Die Astrologie der Antike

This survey of classical astrology is in three parts: a) a summary of its rich and eventful history from the Babylonians to the Renaissance; b) the methods of calculation which remained the same throughout the period, based on the planets, the zodiac and the “twelve houses”; c) an analysis of astrological thought, which is quite different from any modern approach; providing a rigid interpretation of the universe, it granted confort and security. It presents a curious combination of religion and science: the physics is the one forwarded by the stoïcs, with an equal balance of the four elements, and the microcosmic economy within the soul representing the macrocosmic one; but such a determinism is in contradiction with the Stoics' sense of responsability which presupposes free will.     

Elektrotechnik - Entstehung einer wissenschaftlichen Disziplin1

The scientific institutionalization of electrical engineering took place in the 1880's; however, the science of electricity did not yet furnish proof of its practical efficiency. The founding of chairs in electrical engineering at this time was connected with the rise of heavy current industry, whereas weak current developments, as for instance telegraphy and telephony, played virtually no role. The principal connections of the discipline of electrical engineering shifted in the following years from physics to mechanical engineering, before electrical engineering became an independent discipline. The author gives an account of this development and presents theses for it, as well as shows a research program of the history of electrical engineering between 1880 and the First World War.     

PETS OR MEAT: CLASS,IDEOLOGY, AND SPACE IN ROGER & ME*

This paper offers a reading of Michael Moore's docu-comedy, Roger & Me, a film ostensibly chronicling the director's effort to interrogate General Motors Chairman Roger Smith following massive plant closures in and around Flint, Michigan in the 1980s. Our analysis focuses on four key themes: (1) the status of “community” as an ideological lever both prior and subsequent to GM's layoffs; (2) the spatial consequences of economic restructuring, expressed most formidably in the division between public and private space; (3) the charge that Moore's film suffers from a lack of objectivity; and (4) the notable absence of any significant representation of labor resistance to the plant closures. The film's themes, we argue, coalesce in an emblematic sequence involving Rhonda Britton, a woman who sells rabbits as both pets and meat. The paper concludes by calling for increased attention on the part of geographers to filmic portrayal, and, more generally, to all forms of representation and the issues which surround them.     

Integration of Complementary Archaeological Prospection Data from a Late Iron Age Settlement at Vesterager—Denmark

The complementary use of various archaeological prospection data sets offers a series of new possibilities for the investigation of prehistoric settlements. In addition to the separate interpretations of the single methods, the implementation of image fusion provides an additional tool to obtain an even higher degree of data integration during the interpretation process. To investigate some possibilities and risks of image fusion, a procedure frequently used in the medical field but rarely applied in archaeology, various algorithms inside a dedicated MATLAB toolbox TAIFU (Toolbox for Archaeological Image FUsion) were tested on the geophysical prospection data from an Iron Age settlement near Vesterager in West Jutland, Denmark. The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology had conducted large-scale, high-resolution ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry surveys at the site in 2014, based on its discovery by the Ringkøbing Museum through aerial photos and the results of a follow-up excavation in 2009. The aim was to determine if, and to what extent, geophysical prospection together with a novel integrative interpretational approach was able to add more detailed information to an already known prehistoric settlement. Results yielded a variety of deeper insights into the separate farms (dated to around AD 400), including the discovery of several new structures and more information about the construction of the longhouses, as well as a first suggestion on how to implement image fusion into the process of analysis and archaeological interpretation of geophysical data sets.     

Die sektion Iran,Kaukasien und nachbargebiete auf dem bevorstehenden 24. Internationalen orientalistenkongress München, 28. August bis 4. September 1957

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Stapedial footplate fixation in a 4000-year-old temporal bone from Franzhausen II,Austria

In one of 185 temporal bones from 100 individuals excavated from the Bronze Age cemetery Franzhausen II in Lower Austria, stapedial footplate fixation was detected, in a 16–20-year-old male. Examination by surgical microscope, flexible endoscope and computed tomography revealed that the stapes footplate is almost completely fixed into the oval window, with abnormal bone formation in its anterior end. As shown by computed tomographic imaging there were no radiolucent zones around the cochlea, which can sometimes be seen in modern patients with cochlear otosclerosis. Most findings lead to the conclusion that this case of a stapes ankylosis nearly 4000 years ago is probably due to otosclerosis.     

Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept

This essay explores the origins and the development of a ‘communicationsrevolution’, which would give rise to a new concept withinhistoriography. It proposes that the Communications Revolutioncan be explained as a macrohistorical process, comparable tothe Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, whichhave both had permanent and irreversible consequences in themodern era. The communications revolution, like the other two,began in the early modern era, and is still ongoing. The conceptof a Communications Revolution encompasses smaller ‘mediarevolutions’, more easily ascribed to a specific historicalperiod, and to a large extent mutually interrelated and dependent.The development of postal services gave rise to a new understandingof space and time, and it is this development that the essayidentifies as the mainspring of change in the communicationsrevolution. Postal services enabled faster movements of people,goods, and information. The new medium of the printed book,newspaper or sheet magnified the effects of this faster disseminationof information and news. So the Communications Revolution canbe argued to have been the motor that enabled the constructionof the infrastructure of the modern world, newspapers, cartography,and the ‘public sphere’ of politics, of warfareand diplomacy. Indeed, there is scope for discussion as to whetherit was in fact the Communications Revolution which may haveopened the way for both the Scientific Revolution and the IndustrialRevolution.