Cultural revitalisation after catastrophe: the Qiang culture in A’er

The culture of the Qiang ethnic minority in Western China has been threatened by assimilation with the majority culture, and many Qiang no longer take part in traditional ceremonies or use their cultural skills and knowledge. The devastating 2008 earthquake in Sichuan killed a 10th of the Qiang population and destroyed monuments, houses and villages. The Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Centre (CHP), a citizen volunteer non-governmental organisation, launched a project to help a Qiang village named A’er preserve its intangible and tangible cultural heritage. This paper describes the damage that was done and the needs of the Qiang people in the remote village of A’er, which is generally considered one of the last major repositories of traditional Qiang culture. The A’er people, despite their desperate situation, were determined to save their cultural heritage. The CHP team, working with them, provided necessary instruments and methods for recording. The Qiang people of A’er village themselves decided what they would record and produced an introduction to the A’er Qiang culture named ‘The A’er Archive’ and an elementary conversation booklet over which A’er villagers explicitly maintained copyright.     

Whose cultural value? Representation,power and creative industries

ABSTRACT

The debate around ‘cultural value’ has become increasingly central to policy debates on arts and creative industries policy over the past ten years and has mostly focused on the articulation and measurement of ‘economic value’, at the expense of other forms of value—cultural, social, aesthetic. This paper’s goal is to counter this prevalent over-simplification by focusing on the mechanisms through which ‘value’ is either allocated or denied to cultural forms and practices by certain groups in particular social contexts. We know that different social groups enjoy different access to the power to bestow value and legitimise aesthetic and cultural practices; yet, questions of power, of symbolic violence and misrecognition rarely have any prominence in cultural policy discourse. This article thus makes a distinctive contribution to creative industry scholarship by tackling this neglected question head on: it calls for a commitment to addressing cultural policy’s blind spot over power and misrecognition, and for what McGuigan (2006: 138) refers to as ‘critique in the public interest’. To achieve this, the article discusses findings of an AHRC-funded project that considered questions of cultural value, power, media representation and misrecognition in relation to a participatory arts project involving the Gypsy and Traveller community in Lincolnshire, England.     

微波技术在砖石质文物含水率检测中的应用

水是造成砖石质文物劣化的主要因素之一,因此探明其在文物内部的分布、运移规律是开展保护研究的重要基础。微波技术在检测材料内部的水分含量方面表现出较好前景,但在文物保护领域还未普遍应用。基于此,本研究首先介绍了微波技术的理论基础和相关仪器,并选取山西省的长春玉皇庙为对象,针对砖石材料的内部含水率开展了室内样块检测和现场墙体检测。结果表明,微波技术能够较为准确地揭示出文物内部的空间含水率分布规律,这对于研究其病害成因等具有重要作用。此外,与其他多种无损检测技术相比,微波技术检测材料含水率的优点更多,值得文物工作者进一步研究与应用。     

博物馆文物的防震保护研究（三）——陈列文物的地震安全性分析

通过分析博物馆馆藏文物的悬吊、固定、浮放等基本放置形式,探讨了文物的陈列特征及其可能造成的震害因素。综合考察和分析研究了国内外浮放式物体及陈列文物的运动状态,指出陈列文物在地震发生时的主要危害性运动是滑移和倾覆。根据相关浮放物在地震作用下的计算方法、上海博物馆文物的陈列特征及防震设计参数,提出简便实用的浮放式陈列文物稳定性计算模型,编制了适合上海博物馆文物安全性分析的计算程序。并以上海博物馆文物陈列的3类接触材料、4楼中国古代玉器馆的典型陈列文物为试点,计算了陈列文物在地震中遭受破坏的临界值。表明在设防水准的大震和中震情况下,目前陈列现状的绝大多数文物均存在倾覆和滑移安全隐患,但当文物所受到的地震动减小到110gal时可满足陈列安全。     

后过程主义考古学的形成——读伊恩·哈德《解读过去》

考古学的进步是以丧失其纯洁性为代价的。     

Intensive El Niño and the Iron Age of South-eastern Africa

Burnt daga structures in Iron Age villages serve as proxies for severe drought on the plateau of southern Africa. The distribution of burnt daga remains in two other rainfall areas, KwaZulu-Natal and the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone over Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, establishes a sequence of simultaneous burnings that parallels the severe droughts recorded for the interior plateau. These widespread correspondences suggest a common cause. Another correspondence with natural proxy data from South America indicates that intensive El Niño events most likely caused the droughts.     

馆藏文物描述元数据方案探讨

信息社会中博物馆的知识传播职能从被动转向主动,博物馆采用信息技术管理藏品和相关数据,不仅要满足传统业务需求,也要面向网络环境中的使用者。在此过程中,文物藏品信息在互联网环境下的呈现,需要采用标准化的描述元数据方案和受控词汇描述文物的核心信息。该研究首先说明文物数据标准的定义与类型,阐述文物描述元数据的概念与作用,并对比CONA、CDWA Lite、Object ID和第一次全国可移动文物普查的描述元数据方案,说明元数据方案差异反映出的设计需求和结果差异;再进一步对比大英博物馆、大都会博物馆、北京故宫博物院、台北故宫博物院线上文物藏品检索方式,通过检视其检索结果的信息结构与内容,阐述合理的描述元数据方案能呈现丰富信息并导向精准检索。最后建议我国文物博物馆领域应完善文物数据标准,文博机构应制定规范化的文物描述元数据方案和配套实施的编目规则与本地受控词表;文博机构官网在线藏品检索系统应考虑用户需求,呈现完善的编目成果。     

高光谱图像系统应用于模糊印章的提取研究

传统书画作品中存在有大量模糊不清的印章,对此类印章尚没有很好的手段进行提取和鉴别。为解决这一问题,本工作采用一种用高光谱图像系统采集书画中模糊印章的光谱-图像信息,采用最小噪声分离变换(MNF)处理光谱图像数据,提升了模糊印章的可辨识度。结果表明,采用该方法能够有效的将模糊印章的信息提取出来,有利于印章的鉴别和研究,为书画的文物价值和真伪鉴别的研究提供了科学有效的手段。     

固定和浮放条件下文物展柜动力响应分析与试验研究

目前对文物保护的研究主要以试验为主,本研究试图用数值方法分析文物展柜的动力学特性,以解决试验分析方法所导致的缺陷。为此,对固定和浮放两种不同边界条件的文物展柜进行地震作用和简谐激励下的动力响应分析,给出了展柜展台面处的加速度动力放大系数(简称放大系数)上限值。以某博物馆展柜为原型,按1∶1/0.39进行缩尺振动试验,得出两种边界条件下展柜展台面处的放大系数。对试验展柜建立有限元模型,通过与试验对比,验证模型及分析方法的正确性。然后,建立展柜模型的有限元模型,对5种尺寸的展柜进行了动力响应分析,并考虑激励幅值、激励频率等对放大系数的影响。分析结果有助于指导文物的防震保护工作。     

文物计算机辅助修复方法探讨

为提高文物的修复效率和修复质量,改变传统以人工技艺为主的修复方法,探讨利用计算机辅助文物修复方法。通过图像处理研究计算机辅助文物修复的设计方法,研究包括文物破损边界特征的数据提取,实现文物修复模型的生成、修复方案结构设计优化。以吴虎鼎为应用案例进行了试验。研究结果表明,计算机辅助修复可以缩短文物修复周期、提高文物修复质量。