THE BEGINNINGS OF ISLAMIC STONEPASTE TECHNOLOGY*

A multidisciplinary programme of research on Islamic pottery has been focused on questions of the dating, provenance and technology of Islamic pottery. One particular question has been the development of stonepaste, a material made primarily of crushed quartz with added frit-glass and clay. The combination of the different approaches of this study has revealed early foundations for the technology in ninth-century AD Iraq, apparently originating in the clay ceramic rather than the ‘Egyptian faience’ tradition. Subsequent and final practice developed in tenth- and eleventh-century AD Egypt. This technology becomes the primary body for all fine Islamic ceramics.     

Urban Traffic Flows and Fourier Transforms

The purpose of this paper is first, to present some evidence indicative of a rough daily periodicity in traffic counts at a cross-section of an urban road accompanied by a considerable amount of seemingly random additional variation; and second, to attempt an accounting through Fast Fourier Transform and power spectrum density functions of this additional variation beyond the rough daily cycle. Reasons behind the macroscopic variable's dynamic behavior are provided. Relatively extensive traffic counts make them especially suited for investigating various dynamic behaviors, including possibly nonperiodic (chaotic) patterns.     

污染大气中浑仪,简仪的带锈防护

浑仪、简仪（以下简称两仪）在高PH、大气污染和日晒雨淋环境中的腐蚀是一种动态加速腐蚀过程。采用合成的双唑胺铜缓蚀剂和有机硅改性的甲基丙烯酸树脂,并分别复配成协同缓蚀剂群和含有增效稳定剂的封护剂。采用这两种材料和脱水后再防护的工艺,使带锈防护后的浑仪、简仪的腐蚀低于无污染大气中的速率。用电化学方法评价了防护技术的可行性,根据腐蚀与人工老化试验结果讨论了防护材料性能与腐蚀环境和带锈防护的关系,采用XPS分析方法探索了双唑胺比BTA更适用于两仪防护的原因。     

Pretransition marital fertility variation over time: was there deliberate control in England?

An important line of research concerning historical fertility patterns in currently developed countries of Europe has concluded that, prior to the fertility transition, marital fertility was essentially constant over time, and deliberate fertility control was virtually unknown. It has been argued that variations over time in overall fertility were largely the consequence of variations in nuptiality. Other researchers have challenged these views and present evidence for the existence of a significant minority of fertility controllers in pretransition populations. In this article, we find support for this second view and argue that (1) there was significant, non-random variation in marital fertility over time, prior to the transition; (2) in many cases, this variation in marital fertility was large relative to contemporaneous variations in nuptiality; and (3) in a substantial minority of the cases, the variation over time in pretransition marital fertility was so large that it is suggestive of deliberate fertility control. Thus, our findings question the view of fertility transition as an innovation in deliberate marital fertility control. While most of our evidence is based on data from England and Wales, we find corroboration of our key results in other European data.     

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS OF AD 1660–1930 EUROPEAN COPPER-COLOURED BLUE GLASS TRADE BEADS FROM ONTARIO,CANADA

Blue glass trade beads from well-dated late seventeenth- to early twentieth-century sites and collections have been analysed non-destructively by instrumental neutron activation analysis. The beads display enough variations in their elemental contents to allow us to characterize the different chemistries. The implication of these results is that similar chemical analyses of blue beads from undated archaeological sites may be used to help date the sites, since each bead chemistry has a specific earliest period.     

RADIOCARBON DATES FOR BEESWAX FIGURES IN THE PREHISTORIC ROCK ART OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA

Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon ages have been taken for a test suite of small samples of material removed from some of the ‘beeswax’art figures found in rock shelters in northern Australia. The results indicate that we can reliably date this unique form of rock art with no noticeable damage. We had not expected to find figures of any great antiquity, and so we were surprised to find that the ages obtained spanned the time period from the recent past to about 4000 BP.