Pleistocene foraminifera from Botany Bay,New South Wales

Unconsolidated sediments from a borehole in Botany Bay have been analyzed for their foraminiferal content. Faunas from between 41 and 54 m below sea level are interpreted as Pleistocene in age. The foraminiferal assemblage from 54 m indicates marine conditions of moderately deep water (25–30 m), and a climate warmer than at present. The higher assemblages indicate a more brackish environment

The foraminifera, belonging to 123 species in 67 genera, are tabulated and 24 are discussed and illustrated. Three species, Oolina bifidocostata, Fissurina alatoquadrata and Elphidium botaniensis and one subpecies, Quinqueloculina affinis atrata, are described as new.     

A new Llanvirnian Isograptus from the D. murchisoni Shales of Abereiddy Bay,Wales

Isograptus ovatus davidensis subsp. nov. is described from the D. murchisoni Shales of Abereiddy Bay, Wales. This discovery gives further support to the correlation of the murchisoni Zone with the upper part of the Darriwil Stage of Victoria.     

Character and Age of Lateritic Weathering at Jervis Bay,Southern New South Wales

Lateritic profiles near Jervis Bay developed under humid temperate climates on a surface of considerable relief. δ¹⁸O and TL dating of these profiles indicates that their ages range from Late Mesozoic-Early Tertiary to Late Pleistocene. These profiles thus demonstrate a complexity of development far greater than that allowed for in traditional explanations which attributed lateritic weathering to the effects of tropical climates on Middle Tertiary erosional surfaces.     

天纲地常考

本文依据历史文献与出土古文献《十大经》中有关的资料,提出"纲常"二字的本源,是指中国古代建立天地系统模型中的两个极点。天之极曰纲,地之极曰常,天纲与地常上下相对,天旋于上,地静于下,形成了"有晦有明,有阴有阳"现象。后世运用纲常二字,盖出乎此,但其原本之义,已经隐晦不明,故为考证。     

Pests in an ancient Egyptian harbor

Our investigations combine detailed identification and interpretation of plant remains and associated fauna and their mode of arrival in one of the rock-cut galleries, Cave 3, at the site of Mersa/Wadi Gawasis on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. The site served as a staging area and harbor from which Middle Kingdom pharaohs launched seafaring expeditions to the land of Punt in the early second millennium BC. Quantities of wood, including ship timbers, fastenings, debris related to ship dismantling and reworking, and charcoal were excavated and analyzed. Evidence of marine mollusk infestation (shipworm) was abundant in Cave 3, as were the remains of insect pests of stored foods. We also report on a unique find of a plaster “spill” that preserved the floor of Cave 3 as it was when people worked in the gallery ca. 3800 years ago. The plaster spill created a sealed deposit of plant and insect remains with a diagnostic ceramic fragment, allowing us to securely associate insect remains and “hollow” spikelets of emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) recovered from the gallery. An impression of the beetle Trachyderma hispida and its associated exoskeleton fragments provide new evidence of this species as a potential pest not yet reported from an archaeological grain storage site in Egypt. The finding of Tenebroides mauritanicus from the same deposit is the earliest known association of this pest with stored grains. These unique finds shed new light on the risks associated with preserving food supplies, combating pest infestation, and dealing with marine organisms on land and at sea in the pharaonic harbor.     

试析历史古建筑复原陈列的基本定位

在历史古建筑保护工作中,复原陈列是用来表现古建筑文化底蕴和人文内涵的重要手段。其通常借助于实物媒介,以陈列艺术的独特语言表现活态的过往历史,再现原生态的人文风貌。在具体的复原展示中,主要依据古建筑物的历史价值、科学价值、艺术价值的差异情况,而决定"物"与"景"组合展示的最终导向。     

长治炉坊巷古遗址调查

1999年8月3日,位于长治市南街的炉坊巷旧房改造建设工地发现的大量唐代“开元通宝”、“乾元重宝”钱币遭到哄抢,引起新闻媒体和社会各界的关注。长治市博物馆闻讯,立即派人进行了考古调查,当时的13号楼基础已基本挖成,考古工作人员从建设工地采集了大量瓷片,并在建筑施工队的配合下,调查了几处灰坑、古井等遗迹,清理了其它遗物若干。这些瓷片时代不同,具有不同的窑口,不同的器形,标本比较丰富,一方面为陶瓷研究和收藏提供了很好的学习资料,另一方面也从一个侧面反映了长治市炉坊巷繁荣的历史。     

福建历史建筑瑰宝——仙游清代“乐善好施”坊

仙游地区的清代"乐善好施"坊,是地方官吏奉旨为捐资兴学、修桥、铺路的清代巨商陈天高构建的表彰性牌坊,它是福建省迄今保存最完整、文化内涵最丰富、雕刻工艺最精湛的清代功德坊建筑。作为地方有影响力的历史建筑,其产生的作用是巨大的,传统的慈善文化己成为中华文化的一个重要组成部分,根植在每一个中国人的心里,并世代传承下去。因此,"乐善好施"坊的作用已超出建筑本身,因而具有重要的历史和文化价值,是研究地方民俗文化、建筑文化和传统的慈善文化等诸多领域方面的重要依据。     

浅析古书画题款之转变

写在书籍、字面、碑帖等前面的文字叫题,后面的叫跋。对于中国画来说,凡是画上的题字钤印均属题款。绘画在汉时却是一直无作者名款的,有的仅是榜题、画题和画赞,故仅能成为雏形,而不能称题款。中国画题款自宋元以后已逐步成为中国画章法不可缺少的组成部分,形成诗书画印四位一体的独特艺术形式。题款到了元风气为之一变,强调诗书画三者结合,此风气自此大盛,一直延续至近现代。书画作品题款中历朝历代均存在避讳,根据不同历史时期所避讳的字,亦可以判定书画作品的时代。     

中古时期一部重要的文献-《齐民要术》

《齐民要术》是中古时期一部重要的文献典籍,本文从《齐民要术》的作者、版本、内容、语言等方面介绍该书的情况,以期能够促进对于该书的文献整理和汉语史的研究工作。     

Mediterranean heritage: ancient marvel,modern millstone

ABSTRACT. The wealth, variety and seaborne accessibility of Mediterranean societies since late prehistory have made the region's cultural heritage the world's most widely acclaimed. But since the fall of the Roman Empire the Mediterranean has been increasingly disadvantaged, its history compromised, its legacy beleaguered. Two millennia of invasion and rapine, religious vendetta, foreign conquest, imperial dominion and colonial subjugation have left Mediterranean peoples with fewer resources and weaker infrastructures than those of transalpine and transatlantic nation‐states. The consequences for the care and control of Mediterranean heritage are parlous. That heritage is both the region's self‐defining pride and its economic mainstay, yet a crippling burden to protect and maintain, let alone to interpret and celebrate. It is everywhere beset by natural and human attrition. Weathering and erosion, illicit excavation and pillage, tomb robbery and the international antiquities market exact tolls that legal codes and police forces are all but impotent to stem. Recent social and political trends suggest potential remedies for some of these dilemmas.     

Subsistence practices in an arid environment: a geoarchaeological investigation in an Iron Age site,the Negev Highlands,Israel

The Negev Highlands (southern Israel) is an arid zone characterized by settlement oscillations. One settlement peak occurred in the early Iron Age IIA (late 10th and early 9th centuries BC). The most conspicuous structure in many sites of this period is an oval compound comprised of an internal courtyard surrounded by rooms. Two hypotheses for the function of these oval compounds are that they served as Israelite fortresses which guarded the southern border and routes of the Solomonic kingdom, or that they represent local agro-pastoral groups. In order to gather more information regarding the subsistence practices conducted in these oval compounds, we carried out a small-scale excavation at the site of Atar Haroa. We focused on sediment sampling and used several geoarchaeological, as well as isotopic, techniques in order to identify macroscopic and microscopic remains related to animal husbandry and crop agriculture. The remains identified from the archaeological sediments were compared with modern reference materials collected from abandoned Bedouin camps. The excavation included two half rooms and several test pits in the courtyard of the oval compound, featuring one Iron Age occupation level composed of gray sediments and relatively small amounts of pottery, bones and macro-botanical charred remains. Micromorphological, mineralogical, dung spherulite and isotopic analyses carried out on the gray occupational sediments from the rooms show that they originate from wood ash and dung, both used as fuel. Similar analyses of the gray sediments in the courtyard show that they originate only from degraded livestock dung. Phytolith analyses show that the gray anthropogenic sediments have similar concentrations of phytoliths as in control (yellowish) sediments and in the dung of winter free-grazing desert livestock and lichen-grazing black dwarf Bedouin goats. Phytoliths indicative of cereal crops are completely absent in the archaeological dung remains, indicating that cereal crops were not processed by the site inhabitants. Based on ethnographic and archaeological parallels, and on the presence of grinding stones and absence of sickle blades in the excavated rooms, we infer that the inhabitants at the oval compound at Atar Haroa subsisted on livestock herding and bought or exchanged cereal grains. Our results support the hypothesis that the inhabitants at the oval compound at Atar Haroa were desert-adapted pastoralists, rather than garrisoned soldiers.     

Continuity and disruption in the ancient Hejaz: an assessment of current archaeological strategies

In this study I review two conflicting scenaria of the history of northwestern Arabia from approximately 1300 to 200 BC and discuss their theoretical and methodological determinants. The still sparse archaeological and historic information on this topic has been used in two quite different ways. On one hand there is the traditional culture historical approach which subordines all social interpretation to the precise strictures of an interrupted ceramic typology, on the other a recent attempt to interpret archaeological and textual data within the theoretical framework of a long-term historical model that integrates the Hejaz into the broader Near Eastern world system. I argue that these two approaches reflect fundamentally different approaches to the study of ancient society and that each incorporates a conceptual approach that necessarily determines its interpretational outcome. Furthermore I conclude that use of an inclusive theoretical model permits better integration of the growing archaeological and textual information bases and obviates much of the inconsistency and interpretational naivity that unavoidably derives from the culture historica approach.     

Seleucia Pieria: an ancient harbour submitted to two successive uplifts

Historical sources ascribe the foundation of Seleucia (Seleukeia) Pieria to Seleucos I Nikator, shortly before the foundation of Antioch in the late 4th century BC. The Seleucia Pieria site seems however to have been inhabited earlier, perhaps from around 700 BC, possibly by a Greek population under an Assyrian ruler. The city became of considerable military importance during the wars between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids; it was occupied by the Romans in the 1st century BC, but had practically disappeared in the 6th century AD.
Geomorphological surveys in the area have revealed the existence of elevated marine notches and rims bioconstructed by vermetids, oysters and calcareous algae, which occasionally erode or intersect the archaeological sites, showing that two rapid land uplift movements, probably of seismic origin, took place during the late Holocene. The first movement, which occurred about 2500 ± 100 years bp, was the strongest one and caused a local vertical displacement of about 1.7 m, which may have severely affected the earlier Greek settlement. Though several earthquakes are reported to have occurred in the area during the following ten centuries, none of them seem to have been strong enough to cause significant vertical displacements. The second movement occurred around 1400 years bp, probably in May 526 AD, when a great earthquake followed by tsunami waves is known to have caused devastating damage in Antioch and Seleucia. According to geomorphological data supported by several radiocarbon dates, the earthquake was accompanied by a 0.7 to 0 8 m upheaval. This seismotectonic event also caused a rapid silting of the Seleucia Pieria closed harbour basin and entrances, thus preventing its further use.