The Role of Eastern Siberia in Solving Some of the Economic Problems of the Pacific Basin

The abundance of resources in the Soviet Far East and Eastern Siberia, combined with the known scarcity of fuel and energy supplies and certain raw materials in the countries of the Pacific basin, suggests that the resources of the eastern regions of the Soviet Union, could, if properly developed, find a wide market in countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean.     

Swahili Cosmopolitanism in Africa and the Indian Ocean World, A.D. 600–1500

Coastal peoples who lived along the Eastern African seaboard in the first millennium A.D. onwards began converting to Islam in the mid-eighth century. Clearly rooted in and linked throughout to an indigenous regional Iron Age tradition, they created a marked difference between themselves and their regional neighbors through their active engagement with Islam and the expanding Indian Ocean world system. In this paper I explore three ways in which interrelated cultural norms—an aesthetic featuring imported ceramics, foods, and other items, Islamic practice, and a favoring of urban living—created and maintained this difference over many centuries. These qualities of their identity helped anchor those who became Swahili peoples as participants in the Indian Ocean system. Such characteristics also can be seen to have contributed to Swahili attractiveness as a place for ongoing small-scale settlement of Indian Ocean peoples on the African coast, and eventually, as a target for nineteenth-century Arab colonizers from the Persian Gulf. This paper examines the archaeology of these aspects of Swahili culture from its early centuries through ca. A.D. 1500.     

中国上古时期国家道路的几个特点

史前国家、准集权制国家、统一集权制国家是中国上古国家道路的三大阶段。截然有别的三个发展阶段背后的历史现象、社会制度、权力方式等方面有着深刻的联系。历史过程中的偶然因素与社会结构中的稳定内核使上古历史沿着一定的轨迹运行。东亚相对封闭的地理空间、中国东部沿海与内地文明的不平衡性、以及新石器时期的海侵等主要因素既促成以宗法血缘为基础的大一统国家观的早熟,又造成实现国家集权费时长久,并与浩繁的战争形成对照。     

Mean airstreams of Australia

Streamline analyses of mean monthly resultant surface winds over Australia are presented. Mean confluences represent either cyclone trajectories, or modal fronts. These analyses suggest that Australia's annual airstream climate is of two regimes: that of September to March inclusive, and April to August inclusive. The winter half-year is exemplified by a continental airstream source in southern Australia which diverges over virtually the entire continent. It continues into September and October, although dominating only the southern third to half of Australia, and is absent from November to March. During the summer half-year a new pattern emerges, with three maritime air stream sources represented over the continent: first, air from the Southern Ocean penetrates the south coast reaching its furthest northward extension from December to March inclusive; a second source originating over the Pacific Ocean dominates eastern and northern Australia; and a monsoon source originating over the Indian Ocean which flows overland affecting northern Western Australia. Two modal confluences are noted, one over northwestern Australia from November-February separating monsoon flow from that emanating from the east, and another extending from the west central coast east-southeastward to the southeast coast from November-March separating Southern Ocean air from that originating over the Pacific Ocean.     

Domestic Pigs in Africa

The history of African pig breeds is still controversial due to the relative scarcity of archaeological and genetic data clarifying their origins. While these breeds might descend from Near Eastern pigs entering the continent via Egypt during the Neolithic, Africa may be a primary domestication locus for pigs, as indicated for other species such as cattle and donkeys. In this regard, characterisation of the mitochondrial gene pool of African pig breeds has revealed a very low frequency of Near Eastern alleles, suggesting that, if Fertile Crescent pigs played a part in the foundation of African breeds, their genetic signature has been substantially erased. Interestingly, genetic analysis of western and eastern African pig breeds has revealed a strong phylogeographic pattern, with the latter harbouring Far Eastern alleles at high frequencies. This finding is consistent with data obtained for chickens and confirms that livestock was transported in ancient times, from the Far East to Africa as a consequence of the Indian Ocean trade. European colonisation of Africa also involved the introduction of exotic swine breeds such as Iberian pigs. The confluence of the highly divergent European and Far Eastern Sus scrofa gene pools contributed to significantly enrich the genetic reservoir of African swine breeds, favouring their adaptation to environmental conditions that are often harsh. Conservation of this genetic legacy will be of utmost importance to ensure the prosperity of current resource-based subsistence farming systems in Africa.     

East Africa and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean world

The Indian Ocean has long been a forum for contact, trade and the transfer of goods, technologies and ideas between geographically distant groups of people. Another, less studied, outcome of expanding maritime connectivity in the region is the translocation of a range of species of plants and animals, both domestic and wild. A significant number of these translocations can now be seen to involve Africa, either providing or receiving species, suggesting that Africa’s role in the emergence of an increasingly connected Indian Ocean world deserves more systematic consideration. While the earliest international contacts with the East African coast remain poorly understood, in part due to a paucity of archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological studies, some evidence for early African coastal activity is provided by the discovery of early hunter-gatherer sites on offshore islands, and, possibly, by the translocation of wild animals among these islands, and between them and the mainland. From the seventh century, however, clear evidence for participation in the Indian Ocean world emerges, in the form of a range of introduced species, including commensal and domestic animals, and agricultural crops. New genetic studies demonstrate that the flow of species to the coast is complex, with more than one source frequently indicated. The East African coast and Madagascar appear to have been significant centres of genetic admixture, drawing upon Southeast Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern genetic varieties, and sometimes yielding unique hybrid species. The biological patterns reflect a deeply networked trade and contact situation, and support East Africa’s key role in the events and transformations of the early Indian Ocean world.     

A Review of Ceramics from Tanzania, Malawi, and Northern Mozambique, with Implications for Swahili Archaeology

Typological approaches to locally produced ceramics have played an important role in the archaeology of Eastern Africa. This paper engages with that history as it contextualizes the ceramic material recently recovered from the region around the site of Mikindani on the southern Tanzanian coast with known traditions from the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast, Malawi, and Mozambique. That comparison reveals the shifting connections and interregional relationships the inhabitants of the Mikindani region forged over the past two millennia with other communities in the Indian Ocean world and the African interior. Mikindani's ceramics are shown to provide important evidence of the deep connections between the region and the African interior to the southwest during the early second millennium, at the expense of connections with coastal Swahili sites further north. This pattern is unusual for a coastal site during the florescence of Swahili society and the typical expansion of Swahili involvement in the Indian Ocean world at that time. The typological comparison of the Mikindani material and other regional traditions thus allows us to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the typological enterprise, in terms of what information is brought to light and what information is obscured.     

Soils and palaeo-climate based evidence for irrigation requirements in Norse Greenland

Establishing and sustaining agricultural production was a key factor in the success of Norse settlements during the landnám colonisation across the North Atlantic. In light of the occurrence of channel features in several abandoned home-field areas of the Norse Eastern Settlement of Greenland, and the irrigation requirements of present-day Greenlandic sheep-farmers questions are raised: was irrigation used by the Norse settlers of Greenland on their home-field areas? and, if so, how frequently? Modelling of soil chemical, physical and soil-water hydraulic properties integrated with contemporary high-resolution climatic data demonstrate a frequent requirement for irrigation. Soil moisture deficits are related to the duration and intensity of winter temperature. Using the winter Dye 3 ice core δ¹⁸O record as a climatic proxy, the frequency of moisture deficits, based on comparing mean winter temperatures, indicates that there was a frequent irrigation requirement to maintain home-field productivity, increasing throughout the period of settlement until the 14th Century.     

Asian Servants for the Imperial Telegraph: Imagining North Australia as an Indian Ocean Colony before 1914

In the late nineteenth century, the officers of the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company provided north Australia with a cable connection to London via Java, Singapore, and India. The telegraph project prompted a new era of colonisation in tropical north Australia and the officers of the company sought to ensure that the north would be shaped according to their notions of Indian Ocean colonial culture. They insisted on employing Asian domestic servants in opposition to White Australian nationalists who advocated restrictions on Asian migration. Like the pearling industry, which was permitted ongoing access to Asian labour, the telegraph company drew on the support of liberal parliamentarians, and leveraged their privileged position as providers of imperial telecommunications to develop an elite colonial counter-culture in north Australia.     

Rome rainfall and sunspot numbers

The accumulated departure from mean (ADM) of the 208 yr Rome rainfall strongly inversely resembles the ADM of sunspot numbers. The ADM for the Bay of Biscay sea surface temperature also strongly resembles sunspot numbers and Rome rainfall. These data suggest that long-term increasing solar radiation warms parts of the North Atlantic Ocean, which in turn affects the fall and winter storm paths resulting in lower rainfall in Rome and conversely, decreasing solar radiation produces the opposite effect. The accumulated departure from mean (ADM) plotting method is used to compare different records of the same length.     

Reviews

Pirogues monoxyles ď:Europe centrale– construction, typologie, evolution (Archéologie neuchatêloise 20 & 21) BÉAT ARNOLD
Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World LIONEL CASSON
Calvi I ( series De ľArchéologie à la Historie ) PIERRE VILLIÉ
Athens, Aden, Arikamedu–Essays on the interrelations between India, Arabia and the Eastern Mediterranean MARIE-FRANÇOISE BOUSSAC
Tradition and Archaeology–Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean HIMANSHU PRABHA RAY
Das Museum für Antike Schiffahrt. Ein Forschungsbereich des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, Band I BARBARA PFERDEHIRT
Navigation et Milieu Fluvial au Xle siècle: ľépave ďOrlac (Charente-Maritime) 2-page English summary JEAN CHAPELOT, ERIC RIETH     

Variabilité et fréquence des cycles de gel‐dégel dans la région de Québec, 1977–2006

Freeze‐thaw cycles are most common at the beginning or near the end of the winter season. These cycles have various effects on the ecosystems of Eastern Canada, affecting both biotic and abiotic components of temperate cold environments. Using air temperature minima and maxima from four meteorological stations close to Québec City, we determined the frequency of daily freeze‐thaw cycles for the last 30 years. The results show no significant increase in the number of freeze‐thaw cycles despite a small increase in air temperature. Polynomial curves describing the relationship between mean air temperatures and the number of freeze‐thaw cycles were calculated. Based on these equations and anticipating a climate change scenario, we projected future freeze‐thaw cycles. Assuming a 5 °C increase in mean air temperatures by 2100, we estimated that the number of days with a freeze‐thaw cycle could increase by approximately 20 days per winter. The increase in the number of such cycles will be concentrated during the coldest months of the winter (January and February).     

Reimagining the Iglu: Modernity and the Challenge of the Eighteenth Century Labrador Inuit Winter House

The Inuit sod winter house or iglu has undergone a host of alterations over the past millennium, as housing styles were accommodated to changing local milieus during the colonization of the Eastern Arctic. Many of these changes relate to subtle shifts in gendered work and household social relations, and in Labrador from the eighteenth century some appear to reflect engagements with a more or less hostile European discourse on architectural modernity. Far from a static form subjected to convulsive contact-era transformations, however, dwellings were gradually remade in the context of a long-running Inuit effort to house work and sociality within a meaningful space.     

2003年河南新乡市火电厂墓地发掘简报

2003～2004年,新乡市文物考古研究所发掘了新乡市火电厂251座战国晚期至西汉晚期墓葬,出土一批精美的彩绘陶器、大型铁制生活用品、铜器等遗物.根据墓葬形制和随葬品组合,将墓地分为五期,从战国晚期至西汉晚期,为研究中原战国至汉代文化提供了珍贵的实物资料.     

Epidemic disease in central Syria in the late sixth century Some new insights from the verse of assān ibn Thābit

Abstract

Any interpretation of Near Eastern history touching upon the sixth and seventh centuries must invariably come to terms with the numerous causes of mortality, destruction, and social and economic disruption that preceded the Arab conquests. One of these factors was undoubtedly the bubonic plague, which descended the Nile in the summer of 641, spread through the Delta and passed to Syrian ports in the winter of that year; by the summer of 542 it had reached Constantinople itself and infected, among many other places, large parts of inland Asia Minor and Syria.     

European Transfigurations—Eurafrica and Eurasia: Coudenhove and Trubetzkoy Revisited

The Eurasianist movement launched a theory according to which Russia does not belong to Europe but forms, together with its Asian colonies, a separate continent named “Eurasia” whose Eastern border is the Pacific Ocean. Similarily, in the early 1920s, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-European movement, developed, the idea of “Eurafrica.” I compare the writings of Coudenhove and those of Nicolas S. Trubetzkoy and show how the idea of Europe was used as an anti-essentialist model of a cultural community. Though both “Eurasia” and “Eurafrica” may be understood to express cultural and economic imperialism, the sophistication with which both concepts are brought forward makes their interpretation as simple derivatives of chauvinism impossible. Both Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove refuse national “egocentricity” which “destroys every form of cultural communication between human beings.” Above that, Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove agree that cultural apogees have often come about through fusion. I discuss the idea of “convergence” in the context of Bergson's and Deleuze's biophilosophies.     

A Model for Paleoamerican Coastal Zone Preference for the Atlantic Slope of Eastern North America Since the Last Glacial Maximum

Paleoamerican colonization models have emphasized the importance of coastal zones for provisioning hunter gatherers with a diverse range of subsistence resources. This article expands on recent research by Lowery et al. 2012, and presents a model to explain the distribution of Clovis points across the Atlantic slope of Eastern North America. Marine transgression since the last glaciation has submerged large tracts of the Atlantic continental shelf. Global bathymetric data was used to estimate the Clovis age shoreline from Delaware to Florida. Clovis biface data for modern coastal areas, obtained from the Paleoindian database of the Americas, was compared to the slope of the paleo-shoreline to predict coastal zone preference. Results indicate a relationship between point distribution and coastal zone type. Areas where major rivers with high-quality tool-stone intersect broad coastal zones served important roles to Clovis subsistence adaptations. The potential exists for early Paleoamerican sites along the continental shelf submerged beneath 55–75 m of the Atlantic Ocean. Modern coastal regions with high densities of Clovis points may serve as analogues for identifying earlier sites that have been submerged as a result of marine transgression.     

Seismic Noise Characteristics at the Romanian Broadband Seismic Network

The noise level of the Romanian broadband stations operating since 2006 has been studied in order to identify the variations in background seismic noise as a function of time of day, season, and particular conditions at the stations. Power spectral densities and their corresponding probability density functions are used in this paper to characterize the background seismic noise. At high frequencies (> 1 Hz), seismic noise seems to have cultural origin, since significant variations (up to 55 dB) between daytime and nighttime noise levels are observed at almost all of the stations. However, this variability appears not to influence the detection capabilities of the Romanian Seismic Network in case of intermediate-depth earthquakes and earthquakes with magnitude over 3.0. For smaller magnitude events (Mw < 3), we showed that the number of stations detecting an event decreases during daytime. We studied the seasonal variation of the seismic noise for primary and secondary microseisms (with emphasize for the latter) and we demonstrated that the noise levels are higher in winter than in summer. We also observed a shift of the double-frequency peak from lower periods in summer to longer periods in winter. The polarization analysis indicated that the main sources of secondary microseisms for stations close to the Black Sea are coming from the Black Sea, while for the others the main sources are found in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Finally, the analysis of the probability density functions for stations located in different geologic conditions has pointed out that the noise level is higher for stations sited on softer formations than those sited on hard rocks.     

扬州甘泉山二号墓年代献疑

根据墓葬形制和随葬品特征,可以推定扬州甘泉山二号墓主是东汉晚期而不是东汉早期的广陵王。文献记载也表明,终东汉之世,广陵国的王国地位始终保持,附近发现的"广陵王玺"金印为东汉晚期或使用至东汉晚期的可能性都存在。     

21世纪的太平洋——在政治、经济、军事上的重要性评价

太平洋是地球上最大的海洋,在环太平洋沿岸和浩瀚海洋中星罗棋布的岛屿上,分布着40个国家和一些尚未独立的地区,太平洋地区国家陆地面积占世界的46%,人口占世界的40%,但却拥有全球50%以上的GNP和近1/2的世界贸易总额。二次大战以后,太平洋地区的迅速崛起,引起国际舆论的广泛关注。21世纪是太平洋世纪,已日益被国际社会所公认。本文立足于政治军事地理及地缘政治学的基本理论,以21世纪是太平洋世纪的基本结论为出发点,从资源、经济、政治、军事等四个方面对太平洋在21世纪的重要性进行了系统地分析与评价。指出太平洋不仅是人类有待开发的巨大资源宝库和全球经济最富有活力的地区而且是21世纪全球地缘政治中心和地缘战略中心,是世界上各大国和大国集团矛盾的焦点,以及军费增长最快和军备最密集的地区。在今后相当长一段时期内,围绕太平洋地区控制权的争夺竟会日趋激烈。因此21世纪的世界是走向和平还是步入战争,关键取决于环太平洋地区各种战略力量的矛盾与合作。