SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF FAIENCE FRAGMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO THE TOWN MOSAIC AT KNOSSOS*

We analysed a faience fragment from Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, to determine whether it belonged to the Town Mosaic, excavated at Knossos. Three Town Mosaic fragments from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford were also examined. The objects were analysed using non‐destructive variable‐pressure scanning electron microscopy with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectrometry. The Bristol object's composition and microstructures are similar to those of the Town Mosaic samples. Our results are also comparable to those from polished samples of Minoan faience (Tite et al. 2009 ), showing that VP SEM–EDX gives reliable results without invasive sampling. Silicaceous, copper‐rich microspheres were identified for the first time in two of the Ashmolean objects.     

上海青龙镇遗址出土瓷器和砖瓦样品热释光特性研究

利用热释光测定年代技术对青龙镇出土样品的烧造年代进行检测分析,以求帮助了解不同历史时期青龙镇瓷器贸易的发展状况。为此,本工作以青龙镇遗址出土瓷器中的67件瓷片及4件砖瓦样品为研究对象,用热释光前剂量饱和指数法测定瓷片样品古剂量;用热释光高温细颗粒技术测定砖瓦样品古剂量;用厚源α粒子计数法和X射线荧光光谱技术测量样品年剂量。瓷片样品热释光年代结果从唐代至南宋不等,砖瓦样品年代结果为北宋时期烧造,与文献记载中隆平寺塔的始建时间相符。     

Historical Archaeology and the Recent Urban Past

This paper examines the ways in which international historical archaeologists have explored the recent past, in an effort to inform and contribute to contemporary debates about social identity and social inclusion. It is argued that the archaeology of the mundane and everyday can contribute to contemporary culture by creating a sense of community and developing social cohesion. Emphasis is placed upon the archaeology of the recent urban past and case studies are presented from New York, Sydney and Cape Town. The paper concludes that the study of the materiality of urban social life offers a powerful research tool for social scientists, and that archaeologists and heritage interpreters should make greater use of this form of evidence within the context of early 21st‐century urban regeneration schemes in the UK.     

Contested Identities: The Dissonant Heritage of European Town Walls and Walled Towns

Town walls have always played a critical role in shaping the identities and images of the communities they embrace. Today, the surviving fabric of urban defences is a feature of heritage holding great potential as a cultural resource but in management terms one that poses substantial challenges, both practical and philosophical. Town walls can be conceptualised as a ‘dissonant’ form of heritage whose value is contested between different interest groups and whose meanings are not static but can be rewritten. Evidence is gathered from walled towns across Europe, including member towns of the WTFC (Walled Towns Friendship Circle) and inscribed UNESCO World Heritage Sites, to explore the cyclical biographies of town walls in their transformation from civic monuments, through phases of neglect, decay and destruction to their current status as cherished cultural resources. To explore this area of interface between archaeology and tourism studies, the varying attitudes of populations and heritage agencies to walled heritage are reviewed through examination of policies of conservation, preservation, presentation and restoration. Areas of commonality and contrast are thus identified.     

Sustainable architectural conservation according to traditions of Islamic waqf: the World Heritage–listed Stone Town of Zanzibar

Sustainability in the conservation of architectural heritage is now more extensively considered than it was decades ago. The introduction of the concept of sustainability to the field marked hopes to overcome problems threatening heritage sites. There are general concepts guiding sustainable conservation. However, heritage specifics play important roles in achieving sustainability, and may direct the formulation of sustainable concepts to be applied. This paper is an attempt to add to the discourse of heritage sustainability by discussing buildings managed through a tradition of Islamic waqf in the World Heritage Stone Town of Zanzibar. It examines sustainability in terms of its financial, social, managerial, and environmental aspects. The relatively good survival rate of waqf buildings in the old town over several centuries suggests sustainable and transmissible ‘genes’ within the tradition. Waqf was found to elaborate ways to strike a balance between heritage consumption and use, avoiding gentrification, and enabling collective urban conservation. It further suggests that sustainable conservation cannot avoid monetary sacrifices, and if it is to be sustainable in the long term it should be inherent in the heritage itself.     

‘A Bad Lot’: Local Politics and the Survey of Oxkraal and Kamastone, 1853-1923

ABSTRACT

The large Fingo reserve areas of Oxkraal and Kamastone in the Queenstown Division were the site of significant social change and colonial efforts at spatial engineering in order to guide the area from communities under chiefs and hereditary headmen into landscapes with blocks of yeoman farmers and surplus labourers. From the 1850s onward, the area was a target for such efforts, which centred on the survey and titling of finite parcels to individual households. However, local communities, extant Fingo authorities, and various individuals sought to modify the project before it could be carried out, and they worked to circumvent its more onerous aspects afterwards. The relationship between the state and the Oxkraal and Kamastone communities shows both the fixations of the former and the resilient adaptability of the latter, a combination that exposes the limits of each in controlling the changing context of colonial interventions.     

Cultural Innovation and Translation in the Eastern Cape: Jan Tzatzoe,Xhosa Intellectual and the Making of an African Gospel, 1817–1833

Abstract

This article describes the construction of a truly African Bible on the London Missionary Society's Eastern Cape Buffalo River mission station in the early years of the colonial encounter. Largely unacknowledged in the historical record, the isiXhosa translations were made in an intellectual partnership involving Jan Tzatzoe, a cultural and intellectual intermediary and innovator, and two European missionaries, John Brownlee and Friedrich Gottlob Kayser. A particular focus is Tzatzoe's breakthrough in moving the depiction of Jesus Christ towards Christ as Xhosa healer or ‘physician’. The article builds upon the renewed scholarly attention directed towards intermediaries by examining African involvement in the creation of crucial discourses and the conditions under which colonial texts were produced. It is suggested that Tzatzoe and other African linguistic intermediaries might be thought of as the vanguard of an African intellectual tradition born in the colonial encounter.     

清代河南朱仙镇的商业--以山陕会馆碑刻资料为中心的考察

朱仙镇是清代著名商镇之一。其兴起约在明代中后期,康熙、雍正年间迅速发展,乾隆年间达到鼎盛,全镇商人商号数量超过千家。在该镇汇集的商品除相当部分供应省城开封之外,流通范围大致可覆盖河南北部的开封、归德、彰德、卫辉等府。     

日本所藏有关夏圭的资料

本文介绍了日本美术界对夏圭绘画的研究现状,进而对日本收藏的《山水图》、《江城图》与台北故宫所藏的《溪山清远图》做了对比研究,指出了三图的相互关联与区别,为夏圭山水艺术与南宋宫廷绘画的进一步研究提供了新的资料。