Contributions to the agrarian history of Eastern Arabia II. The cultivars

Following on from an earlier study of agricultural implements and cultivation techniques in eastern Arabia, this paper presents the palaeobotanical and ethnohistoric evidence available on early cultivars in the region from the late 4th millennium B.C. through the pre-modern era. The introduction of new crops is discussed and, where possible, the evidence is marshalled which pertains to the origins of those new introductions and the dates of their arrival in the Gulf region.     

The agrarian history of Byzantium,from the origins to the twelfth century. The sources and problems

The relationship between conquerors and conquered in the Latin Empire of Constantinople has traditionally been understood as a relentlessly hostile one, particularly on the religious level. Whatever its merits, the dominance of this view has sometimes resulted in the gross misinterpretation of important pieces of evidence. This article examines two unusual liturgical texts that were treated by their discoverers as products of a Latin campaign of liturgical proselytism. The texts themselves are bilingual presentations of the Western rite of mass, with Greek and Latin text presented in an interlinear format. Most unusually, the Latin text is written in Greek characters. This article makes the case, due to internal evidence as well as the broader context of ecclesiastical relations in the Latin Empire, that these texts were created by Greek clerics rather than by Latin authorities, and that their purpose was entirely different from that imagined by their discoverers.     

Phylogeography of einkorn landraces in the Mediterranean basin and Central Europe: population structure and cultivation history

Einkorn (Triticum monococcum L.) was one of the first cereals to be domesticated in the Old World ca. 10,000 years ago and to spread towards Europe and North Africa. Its cultivation declined before the Iron Age and it remains today only as a relic crop in remote areas. To investigate if the geographic distribution of genetic diversity in modern einkorn landrace accessions could be informative about the movement of this crop during prehistory, we genotyped 50 accessions of einkorn from Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Using nuclear and chloroplast microsatellites and clustering methods, we detected two main gene pools in einkorn. The distribution of these lineages revealed differences between accessions from Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe and the Near East and suggests different regional dynamics in the spread of this crop.     

The mineral wealth of ancient Arabia and its use I: Copper mining and smelting at Feinan and Timna – comparison and evaluation of techniques, production, and strategies

Near Eastern fieldwork in mining archaeology and archaeometallurgy began at Timna (Israel) in the 1960s and 1970s and continued in Feinan (Jordan) in the 1980s and 1990s. For the first time, Bronze Age copper mines were excavated and cleared and importance was given to the slag recovered. At both sites copper was produced for over 5000 years, from the Chalcolithic to the Mamluk periods. Although the broad outlines of technical development can be traced, much remains to be learned in future studies.     

Julfar and the urbanisation of Southeast Arabia

The fourteenth-sixteenth-century town of Julfar (al-Mataf) in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) is one of the most fully investigated archaeological sites in the Gulf, having been the subject of seven different excavation projects. Evidence from the published reports, when brought together, provides a detailed and coherent picture of the development of the site from a small fishing community in the mid-fourteenth century to a fully urbanised settlement by the mid-fifteenth century, and then attests to its eventual decline and abandonment by the late sixteenth century.
Julfar was the first example of true urbanism in this part of Arabia, and therefore marks a significant historical turning point. Its development is believed to have been linked to the expanding mercantile economy of Hormuz, but it occurred at the same time as a period of spectacular rural growth in its own immediate hinterland, evidence for which has been produced by archaeological field survey. Together these phenomena suggest the development of a local market economy, perhaps for the first time, which would have had significant implications for the social and economic structure of the area.     

陈垣对清史研究的贡献

陈垣学术源于清学,从早期编辑《柱下备忘录》到晚年考证两封无名字无年月的信,其研究经历始终于清史、清学,在清人基础上,治宗教史、历史文献学和元史,并开辟清史研究新领域,揭示宗教与清代政治、文化之关系,全面调查《四库全书》,论衡清人著述,总结清代学术与建立近代意义之史讳学、年代学、校勘学,考述清代人物年事,利用档案、僧人语录、学人手札等新材料考史,拓宽清代史料范围。其对清史研究的贡献,开拓与集成兼俱。     

从环境的历史到环境史——关于环境史研究的一种认识

By and large, there are three kinds of research on environment: the history of environment as a field of natural history studies, the history of environment as within the scope of history of society studies, and environmental history as the study of the relationship between human and nature. The methodological perspective of the relationship between humanity and environmental distinguishes the third from the previous two. From this perspective, when we probe the mutual effects between human and nature, we will stress on their interactions. The new era and the realities of contemporary society foster the rise of environmental history, which has not only theoretical values but also practical significance. Translated from Xueshu Yanjiu 学术研究 (Academic Research), 2006, (9):12–22     

The art of link-making in global labour history: subaltern,feminist and Eastern European contributions

Benefiting from the ‘global’ and ‘trans-national’ turns in the larger historiography, labour historians in the past two decades have greatly expanded their geographical scope, developed new methodologies, refashioned categories of analysis and largely abandoned teleological assumptions. In this context, the history of labour in Eastern Europe still constitutes one of the least-globalized research topics in the field, even though the region attracted an array of excellent labour historians both before and after the collapse of state socialism in 1989/91. This introduction to the Dossier on labour history and Eastern Europe reflects on the reasons for the apparent mismatch between Eastern European labour history and the new global labour history. It does so by situating this large question within a discussion of some more or less successful examples of how scholarship on a particular theme in labour history has contributed or attempted to contribute to the conceptual and empirical enlargement of labour history in the past few decades. Focusing on particular aspects of the debates on class analysis, the peasant question, the history of gender, and the history of labour under state socialism, the authors address key questions in the international development of the history of labour. These questions, the authors argue, are at the core of the contributions on Eastern Europe assembled in the Dossier. Situating the four historiographical studies contained in the Dossier in this larger context, the introduction discusses the varied reception of scholarship on aspects of the history of labour emerging in and from different contexts and asks how this scholarship has contributed or might contribute to the development of a more inclusive global labour history.     

商代西周墓葬中出土前代玉器初识

本文对晋侯墓、妇好墓及其他一些墓葬中出土的具有前代明显特征的玉器进行了初步分析,提出出土玉器的断代不仅要认识到前代玉器长期流传的可能性,同时也应在考古实践和研究中对这种情况所反映的心理因素、文化现象作进一步地探讨。     

Documentation as part of the research process. Some considerations actualized by the application of photogrammetric measuring techniques in history of culture

Within the fields of the history of culture increased applications of advanced measuring techniques, e.g. photogrammetry, have clearly demonstrated the difficulties of communication between various scientific branches. The demands of measuring technicians for precise instructions have been very difficult to satisfy. We have partly landed up in a new situation of scientific work where the lack of adequate education and experience prohibits proper utilization of existing technical innovations.

Presentation of applications and problems regarding instruments, treatment of mechanical equipment and so on, are not ‐ in our opinion — meaningful to a wider public until the general background of the documentation has been accounted for in greater detail ‐ practically as well as theoretically.

These circumstances have called for a serious examination of the very base of dataproduction regarding the relevance of data as well as the problem of education in order to make it easier for the two blocs ‐measuring techniques and history of culture ‐ to understand each other.