the title of Granduke of Tuscany in 1569. Bonsignori's portrayal of urban structures was created as a celebration of Cosimo's architectural legacy, and the depiction of the Arno, with its embankments and riverside structures, along with some of the city's fountains and wells, acknowledged granducal ambition to control its waters.     

Controlling for Doubt and Uncertainty Through Multiple Lines of Evidence: A New Look at the Mesoamerican Nahua Migrations

Nahuatl represents a relatively recent extension of the Uto-Aztecan language family into Mesoamerica. Ethnohistorians have linked Nahuatl's arrival to the historically attested migrations of nomadic people into central Mexico in the last centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Archaeologists have tended to treat migration as an explanation for a change in material culture rather than a social question to be examined theoretically. We approach this migration through the comparison of multiple data sets and conclude that what has previously been treated as a historical event is instead part of a longer term process tying together Mesoamerica's northern periphery with its highland core. While we find that certain themes from migration theory are reflected in this preindustrial migration as well, other variables are unique and bode well for archaeology's ability to address and contribute to theoretical issues relating to migration.     

A Fresh Look at the Egyptian Environment of the Pharaonic Period

Abstract

The article deals with the territorial history of the southern steppe areas of the Levant in the period between ca. 1050–750 BCE. In the early days of the Iron Age, until the mid-9^th century BCE, parts of them, were ruled by local desert entities: in the late Iron I a Moabite polity and in the early Iron IIA and the early years of the late Iron IIA the Tel Masos-Beer-Sheba-Negev Highlands Highlands entity. This situation changed in the later years of the Iron IIA as a result of Damascus' rise to hegemony in the Levant. In the second half of the 9^th century BCE Judah, under Damascene domination, expanded for the first time into the Beer-Sheba Valley. In the first half of the eighth century BCE, with the revival of Assyrian power in the days of Adad-nirari III, Damascene authority was replaced by north Israelite domination in the south.