Silo or Vat? Observations on the Ancient Textile Industry in Malta and Early Phoenician Interests in the Island

This paper concerns the Bronze Age/Phoenician contact period, focusing on a cache of pottery from Mtarfa, Malta, excavated by Ward Perkins in 1939, and the evidence of coastal and other pits, possibly used in the process of dyeing textile. Dyed fabric, it is argued, may have been the reason for Phoenician contact with the island prior to colonization. Murex shells and other possible dye sources within Malta are discussed.     

Learning to design cultural districts and learning from designing them

Cultural districts are becoming an important field of study to promote a growing number of initiatives for local development. Despite substantial research in this field, knowledge gaps remain, especially with regard to initiatives at supra-urban level. Many policy-makers, funding agencies, local administrators and managers still face important design issues. This paper contributes to the developing body of theory on cultural districts in two ways. Firstly, focusing on concepts from complexity theory, it expands the debate on the conception of cultural districts as complex adaptive systems. Secondly, it highlights the dysfunctional tensions that can arise from conflicting ways of conceiving organizations, organizing and designing among ‘promoters’ and designers. We have been involved for three years in a large project aimed at designing a wide supra-urban cultural district in Italy, financed by a major banking foundation. Adopting an organizational perspective and through participative action research, we develop an explorative case study. Our core argument is that a linear, predictable and deterministic approach to analysis and design presents many limitations for such complex projects, offering learning opportunities from the design experience.     

Critical Assessment of Intensity Measures for Seismic Response of Italian RC Bridge Portfolios

The seismic assessment of a road network depends largely on the characterization of the fragility of its bridge components. The accuracy of bridge seismic demand estimates and the use of proper intensity measures (IM) will significantly influence such task. The available literature has mainly focused on buildings or a limited number of bridge configurations and IMs, which may not be representative for bridge portfolio assessment studies. In this paper, the correlation quality between a larger pool of traditional and innovative IMs and the nonlinear dynamic response of typical Italian RC bridges is investigated to identify the best-performing IMs.     

An Economy of Country Houses

This paper presents an economy of country houses with the ultimate aim of generating a framework for the evolution of country house management theory for the development of management practice and education. Whereas traditional management theory (for large entities) has evolved from the modern and narrow interpretation of economy, this paper employs the old but broader archaic form (oeconomy). This is a device that has previously been used both to generate an alternative understanding of organisations in general as well as for specific types of organisation. When combined with empirical data collected from a range of different country houses, an economy of country houses has emerged. This oeconomy is based on a number of core concepts, each of which has a number of key issues associated with it. The results show that this economy is quite unique, although there are some similarities with the economy of small businesses and the conflict approach of business management theory.