Plant exploitation and ethnopalynological evidence from the Wadi Teshuinat area (Tadrart Acacus,Libyan Sahara)

Pollen analyses of 13 archaeological sites in the Wadi Teshuinat area, in southwestern Fezzan, Libya, were synthesised to explore the potential contribution of palynological investigation to archaeological research in this area. During the Holocene, the sites were occupied by pre-Pastoral (hunter–gatherers) and Pastoral (pastoralists) cultures. Different pollen stratigraphies and floras characterised the diverse sites and the relevant cultural phases. Pollen data were reported by discussing the sites separately, and by combining them to interpret the regional data set. Emphasis was made on the anthropogenic pollen indicators and grasses, including large grass pollen grains (>40 μm), which were considered evidence of plant transport into the site. These were ethnobotanical markers, human-made evidence of plant harvesting by hunter–gatherers, or of animal breeding by pastoralists. The disappearance of some wild cereals was also observed, consistent with increasing climate dryness and land exploitation. Macroremains were used as a parallel tool to better understand plant exploitation in the region.     

The consilience of historical and isotopic approaches in reconstructing the medieval Mediterranean diet

During the Middle Ages, the economies of Europe, the religious directives involving dietary requirements, and the general human subsistence base were transformed. These complicated and intertwined issues are starkly revealed in an isotopic study of two inland Italian human populations that are separated by approximately 850 years in time. Stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotopic values observed in human dentin and bone collagen from the sites of early medieval Castro dei Volsci and late medieval Rome are consistent with diets that differed substantially. As the North Atlantic opened to fishing and food preservations methods improved, Mediterranean peoples increased their fish consumption dramatically, and in doing so, met the religious directives of the Catholic Church. By analyzing both teeth and bone collagen within individuals, long-term feeding behaviors are documented, and the utility of last erupted teeth collagen as sources of adult dietary information is established. This study offers the first physical evidence of this new economic reality linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean economies at the end of the Middle Ages.     

Underwater archaeological parks: a new perspective and a challenge for conservation—the Italian panorama

The conservation in situ of underwater archaeological heritage is a highly stimulating subject for both archaeologist and conservator as it permits planning and experimentation of new treatment methods opening up new possibilities for conservation, protection and scientific research. This paper offers some remarks on this subject and shows the experience of some Italian underwater archaeological parks.     

中央财政经济委员会成立始末

中央财政经济委员会从 194 8年 9月中央政治局扩大会议提出逐步统一财经工作 ,到194 9年 3月中共七届二中全会正式决定建立 ,经过筹备 ,于 194 9年 7月 12日正式成立。中央财政经济委员会是由原中央财政经济部与华北财经委员会合并成立的 ,简称“中财委” ,由陈云任主任、薄一波任副主任。中财委成立后在短短两个月内 ,在稳定当时的金融物价、统一财经管理、调整工商业方面做了大量的工作 ,为建国初期财政经济的恢复和发展奠定了一定的基础。 194 9年 10月 2 1日 ,政务院财经委员会在中央财政经济委员会的基础上成立 ,5年后 ,政务院财政经济委员会撤消 ,其职能被国务院相关部委和直属机构所取代。     

铁路交通流视角下中原城市群城市体系演变：基于城市中心性与中介性的分析

城市体系研究主要关注城市的节点性与城际关系两个方面，而城市网络研究将这两个关键要素统一起来，为进一步探讨此问题提供了新的思路。通过城际联系的视角，本文从城市的“中心性”和“中介性”两个维度来重新定义城市的节点地位。基于此，研究分析了铁路交通流视角下近十年来中原城市群城市体系整体和局部的结构变化，试图提供一种网络视角下城市体系演变的不同图景。研究发现：①城市中心性和中介性呈现出截然相反的变化趋势；②高中介性的门户城市更易提升自身地位；③城市中心性的层级结构愈发显著，而中介性更加扁平。在一体化建设的背景下，研究讨论了中原城市群城际体系演变的特征与问题。     

Fragments from many pasts: layering the toponymic tapestry of Milan

In the recent literature on the cultural politics of naming, toponyms and street names are increasingly read within the wider social–historical context upon which naming is contingent. In this perspective, naming is often seen as an act of power and a way to inscribe an ideological discourse into the landscape. In this article, we analyze the street names currently inscribed in the historical center of the Italian city of Milan, Italy as a reflection of its long and contested social and political history. Fragments of all the different toponymic regimes and hegemonic discourses that took over one after the other over time have remained inscribed in Milan’s street network, originating a complex tapestry in which different pasts revive and conflicting ideologies co-exist. In this context, we examine the role Geographical Information Science (GIScience) methods and technologies play in quantifying, revealing, and visualizing the spatial patterns of downtown Milan’s toponymic texture at the urban scale and at the scale of the six historical neighborhoods.     

Benevolent hegemon,neighborhood bully,or regional security provider? Russia’s efforts to promote regional integration after the 2013–2014 Ukraine crisis

Russia has tried to use economic incentives and shared historical and cultural legacies to entice post-Soviet states to join its regional integration efforts. The Ukraine crisis exposed the weaknesses of this strategy, forcing Russia to fall back on coercive means to keep Kiev from moving closer to the West. Having realized the limits of its economic and soft power, will Russia now try to coerce post-Soviet states back into its sphere of influence? Fears of such an outcome overestimate Russia’s ability to use coercion and underestimate post-Soviet states capacity to resist. Rather than emerging as a regional bully, Russia is trying to push Eurasian integration forward by becoming a regional security provider. The article relates these efforts to the larger literature on regional integration and security hierarchies – bridging the two bodies of theory by arguing that regional leaders can use the provision of security to promote economic integration. Despite initial signs of success, we believe that the new strategy will ultimately fail. Eurasian integration will continue to stagnate as long as Russia’s economic and soft power remain weak because Russia will be unable to address the economic and social problems that are at the root of the region’s security problems.     

Revising history: Elvira Giallanella’s Umanità and the editing of gender

A mix of fantasy, history, spirituality, and political engagement, Elvira Giallanella’s film, Umanità (1920), is a sort of Carrollian ‘through the looking glass’ in which reality resembles itself but upside-down. In the immediate aftermath of WWI, Giallanella’s film – a revision of Vittorio Emanuele Bravetta’s 1916 children’s story from 1916. children’s story – both reflects and critiques gender roles that had been temporarily fissured by the war itself. A feminist position transpires in the juxtaposition of the pre-war male-authored text with the postwar female-directed film, further revised by men. An invaluable historical source, Umanità not only offers insight into a woman’s and a feminist’s perspective on the Great War and its aftermath but also sheds light on the moral, political, and philosophical atmosphere of destabilization at the time. Coming full circle, Umanità suffered from the very same revisions by the re-established postwar patriarchy, and by the end of the 1920s, cinema itself had been reclaimed as male territory, leaving the film lost amongst the debris. Umanità’s resurfacing in 2007 allows us to reflect on the process of history-making in itself: what is omitted, what is included, and more importantly whose voices will be validated enough to be heard along the way. This instance – one amongst several – can serve as an example of how history is indeed a continuous process made up of (re)visions, and never a singular, univocal one.     

‘An entirely new land’? Italy’s post-war culture and its Fascist past

Scholarship has for decades emphasized the significant continuities in Italian culture and society after Fascism, calling into question the rhetoric of post-war renewal. This article proposes a reassessment of that rhetoric through the analysis of five key metaphors with which Italian intellectuals represented national recovery after 1945: parenthesis, disease, flood, childhood and discovery. While the current critical consensus would lead us to expect a cultural conversation characterized by repression and evasion, an analysis of these five post-war metaphors instead reveals both a penetrating reassessment of Italian culture after Fascism and an earnest adherence to the cause of national revitalization. Foregrounding the inter-relation of Italy’s prospects for change and its continuities with Fascism, these metaphors suggest that post-war Italian intellectuals conceived of their country’s hopes for renewal, as well as its connections to the recent past, in terms that transcend the binary division favoured in many historical accounts.     

From Propaganda to ‘Information’: Reforming Government Communications in Britain

Since the 1980s, several studies of post-war British propaganda have been published. While many of these have focused on developments abroad, some have explored domestic work carried out under the auspices of the Central Office of Information. Established in 1946, the Central Office of Information provided a range of services to government departments, including advertising and public opinion polling, but it was just part of a wider system of official communications that has tended to attract less attention in the historiography. Reorganised by Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour governments, this system was presented to the public as a means of disseminating impartial and apparently non-controversial ‘facts’ about government policy. Few commentators today accept that justification, but little is known about why it emerged after the Second World War or what impact it had on existing communications machinery. Taking a broad view of the subject that considers the inter-war and wartime antecedents to the post-war communications system, this paper seeks to fill in some of the gaps that have emerged in the literature. Focusing on shifts in official nomenclature and departmental practice, it explores the relationship propaganda shared to government policy and its broader legacy in the twentieth century.