Combining residue analysis of floors and ceramics for the study of activity areas at the Garum Shop at Pompeii

In this paper, we propose the application—for the first time in the Mediterranean area—of the combination of the study of chemical residues in floors and ceramics, with the aim of providing information about the activities carried out in archeological buildings. We chose the Garum Shop at Pompeii to test the method. In fact, due to the peculiarity of this archeological context, it provided an ideal case in which the activities performed are in part known, and the ceramic vessels recovered are still in situ. Floor samples were studied by means of spot tests developed in Mexico aimed at identifying the presence of phosphates, fatty acids, and protein residues, while the organic residues preserved in the ceramic matrix of amphorae, dolia, and other ceramic vessels were studied by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Moreover, we integrated the data obtained with specific studies directed at better identifying the solid residues found inside two of the amphorae studied: botanical studies of fruit stones recovered in a Dressel 20 amphora and the characterization of the lime preserved in an African amphora. The research allowed for the identification of the traces of some of the activities performed, such as cooking and producing garum in the floors of the building, and the use and re-use of amphorae and dolia before the Vesuvian eruption.     

Experimental Investigation of Exterior Unreinforced Beam-Column Joints with Plain and Deformed Bars

Experimental tests on four full-scale exterior unreinforced reinforced concrete (RC) beam-column joints, representative of the existing non-conforming RC frame buildings, are carried out. The specimens have different longitudinal reinforcements (plain or deformed) and they are designed in order to be representative of two typical design practices (for gravity loads only or according to an obsolete seismic code). Different failure modes are observed, namely joint failure with or without beam yielding. The local response of the joint panel is analyzed. The different joint deformation mechanisms and their contribution to the deformability and to the energy dissipation capacity of the sub-assemblages are evaluated.     

Seismic Reliability of Code-Conforming Italian Buildings

ABSTRACT

This paper presents and discusses some research results related to the seismic failure risk of standard, residential and industrial, buildings designed for damage, and life-safety according to the Italian seismic code, which is somewhat similar to Eurocode 8. The five considered structural typologies are as follows: masonry, cast-in-place reinforced concrete, precast reinforced concrete, steel, and base-isolated buildings. The archetype structures have been designed according to standard practice at three sites, representative of the seismic hazard across the country. Seismic risk is defined here as the annual rate of earthquakes able to cause structural failure in terms of usability-preventing damage and global collapse. For each structure, the failure rates have been evaluated in the framework of performance-based earthquake engineering, that is, via integration of site’s probabilistic hazard and structural fragility. The former has been computed consistently with the official hazard model for Italy that is also used to define design actions in the code. The latter has been addressed via nonlinear dynamic analysis of three-dimensional numerical structural models. Results indicate that, generally, design procedures are such that seismic structural reliability tends to decrease with increasing seismic hazard of the building site, despite the homogeneous return period of exceedance of the design seismic ground-motion.     

Small angle neutron scattering study of ancient pottery from Syracuse (Sicily,Southern Italy)

This paper is focused on a spectroscopic study of some pottery shards from an archaeological site in Syracuse (Sicily, Southern Italy), dating back to the Hellenistic–Roman period. Structural characterization was performed at different scales of observation, i.e. from macroscopic to mesoscopic. The main goal was to point out the potentiality of the small angle neutron scattering (SANS) technique as a non-invasive analytical tool in archaeometry, also in conjunction with other, more usual, methodologies. Correlation of experimental data, i.e. macroscopic typology and texture, obtained from petrographic analysis, and radius of gyration and fractal dimension of the interfaces of the mesoscopic aggregates obtained using SANS, together with mineralogical X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis, allowed hypotheses to be made on the production technology of the investigated samples.     

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.     

Republicans and Socialists and the Origins of Italian Political Parties

A central debate in political science centres on the origins of political parties and specifically on the question as to whether they emerged as a result of the rise of parliamentary institutions. Regarding the Italian party system, the commonly held view is that Italian parties emerged as a consequence of national unification and the establishment of parliament. This article contributes to the debate on the origins of Italian parties by presenting empirical evidence on the timing of their initial formation, analysing data regarding the social base, membership, organisational articulation and policy-making accomplishments of the two major political movements active before and after the establishment of the national parliament. The article argues that, at least in the Italian case, parties did not originate in the legislature; rather, similar to countries such as Germany and Spain, Italian parties developed as a result of a major national crisis.