A contribution to the study of post-depositional alterations of pottery using TL dating analysis

In luminescence dating, the potassium concentration significantly contributes to the dose rate value in the age estimation. Within this study, fine-grain thermoluminescence dating has been applied on sherds of calcareous pottery of known age, excavated at a Roman site in Mallorca, Spain. For those of the samples that showed signs of severe potassium leaching, according to chemical and mineralogical examination, the thermoluminescence analysis provided overestimated dates. By using the known archaeological age of the samples, a corrected dose rate value can be estimated which provides the potassium concentration averaged for the burial period. Finally, a step-like model can then be used to estimate the fraction of the burial period after which most of the alteration effects took place.     

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TESTING THE SPATIAL SCALE AND THE DYNAMIC STRUCTURE IN REGIONAL MODELS (A CONTRIBUTION TO SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC SPECIFICATION ANALYSIS)*

This article addresses the problem of specification uncertainty in modeling spatial economic theories in stochastic form. It is ascertained that the traditional approach to spatial econometric modeling does not adequately deal with the type and extent of specification uncertainty commonly encountered in spatial economic analyses. Two alternative spatial econometric modeling procedures proposed in the literature are reviewed and shown to be suitable for analyzing systematically two sources of specification uncertainty, viz., the level of aggregation and the spatio-temporal dynamic structure in multiregional econometric models. The usefulness of one of these specification procedures is illustrated by the construction of a simple multiregional model for The Netherlands.     

School killings in China: Society or wilderness (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Between March and May 2010 a series of school killings took place in mainland China. This article explores media discourses on the school killings and examines three cases in detail. It connects the search for underlying reasons and responsible authorities in relation to the murders with the wider search for ‘society’ in contemporary China, and concludes by emphasizing the gap between the official promotion of the idea of ‘society’ as a cohesive moral community and a parallel popular understanding of the contemporary Chinese social world as a savage wilderness.     

Wartime everydayness: beyond the battlefield in China’s Second World War

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that the study of the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression should pay due attention to the effect of the war on the wartime everyday, that is, on Chinese culture, politics, society, and the economy away from the battlefield. Not only was the impact deep and enduring, but evolving, regionally and socially divergent responses to the war also shaped the war’s military. In modern war, as Karl von Clausewitz pointed out, public morale is a key factor in deciding the outcome of the fighting. The article first sketches the war’s impact on the Chinese economy, suggesting that the main consequences were “demodernization” and the revival of traditional trading patterns. It then discusses the reading lives of a young woman who grew up during the war and a senior Nationalist official to delineate contrasting emotional private responses, with one person finding in literature an inspirational alternative and the other becoming increasingly disillusioned. The article concludes with an examination of three popular history textbooks. They all stressed the importance of an awareness of Chinese civilization but narrated its nature and its prospects in contrasting ways. Such textbooks were used in required Chinese history courses at universities. The article makes no attempt to be comprehensive but instead uses a few examples as illustrations of the potential of researching wartime everydayness.