清末民初广州城市的环卫制度与环境整治

清末民初是中国历史上一个重要的转型时期,广州城市环卫制度的构建随着这一时期政治制度的变革而展开,经历了从清末新政以前的缺失,到新政以后至1920年代逐渐形成的过程。与此同时,广州城市环境卫生的整治,在形成中的环卫制度指导下,向制度化、规范化的方向转变。从此以后,广州市的环境整治由民间的无序行为,走向以政府或政府指导下有序的法治化轨道。清末民初广州市的城市环卫制度与环境整治方式的改变,对民国时期乃至新中国初年的广州城市环境卫生的管理均产生了重要的影响。     

Copper production at Baratti (Populonia,southern Tuscany) in the early Etruscan period (9th–8th centuries BC)

Populonia is commonly regarded as one of the most important iron working centres in Europe in the 1st millennium BC. However, multiple layers of copper slags have been recently discovered at the bottom of the slag deposit occurring along the shoreline of the underlying Baratti Gulf. Copper slag layers have been radiocarbon dated to the 9th–8th centuries BC, i.e. to an early metallurgical stage predating the later large-scale iron production. The overall features of copper slags indicate a single-step smelting process of copper-rich ores containing variable amounts of Zn and Pb. Chemical and textural features of copper slags indicate an optimised, high-efficiency metallurgical process.     

The production of speiss (iron arsenide) during the Early Bronze Age in Iran

In this paper, analyses of some unusual slag samples from the prehistoric site of Tepe Hissar in northeastern Iran are presented. These slags are the remains of a five-thousand-year-old pyrotechnological process that produced speiss, a quasi-metallic material usually formed as an accidental by-product of copper or lead smelting. We argue that the “speiss slags” from Tepe Hissar suggest the intentional production of iron–arsenic alloy (“speiss”) in prehistory. Why the Tepe Hissar metalworkers produced speiss is a question that requires further investigation, but our preliminary assessment suggests that it was to provide arsenic as an alloying component for arsenical copper, the preferred copper alloy during much of the Early Bronze Age in Iran, and widely used across the ancient world. This recognition significantly advances our understanding of the early stages of metallurgy in the Old World.     

Modelling land use around an early Neolithic timber ‘hall’ in north east Scotland from high spatial resolution pollen analyses

A methodology is described by which spatial patterns of land use were reconstructed from pollen analyses on anthropogenic sediments at a recently excavated early Neolithic timber ‘hall’ in north east Scotland. The anthropogenic sediments were from a deep, small diameter pit within the building. They present numerous taphonomic and interpretative challenges to the analyst, but from this type of deposit, the power to estimate quantitatively the vegetation structure around the archaeological site makes such difficult deposits very significant. A rigorous methodology is firstly described, therefore, by which confidence in ecological interpretation can be established. Secondly, the source of pollen in the deposit is evaluated. Thirdly, the possible pollen source area and structure of the surrounding vegetation are estimated by quantitative simulation modelling. Finally, these analyses are compared with region-scale pollen analyses from nearby conventional wetland deposits with much larger pollen source areas. The pollen assemblages recovered probably reflect land uses adjacent to the ‘hall’ and up to 2.5 km around. Cereal cultivation was the most important land use immediately around the ‘hall’, possibly grown between stands of scrub Corylus (hazel) woodland. These intensive but local-scale land uses cannot be discerned in region-scale pollen analyses.     

Sedimentological and archaeological fabrics in Palaeolithic levels of the South-Eastern Pyrenees: Cova Gran and Roca dels Bous Sites (Lleida, Spain)

The comparative study of sedimentary fabrics in relation to archaeological fabrics in various levels of the sites of Cova Gran de Santa Linya (Middle and Early Upper Palaeolithic) and the Roca dels Bous (Middle Palaeolithic) has made it possible to analyse the formation dynamics of the deposits and determine the extent of disturbance of the archaeological levels by natural processes. To achieve this, diagrams and two- and three-dimensional indices were calculated from the azimuth and dip angle of natural clasts and artefacts. The results indicate that the sedimentary levels were formed mainly by planar fabric shape gravitational processes (low depositional angles), which differ notably from the archaeological fabrics they contain, characterised by a greater degree of isotropy. This difference in the fabrics would reflect human activity and indicates that the archaeological levels both in Cova Gran and Roca dels Bous have not been subject to significant natural modifications, and are preserved in situ.     

Slaves, servants and wage earners: Free and unfree labour, from Grotius to Blackstone

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

Mapping of subsurface shell midden components through percussion coring: examples from the Dundas Islands

Following earlier examples of mapping the subsurface of shell bearing sites using augering, we employ percussion coring to identify early Holocene shell midden components at two types of sites on the Northwest Coast of North America. We describe a method for mapping subsurface components at shell bearing sites including basal deposits, paleosols and transitions between distinct cultural components. Our research was undertaken for the purpose of identifying early Holocene shell middens above the modern shore, and as components below large shell midden villages. Our results augment the developmental trajectory of shell middens on the Northwest Coast by suggesting that pre-5000 BP forms of these sites may be more common than previously thought. In light of these results, we argue that the Northwest Coast cultural historical sequence, which locates an increase in the number and rate of accumulation of shell middens beginning 5000 years ago, to be premature. However, there are insufficient data from shell middens in the early Holocene, a sampling problem that the percussion coring methods described here can address.     

Towards the identification of dyestuffs in Early Iron Age Scandinavian peat bog textiles

A large systematic dye investigation of prehistoric Danish and Norwegian bog textiles was carried out using high performance liquid chromatography with photo diode array detection. After the selection of the most suitable protocol for dye extraction and HPLC analysis for this specific group of archaeological samples, the second part included the characterisation of the dyes detected in the whole series of the Early Iron Age textiles and the interpretation of the dyeing technology. Natural organic dyes were found from the three main categories of natural dyes, hence throwing new light on the use of biological dye sources in Early Iron Age Scandinavia. The results clearly indicate that most Scandinavian peat bog textiles originally were dyed and that already during the 1st millennium BC, the populations in Scandinavia were familiar with the dyeing technology.     

The efficacy of violence mitigation: A second look using time-series analysis

Among peace researchers and practitioners, it is generally accepted that efforts to prevent violence can be instrumental in its mitigation. So, it was distressing to read the research findings of Meier, Bond, and Bond (2007) that mitigation was positively related to organized raids in the Horn of Africa where there is pastoralist–pastoralist and pastoralist–agriculturalist violence. This article seeks to build on their research. It uses a ‘de-trending’ approach for time-series analysis that is commonly used in economics and financial studies. It reports an opposite statistically significant finding. When the data used by Meier et al. are de-trended, violence associated with organized raids is negatively correlated with mitigation. This negative correlation is similar when data on mitigation and organized raids are de-trended with time as a predictor, on the one hand, and with seasonality over time as a predictor, on the other. Implications regarding the temporal dimension of peace research and practice are presented.