SEISMIC RESPONSE OF REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAMES INFILLED WITH WEAKLY REINFORCED MASONRY PANELS

The research work presented in this paper is related to the seismic response of RC frames infilled with weak masonry panels, as it is traditional in many seismic prone countries in southern Europe. More specifically, the benefits derived from the insertion of a light reinforcement, in the mortar layers or in the external plaster, are studied in some detail.

Tests have been performed on different types of single bay, single storey, infilled frames to investigate the in-plane response at different earthquake intensity levels and the out-of-plane strength as a function of the in-plane damage. A series of parametric simulations have then been performed, calibrating the models used in the test results, to evaluate the effects of the different panels characteristics on the response of whole buildings, with different infill patterns. Both in-plane and the out-of-plane response have been considered. The results are described in terms of peak ground acceleration required to induce given limit states of serviceability or damage relatively far from the collapse of the structure, which is governed by the RC frame design more than by the infill panels properties.     

THESE ROCKS WERE MADE FOR WALKING: ROCK ART AT LEIRFALL,TRØNDELAG,NORWAY

One of the largest sites with Bronze Age type rock art in Norway is found at Leirfall in Stjørdal, Nord‐Trøndelag. The site, which consists of five panels, is dominated by footprints but at the same time a great variety of motifs is present. The footprints seem to lure visitors to walk from panel to panel, even across the panels, which are located at three different levels. The main focus is on the middle level, where the main panel (Leirfall III) contains more than 700 rock carvings. The walks between and around the panels are described; at the same time the Leirfall rock carvings are seen in a wider context. Most footprints are likely to represent children and it is argued that the site was used for the performance of public rites during initiations. However, symbols normally found only on decorated grave cists are present, too, particularly on the upper panel, which cannot be seen from below. Death rituals may also have been performed.     

High‐resolution geospatial surveying techniques provide new insights into rock‐art landscapes at Shuwaymis,Saudi Arabia

Many parts of the Arabian Peninsula contain rock art that has received minimal archaeological attention or has not yet been thoroughly surveyed. In 2001 an extensive rock‐art complex called Shuwaymis, Ha'il Province, Saudi Arabia was brought to the attention of the Saudi General Commission for Tourism and Antiquities. This paper sets out the results of the first high‐resolution geospatial mapping and recording of rock art at this remote site. The research saw the innovative use of a differential GPS to record rock‐art panels to within 5 mm of accuracy at the site of Shuwaymis‐2, the first time that such technology has been used to record rock art in the Arabian Peninsula. With such technology it was possible to show which of eighty‐three late prehistoric rock‐art panels surveyed were in their original position and which had fallen, and to demonstrate that there was spatial homogeneity of rock‐art styles and composition across the site. The mapping recorded multiple panels of cattle, ibex, equid, large cat and other animals. The depictions of lions and cattle in particular indicate that the rock art must have been engraved no later than the early Holocene humid phase (c.10–6 ka BP).     

Picturing the poor: fundraising and the depoliticisation of homelessness

In this paper, we discuss the role images play in attracting charitable donations in an English homeless shelter. Focusing in particular on two image-based projects which feature service-users (one series of black-and-white still photography and one series of film clips posted on YouTube), we draw on interviews with fundraisers and the homeless participants themselves to discuss how they motivated their involvement and what impact they hoped the images would achieve. We conclude by providing some snapshots of how earlier images produced in the shelter have been circulated.     

THE ROMANESQUE FRIEZE AT LINCOLN CATHEDRAL (ENGLAND)—PRIMARY OR SECONDARY INSERTION? MAGNETIC CONSIDERATIONS*

The current debate about the age of the Romanesque frieze of Lincoln Cathedral weighs archaeological evidence against art history. On the one hand, the panels appear to be an integral part of the original Norman structure built by the first bishop (AD 1072–92). However, on grounds of style and artistic comparisons, art historians argue for a later installation during the restoration of AD 1141–6. In order to determine when the panels were stabilized in the cathedral, we used a new method that measures their degree of remagnetization by the earth's magnetic field since they were quarried. The longer that masonry remains stabilized in a given orientation, the greater its viscous remagnetization. Viscous remanent magnetization dating has previously been successful with this particular type of limestone masonry. Our results lend support to the view that the panels were installed in the early 1140s.     

Peculiar Living Shrines and Yuan Governance as Background to Ming Populism

Although post-mortem apotheosis and secular honor in temples have received more attention, shrines to living men were also ordinary institutions from Han times onwards in Chinese history. Previous scholarship so far on pre-mortem shrines in Tang and Song relates them to pre-mortem commemoration in inscribed records of local commendation on the one hand and Neo-Confucian Daoxue Shrines to Local Worthies on the other. That scholarly work suggests that Tang and Song premortem shrines when political were basically elite institutions; and that when common people were involved their motivations were religious rather than political. In Ming times, by contrast, premortem shrines were normatively established by commoners and constituted a venue for popular political participation, while the steles commemorating the shrines explicitly argued that non-elite people had the right to political speech. This article speculates, as a hypothesis awaiting further research, that both Yuan modes of government generally, and creative uses of premortem enshrinement in Yuan times specifically, may have contributed to Ming populism.     

A radiological and histological investigation into the mummification of cats from Ancient Egypt

An examination has been carried out on a series of wrapped mummified cats from Ancient Egypt that are held in the British Museum (Natural History). The cats, which were unprovenanced and undated, were presented by Sir Flinders Petrie at the beginning of this century, but they were not registered in the collections and have never been described. Radiocarbon dates have now been obtained for two of the cats and radiographs have been taken of each one to establish its identification and age at death. Attempts were made to reconstitute the skin tissue and samples of hair were studied by electron microscopy.     

Building Anderita Late Roman Coastal Defences and the Construction of the Saxon Shore Fort at Pevensey

The construction of the Roman coastal installation at Pevensey (East Sussex) in the late third century represented a building project of considerable importance, size and complexity. A study of the surviving material has identified the lithologies employed in the fort's construction, the approximate quantities in which they were present and the likely areas from which they were quarried. Local sources were exploited wherever possible, although an insufficient supply of brick seems to have forced the builders to look further afield for a substitute material for use in the bonding courses. The location of the quarries suggests that the majority of raw materials were moved by boat, and that the transport fleet required was remarkably small. Estimates of the length of construction for the later series of Shore Forts range from less than three years to over four decades. The labour and transport requirements have been calculated for Pevensey, allowing a discussion of the feasibility of each of these proposed time scales. It is argued that all were achievable, although in the briefer scenarios the army would have been unable to provide sufficient manpower, necessitating a draft of civilian labourers.     

The Development of Hand Spinning Wheels

Abstract

It has long been noted that there was a decline in the standards of English embroidery from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. A combination of the Black Death, wars, overseas competition and economic stresses have all been recognised as possible reasons for the loss in quality of these embroideries. This article analyses the production techniques employed by artists/designers and embroiderers during the declining period of Opus Anglicanum, a style of embroidery typical of the late medieval period, which was almost always professional work. The discussion focuses on two lower panels of the pillar orphreys on the Whalley Abbey altar frontal, which date from around 1400 and belong to Towneley Hall Museum and Art Gallery, Burnley, UK. The article suggests that similarities in the design of the two panels provide a glimpse into the time-saving solutions developed by embroiderers to produce Opus Anglicanum as its manufacturing quality deteriorated.     

Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis that Shocked A Nation

As I write this, Little Rock is gearing up for the fiftiethanniversary of the desegregation of Central High School, thatnigh archetypal event which seemed to pitch the forces of progressagainst those of ignorance and Southern intransigence. Preciselybecause it is often viewed in such starkly Manichaean terms,the Central High crisis has become the focal point in yet anotherbattle for memory, with some former students—white students—disparagingthe attention paid to the Little Rock Nine, insisting that they,too, suffered during that tumultuous school year. Further, theonly statewide newspaper in Arkansas is headed up by a formerplayer in the crisis who routinely recasts Governor Orval Faubusas a     

Honorary Secretary’s Report for 1964

Abstract

The glazing scheme of the chapter-house at York Minster contains the best preserved ensemble of narrative glass of its period in England, and is the only one to survive in any of the great polygonal chapter-houses. Although it is frequently mentioned in general works on the Minster and its glass, there has been no sustained attempt to reconstruct the sequence of the panels or to consider the iconography of the scheme in relation to its setting. This study aims to highlight the significance of the scheme as a whole by focusing on just one of its seven windows: that in the north-west corner, which features a life of St Katherine of Alexandria. Using unpublished antiquarian sources alongside textual versions of Katherine's vita, it outlines a possible sequence for the window's disordered panels. It then goes on to analyse the window and its iconography within the context of the chapter-house, considering how it constructs its own particular version of this highly popular narrative. The results suggest that the scheme as a whole is a high-status product which employs complex narrative strategies. It is an important testament to the sophistication of glazed narratives in the period as well as to the ambitions of York's chapter.     

Tree-ring chronologies for the 6th to 16th centuries for oaks of southern and eastern England

The background to the problem of providing useful oak chronologies for the variable environmental conditions that apply in southern and eastern England is outlined. The reference chronologies published here embrace three new principles. Firstly, the samples, nearly 300, on which they are based are almost entirely of boards or planks that are of radial section (from oaks aged on average about 250 years) that form part of panel paintings or chests. Secondly, to take account of the differences in the growth pattern with the vigour of growth, separate chronologies for sequences of different ring-width have been formed. Thirdly, on account of the difficulties in extending, with the samples available, an English chronology by the method of overlapping, eight separate chronologies, each about 300 years long, have been created. Matching has been based on German methods, i.e. computer comparisons (with more than one reference chronology) supported by visual comparison of charts. Agreement values in about half a million positions were calculated.These reference chronologies, expressed as ring-widths, are suitable for application to oaks that have grown within a region of considerable size that covers both sides of the North Sea. For panels used as a support for paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries, they have dated 85% of 130 English (London area) ones and about the same percentage of 25 Flemish ones. Rather earlier, sequences for oak boards used in places as far apart as York, Norwich, Oxford and Winchester have been matched. In the 10th to 12th centuries, the ring-width chronology derived for the London area shows good agreement with those for the hilly regions of Germany and that for Schleswig, as well as dating floor planks from Viking houses in York. A floating chronology, 322 years long, dataed to the 6th to 9th centuries by several radiocarbon analyses, has been formed from long sequences of rings from timbers excavated at Old Windsor and Portchester: this has matched material from Southampton and is linked with a mean curve for the well at North Elmham (Norfolk) and the strakes of the Graveney ship.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 3. June 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 3 Front cover Imagine you're walking in the woods and you kick over an artefact – a piece of pottery, perhaps. You don't know what it is, but you know it's old, and it looks precious. Who you gonna call? A university colleague? The British Museum? Or an ex‐army, former professional wrestler, whose trademark call is to arch his chest like a gorilla and shout, ‘Boom, baby, boom!’? American cable viewers have been watching Ric Savage seek out antiquities, dig them up and sell them. Savage, owner of an artefact recovery and sales outfit that specializes in the Civil War era, fronts American Digger, a filmed series broadcast by Spike TV. He's passionate about history, he knows about old things and he digs – the definition, you might think, of an archaeologist. Archaeologists beg to differ. Across the US, high profile archaeological organizations have complained about the series, which, they say, promotes looting and the destruction of national heritage. They seem to have gained support not just from the public, thousands of whom are signing online protests, but also from metal detectorists and collectors – members of the very gang to which Savage belongs. On 28 March American Digger Magazine, which has no connection with the TV series, dropped Savage as a columnist. Metal detectors, it said, are for finding history, not making money. For many archaeologists such a distinction misses the point. Whatever the intention, they argue, inexpert excavation driven by the beep of a machine is destructive. Yet in Britain, where communication between detectorists and professional archaeologists is enshrined in the unique Portable Antiquities Scheme, barriers have been coming down. It was looting that sparked the idea for the scheme 20 years ago. Could an outsize man with a penchant for heavy machinery achieve the same in the States? Back cover RECOVERING MEMORABILIA The front and back covers of this issue portray contrasting ways in which memorabilia may be recovered. If the front cover is about sensationalizing finds for entertainment on popular TV, the back cover shows finds after sifting for valuable possessions in the deposits left by the 3/11 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami. Various volunteer centres were set up to help clean local residents' rescued possessions found in the debris. Photos and family albums were the most frequently rescued objects. In addition to ongoing cleaning sessions in the devastated region, off‐site sessions have also been held in various parts of Japan. Piles of rescued photos are still waiting to be cleaned. The image shows cleaned, rescued photographs being dried at a cleaning session held at 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo on 11 February 2012. Even though it has been a year since the tragic disaster, not all the images in the uncleaned photographs have faded despite having been covered in seawater and sludge full of bacteria and asbestos. Having survived as traces of memory as well as of personal history, these photos offer the hope of one day being reunited with their owners, or the relatives and friends they portray.     

ESTIMATION PROBLEMS IN MODELS WITH SPATIAL WEIGHTING MATRICES WHICH HAVE BLOCKS OF EQUAL ELEMENTS*

ABSTRACT Spatial models whose weighting matrices have blocks of equal elements might be considered if units are viewed as equally distant within certain neighborhoods, but unrelated between neighborhoods. We give exact small sample results for such models that contain a spatially lagged‐dependent variable. We consider cases in which the data relate to one or more panels, for example, villages, schools, etc. Our results are consistent with large sample results given in Kelejian and Prucha (2002) but indicate a variety of issues they did not consider.     

AN EARLY EUBOEAN SHIP

Summary. A pyxis with the painting of a ship was found during the 1986 Greco-British excavations in the Toumba Cemetery at Lefkandi, Euboea. It was part of a deposit of broken pottery included in the refill of a shaft grave which had apparently destroyed an earlier tomb. The vase can with fair certainty be dated around 850–825 B.C. by the Attic Middle Geometric I pottery associated with it and from its local style.
The painting of a ship contained in one of its panels is, therefore, among the earliest pictorial representations known from Iron Age Greece. It is proposed that the subject may have been suggested to the Lefkandian potter by similar ship scenes on the engraved catchplates of contemporary fibulae.     

Strained relations: A critical analysis of the mining conflict in Prestea,Ghana

This paper examines the dynamics of the ongoing conflict in Prestea, Ghana, where indigenous galamsey mining groups are operating illegally on a concession awarded to Bogoso Gold Limited (BGL), property of the Canadian-listed multinational Gold Star Resources. Despite being issued firm orders by the authorities to abandon their activities, galamsey leaders maintain that they are working areas of the concession that are of little interest to the company; they further counter that there are few alternative sources of local employment, which is why they are mining in the first place. Whilst the Ghanaian Government is in the process of setting aside plots to relocate illegal mining parties and is developing alternative livelihood projects, efforts are far from encouraging: in addition to a series of overlooked logistical problems, the areas earmarked for relocation have not yet been prospected to ascertain gold content, and the alternative income-earning activities identified are inappropriate. As has been the case throughout mineral-rich sub-Saharan Africa, the conflict in Prestea has come about largely because the national mining sector reform program, which prioritizes the expansion of predominantly foreign-controlled large-scale projects, has neglected the concerns of indigenous subsistence groups.     

The Age of Clay: The Social Dynamics of House Destruction

This study provides some fresh insight into Neolithic domestic architecture through the analysis of architectural technology and the control over the practice of house construction and destruction. Examined on a regional or local level, architecture of the Neolithic is often presented as a fairly homogenous social practice over the large area of Southeast Europe. In viewing the Neolithic houses as homogenous and uncontroversial material culture, archaeologists have overlooked not only the possible variation and multimeaning of the Neolithic houses but also their striking and extensive means of destruction. The role of house conflagration, a practice that lasted during the entire Neolithic of Southeast Europe, has not been addressed in archaeological investigations. Indeed the phenomenon of burned houses has been treated as a series of lucky accidents during the Neolithic, which are primarily responsible for the preservation of Neolithic sites. Contrary this view, I argue that it is unlikely that the houses were burned as a result of a series of accidents or for any structural and technological reasons but rather that they were destroyed by deliberate burning and most likely for reasons of a symbolic nature. The causes for the practice of house firing and house abandonment as observed through the architectural evidence at the site of Opovo are believed to have been related to the need for house replacement and securing its postutilitarian visibility in order to show social and material continuity of the Neolithic society. In my view, a struggle for social and material continuity might have been a leading mobilizing force in creating and maintaining social practices and beliefs in the Neolithic society.     

The social life of ruins: sites of memory and the politics of a Zimbabwean periphery

This article explores conflicts over a series of ruins located within Zimbabwe's flagship National Park. The relics have long been regarded as sacred places by local African communities evicted from their vicinity, and have come to be seen as their ethnic heritage. Local intellectuals' promotion of this heritage was an important aspect of a defensive mobilization of cultural difference on the part of a marginalized minority group. I explore both indigenous and colonial ideas about the ruins, the different social movements with which they have been associated and the changing social life they have given the stone relics. Although African and European ideas sometimes came into violent confrontation – as in the context of colonial era evictions – there were also mutual influences in emergent ideas about tribe, heritage and history. The article engages with Pierre Nora's notion of ‘sites of memory’, which has usefully drawn attention to the way in which ideas of the past are rooted and reproduced in representations of particular places. But it criticizes Nora's tendency to romanticize pre-modern ‘memory’, suppress narrative and depoliticize traditional connections with the past. Thus, the article highlights the historicity of traditional means of relating to the past, highlighting the often bitter and divisive politics of traditional ritual, myth, kinship, descent and ‘being first’. It also emphasizes the entanglement of modern and traditional ideas, inadequately captured by Nora's implied opposition between history and memory.     

Modernity and its Discontents: On the Durability of Nationalism in the Arab Middle East

Abstract. Because many area experts studying the Arab Middle East commonly credit assumptions about nationalism that have, for the most part, been abandoned by their colleagues working in other parts of the globe, they assert that nationalist sentiment in the region has declined, either as a result of a series of political shocks or as the result of competition from other ideologies (such as Islamism). However, popular forms of nationalism not only have strong roots in the region, they have been continually reinforced over time. As a result, the current popular support for Islamism cannot be taken as a sign that nationalist sentiments are on the decline, particularly in light of the fact that Islamic movements share with nationalism a number of significant attributes.     

Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone's Docudramas

In the late 1980s and 1990s, American popular culture has been increasingly rife with conspiracy narratives of recent historical events. Among cultural producers, filmmaker Oliver Stone has had a significant impact on popular understanding of American culture in the late twentieth century through a series of docudramas which reread American history through the lens of conspiracy theory and paranoia. This paper examines the films of Oliver Stone—in particular Platoon , Born on the Fourth of July , JFK , and Nixon —asking why they have achieved popularity and brought about catharsis, why they are the subject of attack, and why it is useful to look beyond the debate about truth and falsehood that has surrounded them. It analyzes the ways in which Stone's status as a Vietnam veteran allowed Platoon to be accorded the authenticity of survivor discourse, whereas JFK and Nixon were subject to almost hysterical attack, not only because of Stone's assertions of conspiracy, but also because of his cinematic style of tampering with famous images. Taking these films as its point of departure, this paper examines the role of images in the construction of history, the form of the docudrama, the reenactment of historical images, fantasies of history, and ways in which paranoia part of the practice of citizenship.