Luminescence chronology of the medieval citadel of Termez,Uzbekistan: TL dating of bricks masonries

Among the dating methods in archaeology, thermoluminescence (TL) is widely developed. The present research concerns the construction chronology of the citadel of Termez (Uzbekistan) in the medieval period. On the methodological side along the TL study, we had to take into account two decisive factors that are expected to affect the accuracy: control of anomalous fading on the polymineral fraction (quartz and feldspars) and the effect of thermal treatments on the luminescence properties of the dated material. With regard to the determination of the annual dose, difficulties, associated with the evolution of the radiochemical composition of the dated samples and their environment over time, were overcome.     

The application of ancient DNA analysis to identify neolithic caprinae: a case study from the site of Hatoula,Israel

The evidence for wild sheep (Ovis orientalis) in archaeological sites from the southern Levant is examined through the application of ancient DNA analysis to specimens from the Pre‐Pottery Neolithic A (8300–7500 uncal. BC) site of Hatoula, Israel. The results indicate that at least one of the bones from this site, previously identified as sheep, is in fact goat. To date this is the earliest faunal sample to have yielded DNA in the region. This study highlights the problems in applying morphological criteria to distinguish between caprine species, and illustrates how ancient DNA analysis can serve as a powerful tool in resolving questions of species attribution. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

旅游和民族性的再创造

这是一篇对社会学家和人类学家编写的论文集做介绍的文章,主要论述旅游在保持、改变和重新创造民族边界中的作用。旅游被看成是民族交往的一种特别形式,导致了三个主要角色的形成,即游客、旅游对象和中间人。文章主要关涉：国家在发展民族旅游中扮演的角色、作为旅游结果的民族特征和民族意识的改变和再创造、在旅游交易中艺术形式的转变、旅游代理商的角色以及在民族旅游主客互动交往中形成了民族“刻板印象”。     

Paul Valéry on Photography: A Poetic Writing of Light and Time

This article studies Paul Valéry's personal reflection on photography, as it appears in his essay “Le Discours du Centenaire de la Photographie,” based on a speech given at the Sorbonne in 1939 to members of the French Academy. It stresses the relationship between this essay and the French poet's writings on painting and aesthetics, in particular his work on Corot. Moreover, it analyzes the synthetic character of Valéry's critical approach, which attempts to bring together the language of poetry, philosophy and science when dealing with this utterly modern visual language. Photography is celebrated here as a unique art form that can at the same time imitate and reproduce nature perfectly, while allowing mankind to create a cosmological vision of life and the universe. In other words, the poet underlines in this text the utmost modernity of photography, at a time when many in France were still reluctant to acknowledge its artistic identity.     

SEM-EDS characterization of western Mediterranean obsidians and the Neolithic site of A Fuata (Corsica)

During the Neolithic, obsidians of the Monte Arci (Sardinia) volcanic complex were by far more used in the northern Tyrrhenian area than those of the three other source-islands (Lipari, Palmarola, Pantelleria) in the western Mediterranean. It is shown that merely determinations of content for six major elements with a scanning electron microscope by energy dispersion spectrometry (SEM-EDS) are sufficient to distinguish the four types of Monte Arci obsidians. Because of the compositional similarities between these obsidian types, a multivariate analysis is recommended in provenance studies. Although SEM-EDS, electron microprobe-wavelength dispersion spectrometry (EMP-WDS) and particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) give essentially concordant results in the determination of these six element contents, subtle technique-related biases prevent the combination of SEM-EDS, EMP-WDS and PIXE data on source samples for provenance purposes. An SEM-EDS test-study reveals the first occurrence of obsidians of Lipari for the A Fuata Middle to Late Neolithic site of NW Corsica (north of Sardinia), in addition to the usual Monte Arci obsidians. Similar to EMP-WDS, the SEM-EDS technique requires only millimeter-sized fragments.     

Facility Location Under Zone Pricing

Zone pricing consists in determining simultaneously several delivered prices together with the zones where these prices apply. A model and algorithm are proposed to determine optimal facility locations, prices, tariff-zones, and market areas in order to maximize the firm's profit under zone pricing. The resulting nonlinear mixed-integer program is tackled by projecting the objective function on the price space, solving repeatedly uncapacitated facility location problems for fixed values of the prices. The implicit profit function so defined is optimized by branch-and-bound. Computational results are reported.