“广谱革命”及其研究新进展

广谱革命是20世纪60年代末期西方考古学者提出对旧石器时代晚期至新石器时代早期人类生计方式发生的显著变化的一种认识,它的意义在于导致了食物生产的开始。其一般使用系统分类对动植物资源进行研究,但这种分类体系对人类活动的敏感性不高。近年来,考古学者通过成本与收益对出土的动植物遗存进行等级分类。这种分类对人类活动具有敏感性,反映了史前人类劳动强度及人类与动植物关系的变化,从而为深入认识农业起源的动力、途径提供了可借鉴的模式。     

The politics of self-help: The Rockefeller Foundation,philanthropy and the ‘long’ Green Revolution

While scholars of contemporary philanthropy have observed a concerted interest in the promotion of ‘self-help,’ little has been said about the political history of this investment and its significance in determining both domestic and international development priorities. We locate this modern conceptualisation of self-help in early twentieth-century philanthropic practice that sought to ‘gift’ to individuals and communities the precious habit of self-reliance and social autonomy. The Rockefeller Foundation promoted rural development projects that deliberately sought to ‘emancipate’ the tradition-bound peasant, transforming him or her into a productive, enterprising subject. We begin by documenting their early agricultural extension work, which attempted to spark agrarian change in the US South through the inculcation of modern habits and aspirations among farmers and their families. These agrarian schemes illustrate the newfound faith that ‘rural up-lift’ could only be sustained if farming communities were trained to ‘help themselves’ by investing physically and psychologically in the process of modernisation. We then locate subsequent attempts to incentivise and accelerate international agricultural development within the broader geopolitical imperatives of the Green Revolution and the Cold War. While US technical assistance undoubtedly sought to prevent political upheaval in the Third World, we argue that Rockefeller-led modernisation projects, based on insights gleaned from behavioural economics, championed a model of human capital – and the idea of ‘revolution within’ – in order to contain the threat of ‘revolution without’. Approaching agricultural development through this problematisation of the farmer reveals the ‘long history’ of the Green Revolution – unfolding from the domestic to the international and from the late nineteenth century to the present – as well as the continuing role of philanthropy in forging a new global order.     

The risk of harm to archaeological artefacts in soil from dynamic subsurface pressures generated by agricultural operations: experimental studies

An investigation was made of the fracture risk to buried ceramic pots and bones from the subsurface pressures generated by agricultural operations. A method for generating subsurface pressures at 0.25 m depth in a soil bin was developed and used to explore fracture failure of modern replicates of ceramic pots corresponding to different archaeological periods and aged medieval human bone. Application of conductive traces to the objects’ surfaces allowed detection of fracturing in real‐time without excavation. Predictive models relating fracture of objects to subsurface pressure application were developed by relating the probability of fracture to observed survival statistics at increasing subsurface pressures. Subsurface pressures of above 100 kPa were sufficient to fracture the more fragile pots at a probability level of 90%. The lowest subsurface pressure causing bone fracture was 280 kPa; however, no relationship was observed between subsurface pressure and bone fracture, probably due to variation in bone material. The subsurface pressures generated and applied are within the range reported from field measurements during typical agricultural operations. They indicate that measures to control the generation of subsurface pressures would be necessary to mitigate risk of harm from agriculture to buried archaeology; for example, via low‐pressure tyres, tracks and appropriate tillage.     

Stealing the Water of Life: The Historicity of Contemporary Social Relationships

Pacific anthropology has predominantly concentrated on documenting the pre‐contact past or an acculturated present. This article explores an alternative focus on contemporary relationships, seen as both exhibiting historicity and agentive power. The control over scarce but vitally important resources, such as land and water, is the responsibility of the village leadership in the Tokelau atolls. The regulation of social behaviour establishes fecundity and agency in a manner that lends order to the universe. However, the achievement of a position of command, in particular over rights to land, is dependent upon knowledge of the past and of genealogical connections in the present. Claims to positions are commonly challenged, and this dynamic of contested ascendancy means that the past is always significantly present, although in different shapes.     

Age determination of Petra's engineered landscape – optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon ages of runoff terrace systems in the Eastern Highlands of Jordan

The unfavourable mountainous environment of the Petra region in southern Jordan was modified by ancient engineers to supply the Nabataean/Roman city of Petra with food and water. The area was reclaimed by installing extended runoff terrace systems and hydraulic structures. The agricultural terrace systems have so far been dated based on surface pottery, and the chronology of the systems is under debate. In this study, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating techniques were successfully applied to date these terrace systems. Samples were taken from the fills of agricultural terraces and underneath their walls to determine the chronology of the construction, use and abandonment of the agricultural terraces. The results suggest that runoff farming in the Petra region started around the beginning of the Common Era, and construction, use and maintenance lasted at least until 800 AD.     

Human impact and landscape utilization from the Mesolithic to medieval time traced by high spatial resolution pollen analysis and numerical methods

Pollen analysis in relation to archaeological excavations has been carried out by the coast of central Norway to investigate for the first time long-term human impact on the vegetation in this region. A total of 297 samples from eleven archaeological sites and connected bogs/peat profiles reveal the vegetation development from the Mesolithic until today. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to identify and elucidate the development through time and space, and the results of pollen diagrams from bogs are compared to the results of on-site pollen data. Human impact has transformed the vegetation to a varying degree in different time periods. A dense population connected to the shoreline is slightly visible as opening-up of the forest in the Mesolithic, whereas re-use of Mesolithic settlement sites for cultivation and grazing in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (from c. 2300 cal BC) is clearly documented by palaeobotany but weakly recorded in the archaeological record. Areas for settlement and cultivation are found from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages and pollen analysis contributes to a detailed picture of utilization of the landscape. The investigation shows the potential of combining archaeological and botanical data and analysing several small pollen sequences within an excavation area to reveal spatial patterns in vegetation development and human impact through time.     

Drainage on the Grand Prairie: the birth of a hydraulic society on the Midwestern frontier

The Grand Prairie of east central Illinois was notorious for a marshy environment that prevented dense agricultural settlement until late in the nineteenth century. While recent historical–geographical scholarship has focused on innovations in drainage technology, drainage-related laws and institutions, and the ecological impacts of wetland reclamation, it has largely failed to account for the persistence of agrarian structure, and its key component, land tenure, on the Grand Prairie. Late-nineteenth-century reclamation efforts were not quite so transformative as previously believed. The same landed elite that dominated in the pre-drainage era quickly emerged atop a system of public drainage that held the key to the region’s economic future. In this paper, we extend Karl Wittfogel and Donald Worster’s theorizations about ‘hydraulic civilizations’ from the realm of irrigation to that of drainage. While drainage was indeed important in shaping the history of east central Illinois, we argue that a distinctive social order in east central Illinois emerged from, and was shaped by, an older agrarian structure that had developed in response to marshy, unpredictable conditions before drainage began in the late 1800s. The beneficiaries of the old order did not yield power easily, and instead skillfully capitalized on the new opportunities presented by drainage enterprises, to create a ‘hydraulic society’ on the prairie. The new order continued to rely on the exploitation of tenant farmers even as the landscape itself was transformed into the intensely managed and highly productive Corn Belt of today.     

大遗址保护提出的历史叙事

系统分析“大遗址”及“大遗址保护”作为重要文物保护政策提出和专项保护行动出台的历史背景、重要事件和主要特点,从历史渊源、学术支撑、管理需求、制度保障四个方面展开,兼论彼此之间的交流互动与共同推进,并依据时代背景不同和工作内容侧重划分为三大阶段,试图为了解这一政策和专项行动出台的历史背景及相关问题构建一个比较系统的认知框架.     

Correcting Europe's political economy: The virtuous eclecticism of Georg Ludwig Schmid

The article provides an analysis of Georg Ludwig Schmid's ‘Reflexions sur l’Agriculture’, which was published as the first essay in the first issue of the publications of the Oeconomical Society of Berne, founded in 1759. Schmid connected the agricultural improvement movement of the time to the logic of international power competition that caused the 7 Years’ War and wished to preserve political economy as agronomy for the cause of peace and virtuous economic progress. In his essay on commerce and luxury, he devised a patriotic political economy based on the notion of a marche naturelle, or a natural progress of opulence, which enabled statesmen and political economists to separate the productive from the pathological features of economic development, healthy and necessary growth from luxury. Adam Smith deployed a similar model in the Wealth of Nations but argued that Europe's retrograde development was so fundamental and comprehensive that it made it impossible to use this kind of natural progress model on its own as a meaningful guide for comprehensive economic and political reform.     

史家王树枬及其《欧洲族类源流略》

王树枬是清末民初一位政治家、历史家,他的《欧洲族类源流略》是集中体现其思想的历史著述。本书对欧洲历史夹叙夹议,并且时时对照中国,以种族考察为纲领而论述国家的兴衰,不同于一般外国历史地理之书,这是一个明显的特点。作者的撰著宗旨是要汲取欧洲各民族的历史鉴戒,探求中国保国、保种、保教的途径。但他主张君主政体优于民主制度,认为中国上古文化是西学之源,表现出比较保守的思想倾向,也有不少错误的臆测。王树枬在近代的思想、立场与个人经历,体现的是一大批具备爱国精神,却脱离不开传统思想体系束缚之士人的尴尬处境,然而,其社会群体的历史影响,则不可忽视。