Top-down or bottom-up: rural settlement and raised field agriculture in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

Differing interpretations regarding the organization of past intensive farming are often distinguished as “top-down” or “bottom-up” perspectives. The development of intensive farming and its social organization are attributed to either nascent states and centralized governments or the incremental work of local communities or kin-based groups. We address the social organization of raised field farming in one region of the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andean altiplano, Bolivia. We evaluate past research in the Katari Valley, including our own, based on recent settlement survey, excavation, and a variety of analyses. Taking a long-term perspective covering 2500 years, we find that relations of production and rural organization changed greatly over time in relation to changing sociopolitical conditions. Local communities played dynamic roles in the development and organization of raised field farming, yet its intensification and ultimate recession were keyed to the consolidation and decline of the Tiwanaku state. We conclude that the top-down/bottom-up dichotomy is overdrawn. Local communities and their productive practices never operated in a political or economic vacuum but both shaped and were transfigured by regional processes of state formation, consolidation, and fragmentation.     

元代青花瓷器识鉴

本文在前人研究的基础上,结合作者多年来的研究心得,对有关元代青花瓷器的几个问题进行了论述和探讨。元代青花瓷器的造型、纹饰、胎釉彩及制作工艺等均具有明显的时代特征,这些特征是鉴定元代青花瓷器的关键。另外.了解并熟悉元代青花瓷器的仿造情况可以在鉴定工作中更加得心应手。     

Constructing national identity in Canada's capital, 1900–2000: Confederation Square and the National War Memorial

Ottawa's Confederation Square was initially planned to be a civic plaza to balance the nearby federal presence of Parliament Hill. A century of federal planning, with the direct involvement of Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, repositioned it as a national space in the City Beautiful style. Recent renovations have improved its pedestrian amenity and restored much of the original plan by French urban designer Jacques Gréber. The square contains the National War Memorial and the National Arts Centre, yet is a weak public space due to weak edge definition, animation, and spatial enclosure. The war memorial design was selected in a 1925 international competition won by Britain's Vernon March. The Great War monument was not installed until the 1939 Royal visit, and Mackenzie King intended that the re-planning of the capital would be the World War II memorial. However, the symbolic meaning of the Great War monument gradually expanded to become the place of remembrance for all Canadian war sacrifices. The National War Memorial is more successful as a symbolic object than Confederation Square is as a public space, yet both have evolved into important elements of the Canadian capital's national identity.     

Cultural memory, gender and age: young Latvian women's narrative memories of war-time Europe, 1944–1947

This paper examines the war-time experiences of dislocation and loss, as well as the transition to independent adulthood, of 25 Latvian women who came to Britain as European Volunteer Workers after the end of the Second World War. Despite the recent work in cultural history exploring memories of wartime dislocation and the growing use of oral narratives in this exploration, relatively little is known about the 1944 migration from the Baltic States to the UK or about the particular experiences of young women in this movement. This paper begins to address this forgotten history through interviews with now-elderly women living in Britain in the context of recent debates about cultural memory and forgetting.     

Identifying activity areas in archaeological soils from a colonial Virginia house lot using phytolith analysis and soil chemistry

Environmental archaeology methods can uncover both house lot organization and economic adaptation practices when applied systematically in conjunction with traditional archaeological research. This is the first study to employ both phytolith analysis and soil chemistry to interpret activity areas on an archaeological site. The patterning in the phytolith and soil chemistry analyses from the site of Rich Neck Plantation, Williamsburg, Virginia, reveals a set of six activity areas in and around the 17th century house lot, demonstrating a degree of economic diversification generally attributed only to 18th century colonial economic and social transformations.     

ON STATISTICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF CERAMIC ARTEFACTS USING GEOCHEMICAL AND PETROGRAPHIC DATA*

The scientific analysis of ceramics often has the aim of identifying groups of similar artefacts. Much published work focuses on analysis of data derived from geochemical or mineralogical techniques. The former is more likely to be subjected to quantitative statistical analysis. This paper examines some approaches to the statistical analysis of data arising from both kinds of techniques, including ‘mixed‐mode’ methods where both types of data are incorporated into analysis. The approaches are illustrated using data derived from 88 Late Bronze Age transport jars from Kommos, Crete. Results suggest that the mixed‐mode approach can provide additional insight into the data.     

GEOCHEMICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL LIME MORTARS: PROVENANCE INPUTS*

Chemical and mineralogical analyses were carried out on historical lime mortars from the parish church of Santa María La Real (Guipúzcoa). The study included various periods ranging from Roman to modern times and allowed the identification of various types of raw materials. In order to obtain pure binder, free of carbonate aggregates and charcoal particles, an innovative binder separation method was implemented. The chemical composition of the binder allows discrimination of different provenance areas for the raw materials, although those areas do not correlate with specific historical periods. In addition, the influence of burial processes on the primeval chemical features has been assessed and reveals that modern mortars display greater chemical modification than the Roman mortars.     

UNOFFICIAL COINAGE IN THE THIRD CENTURY ad IN THE GALLO‐ROMAN WORLD: CHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL ANALYSES FOR DETERMINING THE LOCALIZATION OF THE WORKSHOP*

The third century ad was a complex period of crisis in the Roman world. In this paper, official and unofficial antoniniani, and double sestercii and sestercii, were analysed by fast neutron activation analysis (FNAA) to determine the alloys used by the craftsmen for producing forgeries. Moreover, at Châteaubleau, archaeologists discovered antoniniani and bronze forgeries from Postumus. Similar materials have been found in other hoards. They are believed to have been produced by a workshop called ‘atelier II’ by numismatists. The question was whether it is possible to differentiate the Châteaubleau production from the atelier II production.     

A COMPARISON OF THE CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING CHARACTERISTICS OF ANCIENT ROMAN HYDRAULIC CONCRETE WITH A MODERN REPRODUCTION OF VITRUVIAN HYDRAULIC CONCRETE*

The authors have completed structural and compositional analysis of Roman hydraulic concrete using large cores taken from a variety of maritime structures. In 2005 an 8 m³ block of hydraulic, pozzolanic concrete was built in the sea at Brindisi (Italy), applying the materials and procedures specified by the Roman architect Vitruvius. Cores were taken at 6 months and 12 months after construction and subjected to the same analyses as the first‐century bc cores from pilae associated with the Villa of the Domitii Ahenobarbi at Santa Liberata. Results show that a slight variation on the Vitruvian formula yields results closest to the Roman material, and that substantial curing requires 12 months.     

INCISED SLIPWARE PRODUCTION AT CASTELFIORENTINO (FLORENCE): THE ‘VIA BERTINI’ SITE (15TH–17TH CENTURIES)*

This study deals with the physical–chemical and mineralogical–petrographic investigations (OM, SEM–EDS, EPMA, ICP, XRpD, Mössbauer and IR) conducted on first‐ and second‐firing wasters belonging to two types of incised slipware (sgraffito), manufactured at Castelfiorentino between the late 15th and the early 17th centuries. Raw materials, colouring agents and firing products were analysed in order to establish the production technology of the ceramic coatings, by means of detailed microtextural and chemical investigations. The pottery underwent two firing processes: the firing of the white slip‐coated ceramic body and a further firing after application of the glaze. The homogeneity of the raw materials, white slip and glaze is remarkable, and demonstrates the use of well‐established recipes with a constant supply of raw materials from the same places. Highly efficient kiln management during both firings is revealed by body–glaze interface reactions.