À propos du colloque « The Machine as Model and Metaphor » Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin,novembre 2006

Sans résumé ? Lève la peau, dissèque: ici commencent les machines. Puis, tu te perds dans une substance inexplicable, étrangère à tout ce que tu sais et qui est pourtant l’essentielle. ? Paul Valéry, Tel quel, Cahier B 1910 Ses recherches portent sur l’épistémologie, l’histoire des sciences et l’histoire de la philosophie à l’age classique (xvi ^e-xvii ^e siècles). Elle a notamment dirigé avec Walter Roy Laird, Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Dortrecht/Boston/Londres, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2007), puis, en collaboration avec Massimo Bucciantini et Michele Camerota, Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (Florence, Olschki, 2007).     

Relating the Ancient Ona Culture to the Wider Northern Horn: Discerning Patterns and Problems in the Archaeology of the First Millennium BC

Archaeological research carried out between 1998 and 2003 on the Asmara Plateau of Eritrea has provided new insights concerning the development of early-to-mid first millennium BC settled agropastoral communities in the northern Horn of Africa. The settlement, subsistence, and material culture of these communities in the greater Asmara area, referred to as the “Ancient Ona culture,” bear both unique qualities and striking similarities to coeval communities in Tigray, Ethiopia. This article provides an overview of regional settlement data and ceramic and lithic traditions from the greater Asmara area, drawing comparisons to other contexts of this period in the archaeology of the wider northern Horn. It is argued that we can see among the Ancient Ona sites distinct localized cultural expressions and development as well as strong links to a wider first millennium BC macro-cultural identity.     

The First Millennium <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">bc</Emphasis> in the Highlands of Northern Ethiopia and South–Central Eritrea: A Reassessment of Cultural and Political Development

An overview is offered of the development of research—both archaeological and epigraphic—on the inhabitants of the northern Horn during the first millennium bc. Initially, reconstructions of this period placed considerable emphasis on links with southern Arabia and tended to group those into a single cultural category that was designated ‘Pre-Aksumite’. It is now argued that long-distance contacts were much less pervasive, being largely restricted to the élite, and that other aspects of life—including much material culture and subsistence economy—displayed strong local continuity from earlier times. Similarly, it is argued that interpretation of the epigraphic evidence as indicating a single ‘Pre-Aksumite’ state called D'MT is unjustified.     

Transitions to Work: Masculine identities,youth inequality and labour market change

In this article, the initial transitions of white working-class male post-compulsory school leavers in two British cities are investigated. In the context of economic restructuring, the decline of manufacturing employment, and the rise in young women's educational achievements, it has been argued that poorly educated young men are increasingly disadvantaged in the labour market. Indeed, this may be the first generation of young men in the post-war period that will experience downward mobility compared to their fathers. In an earlier article, the author explored the labour market aspirations of white working-class boys living on peripheral local authority estates in Cambridge and Sheffield and in their final year at school. Despite the decline of manufacturing employment, they hoped to enter typically 'male' jobs in, for example, the car industry in both cities and in the steel industry in Sheffield. In this article, the author explores their labour market experiences in the year since they left school and their sense of themselves as masculine workers in the context of debates emphasising a growing 'crisis' of masculinity.     

Changes in regional settlement patterns and the development of complex societies in southeastern Shandong,China

Around the globe, archaeological settlement pattern survey has brought a new spatial, diachronic, and theoretical vantage to the study of early civilizations. This paper provides a new perspective on the rise and reorganization of complex societies in northern China through the synthesis of 11 years of systematic regional survey in southeastern Shandong Province. Based on our surface findings, we suspect that the agricultural colonization of this coastal region occurred primarily during the later half of the Neolithic and was rapidly followed by the development of a four-tiered settlement hierarchy with two primary centers during the Early Longshan period. We also document the reorganization of this regional system during the Bronze Age, and the eventual political integration of this study area under polities centered to the west (and outside the region surveyed). We argue that southeastern Shandong was not merely a backwater or periphery throughout its history, particularly in regard to the Early–Middle Longshan periods when there were centers of great size. Through our long-term and broad-scale perspective, we provide new evidence of how complex societies arose and changed over millennia in northern China.