Excavations at Balakot,Pakistan, 1973

Abstract

During the winter of 1973–74 preliminary excavations were conducted at the ancient coastal site of Balakot in Sanmiani Bay, Pakistan. Two periods are represented at the site. Period B, capping the mound, represents the Mature Indus (Harappan) period, the earliest urban period of South Asia. Balakot is one of five known coastal sites of the Indus Civilization. It is hoped that evidence will be discovered in subsequent seasons bearing on the question of the assumed sea trade contacts between the Indus and the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia in the centuries just before and after 2000 B.C.

Period A at Balakot is designated as Early Indus. The more than 6 m. of occupational debris resting on sterile soil represent the developmental stages leading directly into the earliest civilization of South Asia. The Early Indus sequence at Balakot contains ceramic elements related to many of the so-called “painted pottery cultures” of Baluchistan and the southern Indus Valley. The proposed series of extensive excavations at the site should provide a sound chronological and cultural framework within which any of these presently isolated cultural traditions can be studied.

This report describes the location and potential importance of the site. The most significant findings of the first season's work are presented.     

A new approach to tracking connections between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia: initial results of strontium isotope analyses from Harappa and Ur

Exchange and interaction between early state-level societies in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley during the 3rd millennium BC has been documented for some time. The study of this interaction has been dominated by the analysis of artifacts such as carnelian beads and marine shell, along with limited textual evidence. With the aid of strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes, it is now possible to develop more direct means for determining the presence of non-local people in both regions. This preliminary study of tooth enamel from individuals buried at Harappa and at the Royal Cemetery of Ur, indicates that it should be feasible to identify Harappans in Mesopotamia. It is also possible to examine the mobility of individuals from communities within the greater Indus Valley region.     

城市空间集中与分散的哲学透视

城市空间是一种处在对立统一运动中的矛盾复合体。集中与分散的相互关系作为城市空间中对立统一的两面,构成了城市空间演化的基本矛盾。它们的对立与统一成为城市空间发展的最本质的运动。文章以哲学的方法论透视了集中与分散的概念,讨论了集中与分散的学术论争及其背后城市发展的轨迹,指出了集中与分散的机制特点以及一体化趋势,得出了集中与分散是城市空间演化中的基本表现,是考察城市空间运动的一个基本视角的结论。文章通过深入剖析集中主义与分散主义不同的发展条件与背景,揭示了城市空间内部集中与分散的关系以及空间机理,强调据此有助于从中了解与把握城市空间演化的规律,有利于指导我国城市发展的实践。     

Cereals,calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

Several major cereal groups have been identified as staples used by the pre-urban, urban and post-urban phase populations of the Indus Civilisation (3200–1500 BCE): wheat, barley, a range of small hulled millets and also rice, though their proportional exploitation is variable across space and over time. Traditional quantification methods examine the frequency, intensity and proportionality of the use of these crops and help ascertain the ‘relative importance’ of these cereals for Indus populations. However, this notion of ‘importance’ is abstracted from the daily lives of the people using these crops and may be biased by the differential production (as well as archaeological survival) of individual cereals. This paper outlines an alternative approach to quantifying Indus cereals by investigating proportions of calories. Cereals are predominantly composed of carbohydrates and therefore provided much of the daily caloric intake among many late Holocene farming populations. The four major cereal groups cultivated by Indus farmers, however, vary greatly in terms of calories per grain, and this has an impact on their proportional input to past diets. This paper demonstrates that, when converted to proportions of calories, the perceived ‘importance’ of cereals from five Indus sites changes dramatically, reducing the role of the previously dominant small hulled millet species and elevating the role of Triticoid grains. Although other factors will also have affected how a farmer perceived the role and importance of a crop, including its ecological tolerances, investments required to grow it, and the crop’s role in the economy, this papers suggests that some consideration of what cereals meant in terms of daily lives is needed alongside the more abstracted quantification methods that have traditionally been applied.     

Does size matter: the role and significance of cereal grains in the Indus civilization

Cereal grains play a pivotal role in the rise and character of the Indus civilization. Archaeologists have traditionally focused their attention on the large-grained crops of wheat and barley while often minimizing the importance of the smaller-grained millets. Both environmental and cultural variables influence crop selection in the past as well as today. This paper explores the role and significance of cereal grain size during the evolution of the Indus civilization.     

国内外城市功能疏解研究进展

由于城市聚集效益的存在,城市功能不断向中心城区集聚,过多的功能集聚带来了一系列城市问题,城市功能疏解的研究亟待开展。文章首先从人口疏解和产业疏解两大模块以及土地利用变化方面对功能疏解的测度方法进行述评,并简要分析了功能疏解的必要性和动力机制;其次对国内外功能疏解的经验进行梳理;再次对功能疏解的成效进行评价;最后对国内外功能疏解研究内容进行述评。总体而言,与国外研究相比,国内研究起步较晚,但内容上与国外研究基本相似;然而在方法上国内研究目前仍以数量分析为主,缺乏相关测度模型的构建。随着国内城市功能疏解实践的推进,以及在中国特殊的土地和户籍等政策影响下,功能疏解的方法和理论研究将不断完善。     

Landscapes of Urbanization and De-Urbanization: A Large-Scale Approach to Investigating the Indus Civilization’s Settlement Distributions in Northwest India

Survey data play a fundamental role in studies of social complexity. Integrating the results from multiple projects into large-scale analyses encourages the reconsideration of existing interpretations. This approach is essential to understanding changes in the Indus Civilization’s settlement distributions (ca. 2600–1600 b.c.), which shift from numerous small-scale settlements and a small number of larger urban centers to a de-nucleated pattern of settlement. This paper examines the interpretation that northwest India’s settlement density increased as Indus cities declined by developing an integrated site location database and using this pilot database to conduct large-scale geographical information systems (GIS) analyses. It finds that settlement density in northwestern India may have increased in particular areas after ca. 1900 b.c., and that the resulting landscape of de-urbanization may have emerged at the expense of other processes. Investigating the Indus Civilization’s landscapes has the potential to reveal broader dynamics of social complexity across extensive and varied environments.     

Asimah: Neue 14C-Datierungen zum späten 3. vorchristlichen Jahrtausend auf der Halbinsel Oman

The third millennium BC domestic sites of Asimah (Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, U. A. E.), excavated in 1988 and published in 1994, produced a common Umm an-Nar inventory, but with a high percentage of imported Indus Valley pottery. A comparison of finds with the well-stratified Hili-8 sequence is contrasted with five new radiocarbon dates which, together with the artefacts recovered, place Asimah in the late third millennium BC chronological and cultural context of Tell Abraq.     

Smart growth strategies,transportation and urban sprawl: simulated futures for Hamilton,Ontario

North American cities have undergone dramatic changes over the last century. Locations that were once inconvenient have become accessible through extensive road networks leading to population decentralization from the traditional urban centre to suburbia, creating polycentric sprawls from once monocentric communities. Hamilton, Ontario is one such city. The decentralization and urban decline of the city is widely attributed to sprawling development. This change in the sociospatial structure creates challenges for transportation planners as we see greater automobile dependency, greater commuting distances and increased congestion. Smart growth policies such as urban residential intensification (URI) aim to increase population densities in the urban core. This exploratory study estimates the benefits of such policies from a transportation aspect. It is predicted that the City of Hamilton will experience household growth of approximately 80,000 households over the period 2005–2031. Using IMULATE, an integrated urban transportation and land‐use model, a variety of development scenarios model this anticipated growth. Changes in vehicular emissions, traffic congestion and energy consumption as a result of URI are examined. Models of the land‐use/transportation relationship demonstrate how increasing population densities within a city's urban centre drastically reduce congestion, emissions and gasoline consumption.     

Barrio resurgence in Buenos Aires: Local autonomy claims amid state-sponsored transnationalism

This paper argues that observing neighborhood movements through the lens of territorial state restructuring holds theoretical promise. Contemporary struggles over municipal decentralization need to be located within broader state re-scaling processes. Seeking to contribute a Latin American perspective to the largely Anglo-American field of urban neoliberalization research, this study engages with the emergence of local autonomy claims in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Middle-class activists and organizations advanced such claims against the background of thorough transnationalism, in what may be interpreted as a localist political reaction to the socio-spatial consequences of urban and state restructuring. Field evidence is used to assess the ultimate political efficacy and democratic implications of their political agency, particularly in what concerns municipal decentralization. It is argued that curtailing the empowerment of barrio districts were the following conditions: mayoral opposition to communal reforms; ongoing cross-scalar tensions between the city and national government; and the barrio-centric issue framings of activists, which hampered social recruitment in an increasingly heterogeneous and transnationalized urban space.     

湖北荆门市后港城河城址调查报告

荆门后港城河城址位于江汉平原西北部,地处平原向荆山余脉过渡的丘陵岗地地带,是长江中游地区发现的又一处新石器时代的古城址,也是汉水流域荆门境内继马家垸城址后发现的第二座新石器时代古城址。该城址的发现不仅丰富了长江中游早期古城址的内容,同时对研究长江中游地区这些早期城址之间的关系、探讨长江中游史前聚落考古文化提供了重要的资料。     

90年代重庆零售商业离心化研究

本文以重庆市近郊区为研究区域,通过对近郊区与中心区社会商品零售额总量和增长率的比较以及对近郊区零售商业中心的特征分析,发现90年代中期开始出现商业离心化的迹象。商业离心化的出现是宏观环境以及中心区与近郊区推拉力机制共同作用的结果。目前的商业离心化尚处于萌芽阶段,是市场经济下的自觉行为,但不同于计划经济下的均衡分布,离心化发展速度较慢,主要发生在各郊区商业中心,中心区的商业优势仍然很突出。商业离心化势不可挡,近郊中心与中心区的竞争将更加激烈,中心商业区和郊区商业中心应各有侧重地发展     

Material Matters: Representation and Materiality of the Harappan Body

In the Indus Civilization (ca. 2600–1900 BC), a society with no readable texts and few larger-scale representations, terracotta figurines were the most common representations of the human body. This paper explores the unique construction of the material representations of bodies and other material culture from Harappa, a major Indus site now in Pakistan. Hand-modeling representations of human bodies from dual clay pieces, sometimes decorated with bone pigments, suggests a focus on the process and ideological rather than practical choices in the materialization of the Harappan human body. For the Harappans, material matters as they engage physically with their world and embody themselves and their worldview.     

Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia: A Critique of Neo‐Institutionalist Perspectives

This article assesses some of the major premises of neo‐institutionalist explanations of decentralization policy and practices, but focuses especially on the relationship between decentralization and democracy, in the context of the recent and ongoing Indonesian experience with decentralization. In the last two decades ‘decentralization’ has become, along with ‘civil society’, ‘social capital’ and ‘good governance’, an integral part of the contemporary neo‐institutionalist lexicon, especially that part which is intended to draw greater attention to ‘social’ development. The concern of this article is to demystify how, as a policy objective, decentralization has come to embody a barely acknowledged political, not just theoretical, agenda. It also suggests alternative ways of understanding why decentralization has often failed to achieve its stated aims in terms of promoting democracy, ‘good governance’, and the like. What is offered is an understanding of decentralization processes that more fully incorporates the factors of power, struggle and interests, which tend to be overlooked by neo‐institutionalist perspectives. The current Indonesian experience clearly illustrates the way in which institutions can be hijacked by a wide range of interests that may sideline those that champion the worldview of ‘technocratic rationality’.     

Excavations at Huaca Herederos Chica,Moche Valley,Peru

Abstract

Detailed results of excavations from 1970 to 1973 at the site of Huaca Herederos Chica in the lower Moche Valley, Peru are presented. This now partially destroyed monumental site belongs to the Caballo Muerto Complex, a series of mound sites that span both the Initial Period (2100–1200 CAL B.C.) and the Early Horizon (1200–200 CAL B.C.). The existing mounds were constructed sequentially over a period of some 1000 years; some mounds, like Huaca Herederos Chica, are the result of the superposition of several phases of occupation and building over that long time period, each separated by phases of abandonment. The older remains, dating from the Initial Period, testify to the presence in this coastal region of Peru of architectural features such as small quadrilateral rooms with rounded corners and somewhat circular rooms reminiscent of similar features of the Kotosh Religious Tradition at the highland sites of La Galgada and Huaricoto as well as in the coastal Casma Valley. Huaca Herederos Chica was abandoned from 1200–400 CAL B.C. only to be reoccupied and rebuilt in the late Early Horizon (400–200 CAL B.C.). Architectural changes seen at the site and at the Caballo Muerto Complex as a whole probably reflect important social and political changes along much of the Peruvian north coast.     

The lower paleolithic of the Near East

The Near East forms the geographic crossroads between Africa, Asia and Europe and was certainly a main route for the dispersal of Homo erectusinto Eurasia. The study of Lower Paleolithic sites in this region and in the neighboring Caucasus area sheds some light on several potential colonization events. Sites such as Ubeidiya (Jordan Valley) and Dmanisi (Georgia) suggest the early sorties took place around 1.4-1.0 Ma. Despite the lack of radiometric dates, sequences of raised beaches, marine deposits, river terraces, and paleolake formations have enabled various investigators to identify several series of major aggradation and erosion periods within the Pleistocene. Lithic assemblages derived from a few systematic excavations and collections from stratigraphically dated outcrops led to a threefold subdivision of the Acheulian sequence into the Lower, Middle, and Upper Acheulian. The study of nonbiface assemblages, however, has not resolved the question of whether these assemblages deserve inclusion as separate entities or should be viewed as sites within the Acheulian settlement pattern. While the typotechnological definitions of each major phase can be compared to what is known from other regions of the Old World, the Acheulo-Yabrudian (or the Mugharan Tradition) is seen as a local entity. Rare human remains and scarce data concerning subsistence activities do not warrant a comparative discussion with what is known from African and some European sites.     

Exchange networks of the Early Bronze Age Gulf: The imported ceramics from Kalba 4 (United Arab Emirates)

Imported ceramics from Early Bronze Age contexts in southeast Arabia illustrate a complex multidirectional network of material and social interactions at this time. Significant socioeconomic changes that occurred in the Hafit (3200–2800 B.C.) and Umm an-Nar (2800–2000 B.C.) periods have been linked to external demand for copper, which is argued to have stimulated a change in subsistence patterns. Similarly, disruption to long-distance exchange networks by external factors has been cited as driving change at the end of the Umm an-Nar period. Archaeological evidence from the region suggests a shift in the direction of exchange from Mesopotamia to the Indus occurred around the middle of the third millennium B.C. However, a recent analysis of Mesopotamian historical sources has highlighted the scale of state-organised textile production for export to the lower Gulf in the later third millennium B.C. The site of Kalba 4 has a stratified sequence of occupation deposits dating from the Umm an-Nar and Iron Age (1300–300 B.C.). In this study, a typological analysis of imported ceramics is used to locate the Kalba in the chronological framework of the region and discuss the changing networks of long-distance exchange that were operating. The imported pottery at Kalba 4 indicates that the inhabitants of the site were exchanging goods with a range of polities, including southern Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley (Meluhha), southeast Iran (Marhashi) and Bahrain (Dilmun). A significant quantity of Late Akkadian ceramics at the site suggests it became an important location for Mesopotamian trade at this time.     

基于中部地区崛起的城市群整合发展

为协调区域发展,实现经济持续增长,国家作出了"中部地区崛起"这一重大决策。中部6省分别拥有中原城市群、武汉城市圈、长株潭城市群、环鄱阳湖城市群、皖江城市带和太原城市圈等6个城市群,城市群的整合发展在推动中部崛起进程中发挥着越来越突出的主导作用。在对中部地区城市群的现实基础与综合实力进行分析、评价的基础上,提出了基于中部崛起的城市群整合发展的总体意向和要解决的关键问题。整合发展的总体框架为:以武汉城市圈为核心增长板块,中原城市群和长株潭城市群为北、南牵引增长版块,沿交通大动脉京广铁路和长江黄金水道构筑两条南北、东西向城市群发展核心轴带,6个城市群并力互推,形成纵贯中部地区的"倒Y"字形发展格局。