Stone Piano Unique to Tibet

Notlongago,LhasaTVshowedastonepianorenditionenhtledtheMerryaudiencerespondedwithgreatwarmm.ThestoneusedtomakeitiscalledDordiinTibetan,meaning"stonewhichsings"inChinese.Itissocalledbecauseitgivesresonantsoundwhenstruck.Suchastonewasusedinmonasteriescloseto…     

Stone Walls Inscribed With Buddhist Scriptures

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Written in Stone: subverting the authoritative (auto)biographical voice—Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries and Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel

Diaries imply true confessions, and readers wish to believe Daisy Flett’s life story in Carol Shields’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Stone Diaries (1994), but her layered narration, alternating first- and third-person narrative, proves problematic. “Death,” the final chapter, is particularly puzzling, as third-person accounts of Daisy’s demise are punctuated by her comments, such as, “I’m still in here” (320). But how does a first-person narrator relate her own death? The secret to Daisy’s death narrative, as David Williams observes, is the correspondence between Shields’s postmodernist gem, The Stone Diaries, and Laurence’s modernist masterpiece, The Stone Angel (1964), published three decades earlier, as Shields’s title clearly references Laurence’s. Two decades after Williams’s insightful essay, we can extend the parallels (and delineate the differences) between the two—and explore their implications. Such intertextual resonance illustrates Shields challenging the borders between fiction and biography and parodying canonical texts.     

Worship to the White Stone In the Fields

Whitestonestakenfrommoun-tainsareoftenseenincropfieldsinthesuburbsofLhasa.Tooutsiders,theyarenothingspecial.However,localfarmersdeemthemsupernaturalbeingsresponsibleforprotectingthecropsfrombeingattackedbyhailstorms,insects,birdsandwildanimals.Actually,theTibetanshavesincetheancienttimebeenworshippingwhitestones.Thinkingaharvestisabsolutelylinkedwiththedeifiedwhitestones,theybuildupwhitestonepilesinthefields.Someofthemevenremovewhitestonesfromfieldsbelongingtoothersunderthecoverofdarkness(in…     

The Pyramids—Cement or Stone?

Several samples of pyramids from Giza were obtained. The samples were analysed by scanning electron microscopy, electron diffraction by X-rays, powder X-ray diffraction, inductively coupled plasmography, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and other techniques. Some scientists who have recently studied the pyramids have suggested that the pyramids were poured into place, stone by stone. The prevailing theory among Egyptologists is, of course, that the pyramids were built from blocks of natural stone. All of the results obtained during this study directly support the concept that the pyramids are made of limestone and are not cementitious in nature.     

Stone Coffins,Rock Carvings and Iron Chain Bridge

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Tang Dynasty Stone Tablet Found In Border Town of Gyilung

LobsangisthechiefofZongkaTownship,GyilungCounty.Oldasheis,heknowseachbladeofgrassinthelocalitylikepalmofhishand."Icantellexactlywhateverythingishere,becauseIhaveatelescope,"explainstheoldman,whosefaceiscoveredwithwrinkles.LobsangcapturedthetelescopefromBritishinvadersinthepreviouscenturyandnowcarriesitwhereverhegoes.Whenevertheneedarises,hewillbringitoutofhispockettocarryoutexaminationwhilstotherswatchwithgreatrespect.WhentheChinesearchaeologistsreachedhisvillage,theoldmandisplayedgreatent…     

Is This Stone Alive? Prefiguring the Future Role of Archaeology

By reflecting on new and emerging perspectives and trends in the contemporary humanities and social sciences, including the critique of anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism and secularism, the questioning of human epistemic authority over knowledge building, the ‘indigenization of the academy’, and debates over the applicability of the humanities to the problems of the contemporary world, the author identifies tendencies that are relevant to discussions on the future role of archaeology. In her analysis of the ontological and animist/ic turns, the author claims that asking the questions ‘what is an object?’ and ‘is it alive?’ within the context of this paradigm shift might support the emergence of an alternative worldview based on a participatory perspective of the world that understands (new) animism as a different way of being human and relating to the world on different terms. The author asks whether it is possible for archaeology (as the discipline of ‘animated bones and things’) to potentially become an intellectual platform for exercising an alternative worldview.     

Special Studies: The Pre-Chavín Stone Sculpture of Casma and Pacopampa

Abstract

In a recent article, “Early Carving From Pampa de las Llamas-Moxeke, Casma Valley, Peru,” Thomas Pozorski and Shelia Pozorski (Journal of Field Archaeology 15 [1988] 114–119) describe an important stone sculpture discovered in their 1987 excavations of Huaca A at Pampa de las Llamas-Moxeke, Casma Valley, Peru. They argued that it was the oldest securely-dated sculpture in Peru based on a radiocarbon date of 1565 b.c. (unrecalibrated), and deemed it unique on the basis of comparisons with the corpus of early stone sculptures from Peru. The dual purpose of this short contribution is to: 1) suggest that on the basis of radiocarbon measurements available it cannot be demonstrated that the Huaca A sculpture is older than the hundreds of stone sculptures from Cerro Sechin in Casma; and 2) draw attention to some intriguing similarities between the Huaca A sculpture and a stone carving from Pacopampa in the Chotano Valley of the Peruvian highlands. These two points highlight the inadequacy of our understanding of the origins of stone sculpture in Peru.     

Damage Assessment of Unreinforced Stone Masonry Buildings After the 2010–2011 Canterbury Earthquakes

The sequence of earthquakes that has affected Christchurch and Canterbury since September 2010 has caused damage to a great number of buildings of all construction types. Following post-event damage surveys performed between April 2011 and June 2011, an inventory of the stone masonry buildings in Christchurch and surrounding areas was carried out in order to assemble a database containing the characteristic features of the building stock, as a basis for studying the vulnerability factors that might have influenced the seismic performance of the stone masonry building stock during the Canterbury earthquake sequence. The damage suffered by unreinforced stone masonry buildings is reported and different types of observed failures are described using a specific survey procedure currently in use in Italy. The observed performance of seismic retrofit interventions applied to stone masonry buildings is also described, as an understanding of the seismic response of these interventions is of fundamental importance for assessing the utility of such strengthening techniques when applied to unreinforced stone masonry structures.     

Beyond the Stone Town: Maritime Architecture at Fourteenth–Fifteenth Century Songo Mnara, Tanzania

The towns of the Swahili coast of East Africa are widely acknowledged as the remains of a maritime society whose relationship with the ocean was fundamental to their economy and identity. Yet research that links the terrestrial environments of the towns to their adjacent maritime landscapes is rare, and urgently required in the light of marine erosional processes unmitigated by human actions. In the Kilwa archipelago of southern Tanzania, survey of the coastal foreshore has documented maritime architecture??particularly a series of coral-built causeways??that serve to link the medieval towns of this area to coastal resources and to expand the limits of the settlements themselves. This paper reports on survey recovering these causeways on Songo Mnara Island, putting the structures into context as part of the broader spatial manifestation of the island??s fourteenth?Cfifteenth century town. Several possible uses of the causeways are discussed, including functional explanations linked to the exploitation of oceanic resources, and more social reasons of territoriality and spatial demarcation.     

Notes on Certain Objects of Stag–s Horn Used for Hafting Stone Implements or Weapons

Part of a cemetery of uncertain extent was excavated following its discovery during work upon a late prehistoric and Roman rural settlement. At least four of the inhumations appeared to lie within square-ditched enclosures with entrances on the east. Bone survival was very poor but one skeleton, from a double burial, was dated to the mid-seventh century and was probably female. The practice of square-ditched burial is discussed and it is suggested that the burials are a widespread but uncommon form of secular elite burial in areas outside Saxon control.     

Luminescence Dating of Monumental Stone Architecture at Chavín De Huántar,Perú

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) is applied to quartz extracted from mud mortar collected from Chavín de Huántar, an early Andean monumental center. The samples appear to have been only partially exposed to sunlight during construction, so a minimum age model is applied to equivalent dose distributions. Complications, including complex radioactivity, low sensitivity of the quartz, and limited sample, prevent high precision, but the 14 dates obtained cluster around 1000 BC largely in agreement with radiocarbon assays on charcoal also collected from the mortar. Results suggest a relatively rapid construction for the monument. This work develops OSL as a method for directly dating architectural mortar.     

‘The Stone Axe from Way Back’: A Mutable Magical Object in Folklore and Fiction

Objects of ‘magic’ and folklore do not always begin their lives as such. Often, they are natural objects or mundane artefacts, crafted for utilitarian purposes, which become objects of magic through processes of re-utilization and redefinition. This is a process poignantly explored by fantasy writer Alan Garner in many of his works, but captured most overtly in his 1973 novel Red Shift. This article offers a commentary on this novel, exploring how Garner uses fiction and folklore to illustrate the mutability and multiple authorship of the magical object.     

Stone projectiles from the siege of Alcalá la Vieja (Spain) and likely trebuchet placement

Investigations of the siege of Islamic Alcalá la Vieja (Madrid, Spain) by Christian forces in the 12th century ce have depended on secondary sources proven to be unreliable and error-laden. In a search for possible locations of trebuchets used by the Christian attackers, the option was for an interdisciplinary approach combining elements from archaeology, physics and spatial analysis. The discovery of stone projectiles near the Islamic fortress allowed for the application of projectile physics to the calculation of several effective firing ranges for each stone. Those outcomes, in combination with geographical information system (GIS) data, have revealed a possible location where Christian forces could have effectively deployed hybrid trebuchets as siege engines.     

Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa represents a period during which anatomically modern humans adopted a series of diverse cultural innovations. Researchers generally attribute these behavioral changes to environmental, neurological, or demographic causes, but none of these alone offers a satisfactory explanation. Even as patterns at site level come into focus, large-scale trends in cultural expansions remain poorly understood. This paper presents different ways to view diachronic datasets from localities in southern Africa and specifically tests hypotheses of environmental and cultural causality. We employ an array of analyses in an attempt to understand large-scale variability observed during the MSA. We evaluated the diversity of stone tool assemblages to model site use, examined transport distances of lithic raw materials to understand patterns of movement, assessed the cultural capacities required to manufacture and use different sets of tools, applied stochastic models to examine the geographic distribution of sites, and reconstructed biome classes and climatic constraints. Our large-scale analysis allowed the research team to integrate different types of information and examine diachronic trends during the MSA. Based on our results, the range of cultural capacity expanded during the MSA. We define cultural capacity as the behavioral potential of a group expressed through the problem-solution distance required to manufacture and use tools. Our dataset also indicates that the actual behavior exhibited by MSA people, their cultural performance as expressed in the archaeological record, is not equivalent to their cultural capacity. Instead we observe that the main signature of the southern African MSA is its overall variability, as demonstrated by changing sets of cultural performances. Finally, at the scale of resolution considered here, our results suggest that climate is not the most significant factor driving human activities during the MSA. Instead, we postulate that behavioral flexibility itself became the key adaptation.