美索不达米亚早期食物生产的生态学——史前农人与牧人开发一系列位置相邻却差异显著的气候区

大美索不达米亚,在这里广泛地定义为阿拉伯河（Shattal—Arab）各支流汇人的整个地区,长期以来它是公众兴趣和学术研究的舞台。近年来,关注点转向这样一个事实,即它是世界上少数几个农业与动物饲养独立出现的地区之一。虽然已有许多近东粮食生产起源方式出色的文化历史学复原,但是大多数并未直接解决感兴趣的非专业人士最常提出的一些生态学问题。本文研究其中的某些问题。     

Siberia at the Last Glacial Maximum: Environment and Archaeology

This article focuses on the presence of humans in Siberia and the Russian Far East at the coldest time of the Late Pleistocene, called the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and dated to c. 20,000–18,000 rcbp. Reconstruction of the LGM environment of Siberia, based on the latest models and compilations, provides a background for human existence in this region. Most of Siberia and the Russian Far East at c. 20,000–18,000 rcbp was covered by tundra and cool steppe, with some forest formations in the river valleys. Climate was much colder and drier than it is today. Eighteen Upper Paleolithic sites in Siberia are radiocarbon dated strictly to the LGM, and at least six of them, located in southern parts of western and eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, have solid evidence of occupation during that time span. It seems clear that southern Siberia was populated by humans even at the height of the LGM, and that there was no dramatic decline or complete disappearance of humans in Siberia at that time. The degree of human adaptation to periglacial landscapes in the mid-Upper Paleolithic of northern Eurasia was quite high; humans coped with the cold and dry environmental conditions using microblade technology, artificial shelters, tailored clothes, and megafaunal bones as fuel. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Oldowan behavior and raw material transport: perspectives from the Kanjera Formation

The archaeological record of Oldowan hominins represents a diverse behavioral system. It has been suggested that exploitation of lithic resources by Oldowan hominins was simplistic and represented mostly use of local sources of stone. Here we investigate the raw material selection and transport behaviors of Oldowan hominins reflected in the stone artifact assemblages from the Kanjera South Formation, South Rachuonyo District, Kenya. Using geochemical methods (ED-XRF) artifacts are linked to primary and secondary source outcrops throughout southwestern Kenya. These data show that hominins selected raw materials for transport at frequencies that are significantly different from their availability on ancient landscapes. Furthermore, a substantial proportion of the assemblage represents transport over relatively long distances (>10 km). Our study further suggests that in the early stages of stone tool use hominins used a wide variety of raw materials and selected these materials at some distance from their eventual discard locations. Early hominin behavior may have incorporated an understanding of raw material source distributions across a more extensive landscape than has been previously documented. This supports the growing perspective that Oldowan technology represents a more complex behavioral pattern than is usually associated with the beginnings of hominin tool use.     

“伯”、“仲”、“叔”、“季”与西周晋侯世系

近年发掘的北赵晋国墓地为研究西周考古、历史等提供了极其宝贵的资料。该墓地中出土的大量铜器,引起了专家学者的广泛关注,研究成果涵盖很多方面,但仍有若干问题悬而未决,北赵墓地中墓主身份问题     

Resource abundance constraints on the early post-contact Cherokee population

We present the combination of an analysis of resource demand by the early post-contact (1721) Cherokee population with spatially explicit estimates of production for five key resources: architectural land, agricultural land, firewood, hard mast, and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). We combine a recent synthesis of village location and population, a map of recognized Cherokee territory, digital terrain data, estimates of per capita demand, and productive capacity for each resource. Average, high, and low demands were estimated for each resource and assigned based on a weighted function of terrain and distance from each village. We conclude that Cherokee demands for architectural and agricultural land, hard mast, and fuelwood were easily met within a short proximity to each town under all combinations of production and demand. These resources were likely not limiting, and were satisfied for the entire Cherokee population by less than 1% of the entire recognized Cherokee territory in 1721. These resources likely exceeded demand even when sources were restricted to the convex hull of the Cherokee territory, or to near stream, flat regions. Deer resources were likely harvested over a much larger area and to a much greater extent. Our best estimate of deer resource demand was 32% of annual sustainable production in the Cherokee territory, with from 16 to 48% of estimated sustainable production harvested for low and high demand estimates, respectively. Our estimates vary in response to uncertainties in deer production, harvest proportion, deer density, and sustainable harvest rates. Deer demand was substantially higher under all combinations of conditions than that available within the convex hull of Cherokee villages, indicating significant travel was needed to furnish deer requirements. Spatially explicit models that consider terrain- and distance-related tradeoffs suggest that Cherokee demand for deer drove harvest over areas consisting of over half the recognized Cherokee territory.     

Optically stimulated luminescence dating of heated materials using single-aliquot regenerative-dose procedure: a feasibility study using archaeological artefacts from India

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of heated/fired materials of archaeological importance from various parts of India was attempted. A single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) procedure was used for palaeodose determination in the quartz grains extracted from the heated materials using the luminescence produced by blue light stimulation. In most pottery samples, the palaeodose obtained using SAR-OSL is ∼6% lower than the palaeodose measured using thermoluminescence (TL) method. Broadly, there is good agreement between the SAR-OSL and TL ages of the artefacts and their archaeologically expected ages. The results suggest that routine dating of heated/fired materials using the SAR-OSL procedure is more practicable, especially when the TL sensitivity of the quartz grains is poor and availability of datable material is limited.     

Reflections on Retelling a Renaissance Murder

This mischievously artful essay plays out on several levels; think of them as storeys of an imaginary castle much like the real, solid, central Italian one it explores and expounds. On its own ground floor, the essay recounts a gruesome murder, a noble husband's midnight revenge upon his wife and upon her bastard lover, his own half–brother, in her castle chamber, in bed. In sex. Of course. The murder itself is pure Renaissance, quintessential Boccaccio or Bandello, but the aftermath, in fort and village, is more singular, more ethnographically delightful, as castle and village trace a ceremonious passage from frozen limbo to fluid grief and storytelling, finally set in motion by the arrival of the dead wife's brother. Meanwhile, one flight up, the essay retells my own investigation of the real castle's geometry, as I clambered through rooms, peered out windows, prowled the roof, and scanned blueprints seeking the places of the plotters' plots. In an expository attic, I lodge reflections on my teaching stratagems, as I led a first–year seminar into detection's crafts and exposition's ploys. All the while, on its rooftop, this essay dances among fantastical chimneys and turrets of high theory and literary practice, musing on the patent irony of artful artifice, which evokes both the irony and the pathos of scholars' cool histories about hot deeds and feelings. Art suggests we authors had best hide ourselves, unlike normal essayists, so as not to spoil the show. But, I posit, our self–effacement is so conspicuous that it proclaims our presence, as in fact it should, and, by so doing, trumpets the necessary tensions of our artifice and craft. Thus artfulness itself nicely both proclaims and celebrates the bittersweet frustrations of historians' and readers' quest for knowledge and, especially, for experience of a lost past.     

Cahill,Timothy C., An Annotated Bibliography of the Alamkāraśāstra

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

The significance of pockmarks to understanding fluid flow processes and geohazards

Underwater gas and liquid escape from the seafloor has long been treated as a mere curiosity. It was only after the advent of the side‐scan sonar and the subsequent discovery of pockmarks that the scale of fluid escape and the moon‐like terrain on parts of the ocean floor became generally known. Today, pockmarks ranging in size from the ‘unit pockmark’ (1–10 m wide, < 0.6 m deep) to the normal pockmark (10–700 m wide, up to 45 m deep) are known to occur in most seas, oceans, lakes and in many diverse geological settings. In addition to indicating areas of the seabed that are ‘hydraulically active’, pockmarks are known to occur on continental slopes with gas hydrates and in association with slides and slumps. However, possibly their potentially greatest significance is as an indicator of deep fluid pressure build‐up prior to earthquakes. Whereas only a few locations containing active (bubbling) pockmarks are known, those that become active a few days prior to major earthquakes may be important precursors that have been overlooked. Pockmark fields and individual pockmarks need to be instrumented with temperature and pressure sensors, and monitoring should continue over years. The scale of such research calls for a multinational project in several pockmark fields in various geological settings.