Avian resources at a Mexican site at the time of the Spanish Conquest

The time of the Spanish Conquest in America saw a major biological interchange caused by human action. In the native people it was expressed by major changes in the use of animals, due to the introduction of domestic European fauna. This theme is discussed here based on a review of ethnohistorical sources and a small body of recent archaeological evidence. An analysis is presented of the use of birds at a Mexican settlement inhabited in the sixteenth century at the time of Spanish contact. The bird remains, 456 fragments, are from the site of El Japon, southeast of Mexico City. The main avian resources were domestic fowl, Gallus gallus, turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, and four species of ducks. The exploitation of scrub jay, Apheolocoura coerulescens is recorded for the first time in Mexican archaeo-ornithology. The study confirms ethnohistorical information about the introduction of the domestic fowl, but also shows that native resources were more widely used than is known from the chronicles of the sixteenth century. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eros and Dionysus

Abstract

Liberty was once praiseworthy because it enabled a free choice for the good. Technology recasts the classical link between liberty and virtue by making human well-being depend on technological advance. Till recently, technology signified human mastery over nature. But now virtual reality offers itself as a substitute for nature. Unlike machines which hold us at a distance, it draws us in with images. It no longer shapes the soul indirectly through the effects of using machines, but involves the soul directly. The modern attempt to bracket the soul has brought it back virtually. The argument between fight and flight is at a standstill. Instead, the irony which many lament as a feature of postmodernity can provide a distance from the technologies which have made themselves necessary.     

A Simplified Model to Evaluate the Dynamic Rocking Behavior of Irregular Free-Standing Rigid Bodies Calibrated with Experimental Shaking-Table Tests

A simplified model to evaluate the dynamic rocking behavior of free-standing irregular rigid bodies under earthquake-induced forces is proposed. The model analyzes the response of a three-dimensional irregular rigid body using a numerical approach that considers a critical section and two equivalent rectangular rigid blocks. Experimental shaking-table tests were carried out on modular prototypes, which allow the replication of representative mass distributions, sizes, and/or slenderness ratios for typical objects. The tests were used to calibrate the numerical model. It was found that the dynamic behavior under irregular conditions (asymmetrical shape and/or non-uniform mass distribution) can be estimated with the appropriate geometric and density considerations.     

The Origins of the Concept of ‘Palaeolithic Art’: Theoretical Roots of an Idea

This paper explores the origin and theoretical roots of the concept of ‘Palaeolithic art’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1895–1906). It identifies three main sources for this concept: the Western category of ‘art’, the idea of evolution and the notion of primitive. This article shows how the traditional conception of ‘Palaeolithic art’ is a particular case of the wider idea of ‘primitive art’, a category that was born as an attempt to harmonise the notion of ‘primitive society’ and the nineteenth-century bourgeois concept of ‘art’. Additionally, I discuss this traditional conception as the source of a number of ideas that have persisted in our way of interpreting Palaeolithic images until recently, including the understanding of prehistoric images through the lens of the modern notion of ‘art’, their interpretation in symbolic-religious terms and their formal definition based on the idea of naturalism.