Further Comments on the Simla Conference

Early in the period of the Republic of China,inAugust 1913,the Government of the Republic of Chinaheaded by Yuan Shikai sent a delegation to participatein tripartite talks in British India between China,Brit-ain and Tibet.This was under pressure from the Brit-ish Government and the aim was to“solve”the so-called Tibetan issue.Being held in Simla,the confer-ence was remembered by history as the SimlaConference.After long-drawn-out negotiations,noagreement was reached.The conference ended in fail-     

Comments on comments

This article is a comment on: Tubridge et al., 2012. Decennial reflections on a ‘geography of heritage’ (2000). International Journal of Heritage Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.695038     

电视节目低俗化现象之评析

在现代技术文明和商业文化背景下成长起来的电视文化,加快了传统文化中高雅文化和商业文化的分化速度。但在电视文化通俗化的发展道路上,低俗化的倾向日益显现。本文通过分析低俗化现象产生的原因,提出了遏制电视节目低俗化的路径。     

Comments on archaeology into the 1990s

This article focuses on the complexity of Early Bronze Age weapon depositions. While some of the deposited weapons have been disabled by intentional breakage, others seem to be more or less unused. A plausible explanation for the variability is that the surrender of lethal weapons to land or water was a means of coping with their power or agency – their individuality. We suggest that weapons, in their capacity as extensions of warriors’ bodies, may have substituted for humans in ritual depositions. The metalworkers also come into play, due to their capacities in the processes of making weapons and shaping weapon technologies. Although we consider the three depositions that we discuss to relate to rituals on the occasion of warfare, we are not aiming for a uniform explanation. In the same way as the patterned human behaviour of a ritual is a means of subsuming individual events into a greater order, so a focus on general patterns may subsume the complexity of the past by ignoring the many different events leading to, e.g., the deposition of metalwork. Far from seeing these perspectives as contradictory, we try to use three well-documented individual cases to shed light on the variability within the pattern.     

“百家讲坛”讲史平议

中央电视台"百家讲坛"宣讲历史有三点应当注意:一是贴近历史,开发历史文化。文史兼顾,但应尊重历史事实。二是传播历史,发扬光大祖国丰富的历史文化遗产,但不可颠倒是非,以伪乱真。三是再讲历史,创新资治通鉴。司马光写史,以史为鉴,欲以益世。现在讲史,应当创新,有益于世,"青出于蓝"。     

Comments on the flint daggers of Denmark

The transition to settled farming communities in northern Europe was a far more gradual process than elsewhere in Europe: this makes it possible to study the transition to farming archaeologically at a finer level of resolution. In this paper we trace the shift to cultivation in two areas: Denmark and Finland. Despite the difference in the time scale of agricultural evolution, and despite other chronological and environmental differences, we can, in both cases, isolate three distinct stages in the transition to fanning, thus extending the process well beyond the conventional date for the shift to cultivation. Both the case studies emphasize the long continuation of foraging adaptations, and the long delay before the appearance of a predominantly agricultural economy. This delay has been caused by the development of successful maritime adaptations, which acted as a viable alternative to farming until a specific trigger—a decline in marine resources—occurred and initiated the substitution phase of the transition.     

释“北洋”

"北洋",在中国近代史上是一个习见名词,内涵数变。其源头古意仅是地域名称。第二次鸦片战争后,转成官职概念。北洋大臣的设置是清朝外交从地方到中央的转变,从南到北位移的过渡,在李鸿章之手,天津的屏障外交作用得以充分发挥。到袁世凯的"北洋",含义再变,前此侧重外交和洋务的意味淡去,而更多地具有了军事政治派系的命意,进而成为中国主要统治集团的称谓。     

Comments on relative chronology

Post‐Processualism's influence is waning in Britain, linked to the decline of its parent Post‐Modernism. Both lost credibility through attempting to dominate discourse, and their negative implications for human rights. Modernism and its offspring Processualism had reflected the scientism and socio‐economic centralism that dominated the 20th century up until the 1970s. Jameson and Harvey have exposed their Post‐Modernism as a superficial aesthetic movement spawned by Post‐Fordist economics. Perceived from the History of Ideas this temporal succession is the recurrent opposition between Positivist and Idealist philosophies. Wittgenstein's philosophy shows a ‘third way’ where objective and subjective approaches are complementary tools for scholarship. In Cognitive Processual archaeology a pragmatic merger arises from these formerly competing traditions.