陕西秦兵马俑展赴巴黎

由陕西对外交流中心与巴黎美术馆主办的陕西秦兵马俑展于4—9月在巴黎美术馆隆重举行,此次展览由120件（组）春秋、战国、秦时期文物组成,它们是秦人兴起、励精图治、成就帝业的历史见证。     

Review Article: Elie Kedourie: Forgotten Iconoclast

ELIE KEDOURIE. Nationalism, 4th ed. Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1993. Pp. xviii, 154. $16.95 (US), paper; ELIE KEDOURIE. Democracy and Arab Political Culture. London: Frank Cass, 1994; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. xii, 105. $17.50 (US), paper; ELIE KEDOURIE. Politics in the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. 366. $20.95 (CDN), paper; ELIE KEDOURIE. Hegel and Marx: Introductory Lectures, ed. Sylvia and Helen Kedourie. Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1995. Pp. xiii, 216. $49.95 (US); SYLVIA KEDOURIE, ed. Elie Kedourie CBE, FBA, 1926–1992: History, Philosophy, Politics. London: Frank Cass, 1998; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. 132. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by Efraim Karsh     

Warriors and blacksmiths: Mediating ethnicity in East African spears

Ethnoarchaeology offers some ability to transform contemporary forms of social constitution into a method for interpreting prehistoric social patterns and for understanding the coevolution of symbolic and utilitarian technologies. In north-central Kenya, one social caste of Lokop pastoralist actors (warriors) interacts with another (blacksmiths) to build a technology for socially constituting gender and social age. Three aspects of this process can help to direct analogous archaeological research in prehistoric contexts. First, this case reiterates that symbols for and symbolic acts of gender and social age continually help actors to constitute or negotiate their places within varied social fields. It is clear, however, that the connection between social prestige—essentially the goal of Lokop personal adornment—and real economic or political power is not necessarily direct. For Lokop herders, foreign traits of spear morphology are the stylistic raw material for constituting internally defined social fields. Ethmic distinctions are more pasively constituted, almost as an epiphenomenon. Second, the constituative significance of material symbols may be grasped without appealing to or understanding the cultural meaning of forms (in an emic sense) from only the archaeological evidence. In fact, prehistorians should not concern themselves with attempts to reconstruct the meaning of cultural phenomena. Rather, archaeological inquiry should attempt to infer the meaningfulness of formal traits within a specific social context, based on significant material patterns in the archaeological record. Third, the items of meaning themselves are constituted with their own material means of production, and these systems may be interpreted through economic models more familiar to archaeology. The Lokop case encompasses producers and users both as specialists. Blacksmiths rely on their marginal positions in herding society to make them the brokers of morphological traits. Warriors, also accustomed to marginal status, effectively collaborate with blacksmiths to set up their own future place as elders. For archaeological applications in prehistory, the exchange and processing of raw materials should reconstitute economic hierarchy in a very clear manner.     

Adolf Beck: A Forgotten Pioneer in Electroencephalography

Adolf Beck, born in 1863 at Cracow (Poland), joined the Department of Physiology of the Jagiellonian University in 1880 to work directly under the supervision of the prominent physiology professor, Napoleon Cybulski. Following his suggestion, Beck started experimental studies on the electrical brain activity of animals, especially in response to sensory stimulation. Beck placed electrodes directly on the surface of brain to localize brain potentials that were evoked by sensory stimuli. He observed spontaneous fluctuations in the electrical brain activity and noted that these oscillations ceased after sensory stimulation. He published these findings concerning the electrical brain activity, such as spontaneous fluctuations, evoked potentials, and desynchronization of brain waves, in 1890 in the German language Centralblatt für Physiologie. Moreover, an intense polemic arose between physiologists of that era on the question of who should claim being the founder of electroencephalography. Ultimately, Richard Caton from Liverpool showed that he had performed similar experiments in monkeys years earlier. Nevertheless, Beck added new elements to the nature of electrical brain activity. In retrospect, next to Richard Caton, Adolf Beck can be regarded, together with Hans Berger who later introduced the method to humans, as one of the founders of electroencephalography. Soon after his success, Beck got a chair at the Department of Physiology of the University at Lemberg, now Lviv National Medical University.