新起点 新高度 新课题——学习《中共中央关于构建社会主义和谐社会若干重大问题的决定》

党的十六届六中全会作出的《中共中央关于构建社会主义和谐社会若干重大问题的决定》,开辟了中国特色社会主义事业的新境界。这一马克思主义中国化的最新理论成果,标志着中国特色社会主义建设进入了一个新的历史起点,体现了我们党对中国特色社会主义的认识达到一个新的理论和实践高度,它为新世纪新阶段中国特色社会主义建设提出了新的实践课题。     

Recent Researches Among The Pyramids

Recent consideration of the date of construction of the hall at Tamworth Castle puts the building into a medieval context. It is suggested that the structure was raised in the second quarter of the fifteenth century or earlier. With a span of over eight metres (27 feet) its impressive tie-beam and double collar roof trusses represent the full structural development of the post and truss tradition and its place in that tradition is discussed. This significant late medieval timber frame has not stirred much interest since J. C. Buckler drew part of a roof truss (B.M., M.S. 36436, p.38620) and little documentary evidence has come to light which might establish close dating of the structure. A short account of the associated domestic buildings inside the shell keep reflects the general trend from first floor to ground floor hall and the eventual abandonment of the latter as the centre of the household.     

Walsingham Priory,a Memoir Read at the Meeting of the Institute in Cambridge,June, 1854 : With an Account of Recent Discoveries

The conventional wisdom on the origins and purpose of homestead moats is that they functioned as indicators of status. But that makes no distinction between manorial and homestead moats, and fails to take account of the combination of circumstances in early fourteenth-century England that resulted in a subsistence crisis of devastating proportions: the worst, it is now believed, in our recorded history. In 1300, many rural areas were already dangerously overcrowded. But it was the Agrarian Crisis of 1315–22, starting with back-to-back harvest failures and the Great European Famine of 1315–17, that caused the starving ‘undersettles’ to turn to crime and brought a tide of criminal violence to the localities. Harvests improved, but the violence continued until the Black Death (1348–49), fuelled by poverty and unprecedented taxes. And it is the argument of this paper that homestead moats, far from being the trophy assets of a would-be gentry class, were in reality precautions against the criminal activity to which all well-off householders were exposed.     

A Persian Talisman

The small plate or mount, engraved with two adorsed snakes, is described briefly. It is in Ringerike style of the late 10th or early 11th century. The implications of this discovery for the disputed interpretation of a late-Viking turf-walled hall are discussed in detail. An established Viking presence at Waltham is attested by the fact that Tovi the Staller held the estate under Cnut. Field names and the presence of sokemen in the Domesday record are mentioned.