Ancient soil resources of the Usumacinta River Region,Guatemala

In this study we present the results of a combination of methods used to identify possible agricultural activity of the ancient Maya in the Usumacinta River Basin in Guatemala. These methods included stable carbon isotope analysis of bulk soil organic matter, soil profile investigations and a spatial model of gentle slopes and well-drained soils to identify favorable agricultural conditions. Stable carbon isotope analysis of bulk soil organic matter in particular offers potentially direct evidence of agricultural activity. The δ¹³C results suggest that there is a strong signature of C₄ plants, such as maize and tropical grasses, throughout the study area. Further, the current soil conditions and extent of relatively gently sloped areas are favorable to agriculture. Overall, the results are supportive of the hypothesis that the area, located between the polities of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilán, was agriculturally important to surrounding areas.     

Breaking Ranks: C. P. Snow and the Crisis of Mid-Century Liberalism, 1930–1980

C. P. Snow's identification of ‘two cultures’, as the literary critic F. R. Leavis pointed out in 1962, represents not an insight but a cliché, one that invites the repetition of further clichés about the origins of a divided culture, the need to bridge cultures, the emergence of a third culture, or the reality of one culture. Yet this recurrent feature of ‘two cultures’ talk does not nullify the concept's value as an object of study, if these discussions are treated as revealing points of entry into foreign historical contexts. This article adopts this approach, unearthing the liberal position that Snow developed as a novelist and critic from the 1930s, that he advanced in the form of a disciplinary lament in The Two Cultures (Snow, C.P. 1959 Snow, C.P. 1959. The two cultures and the scientific revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]. The two cultures and the scientific revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), and that — to his distress — increasingly came under radical critique from the mid-1960s. Ultimately, the technocratic liberalism that Snow associated with science at mid-century came to be closer to American neo-conservatism by 1980. By tracking the fortunes of the ideological position that structured The Two Cultures, rather than lifting that text out of its moment in an attempt to engage its arguments today, this article testifies to the abiding value of contextual analysis at a moment when intellectual historians are increasingly inclined to question and even displace it.     

A Critical Review of European and American Provisions for the Seismic Assessment of Existing Steel Moment-Resisting Frame Buildings

The publication of Part 3 of Eurocode 8 (EC8-3), dedicated to the seismic assessment of existing buildings, took place a decade ago. However, its application in engineering practice has been limited. Moreover, no studies have been conducted regarding the application of EC8-3 to steel structures. In this paper, a critical review and practical application of EC8-3 and ASCE41-13 are carried out. Issues related to the definition of the performance requirements, compliance criteria, and the consistency of the analysis procedures proposed by both standards are identified. Conceptual differences between both documents are highlighted, and several inconsistencies in EC8-3 are discussed.     

General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942

During General Mario Roatta's tenure as commander of the Italian 2nd Army in Yugoslavia, he faced a mounting Communist insurgency. To defeat the partisan forces of Tito, he resorted to proactive politics and a strategy of counter-insurgency. Owing to Italian military weakness and his army's lack of training in guerrilla warfare, Roatta was not averse to enlisting the services of Orthodox Serbs in Croatia, who the previous year had asked for Italian protection after a fearful massacre had been unleashed against them by Mussolini's handpicked ruler in Zagreb, the Croatian Usta?a leader Ante Paveli?. Against the wishes of the Fascist government in Rome, Roatta armed Serbs (called ?etniks) because they agreed to assist the Italian legions in fighting the partisans, their common ideological foe. But as Yugoslavia descended into civil war – one triggered by the Axis invasion – Roatta paid a price for his freelance pro-Serb politicking by alienating Zagreb, irritating the Germans, and dismaying his superiors in Rome. Italian policy was reduced to a tug-of-war between the Fascist empire-builders surrounding Mussolini and the military command in Yugoslavia, and Roatta became enmeshed in a cobweb of intrigues involving Croats, ?etniks and Germans. Apart from political manoeuvring, Roatta, in the ineluctable necessity of defeating the partisans, devised a detailed strategy of counter-insurgency. On 1 March 1942, he circulated a pamphlet entitled ‘3C’ among his commanders that spelled out military reform and draconian measures to intimidate the Slav populations into silence by means of summary executions, hostage-taking, reprisals, internments and the burning of houses and villages. By his reckoning, military necessity knew no choice, and law required only lip service. Roatta's merciless suppression of partisan insurgency was not mitigated by his having saved the lives of both Serbs and Jews from the persecution of Italy's allies Germany and Croatia. Under his watch, the 2nd Army's record of violence against the Yugoslav population easily matched the German. Tantamount to a declaration of war on civilians, Roatta's ‘3C’ pamphlet involved him in war crimes.     

Radiocarbon dates as data: quantitative strategies for estimating colonization front speeds and event densities

Archaeological analysis of large-scale prehistoric population history requires us to estimate rates of spatial spread during dispersals, and rates and magnitudes of temporal contraction during crashes. Using OxCal’s MCMC sampling routine, I introduce and demonstrate a simple and easily implemented method of estimating front speeds that takes due account of the uncertainty in the archaeological data (in both dates and distances), and argue that this method is more appropriate than those most often used in front speed estimation at present. I also propose a simple and easily implemented method of estimating event densities as a demographic proxy, as an alternative to summed calibrated probability distributions. I argue that this alternative is a significantly better technique, and show that its use also enables us to identify individual archaeological dates that are exerting particularly strong influence on the results, so that we can efficiently allocate our attention when assessing the possible effects of exogenous sampling uncertainty. To illustrate these methods I re-analyse two published datasets relating to the early Paleoindian colonization of North America. My results with the new technique indicate that even with a very noisy dataset, there was clear evidence in the framework of the INTCAL04 calibration curve for a drastic reduction in archaeological event densities following the Younger Dryas onset, followed by a prolonged period of reduced human activity, and a possible renewed phase of rapid growth after the Younger Dryas termination and onset of the Holocene. However, the revised estimate of the Younger Dryas marine reservoir offset in the INTCAL09 calibration curve for ∼12,550–12,900 cal BP changes the picture significantly, by flattening the peak in Clovis-age events and pushing it forward in time into the early Younger Dryas itself.     

Wotan and the ‘archetypal Ergriffenheit’: Mystical union, national spiritual rebirth and culture-creating capacity in C. G. Jung's ‘Wotan’ essay

This article analyses the 1936 “Wotan” essay by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung in light of one of its reigning motifs, Ergriffenheit. First, this term is examined within the works of Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto and Indologist Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, who used it to describe what they claimed to be the original religious experience, a state of being deeply stirred or even seized by the “the holy” or by “the ultimate reality.” The article then examines antecedents in Jung's theory of states of psychic seizure, in which two halves of the psyche come into conflict, the resolution of which leads to an increased capacity to create the arts of culture. The analysis then moves to the “Wotan” essay itself, where Jung brings together his own theory of psychic seizure with the theory of the original religious experience as proposed by the above-named scholars of religion in order to suggest that, under National Socialism, the Germans were in the midst of a collective confrontation with their own inner divinity, which should lead to a national spiritual rebirth. The article then investigates the works of several of the men Jung mentions in the essay, as well as his use of ancient Germanic mythology, to support his claim. Through his portrait of the Germanic archetype Wotan, Jung psychologizes and thereby essentializes the Romantic image of the Germans as “a people of poets and philosophers” as well as that of a Nietzschean “master-race.” In conclusion, the article argues that, at least in 1936, Jung's attitude towards Hitler and National Socialism was much more favorable than has previously been recognized.     

The Sino‐Soviet Conference, 1924–1927

Soviet Union issued two declarations toward China in 1919 and 1920, promising to nullify all treaty privileges in China previously established by the Tsarist government voluntarily. However, in the formal negotiations Karakhan insisted that old treaties must be replaced by new treaty. Finally, the Sino‐Soviet Agreement, literarily, “Agreement on General Principles for the Settlement of Outstanding Questions”, signed in May 1924 and diplomatic relations restored at once, a conference was stipulated to meet within one month to solve all questions and to conclude a formal treaty. Nevertheless, the conference was postponed for more than a year; when it did convene too many controversies led it nowhere. Since no treaty was produced at the Sino‐Soviet Conference, the old treaties were not abolished, therefore the Soviet's promises were never practiced.     

PETROGRAPHIC AND ISOTOPIC CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MARBLE OF THE ISLAND OF TINOS (GREECE)*

Most outcrops of good‐quality crystalline marble in Mediterranean countries were exploited in Greek and Roman times. Hence, a wide variety of marble is now found in archaeological excavations. The precise determination of the provenance of a marble object is of great archaeological importance, and is now mostly obtained by coupling the petrographic study of a thin section with the analysis of the C and O stable isotopes, or by stereomicroscopy and EPR. The existing databases are considerable but still insufficient, because our knowledge about and study of ancient Mediterranean quarries remain incomplete. The contribution of this research is to add new petrographic and isotopic data on small quarries on the Greek island of Tinos that were exploited in antiquity. This marble belongs to the same geological horizon; it is quite pure, sometimes dolomitic and characterized by a low‐T, high‐P metamorphism that produced a limited recrystallization (MGS varying from 0.64 to 2.50 mm) on marine limestone protoliths. The petrographic features are quite distinctive: the fabric is strongly lineated and often stressed; and the accessory minerals are ubiquitary quartz, ore minerals, graphite and muscovite. As far as the isotopic data are concerned, δ¹³C_PDB varies from 1.1 to 2.7, and δ¹⁸O_PDB from ?1.7 to ?11.4. Both the features and the data have been compared with those of similar marbles used in antiquity, showing that their combination mirrors the fingerprint of the Tinos marble.     

Tunnel engineering in the Iron Age: geoarchaeology of the Siloam Tunnel,Jerusalem

The Siloam Tunnel (ST) is the best-identified biblical structure that can be entered today. We use geological, structural, and chemical features of ST and its internal deposits to show that it is an authentic engineering project, without any pre-existing natural conduit that could have guided its excavators. Radiometrically and historically dated to ∼700 BCE, ST pinpoints the technological advance in leveling techniques that was essential for the construction of such a long tunnel without intermediate shafts. A combination of geological and archaeological evidence demonstrates that the circuitous route of ST and the final meeting of the two excavating teams are associated with continuous modifications of the plan to allow acoustic communication between hewers and the surface teams. Hydraulic plaster was applied throughout the tunnel in order to seal voids of dissolution and tectonic origin. Organic material accidentally entrapped in the plaster was carbon 14 dated, and speleothems were dated by U–Th, both corroborating the historic and epigraphic evidence ascribing the engineering advance in tunneling techniques to the Judahite King Hezekiah.     

Stable isotope evidence for palaeodiets in southern Turkmenistan during Historical period and Iron Age

The subsistence patterns of Iron Age and Historical period humans from south-western Turkmenistan have been reconstructed using the carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions of archaeological faunal and human bones. A qualitative comparison of the isotopic signatures points to a small proportion of ruminant meat and dairy in human diet for both periods. The ranges of proportions of dietary items yielded by a quantitative approach based on concentration dependent mixing models confirm the high proportions of plant food in the average diet, and show little change in the reconstructed diet for both periods. A comparison of results from zooarchaeological and isotopic approaches illustrates their complementarity in subsistence patterns reconstruction.