Three unpublished collections of South Arabian coins

The author presents the South Arabian holdings of three museums in Israel, forty-eight coins in all. The coins comprise one Qatabanian coin and several coins each of three very common Himyarite and Sabaean types (two issues of 'Amdân Bayyin Yuhaqbid, kingdom of Saba' and dhû Raydân, and various coins of the Sabaean Bucranium series). The paper gives the opportunity to make some remarks on South Arabian Coinage.     

Some thoughts on ibex on plinths in early South Arabian art

Ibex are an important iconographic element in the art of South Arabia. The origins, geographical distribution, chronology and divine affinities of ibex are considered, drawing on both archaeological and epigraphic sources.     

The flint daggers of Denmark: Studies in chronology and cultural relations of the South Scandinavian Late Neolithic

A main topic in this issue of Norwegian Archaeological Review is the book Die Flintdolche Dänemarks. Studien über Chronologie und Kulturbeziehungen des südskandinavischen Spätneolithikums by Ebbe Lomborg. The Scandinavian Late Neolithic has not been a subject of discussion for many years, and this publication is an important contribution to the study of this formative period in the prehistory of the Scandinavian countries.

Comments by Niels Bantelmann, Jay J. Butler, Klaus Ebbesen, and Märta Strömberg are followed by a reply from Ebbe Lomborg.     

Makaynûn and its territory: the formation of an urban centre during the South Arabian period in the Hadramawt

Work at the site of Makaynûn in eastern Hadramawt (Yemen) and surrounding territory has yielded information on ancient settlement patterns in southern Arabia. This small regional centre lay within an area marked out by a network of seasonal flood‐water cultivation systems that irrigated agricultural areas. Each system was associated with one or more villages that were contemporary with the central site. As well as providing a communal refuge, the central site contained religious buildings, dwellings and doubtless the residence of the local elite, within the shelter of a defensive enclosure. This territory was overlain by a symbolic geography defined by the location of the sanctuaries and cemeteries of the Makaynûn community. This model of settlement was repeated all along the valley, where comparable systems were found at the mouths of the main tributary valleys.     

南亳地理之我见

古文献有关南亳的记述,目前尚不可完全相信,也不可完全否定,重要的是努力寻找考古证据.如果南亳确实存在,其文化应是漳河型一类先商文化.     

契丹陶器的编年

辽代瓷器的研究已取得丰硕的成果,但对于契丹传统陶器的研究却没有得到应有的重视.通过对契丹最具特色的传统陶器的排序与编年的研究,不仅了解了契丹陶器发展演变的脉络,同时辨识出远在建立辽王朝之前的契丹遗存,并确认了其同鲜卑遗存的一定联系.契丹陶器的演化表明在建立辽代发展的过程中,随着经济实力的增强和技术工艺的发展,传统陶器逐渐被釉陶或瓷器所替代,走向了衰落.     

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.