Selinunte (Sicily) and its productive context: the clayey raw materials applied in a long-lived ceramic production (seventh to third century BCE)

The westernmost of the Greek-Sicilian towns, Selinunte, founded in western Sicily during the second half of the seventh century BCE, gives amazing evidences of a historic activity of ceramic production (seventh to third century BCE). The present study aims to identify the raw materials available in the vicinity of the archaeological site of Selinunte, which were possibly used by the ancient potters, and to characterise them by means of petrographic and chemical techniques. A sampling campaign of clays and sands for tempering was undertaken in the archaeological site and the adjacent area. Moreover, locally produced archaeological bricks and tiles were considered helpful for comparison regarding the definition of local ceramic macro- and micro-fabrics and were analysed as well. The comparison between textural, mineralogical and chemical data allowed us to highlight a good similarity between the clayey materials available in the area and the local ancient bricks and tiles. Their compositional resemblance suggests the hypothesis of a systematic use of the studied clays for ceramic productions from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period. The preliminary archaeometric results obtained so far could enhance the distinction between local manufactures and imports and may well lead to the identification of ceramic artefacts produced by the Archaic-Hellenistic workshops of Selinunte at various consumption sites.     

Book reviews

Paul Cammack, David Pool and William Tordoff, Third World Politics. A Comparative Introduction. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988. xi+308pp. $22.95

Naomi Chazan, Robert Mortimer, John Ravenhill and Donald Rothchild. Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988. xi+459pp. $29.95.

Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba (eds). The Civic Culture Revisited. Newbury Park: Sage, 1989. 422pp. £39.95 (cloth), £15.75 (paper).

John R. Gibbins (ed). Contemporary Political Culture. Politics in a Postmodern Age. Newbury Park: Sage, 1989. 266pp. £27.50 (cloth), £10.95 (paper).

Kusuma Snitwongse and Sukhumbhand Paribatra (eds). Durable Stability in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1987. xiii+237pp. $S44 (cloth), $S32 (paper).

Lawrence C. Mayer. Redefining Comparative Politics. Promise Versus Performance. Newbury Park: Sage, 1989. 303pp. £29.50 (cloth), £13.95 (paper).

Amin Saikal (ed.). Refugees in the Modern World. Canberra: Department of International Relations, Australian National University, 1989‐ 125 pp. No price given.

W. Michael Reisman and Andrew R. Willard (eds). International Incidents: The Law That Counts in World Politics. Princeton: Princeton Unversity Press, 1988.xii+278 pp. $US35.00 (cloth), $US12.95 (paper).

Samuel B. Payne, The Conduct of War: An Introduction to Modem Warfare. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. xiv+309 pp. $49.95.

Jane F. Marceau. A Family Business? The Making of an International Business Elite. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. x+247 pp. $65.00

Kenneth Hoover and Raymond Plant. Conservative Capitalism in Britain and the United States: A Critical Appraisal. London: Routledge, 1989. xvii+341 pp. $98.95.

David Carlton, Britain and the Suez Crisis. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989‐ 174 pp. $27.95.

Michael Dockrill. British Defence Since 1945. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. 171 pp. $24.95.

Yves Boyer, Pierre Lellouche and John Roper (eds). Franco‐British Defence Co‐operation: A New Entent'e Cordiale?. London: Routledge, 1989‐ 194 pp. $89.95.

Kristian Gerner and Stefan Hedlund. Ideology and Rationality in the Soviet Model. A Legacy for Gorbachev. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. xii+455 pp. $105.00.

Boris Kagarlitsky. The Thinking Reed. Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present. London: Verso, 1988. x+370 pp. $29.50.

Alan B. Sherr. The Other Side of Arms Control: Soviet Objectives in the Gorbachev Era. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. xviii+325 pp. $US42.00.

David Childs, Thomas A. Baylis and Marilyn Rueschemeyer (eds). East Germany in Comparative Perspective. London & New York: Routledge, 1989. xvi+238 pp. $105.00

Tony Judt (ed.). Resistance and Revolution in Mediterranean Europe, 1939 ‐ 1948. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. iv+229 pp. $105.00.

Yoshihara Kunio. The Rise of Ersatz Capitalism in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988. xiii+297 pp. $24.95.

Chin Kin Wah (ed.), Defense Spending in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. 1987. ix+326pp. $US 20.00.

P.J. Soedjati Djiwandono & Young Mun Choeng (eds). Soldiers and Stability in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. 1988. ix+354 pp. $US22.00.

Greg Lockhart. Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People's Army of Vietnam. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, in association with the Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1989‐ xiv+314pp. $29.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper).

John Overton. Land and Differentiation in Rural Fiji. Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, 1989. vii+152 pp. $20.00.

Walter Manshard and William B. Morgan (eds). Agricultural Expansion and Pioneer Settlements in the Humid Tropics. Tokyo: United Nations University, 1988, 305 pp. $US20.00.

Robert H. Bruce (ed). The Modern Indian Navy and the Indian Ocean: Developments and Implications. Perth: Centre for Indian Ocean Regional Studies, Curtin University of Technology/Australian Institute of International Affairs, x+168 pp. $22.50.

Rasul B. Rais. The Indian Ocean and the Superpowers, London: Croom Helm, 1988.215 pp. No price given.

Roy Mottahedeh. The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, Harmonsworth: Penguin Books, 1987. 418 pp. $22.95.

Max G. Manwaring and Court Prisk (eds). El Salvador at War: An Oral History. Washington D.C.: National Defence College, 1988. liv + 500 pp. No price given.     

论邓小平的侨务思想和党的统一战线

邓小平的侨务思想是马列主义基本原理与当代中国实践与时代特征相结合的产物。他根据新时期的特点和国际形势的新变化 ,用新的思维和观点 ,继承、丰富和发展了毛泽东、周恩来所创建的中共统一战线理论。邓小平恢复和肯定“海外关系”的正确地位 ,作出海外侨胞是爱国的基本评价 ,强调要认真落实各项侨务政策 ,保护华侨华人的正当合法权益。为解决我国现代化建设中缺乏资金、人才和技术等问题 ,邓小平提出引进华侨华人和港澳台同胞的资金 ,引进华侨华人的人才与智力 ,吸引海外侨胞参与中国发展方略设计三大战略方针 ,并把统一祖国、振兴中华作为侨务工作的长期战略任务     

El policial palimpséstico en “Marta Odera,monja” de Marisa Grinstein

This article investigates the emergence of detective fiction and film from 1994 to the present. The corpus appears during the government of Carlos Menem and its intent to insert Argentina into a globalized economy. Poverty, insecurity, and violence prevail in Argentine society, and many detective novels, based on real-life murders, appear in 1994. Moreover, this type of literature continues to proliferate in the twenty-first century. In this essay, I explore one of the many stories written by Marisa Grinstein. I begin with the newspaper article and trace its transformation into short fiction and television series. The articles about the homicide follow the tendencies of the sensationalist yellow press. The author and the film director of “Marta Odera, monja,” however, transform the events, following and also subverting the characteristics of the classic detective fiction and the hard-boiled. In doing so, these recreations of this particular murder case denounce the domestic violence that exists in Argentine society.     

The Enlightenment and the church in the work of Franco Venturi: the fertile legacy of a civil religion

The first part of this essay examines the reasons why the relationship between Enlightenment and religion was central to Franco Venturi's studies on the eighteenth century. In part this came from his own strong secular convictions and from the tradition of secular utopian thought in which Venturi came to intellectual maturity in Turin in the first half of the century, but whose origins lay in the eighteenth century. The essay then explores how these interests guided Venturi's choice to themes and topics, and how his understanding of the relationship changed in the course of his life and writings. The second part of the essay considers Venturi's legacy specifically in relation to this central theme, and discusses the works of subsequent scholars (including the author) whose work has most directly taken up and developed Venturi's own concern to explore the origins of different forms of secular religion in the age of the Enlightenment.     

Site Classification Assessment for Estimating Empirical Attenuation Relationships for Central-Northern Italy Earthquakes

The aim of this article is to investigate the ground motion attenuation of the most industrialized and populated regions of Italy, evaluating the capability of different approaches to estimate site dependent models. The 5.2 local magnitude earthquake on November 24, 2004 shocked the areas of Northern Italy producing damage of about 215 million euros. The data set, including 243 earthquakes of local magnitude up to 5.2, has been collected in the period December 2002–October 2005 by 30 three-component seismic stations managed by Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Milano (INGV-MI). Empirical attenuation relationships have been estimated for horizontal peak ground velocity (PGHV), acceleration (PGHA), displacement (PGHD), and for response spectral acceleration (SA) for periods between 0.1 and 1.5 s. To estimate suitable attenuation models, in particular for sites characterized by thick sedimentary geological formations, a soil discrimination based on EU8 code can lead to wrong evaluations. On the contrary, a classification based on H/V spectral ratios of seismic ambient noise (NHV) allows the models to fit better real and predicted data and to reduce the uncertainties of the process. For each receiver, NHV have been strengthened by additional H/V spectral ratio of earthquake data (EHV), calculated considering different portions of the analysed signals. In order to validate the PGHA attenuation relationship for greater magnitudes, accelerometric records, relative to Central-Northern Italy strong motions occurring in the last 30 years, have been collected and superimposed to our attenuation curves.     

A Microtremor Survey in the Area Shocked by the ML 5.2 Salò Earthquake (North Italy): An Empirical Approach to Determine the Effects of Ground Motions

In this work, the results of a quick microtremor survey performed in the municipalities situated in the epicentre area of the Ml 5.2 2004 Salò earthquake (North Italy) are presented. The aim of this study is to understand if the large amount of damage caused by the event (about 215 million euros only in the areas near to the epicenter) is correlated more to the local surface geology conditions or to the vulnerability of ancient Italian historical centers.

A preliminary seismic zonation was carried out in 5 villages including about 30 measurements of microtremors analyzed by the Nakamura technique (hereinafter HVNR). The points of measurement were carefully selected considering sites located both near damaged buildings and over different local geology conditions (alluvium deposits, fluvial-glacial deposits, debris fans and rock). In order to strengthen the HVNR results and to evaluate the reliability of the Nakamura analysis, a comparison with spectral ratios calculated on earthquakes (hereinafter HVSR) recorded at the strong motion station of Vobarno was made. In general, the outcomes of the survey highlight a possible correlation between local geology conditions and ground motion amplification for different frequency bands. In order to check if this evidence is linked with the damage, a series of macroseismic intensity values were collected for different zones of the investigated area, and a nonparametric correlation approach was used to establish a possible correlation between damage and ground motion amplification for selected frequency bands. The results show, from a statistical point of view, that in the area surrounding the epicenter of the November 24, 2004 mainshock, the damage pattern is not strongly dependent upon the local surface geology but more correlated to the low quality of the civil structures present in the area, including old buildings of the last century.     

Pollen-wood analysis at the Neapolis harbour site (1st–3rd century AD,southern Italy) and its archaeobotanical implications

Three Roman shipwrecks (Napoli A and Napoli C – 1st cent. AD; Napoli B – 2nd century AD) were recovered in the sandy-silt sediments representing the infilling of a protected inlet of Neapolis harbour (Naples, southern Italy). Extensive wood analysis suggests that a very attentive selection of species was made in shipbuilding, the choice of timber being related to wood technological properties and to the structural uses of the construction elements. Pollen data obtained from the coeval sedimentary layers revealed that all the timber taxa (apart from Picea/Larix) were present in the surroundings of the study area. The identified forest taxa are very common in the Mediterranean basin and thus the pollen-wood comparison was not able to define the location of the shipyards. Broad comparison with western Mediterranean wrecks evidenced the peculiarity of the Neapolis ships where the systematic use of both Juglans regia and Cupressus sempervirens was highlighted. Archaeological, biogeographical and archaeobotanical considerations suggest the local provenance of the ship C and constrain the possible origin area of both the ship Napoli A and Napoli B to central-southern Tyrrhenian coasts.