Recent Work on Nordic Neo-Latin Literature (1997-2000)

Ancient Nubia—alias the Kingdom of Kush alias Aithiopia alias the Napatan and Meroitic empires—though as a Randgebiet in constant interchange, through Egypt, with the Mediterranean world, is still largely neglected by‐students of Ancient History. This need not be so; the present review article discusses six new books on Nubian civilization in antiquity and argues that ‘ the deficient integration of archaeological and textual evidence that has marred much of the modern interpretation of Nubian history is now beginning to be replaced by fruitful interdisciplinarity.     

Medieval Descriptions and Doctrines of Stroke: Preliminary Analysis of Select Sources. Part I: The Struggle for Terms and Theories - Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages (300-800)

This first of a series of papers on the history of stroke presents an examination of a number of exemplary Greek and Latin sources, ranging from late antiquity to the dawn of the Middle Ages. We first establish a chronological order of various groups of texts and, whenever possible, ascertain the relationship of one group of writings to another. In the second century A.D., Galen had used the Hippocratic concept of humoral imbalance as a fundamental explanatory mechanism for the interpretation of clinical manifestations of apoplexy. Galen definitely rejected the Aristotelian precept of the primacy of the heart. According to his teaching, stroke resulted from the accumulation of a thick and dense humor in the ventricles of the brain blocking the passage of the animal spirit. Galen's Greek texts became axiomatic for compilers of the Byzantine period (Aetius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles, Paulus of Aegina). But his ideas contrasted starkly with the theories of the Methodical School which exerted – through the Latin writings of Caelius Aurelianus – a certain influence on authors of the Latin West (Cassius Felix, Theodorus Priscianus). References to stroke can also be found in many theological writings of the early Middle Ages.     

Texts,Practice and Practitioners: Computational Cultures at Work in Early Modern South India**

This essay will discuss the hegemonic role that texts have come to play in the historiography of subcontinental mathematical traditions. It will argue that texts need to be studied as records of practices of people's working lives, grounded in social hierarchies. We will take particular mathematical texts to show how different occupational registers have come to shape practices that defy the binaries of concrete and abstract, high and low mathematics or the pure and applied conundrum. Measuring, counting and accounting practices as part of the routine work of practitioners performing their caste occupations then provide us with a spectrum of the computational activities that controlled and regulated the lives of people in the past. In the process the act of computing itself gained certain political values such as cunning and manipulation, identified with professions of village accountant and merchant, for example. Drawn from my earlier work on these records, I discuss the occupational role of the accountant as a political functionary who assessed and authenticated the measurements of land and produce in the village, making values of the labor performed by others, and creating avenues for his own proficiency as a mathematical practitioner.     

回响的驼铃(上篇)

文章上篇以大量材料阐述了丝绸之路历史上作为新疆大门的哈密、巴里坤古城形成的过程、地理位置、所发挥过的重要作用及以后逐渐冷落的原因。     

封、疆、界:中国古代早期对于域界的表示

甲骨文、金文以及秦楚瓦文、简牍中所见的“封”(“夆”)乃是人工堆筑的土堆,其上或植有树木;“封”多沿着道路设置,用以表示其地域之归属;田地中的“封”则置立于田畔或阡道上,用于标识田地的归属。金文与秦楚简牍中所见的“疆”“畺”或“彊”,则是人为地划出的界线,它可以但并不必然表现为自然或人为的地理事物。“界”也是一种人为的划分,却有具体的自然或人为的地理事物作为标识;用于表示“界”的地理事物主要有关、垣、离、格、堑、封、刊、坞、虎落、天田、立石等人为的地理事物,以及山、川等自然地理事物。