An astrolabe from Passa Pau, Cape Verde Islands

Mariner's astrolabes seem to have been in use from the 15th to the end of the 18th centuries. They evolved at about the same time as quadrants and cross-staffs. Their precursor, the astronomer's astrolabe and kamal, were either too cumbersome or not sufficiently accurate for sea-going use. An astrolabe found on the Passa Pau wreck is unique in that it is the only know/specimen coated with silver. It is dated 1645 and has the maker's name, Nicolao Rvffo, inscribed on it.     

Arabs,Latins and Persians bearing gifts: Greek translations of astrolabe treatises,ca. 1300 D. M. Angeliki E. Laiou

Abstract

Although translation of foreign literature was rare in Byzantium, in c. 1300 three Greek translations of treatises on using the astrolabe appeared, two from Latin and one from Persian or Arabic; all three are assessed in terms of Greek style and significance for Byzantine culture. The Islamic treatise translated by Shams al-Din al-Bukhari includes a translator's preface, edited in full and translated into English here for the first time. In the preface, Shams describes a deluxe astrolabe sent to Andronikos II with the treatise in the hope, it is argued, of some personal benefit in return.     

An Early Portuguese Mariner's Astrolabe from the Sodré Wreck‐site,Al Hallaniyah,Oman

A unique leaded‐gunmetal disc decorated with iconic Portuguese markings was recovered in 2014 during archaeological excavations at the Sodré shipwreck site in Al Hallaniyah, Oman. Initially the identity and function of the disc was unknown, although it did possess characteristics suggesting it could be an astrolabe. Laser imaging of the disc post conservation revealed regular scale marks on the limb of its upper right quadrant. Accurate digital measurements of the marks show them to be graded at close to 5‐degree intervals, thus confirming the identity of the disc as a mariner's astrolabe and the earliest known example discovered to date.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
The mariner's astrolabe. ALAN STIMSON
The seventy-four gun ship, Vols. I, II and III. JEAN BOUDRIOT, translated by DAVID ROBERTS
Faerobaden (Faeroese boats). M. GOTHCHE
Salui , a dugout from Borneo. I. NICOLAISEN
Ragione antique spettanti all'arte del mare et fabriche de vasselli. G. B. DOSIO, P. van der MERWE, A. CHIGGIATO and D. V. PROCTOR et al ., Eds
Conservation of marine archaeological objects. COLIN PEARSON
Guide des treśors archéologiques sous-marines des Petites Antilles, d'apres les archives Anglaises, Espagnoles et Françaises des XVIc, XVIIc, XVIII sièles. JEAN-PIERRE MOREAU
Nordlandsbåten og Åjordsåiten, Vol. 1, Baten i bruk, Vol. 3, Åfjordsålten. GUNNAR ELDJARN and JON GODAL
Tecniche di lavoro subacqueo per l'archaeologia; mare e ipogei. EDOARDO RICCARDI
Introduzione all'archeologia delle acque; il rilevamento di manufatti sommersi. ANTONIO ROSSO
Archédogie sous-marine. JEAN-YVES BLOT
Aegeans in the Theban tombs. SHELLEY WACHSMANN     

监狱旅游开发初探

监狱旅游是一种新型的旅游产品和新的旅游业态。开发、开展监狱旅游能够增加监狱行政执法的透明度,有利于进行和平、反腐败和爱国主义教育,有利于继承与保护以监狱文化为重点的中国传统文化,凸显现代狱政文明。同时监狱旅游的出现将满足一部分人的独特需求,具有不可忽视的开发潜力和经济社会效益。最后,文章提出了开发监狱旅游的初步思路、理论框架及需要注意的相关问题。文章首次对监狱旅游的概念作了明确界定;构建了开发监狱旅游的理论体系。     

Evaluating civil development in counterinsurgency operations: the case for a field experiment in Afghanistan

It is a widely held belief that civil development programs play a central role in any counterinsurgency campaign. It is assumed that civil development assistance is key to ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the civilian population, which, in turn, is crucial for victory. However, there is currently little evidence to support this belief. This article begins by analysing the different methods that have been used in Afghanistan in order to evaluate the effectiveness of civil development programs since 2001. It finds that these methods have severe limitations. Indeed, based solely upon current methods of evaluation, we have no reliable evidence whether civil development programs are actively improving security, having no impact or making matters worse. As such, this article makes the case for a field experiment approach to be adopted in Afghanistan. It argues that field experiments are the most powerful methodology currently available to social scientists for making causal inferences and, by making minor changes to the way in which civil development is distributed, we can vastly improve our understanding of the relationship between aid and security.     

Commentary : Partication and representation in the 2002 ATSIC elections

This commentary updates earlier work on participation and representation in ATSIC elections. It adds analysis of the fifth round of ATSIC elections held in 2002 to those held in 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1999. It confirms and refines earlier findings relating to a number of different measures of participation and representation. It argues that overall voter turnout is reasonable given the voluntary nature of ATSIC elections. It discerns a distinctive geography of both voter turnout and candidate interest. It argues that women's participation in ATSIC elections as voters, candidates and in being elected as regional councillors is quite high, but that there is some falling away in women's election to the offices of commissioner and regional council chairperson. It notes some weakness in the representation of women as regional councillors in remote areas and an under-representation of councillors under the age of 35. It also discerns a distinctive geography in the election of Torres Strait Islanders to ATSIC regional councils. In all these instances, the commentary attempts to explain and understand the patterns of participation and representation, while also raising them as possible issues of concern for ATSIC. Explanations relate to ATSIC's program and service provision roles, different social meanings and types of Indigenous identity, the relative influence of European settlement norms on traditional patterns of Indigenous political behaviour, and the nature of public career life courses. The commentary suggests that the distinctive geographies and other patterns of participation and representation are both understandable and well entrenched, and are unlikely to change greatly in the future.     

Counting Carbon: Calculative Activism and Slippery Infrastructure

The environmental movement in the global North is in a state of impasse. It appears that despite the renewed international focus on climate change, and the actions of innumerable social movements, a “solution” to the problem appears as one, without a viable solution. It is the contention of this paper that climate change has no clearly viable solution as it is a seemingly impossible problem. This paper investigates how the problem of climate change is constructed as a global object of political action and how it functions to render politics into a matter of calculative action, one that seeks—but fails—to take hold of a slippery carbon infrastructure. It concludes by suggesting one possible solution to this dilemma is to turn away from the global scalar logic of climate change and towards a situated focus on questions of infrastructure, or what Dimitris Papadopoulos calls “thick justice”.     

Defining,explaining and managing high-tech growth: The case of Oxfordshire

The formerly sleepy, rural county of Oxfordshire is now one of Europe's leading centres of enterprise, innovation and knowledge. It is a hotspot for high-tech manufacturing and service employment. But what is behind this phenomenon, and to what extent has it been managed? This paper sets out the facts, and explores the underlying factors. It starts with a number of definitional questions and approaches used in the research. It concludes with an examination of the role of planning in the process—and the extent to which is has helped or hindered the rise of “Enterprising Oxford”.     

Spatial-Domain Chaos in Landscapes

It has been speculated that deterministic chaos may be responsible for the spatial complexity commonly observed in biophysical landscapes. However, deterministic chaos is a temporally defined concept and has been rigorously investigated only in the temporal domain. It is shown here, using a simple hillslope regolith cover model as an example, that temporal chaos in the presence of even minor spatial anisotropy will result in a spatially chaotic pattern. It is also shown that behavior of spatially chaotic landscape systems can be deduced, at least in theory, from spatial patterns of a single landscape component or variable. Because stochastic complexity is likely to exist in landscapes in addition to any deterministic complexity, detecting and analyzing chaotic behavior in landscapes is difficult. Progress in efforts to examine chaos in the spatial domain and to isolate deterministic and stochastic complexity may be the key to developing a theory of landscape evolution that can reconcile the simultaneous presence of apparently random, irregular variability and orderly, regular patterns.     

The Dynamics of African Agricultural History: Is it Time for a New Development Paradigm?

Much of our present day perception of African agriculture is still indirectly based on the coloured accounts of the early explorers and administrators. It involves an often very static conception of ‘traditional’ African agriculture. Not only does this fail to dojustice to the rich and dynamic history of African agriculture, it has also led to an inappropriate research and development paradigm which treats African agriculture as a disrupted equilibrial system that needs readjustment to return to an equilibrial and productivestate. A diachronic study of African agricultural history reveals that many of our preconceptions of African society and agriculture are invalid: agriculturists are not inert, but respond in innovative and dynamic ways to the perturbations of their natural and socialenvironment. It appears that their survival is not so much dependent on the establishmentof a fine-tuned equilibrium, but rather on the dynamic responses to these external disturbances. It is very likely that the agro-ecosystems in large parts of Africa function mainly as non-equilibrial (unstable), but nevertheless persistent systems. This has importantimplications for development interventions and agricultural research. It requires a shiftfrom a synchronic approach to a diachronic approach that is firmly based on an understaning of the past.     

Development for Whom? Rural to Urban Resettlement at the Three Gorges Dam,China

When farmers are dispossessed of their lands to make way for a development project it is often inevitable that there will not be enough land to go around. It is unlikely that parcels of fertile land are lying vacant in the surrounding areas awaiting distribution. It therefore becomes necessary for people who previously derived their livelihoods from the land to move into cities. This research explores what happens to a sample of such people and whether they are able to restore their livelihoods. It examines the Three Gorges Dam resettlement in China's Hubei province and discovers that while the Chinese government has devised an inspired toolbox of benefit-sharing initiatives, the gains accrue to a minority who live in the most amenable location of the Three Gorges area. It concludes that the availability of capital through benefit-sharing initiatives does not guarantee its productive use.     

Creative geographies of ceramic artists: knowledges and experiences of landscape,practices of art and skill

This paper argues for a conception of art as an embodied and creative material practice. It draws on research conducted with seven professional ceramic artists who deal with landscape in their work to explore their processes of art-making through interview and (filmed) observation. It demonstrates the distributed range of embodied and relational more-than-artistic practices which inform how landscape is encountered, known and ultimately represented. It argues that artists’ self-expression in art is based upon material, social and political knowledges which interweave in artists’ lives. By studying ceramicists’ making this paper demonstrates both the non-conscious skill and the conscious technical knowledge needed to make art. It shows chance to have a triple role in practices of making, as something to work alongside, to work against and to draw on as a creative resource. This paper both argues for and demonstrates the value of an approach to art-making that frames it as a complex of both conscious, socio-cultural, technical knowledges and non-conscious skills which together (in)form works of (ceramic) art.     

New Archaeological Finds in Xianquanhe River Valley

Xianquanhe River in Ngari of Tibet got its name because of the valley at its head that looks like an elephant trunk. It originates in Mointo Township,Gar County,running west to pass through Zada County before entering India.The section of the river in India is named the Sutlej.It joins the Chenab River in Pakistan before finally becoming a major tributary on the upper reaches of the Indus River.It is 1.450km long,with a drainage area of 400,000 square km. The survey started with the source of Xianquanhe River and then went on to Zada County’s Xiangba Township.They found many historical remaias of the pre- Buddhism period including stoneware position,great stone relics,ancient graveyards, rock paintings and relics of the     

宁夏固原南郊唐代壁画墓发掘简报

2014年6月,宁夏回族自治区文物考古研究所对固原南塬一座唐墓(编号M1401)进行了抢救性发掘。此墓葬为带斜坡墓道的单室土洞墓,平面形状呈刀把形,由封土、墓道、过洞、天井、壁龛、甬道和墓室七部分组成。墓道与墓室皆绘有壁画,其中以第二、第三天井与墓室北壁保存较好。墓室各壁绘制屏风式条框,条框内绘制图像的做法见于初唐时期陕西关中地区,此座墓葬与已发现的史氏家族墓所处位置很近,并且与各墓葬基本在东西一线排列。结合男性墓主人头骨的体质人类学鉴定得出的欧罗巴人种特征,推断此座墓葬与史氏家族有关。     

俄罗斯文学中“多余人”形象的新思考

＂多余人＂是俄罗斯文学上重要的形象类型。这是19世纪俄国贵族青年的典型形象：精力充沛,才华横溢却一无所成;心怀远大抱负却流连于空虚生活。集个人与社会的矛盾,思想与行动的矛盾于一身。优秀青年之所以堕落或被埋没,有一系列时代与社会原因及自身原因。然而,也并非所有性格矛盾的优秀贵族青年最终都成为＂多余人＂。这既是俄罗斯文学的一种客观存在同时也是为社会生活现实所决定的。     

SEEING SPATIAL STRUCTURES: ON THE ROLE OF VISUAL MATERIAL IN THE MAKING OF THE EARLY QUANTITATIVE REVOLUTION IN GEOGRAPHY

This article examines the role that visual material played in the early years of the quantitative revolution in Anglophone geography. It is part of a larger project that attempts to write a history of geography's scopic regimes in the twentieth century and draws on post‐positivist approaches to the history of science. It is argued that there are a number of strategic as well as theoretical reasons for such a reliance on images in the quantitative revolution. Some reasons are unique to the quantitative revolution in geography, some resemble a more general way in which paradigm shifts take place in science and some are located outside of academia. This article is primarily interested in the internal view on the geography of the quantitative revolution and its rationalities. The paper departs from Christaller's hexagon, as one of the most influential and iconic. It then broadens the view to include a much wider range of visual material, arguing for some more general observations on the use of images in geography during the early quantitative revolution. It is argued that there was a significant shift of forms and functions of visual material. Overall, it is argued, visual material gained in importance and while geography was getting “thinner” and more abstract, its role in making visual arguments became stronger. From being merely an aid for seeing, visual material became a prime carrier of knowledge.     

陕西安康市张家坎南朝墓葬发掘纪要

该墓位于陕西安康市张家坎,是20世纪80年代抢救性清理的一座残破墓葬。该墓为长方形砖室墓,出土了陶俑、画像砖和其他随葬物品,尤为重要的是发现了带有南朝梁"天监五年"纪年的铭文砖,故刊布该墓资料的意义重大。     

Turkey and the European Union: troubled European or European trouble?

This article examines EU‐Turkey relations and considers the potential impact of the EU pronouncement at the December 2004 summit and the subsequent (reluctant)decision to begin negotiations in October 2005 on Turkey's efforts to become a member of the Union. It briefly summarizes the debate over Turkish accession and outlines the main arguments and positions of EU members and institutions. It then highlights the inadequacies of the alternatives to full membership that have been offered to Turkey in the past and expresses the concern that the EU's adoption of ‘flexible integration’ may lead to Turkey being, at best, offered a ‘lower tier’ form of EU membership in the future. It continues by arguing that concerns about Turkey's suitability for EU membership because it is Islamic and its lack of ‘Europeanness’ are ill‐founded and/or irrelevant and that the best way to facilitate Turkey's continued contribution to European (and world)security and its western orientation, is to allow it to join the EU as a full member. It concludes that the decision to admit a new member is primarily a political one and that Turkey should be allowed to join the EU in the immediate future.     

Contamination of archaeological deposits by seeds of modern origin with particular reference to the use of flotation machines

Modern contamination would seem to be of widespread occurrence on archaeological sites in Britain. It is particularly noticeable when recovery is increased by the use of a flotation machine. Sources of contamination and methods of distinguishing modern and ancient seeds are discussed. It should often be possible largely to discount the recent component providing that a certain amount of consideration is given to the problem in relation to a particular site, although there are still some areas requiring further research.