Technological traditions inferred from iron artefacts of the Xiongnu Empire in Mongolia

Iron objects excavated from sites of the Xiongnu Empire (3rd century BC–2nd century AD) in Mongolia have been examined using optical and scanning electron microscopy. The results show that the Xiongnu iron tradition may be characterized by the use of low carbon iron and carbon control by carburization. Cast iron was also used in the Xiongnu Empire, but only in very limited applications and with no convincing evidence of its use for the production of low carbon iron. The Xiongnu iron technology seems to have been established on the basis of the bloomery technique, without much influence from the Chinese style of technology, based on cast iron.     

Living above the shop: home, business, and family in the English "Industrial Revolution"

This article explores the living arrangements and familial relations of small business households in northwest English towns between 1760 and 1820. Focusing on evidence from inventories and personal writing, it examines the homes that such households lived and worked in and the ways in which space was ordered and used: indicating that access to particular spaces was determined by status. This study suggests both the continuance of the "household family" into the nineteenth century (rather than its more modern, "nuclear" variant) and the existence of keenly felt gradations of status within households making it likely that the constitution of "the family" differed according to one's place in the domestic hierarchy.     

论陶渊明藉田园开创的诗歌新美典

本文强调陶渊明对中国诗歌的贡献在创造出足以辉耀整个传统的新美典。文章提出陶氏的社会理想接近"秦汉之际新儒家",故其对力田和个体生命的态度与孔孟扜格。而陶诗美感的源泉,则在与此生命态度相关的"委运"和"乘化"。本文第二、三节转入对陶诗田园世界和抒情自我的讨论,并以三端概括陶诗新美典:首先,"乘化"的生命态度令诗人自时间面去体悟四季、晨昏的循环,天人一体、身心一体地感知熟稔的土地。由此生出的不设色的田园世界,与诗坛逐渐声色大开的局面形成对照。其次,陶诗解构了屈原开创的抒情自我原型,首次将诗人自我形象白描在日常生活化背景之上。最后,陶诗以彻底的内在主义,为中国诗歌由嵇康开始的对超越境界的追求找到了归宿。     

延边朝鲜族自治州非公有制林业发展的思考

延边远处中国边陲,其特殊的地理位置和丰富的自然资源构成决定了她在林业产业发展中举足轻重的地位,而林业经济的发展,则是延边经济发展的关键因素.随着市场经济的发展和林业经济体制改革的深入,非公有制林业应运而生,并成为林业发展的强大推动力.事实证明,发展非公有制林业是实现林区可持续发展的必然选择.然而,在具体的进程中,非公有制林业发展却产生了种种问题,使其陷入困境.本文从延边州非公有制林业现状出发,分析其发展中存在的问题及优势,并提出解决问题的对策,对延边州发展和提高非公有制林业经营效益有一定的理论和实践意义.     

Palaeopathology in Britain: a critical analysis of publications with the aim of exploring recent trends (1997–2006)

This study collects data from three major journals and analyses them in order to assess the recent (1997–2006) nature of the study of palaeopathology within Britain. It considers the types of study published (case, population or method), whether findings are integrated with other data, the particular ‘theme’ that is considered (diet, activity patterns, etc) and the particular pathological condition focused upon (metabolic, dental, etc). The findings show there is a move away from the traditional case study and an increase in the acknowledgement of the value of integrating data with wider information. There is also a bias towards certain ‘themes’ and pathologies, reasons for which are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Economic geography under postcolonial scrutiny

Because the economy is not found as an empirical object among other worldly things, in order for it to be 'seen' by the human perceptual apparatus it has to undergo a process, crucial for science, of representational mapping. This is doubling, but with a difference; the map shifts the point of view so that viewers can see the whole as if from the outside, in a way that allows them, from a specific position inside, to find their bearings. ( Buck-Morss 1995 , 440)     

Towards the application of desorption electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) to the analysis of ancient proteins from artefacts

The detection and identification of protein residues from archaeological artefacts has been the subject of considerable controversy over the past two decades, this controversy spurring the application of a range of different analytical methods. Part of the debate surrounds the ability of the methods to uniquely identify original proteins. Another is the apparent contradiction between the ease of extraction in the laboratory of residues that have managed to survive in sediment over millennia; some studies use simple solvents including water, whilst others claim that efficient extraction requires the destruction of the artefact.Desorption electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) offers the potential to directly analyse proteins bound to the surface of artefacts. The method permits desorption of analytes under ambient conditions directly from a wide range of surfaces with little or no sample preparation. This has already led to its application in a range of areas, including forensic analysis of trace levels of narcotic drugs. It does not require destruction of the artefact (e.g. by drilling or dissolution) and can work in concert with other methods (for instance it could be used as a screening tool prior to lipid extraction).Here we report the construction of a DESI-MS interface and consider the potential of the method to contribute to the debate surrounding the preservation of proteins on artefacts. The DESI-MS interface was fitted to a conventional ion trap mass spectrometer and tested using peptides and proteins artificially applied to the surface of flint flakes and potsherd samples. A range of intact proteins was analysed; the DESI interface identified test proteins up to a maximum molecular weight of approximately 20 kDa. Peptides generated from these and larger proteins could be detected using DESI-MS following tryptic digestion in situ. The collected data allowed identification of the originating proteins. The potential applications to archaeological science of this new analytical tool are discussed.     

‘The Dining Room Should Be the Man's Paradise,as the Drawing Room Is the Woman's’: Gender and Middle‐Class Domestic Space in England, 1850–1910

In the middle‐class home in late nineteenth‐century England, drawing rooms, morning rooms and boudoirs became increasingly associated with women, while dining rooms, studies and smoking rooms were viewed as male spaces. Historians have linked this to the exclusion of women from social power and a male ‘flight from domesticity’. This article questions these interpretations and explores gendered space through advice manuals, inventories and sale catalogues, and autobiographies. While the notion that domestic space should be divided between men and women had considerable cultural purchase, the ways in which this should occur were subject to dispute and limited by the practical contingencies of everyday living. In homes where gendered material culture was present, it exerted a powerful influence on childhood experience and the formation of adult identities.