Chemical Characterization of Micronesian Ceramics Through Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis: A Preliminary Provenance Study

The development of exchange models from Pacific Islands' archaeological data is a major task facing Oceanic archaeologists. Chemical characterization of ceramics can assist provenance studies required for modelling past human interactions. This regional instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) conducted on ceramics collected from the Micronesian ceramic-producing islands of Belau, Chuuk, Guam, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap allows us to form compositional groups and provenance ceramics from the coral islands of Fais, Satawal, and Ulithi. Different island contexts, which cause post-depositional chemical transformations in ceramic sherds, do not hinder the provenance assignments.     

A hierarchical taxonomic procedure for provenance determination: A case study of Chalcolithic ceramics from the central Zagros

This study develops a data analysis methodology for the exploration of the variance in chemical composition of ceramic artifacts due to their typological, location and temporal characteristics. This methodology then allows for the characterization of ceramics based on these characteristics and the sequential assignment of unclassified ceramics to a region, subregion or site, with further assignment to specific ware and chronological period. The procedure uses INNA data on the elemental composition of ceramics in order to derive a series of classification functions for each category within each level of the taxonomic hierarchy. The developed procedure is used to investigate a provenance problem involving Chalcolithic ceramics from the Zagros region of western Iran. The results show that the elemental composition of ceramics, when coupled with multivariate statistical techniques, represents a powerful means for distinguishing ceramic provenance.     

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS OF BIRD BOWLS AND RELATED ARCHAIC CERAMICS FROM MILETUS

In this paper we present the results of a chemical investigation by neutron activation analysis of sherds of different kinds of bird kotylai, bird bowls and related wares excavated in Kalabaktepe, a hill of the ancient city of Miletus. A new archaeological classification of this well-known group of Archaic ceramics of eastern Greece is presented. A number of kiln wasters of misfired vessels from Kalabaktepe revealed a characteristic local pattern. This pattern helped to clarify the provenance of some of the bird bowls classified archaeologically as of orientalizing type: they have been made in Miletus. But bird kotylai and bird bowls in the 'standard fabric’as well as other archaeologically related vessels show a different chemical pattern of unknown provenance.     

Archaeometrical study of Khmer stoneware from the Angkorian period: Results from the Cerangkor Project

In the area around Angkor, Cambodia, several ceramics kilns dating from the ninth to 15th centuries ce have been discovered since 1995. The technical, typological and compositional characterization of their production has been one of the main goals of the Cerangkor Project. Samples of green‐glazed ‘Kulen‐type' stoneware and non‐glazed stoneware produced in five kiln sites in the Angkor region were analysed chemically by wavelength‐dispersive X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry (WDS‐XRF) and also petrographically. The data indicate that some workshops used similar raw materials for the same types of ceramics, suggesting the exploitation of the same geological formations in the whole region. Several references groups were established for each type of stoneware offering an important database for future provenance studies of sherds from consumption sites.     

The Garden and Beyond: the Dry Season,the Ok Tedi Shutdown,and the Footprint of the 2015 El Niño Drought

This paper offers a snapshot of the 2015 El Niño drought among Min people in Papua New Guinea's West Sepik and Western Provinces. Local assessments of food, water, and health show variation between locations, but with an overall tendency for the drought's effects to spread from lower to higher elevations as the drought progresses. This zone is in the hinterland of the Ok Tedi Mine, and the drought's regional impact was intensified by Ok Tedi's abrupt closure when low water in the Fly River stopped shipments of concentrate and cut off fuel and food supplies. The decision to close the mine was accompanied by the mandatory ‘repatriation’ of workers and their families to ‘home’ communities in the drought‐stricken hinterland. This, combined with deteriorating regional links, has eroded the capacity of Min communities to weather the drought, suggesting that we must look beyond the garden when calculating El Niño's costs.     

Contesting the capital of culture in Antonio Muñoz Molina's Los misterios de Madrid

This essay examines Antonio Muñoz Molina´s use of the Gothic mode and the misterio genre to destabilize Madrid's image as a politicized symbol of cultural modernity in his 1992 novel Los misterios de Madrid. The novel was a return to the form and function of the nineteenth-century urban mystery novel. The year 1992 was one of celebrations throughout Spain, and Madrid was designated the 1992 European Capital of Culture (ECOC). The ECOC title was meant to signal Spain's graduation to democratic modernity and its new identity as a European capital. Madrid of Muñoz Molina contests this politicization of Madrid´s identity by gothicizing the capital. This Madrid is enigmatic and threatening, and it is the home of the conspiracies that undermine the capital's new image. In a year that celebrated Madrid's entree into European modernity, Muñoz Molina uses nineteenth-century literary modes to question Madrid's success story.     

Lady Gregory's The Gaol Gate,Terence MacSwiney and the Abbey Theatre

In September 1920, a French translation of Lady Gregory's 1906 play The Gaol Gate was staged in a Parisian drawing room. The play's original setting outside the gate of Galway Gaol was transferred to Mountjoy Prison at a time of republican hunger strikes. The drama's central character of Denis Cahel – refusing to inform on his neighbours and hanged as a consequence – gained contemporary currency with Terence MacSwiney's hunger strike and impending death as both men had turned their bodies into a political tool. With a focus on the concept of the political body, this article illustrates the power of The Gaol Gate by tracing the play's provenance and production history, demonstrating its flexibility through performance in a particular historical context.     

Development of quartz cathodoluminescence for the geological grouping of archaeological ceramics: firing effects and data analysis

Cathodoluminescence (CL) spectrometry reveals genetic crystallographic and chemical characteristics of quartz grains specific to the thermodynamic conditions in which they crystallised and their mineralisation history. These genetic characteristics have been used successfully to determine the provenance of sediments. Geological sediments are the raw material for archaeological ceramics which means quartz CL has a potential application in ceramic provenance studies, particularly for fine wares and fabrics in which quartz is the only identifiable inclusion.     

Geochemical discrimination of basaltic sources as a tool for provenance analyses of bifacial tools in the southern Levant: first results from the Jezreel Valley,Israel

The determination of groundstone tool sources bears the potential to examine aspects like raw material selection and preference, mobility, trade and exchange patterns, control over resources and long term use of raw material sources. The discovery of the Neolithic/Chalcolithic basanite bifacial quarry of Giv'at Kipod in the Jezreel Valley, Israel, provides the opportunity of raw material centred provenance studies of bifacials in the southern Levant. The basis for reliable provenance analyses is a clear geochemical characterization of the extraction site and its discrimination from other potential sources. To achieve this, the Miocene magmatic rocks of the Jezreel Valley were sampled and analysed by XRF and La-ICP-MS. The geochemical evaluation, combined with cluster analyses, resulted in a clear discrimination of the Giv'at Kipod lava from other basaltic sources in the area. Based on the geochemical field data, a Giv'at Kipod provenance for six bifacial tools found in three archaeological sites dated to the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic periods was established. The results suggest that the quarry was in use for several millennia. This pilot study demonstrates that for provenance analyses lava outcrops in the southern Levant can be geochemically discriminated from each other on a very small spatial scale, on the basis of a detailed field sampling and the application of multivariate methods.     

New evidence on the origins of the Latin Mirror of Simple Souls from a forgotten Paduan manuscript

This article examines an overlooked fifteenth-century document which attacks and refutes 35 extracts from a Latin copy of the condemned fourteenth-century work The Mirror of Simple Souls. It gives an overview of the document's origins, provenance and contents, and then discusses how certain omissions in the text's source citations have crucial implications for more firmly establishing the date of origin for the Latin translation of the Mirror.     

CRITERIA FOR THE PETROGRAPHIC CHARACTERIZATION OF STONEPASTE CERAMICS

The application of petrographic analysis to the problems of provenance attribution of ceramics made in the Islamic world is complicated by the presence of the highly quartzose ‘stonepaste’body. To facilitate the differentiation of different stonepaste groups, it has been necessary to develop specific criteria for distinguishing the characteristics of each centre, including the assessment of the degree of cloudiness of the quartz as rendered by fluid inclusions. This has enabled the successful application of petrographic analysis, and the solution of a number of provenance problems.     

‘Vienen de gente de mucha discreción y entendimiento:’ ethnic identity,ambivalence, and colonial discourses in Diego Muñoz Camargo’s Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala

Diego Muñoz Camargo's Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala (1585) is a well-known reference on the history of Tlaxcala that scholars have studied to better understand Tlaxcalan participation in the conquest of Tenochtitlan, its relationship with the Spanish Crown, and the author's selective approach to local history. Often, these approaches present the historian as acculturated or Hispanized because of his celebration of the Spanish or criticism of local religious practices. This article complicates such approaches in order to show the complex ways that the author approached issues of cultural difference. Examining Muñoz Camargo's recourse to colonial discourses of morality, I argue that the author molds and tailors these discourses to fit local Tlaxcalan circumstances. In doing so, I show how he humanizes Tlaxcala's ruling elite while exemplifying the inherent ambivalence of moral authority in Colonial New Spain.     

Lithium extractivism and water injustices in the Salar de Atacama,Chile: The colonial shadow of green electromobility

This paper analyzes the linkages and feedback between green electromobility, lithium extractivism, and water injustices affecting the Atacameño's indigenous communities in the Salar de Atacama basin (Atacama Salt Flats). Currently, lithium is in high demand in the international markets as a strategic resource for the green electromobility industry, which represents part of the Global North policies established by the Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change's effects. Using both documentary and ethnographic methods based mainly on semi-structured interviews conducted with Atacameño people, public officials, and lithium companies' representatives and workers, we propose a decolonial interpretation of lithium extractivism in brine mining through the lens of Latin American political ecology combined with a decolonial and water justice approach. The results demonstrate how the linkages and feedback between global and local dynamics of lithium mining in the Salar de Atacama constitute a form of green extractivism that further replicates the historical inequalities between the Northern and Southern hemispheres and especially affects the indigenous Andean territories and the water ecosystems in the Global South. We call this phenomenon the colonial shadow of green electromobility. We conclude by exposing the need to rethink global proposals addressing climate change by reducing the commodity demand and aiming for water justice at global and local levels.     

The provenance and distribution of Early Bronze ceramics in the Kolyaei Plain,central Zagros,Iran

Within Iran, there is little archaeological evidence for relationships between newly arrived Early Trans-Caucasian (ETC) or Kura-Araxes settlers and earlier inhabitants and contact with neighbouring cultures, or for their apparently abrupt end. Based on the evidence, the Iranian Kura-Araxes was not a simple ‘copy' of the Caucasian Kura-Araxes package. Ceramic traditions show local peculiarities, and all are elements suggesting that the Kura-Araxes traditions went through processes of adaptation, change and re-elaboration according to local tastes and technologies. In this study, an archaeometric approach to ceramics in the Kolyaei Plain of central Zagros contributes to the discussion of contact and exchange between indigenous communities and several cultural spheres of influence on the Early Bronze Age (beginning in the fourth millennium bce ). Morphological data, as well as the mineralogical and chemical composition of ceramics, were applied to determine the major and trace elements of the pottery shards. Based on the trace element profiles, it can be suggested that all the pottery shards are in the same group and they strongly are local products. The ceramic provenance indicates the same patterns of material interactions during the ETC or Kura-Araxes in all the sites within the Kolyaei Plain.     

Silver production at al‐Radrad: archaeometallurgical analysis of ore,slag and technical ceramics from early medieval Yemen

The zinc‐lead‐silver deposit of al‐Jabali, about 65 km north‐east of Sana'a in Yemen, has been identified as the location of the late antique/Islamic period silver mine al‐Radrad. Exploitation of the mine is known from the account of al‐Hamdani, an Arab geographer of the tenth century AD. The al‐Jabali area has been the focus of geological and archaeometallurgical surveys, and extensive metallurgical remains have been discovered. Samples of ore, slag and technical ceramics were collected for archaeometallurgical analysis. The technology of silver production is discussed in relation to the historical record, and elemental and lead isotope characterisation of ore and slag provides a basis for future provenance studies.     

Las expresiones de violencia en una Medea itinerante: Medea maelstrom de Roberto Viña

This Latin American Medea plunges us into the well-known classical Greek myth from a novel approach. The Cuban writer Roberto Viña redefines the heroine's voyage with the Argonauts from the moment of her escape from her native Colchis. That is why Viña fragments the myth and focuses his tragedy on the sorcerer's maritime itinerancy that bears another nomination. Thus we identify the ethos of an ambivalent woman, peculiarly shy, and yet able to commit fratricide. Within the framework of the literary reception studies, we will analyze the expressions of extreme violence perpetrated by the characters of this play from very dissimilar perspectives.     

粗糙集理论（RST）及其在古陶瓷分类上应用的初探

为了获得古陶瓷器的产地和制造年代的信息,需要应用科学分析方法对古陶瓷器的化学组成数据进行归纳、分类。本文介绍了粗糙集理论(RST)的一些基本概念,同时给出了用粗糙集方法建立古陶瓷分类模型的基本步骤和对古陶瓷器化学组成数据的处理方法,通过对瓷器产地、时代判别的应用举例,表明用该方法对古陶瓷分类研究的效果能达到预期目的,回代检验分析结果正确率为100％。     

Overseas imports on the Blue Nile: Chemical compositional analysis of glass beads from Soba,Nubia

Archaeological evidence as well as textual sources leave no doubt about Alwa's (Alodia's) intense transcultural connections, further corroborated by understudied overseas glass bead imports found there. This paper presents results of an analysis of 23 glass beads from Soba, the most prosperous capital of medieval Nubia. Compositional analyses using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) have identified glass belonging to a number of broad compositional groups. Three samples were made of soda lime low-alumina glass produced in the Middle East (v-Na-Ca) and Egypt (m/v-Na-Ca). The remaining beads were made of two types of mineral–soda high-alumina glass (m-Na-Al) North Indian in origin. The results of this study provide new evidence for the provenance and chronology of glass beads available in medieval Soba and Northeast Africa, and contribute new data to research on trade contacts of that time.     

Ancón and Garagay Ceramic Production at the Time of Chavı́n de Huántar

Ceramics from Ancón and Garagay, two early sites on the central coast of Peru, are analysed to verify the existence of ceramic exchange. The analysis technique are petrography, X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (SEM-EDX). The results are compared to a larger data bank including ceramics from the sites of Chavı́n de Huántar, Pallka, Huaricoto and smaller sites in the Nepeña valley. The analyses yield interesting information on ceramic production, which is mostly local, and unexpected results regarding the lack of compositional similarities between the ceramics analysed from Ancón and Garagay. The results suggest that, although the sites are close to each other, interactions and ceramic exchange should be sought for among communities within the same drainage.