Archaeobotanical inference of Bronze Age land use and land cover in the eastern Mediterranean

Charcoal and charred seeds at five Bronze Age archaeological sites discern ancient land use in the eastern Mediterranean. Seed frequencies of orchard crops, annual cereals and pulses, and wild or weedy plants are used to characterize plant utilization at different archaeological sites on the island of Cyprus, in the Rift Valley of Jordan, and in the Jabbul Plain and along the upper Euphrates River valley in Syria. Seed to charcoal ratios provide proxies to determine the relative usage of dung versus wood for fuel across the ancient Mediterranean landscape. Greater charcoal and lower charred seed values are interpreted to represent a wooded environment, while higher amounts of charred seeds and minimal wood charcoal suggest a much great use of dung as a fuel source. Interestingly, Politiko-Troullia (Cyprus, Cypriot archaeological sites are, by convention, named for the nearest modern village (Politiko), followed by an italicized toponym (Troullia) referring to the plot of land that incorporates the site) has the lowest seed to charcoal ratio, suggesting its residents primarily burned wood and that the landscape surrounding Troullia remained relatively wooded during the Bronze Age. In contrast, villagers at Tell el-Hayyat (Jordan) utilized a mixture of wood and dung, in contrast to Tell Abu en-Ni’aj (Jordan), and especially Umm el-Marra and Tell es-Sweyhat (Syria), where inhabitants relied solely on dung fuel. Comparative analysis and interpretation of seed and charcoal evidence thus illustrates the variety of fuel use strategies necessitated by the dynamic and diverse Bronze Age landscapes of the Eastern Mediterranean.     

Adventures in happy land

Abstract

Interpretation proved to be a key to the successful outcome of three overseas aid projects in Asia and the Pacific. In Vanuatu, interpretation games were used to interest and involve local villagers in writing a management plan to protected a recently protected Pacific Kauri (Agathis macrophylla.) forest. The rapid establishment of national parks in Indonesia required staff to be trained in a variety of disciplines including interpretation. Park interpretation manuals were also written. Small scale tourism ventures in Fiji, where locals are the interpreters, are part of a management plan to protect a private forest park forest from logging.     

甲午陆战与晚清陆军军事教育的发展

甲午陆战的失败是晚清陆军军事教育的重要转折点.由于汲取了甲午陆战失败的教训,陆军军事教育得到了空前的重视,无论是陆军军事学堂的数量还是教育人数都得到了飞速的发展,促进了中国军事教育近代化的发展.     

Intervention methods in land disputes

Archival data, survey and interviews were used to investigate mediation activities among judges in the Norwegian Land Consolidation Court. The court handles land issue disputes among farmers in rural Norway. Despite having both planning skill and court power the judges spend a considerable amount of time mediating the disputes. In fairly integrative planning disputes they increase their mediation efforts with conflict level, case size and complexity. Mediation helped to reduce objections to the plan implemented. In more distributive boundary disputes they mediated less, and to a lesser degree varied efforts with case characteristics. However, settlements were achieved in the less conflictive, smaller and less complex cases. Considerable variations in mediation styles were found among the judges. Those with settlement oriented behaviour achieved more settlements than those that focused on facilitating communication. Implications are discussed.     

清代地权交易形式的多样化发展

There were three kinds of financial transactions involving rights of land during the Qing Dynasty: debt financing through rights of land, the direct transferring of the rights of land, and the transaction of shares. This article attempts to clarify the confusion between several types of debt financing through rights of land. Ya 押 was loan through land as guaranty and repaying the interest and capital by the rent of land or harvest. Dian 典 was loan through temporary transferring of usage rights and harvest in a certain period of time. Dang 当 referred to various types of loans which involved the rights of land. Di 抵 meant using a certain portion of land right as repayment of debt. Similar with modern financial methods, these financial transactions in the Qing Dynasty allowed peasants to preserve their possessive rights over the land and also satisfied their financial needs. The direct transactions of rights of land and repayment of debt by harvest included juemai 绝卖 (finalized sale of land), huomai 活卖 (not finalized sale of land), dianquan dingtui 佃权顶退 (sell or purchase tenancy), zhaojia 找价 (price add-on after transaction), and huishu 回赎 (redemption). The main purpose of these transactions was to protect the land proprietors as far as possible. Share transaction and co-tenancy of land also appeared in the Qing Dynasty. Such diverse financial transactions not only were substitutes of modern financing tools which allowed peasants to weather financial hardship, but also promoted the changing ownership of land which further encouraged the combination of different production elements and reallocation of resources in the land market. This paper is the research result of the National Philosophy and Social Science Fund Project “Market of land rights and the evolution of its system, 1650–1950.”     

Chiefdoms and the emergence of private property in land

A prevailing characteristic of complex, stratified societies is unequal access to critical resources, and in most cases land is the most fundamental of those resources. Gaining an understanding how relations to land are transformed is viewed as integral to revealing the origins of social inequality. Recent scholarship has proposed an evolution of property rights in land from open access to private property, the latter condition having been attributed to nation states. However, some scholars have concluded from their examinations of Early Medieval Irish texts that land within Irish chiefdoms was regarded as a commodity. The analysis carried out in this paper reveals that in Early Medieval Ireland some land could be considered to be private property, but the holding and transfer of land was restricted to chieftains and their dependents, the lands of commoners being held communally. The closest counterpart to this mode of land ownership is the form of feudalism proposed for the Classic and Post-Classic Maya.     

Conservation charity land ownership in Scotland

Land ownership in Scotland has been the subject of increasing public debate. This paper traces the establishment of the conservation land ownership movement in Scotland from 1931. Charitable donations influence and affect the ability of voluntary bodies to acquire land. Voluntary ownership increased dramatically from the 1960s and the growth in outdoor recreation focused attention on the way mountain estates are managed by charities. Public bodies are instrumental in providing funding and influencing government support for land acquisition. The National Lottery, for example, affects greatly the ability of charities to acquire land. New charities have been formed with a specific focus on trees and wild land but conservation charities have been criticised for aspects of their land management. These charities continue to attract funding from people with a deep belief that their activities are for the benefit of the people of Scotland.     

The land which bled forth its bounty: An exile image of the land of Israel

Abstract

The expression: “a land flowing with milk and honey” appears some 20 times in the MT version of the Hebrew Bible and is generally thought to express the overall productivity of the Land of Israel. It is one of the few expressions which is used in many literary strata of the text as a distinctive term to describe the Land of Israel and its produce, although its absence from poetic, proverbs and wisdom literature indicates that it was not seen as a universally useful expression. Appearing in writings attributed to J, E, Dtr¹ and Dtr², as well as the writings of the prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the expression is understood by medieval and modem commentators as a metaphor for abundant grazing land and date palm honey (i.e. abundant flora and fauna). It's presence in different literary strata of four of the five books of the Torah, in particular, seems to point to the antiquity and long term utility of the expression. Further investigation of this expression reveals that it may not be a realistic perspective on the ancient land of Israel, but rather a rather poignant, nostalgic, exilic, and purely metaphoric view of the land written at a period after the land had passed through a significant devastation. This article will investigate the language of this passage and attempt to locate it in its original historical context.     

神圣国土：不可缺少的蔚蓝色

对大多数中华民族子孙来说,最熟悉的颜色奠过于黄颜色。大概是由于中国人生下来就是黄皮肤,黄土高坡、黄河流域又是中华化的重要发祥地,先辈们一生中辛勤劳作的那方田地是黄土地．就连死后也要归葬黄土的缘故吧,久而久之,人们很自然地将中华民族的生存空间．乃至国土面积与黄土地紧紧联系在一起了。     

集体土地流转中集体角色的错位与回归

推进集体土地流转,加强农民集体权益保护,需要其代表——集体找准角色定位,发挥积极作用。然而,在实际土地流转中,集体背离了其整体利益代表的角色定位,扮演了土地流转个人利益最大化的促进者和乡（镇）政府利益顺从者的角色,严重的角色错位侵害了集体内其他农民的合法权益。在集体土地流转中,应从乡（镇）政府、农民、集体自身三方面入手,规正集体角色,切实保护农民的权益。     

Gendered frontiers of land control: indigenous territory,women and contests over land in Ecuador

Agricultural and rural land has become the site of considerable policy, governmental and scholarly concern worldwide because of violence and dispossession, food insecurity and contests over private property regimes. Such issues are highly gendered in territories with majorities of indigenous populations where overlapping legal regimes (statutory, multicultural, customary) and histories of dispossession have created complex spatialities and access patterns. States' formalization of indigenous rights, neoliberal restructuring and land appropriation are the backdrop to Ecuadorian women's struggles to access, retain and pass on land. Despite a burgeoning literature on Latin American indigenous territories, women are often invisible. Using collaborative research among two indigenous nationalities, the article analyses the political–economic, legal and de facto regimes shaping women's claims to land and indigenous territory. Focusing on Kichwa women in the rural Andes and Tsáchila women in a tropical export-oriented agricultural frontier area, the article examines the criteria and exclusionary practices that operate at multiple scales to shape women's (in)security in tenure. Women's struggles over claims to land and territory are also discussed. The article argues that Latin America's fraught land politics requires a gendered account of indigenous land–territoriality to unpack the cultural bias of western feminist accounts of multiculturalism and to document the racialized gender bias across socio-institutional relations.     

关于中国传统社会土地权属的再思考——以土地交易过程中的“乡规”、“乡例”为中心

本文从中国传统社会土地交易过程中存在的"乡规"、"乡例",探讨了中国传统社会的土地权属,揭示了中国传统社会土地所有权属的多重性,以及反映中国社会历史实情的土地所有权属的认证与土地所有权属转移的确定.     

Rural children's perceptions of life on the land in Southwestern Ontario

What are the life experiences of farm children in rural southwestern Ontario? Within the rural sociological literature, little research has been undertaken on the geographies of Canadian children in rural settings. Play, leisure, work and future aspirations are important to their lives. However, little is known about these issues and children's use of space and place on the farm. This study focuses on these issues from the point of view of the child and examines how gender, age and socialization processes work together with agrarianism to frame the lifeworlds of these children. In general, these children do not aspire to farm in the future, but are interested in future residence in the country. They value the way of life to be found in farming but some experience loneliness on the farm. For farm children, space and farm animals act as comfort in their lives and make for unique experiences.     

美国历史上的土地测量制度

土地测量是美国公地处理中的一项重要制度,它为地产的划分和土地的买卖提供了强有力的支持手段.土地测量在美国西部大开发过程中起到难以估量的巨大作用.美国土地测量中的村镇制度经历了村镇移植到村镇划分的嬗变过程,即由先前的人的移植变为后来纯粹的土地的划分.