Recognising values of China’s scenic and historic interest areas as world heritage cultural landscapes: Lushan case study

ABSTRACT

China’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas are a major contributor to the State’s World Heritage lexicon. However, understanding of their values has led to confusion internationally and in China, not least with controversy over China’s latest promotion of the Natural Protected Areas System. This paper discusses values of China’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas from the cultural landscape perspective through an in-depth case study of Lushan. A theoretical framework for recognising values of China’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas has been set up and tested at Lushan, including exploring stakeholders’ understanding of its values as a world heritage site by using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The findings reveal that Lushan clearly represents cultural values inextricably associated with Scenic and Historic Interest Areas, and also need for supplementary advice on its Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). It suggests that the ideology driving management of China’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas as national parks or natural parks focusing mainly on objective nature-related conservation without regard to the traditional Chinese philosophy of the culture-nature binary will adversely affect China’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas as cultural landscapes and their community values.     

The Female Mortality Advantage in the Seventeenth-Century Rural Low Countries

Data from famines from the nineteenth century onward suggest that women hold a mortality advantage during times of acute malnutrition, while modern laboratory research suggests that women are more resilient to most pathogens causing epidemic diseases. There is, however, a paucity of sex-disaggregated mortality data for the period prior to the Industrial Revolution to test this view across a broader span of history. We offer a newly compiled database of adult burial information for 293 rural localities and small towns in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, explicitly comparing mortality crises against ‘normal’ years. In contrast to expected results, we find no clear female mortality advantage during mortality spikes and, more to the point, women tended to die more frequently than men when only taking into account those years with very severe raised mortality. Gender-related differences in levels of protection, but also exposure to vectors and points of contagion, meant that some of these female advantages were ‘lost’ during food crises or epidemic disease outbreaks. Responses to mortality crises such as epidemics may shine new light on gender-based inequalities perhaps hidden from view in ‘normal times’ – with relevance for recent work asserting ‘female agency’ in the early modern Low Countries context.     

越窑秘色瓷匣钵装烧工艺的实验考古学研究

上林湖越窑在晚唐、五代时期烧制出了釉色青灰、色泽莹润的秘色瓷,迎来了越窑瓷业的巅峰。以上林湖后司岙越窑遗址出土唐、五代秘色瓷和普通青瓷科技分析数据为基础,采用当地沉积黏土、草木灰等为主要原料开展了秘色瓷的工艺模拟实验研究,重点对比了不同类型匣钵和装烧方式对模拟烧制青瓷釉的影响。此外,通过色度分析仪及光电子能谱仪等对模拟烧制青瓷釉色度和着色物质铁的价态进行测试,探讨了瓷质匣钵口沿封釉装烧秘色青瓷的作用和机理。越窑青瓷实验考古中,对七件青瓷样品进行了光电子能谱分析,结果显示,采用瓷质匣钵口沿封釉装烧青瓷釉的Fe²⁺/Fe³⁺比值为2.8,远大于普通匣钵内青瓷釉的0.57。结合考古实地调查研究,可以推断这是越窑秘色瓷呈色不同于普通青瓷的主要原因。     

湖南何家皂北宋墓出土纺织品附着灰蓝色物质的科学分析

出土于湖南衡阳何家皂北宋墓的纺织品上观察发现有灰蓝色固体物质附着,为查明其性质,采用扫描电镜-能谱法、激光拉曼光谱法和X射线衍射法结合能量色散X射线荧光光谱法和光学形貌观察等手段进行科学分析。结果表明,该物质为磷酸亚铁矿物——蓝铁矿[Vivianite:Fe_(3)(PO_(4))_(2)·8H_(2)O],其多形成于富铁、富磷、有机物含量较高且贫硫的缺氧还原沉积环境中,微生物活动亦对其生成有影响。该矿物的发现对墓葬环境特征与保存状态的研究有指示意义,在考古遗存中或可作为判断特殊埋藏条件的标志自生矿物之一。     

Early history of Chinese domestic sheep indicated by ancient DNA analysis of Bronze Age individuals

China has a long history of sheep husbandry, and has several indigenous sheep breeds. However, the exact geographic origin of Chinese domestic sheep remains unclear. To provide valuable genetic information for origin of Chinese domestic sheep, we performed an ancient DNA study on 22 sheep excavated from four Bronze Age archaeological sites in Northern China. Two lineages (A and B) were observed in ancient Chinese sheep, of which lineage A was predominant reaching a frequency of 95.5%. Furthermore, phylogenetic network showed that the most frequent haplotype in ancient sheep was the founder of lineage A. These results suggest that Lineage A may hold the key to understanding the origin of Chinese domestic sheep. Sequence sharing and principal component analysis showed that the ancient Chinese sheep had a close affinity to modern Chinese sheep. However, there was no significant breed structure among three modern Chinese sheep groups, making it difficult to determine their relationship to ancient Chinese sheep. Lastly, our results imply that ancient DNA analysis could provide a new way to investigate prehistoric East-West contact.     

A Visual Analytics System for Space–Time Dynamics of Regional Income Distributions Utilizing Animated Flow Maps and Rank-based Markov Chains

Regional income convergence and divergence has been an active field of research for more than 20 years, and research papers in this field are still being produced at a prodigious rate. Despite their importance for the study of dynamics of income distribution, interactive visualization tools revealing spatiotemporal dimensions of the income data have been sparsely developed. This study introduces a visual analytics system for the space–time analysis of income dynamics. We use state-level US income data from 1929 to 2009 to demonstrate the visual analytics system and its utility for exploring similar data. The system consists of two modules, visualization and analytics. The visualization module, a Web-based front-end called Rank-Path Visualizer (RPV), draws inspiration from the cartographic technique of flow mapping, originally developed by Tobler and embodied in his canonical Flow Mapper application.     

试论北京地区的新石器时代文化

北京地区处于东北和华北文化区的交汇地带,其新石器时代文化从距今10000多年一直延续到大约距今3800年。除雪山一期文化对外影响稍大外,其余时候并未形成强有力的中心。由于北京地区所具有的边缘地带的特点,使其不时成为多种文化因素汇聚的熔炉,以及联系东北、北方、中原、海岱文化系统的纽带,对"中国相互作用圈"的酝酿、形成和早期发展起到重要的作用。