REAL-TIME RISK ANALYSIS FOR HYBRID EARTHQUAKE EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS

Earthquake Early Warning Systems (EEWS), based on real-time prediction of ground motion or structural response measures, may play a role in reducing vulnerability and/or exposition of buildings and lifelines. In fact, recently seismologists developed efficient methods for rapid estimation of event features by means of limited information of the P-waves. Then, when an event is occurring, probabilistic distributions of magnitude and source-to-site distance are available and the prediction of the ground motion at the site, conditioned to the seismic network measures, may be performed in analogy with the Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA). Consequently the structural performance may be obtained by the Probabilistic Seismic Demand Analysis (PSDA), and used for real-time risk management purposes. However, such prediction is performed in very uncertain conditions which have to be taken into proper account to limit false and missed alarms. In the present study, real-time risk analysis for early warning purposes is discussed. The magnitude estimation is performed via the Bayesian approach, while the earthquake localization is based on the Voronoi cells. To test the procedure it was applied, by simulation, to the EEWS under development in the Campanian region (southern Italy). The results lead to the conclusion that the PSHA, conditioned to the EEWS, correctly predicts the hazard at the site and that the false/missed alarm probabilities may be controlled by set up of an appropriate decisional rule and alarm threshold.     

Becoming Rafinesque: Market Society and Academic Reputation in the Early American Republic

This article focuses on how knowledge came to be valued in conflicting ways in the American Republic during the 1820s and 1830s – one based on a market model that considered knowledge to be a commodity for sale, and another that produced cultural value through social connections created in new academic institutions. Constantine Rafinesque, who taught at Transylvania University in Kentucky, and his research in the natural sciences serve as an example of the first sort of scholarship. His life also illustrates how a market society could lead to dandies, like Rafinesque himself, even in academia, and how that threatened both new middle class social proprieties and a system of clubby social relations that had come to dominate America’s colleges and universities in the early nineteenth century.     

Multidisciplinary approaches to defining historic period coastal and fluvial changes at Dunglass Burn,South East Scotland

An exceptionally thick (>2.5 m) fluvial and colluvial valley fill is described from the coastal reach of the Dunglass Burn, draining the Lammermuir Hills in south east Scotland. Buried by the valley fill is a series of charcoal accumulations interpreted as beacons to guide fishing boats, and an assemblage of large mammal bones. Radiocarbon assays on charcoal associated with these elements show them to be of early Medieval age. The onset of this extraordinary fluvial and colluvial sediment aggradation is considered to have begun at c. 1100 AD, although causation cannot be closely defined. The relations between the valley fill and securely dated built structures (buildings, bridges), an approach very infrequently explored, allow the cessation of aggradation to be dated to before the mid‐16th century AD. After c. 1600 AD incision has occurred to the present. The development of this valley fill is likely to have extensively altered the configuration of the coastline in the Medieval and early modern periods. The analyses emphasise the large magnitude of very recent landscape changes.     

The nature of third-millennium settlement: The example of al-Tikha (Rustaq) an Umm an-Nar site on the Batinah coast of Oman

al-Tikha is a mid to large Umm an-Nar (c. 2700–2000 BC) settlement situated near Rustaq at the back of the Southern Batinah coastal plain in the Sultanate of Oman that was discovered (or rediscovered) in 2014. The site is unique because its layout and spatial organisation are very largely (possibly completely) visible on the surface. This includes two separate areas of stone-built housing, a large pottery scatter of varying density, three or four typical Umm an-Nar round towers and a small cemetery consisting of at least four tombs, along with a few other features. The layout of the site is described and discussed in detail, in particular, in relation to what it might tell us about the nature of Umm an-Nar settlement and social organisation more generally. The location of the site within a pattern of repeating Umm an-Nar settlement along Wadi Far (Wādī al-Farʿī) is also described and discussed.     

Comments on archaeology into the 1990s

This article focuses on the complexity of Early Bronze Age weapon depositions. While some of the deposited weapons have been disabled by intentional breakage, others seem to be more or less unused. A plausible explanation for the variability is that the surrender of lethal weapons to land or water was a means of coping with their power or agency – their individuality. We suggest that weapons, in their capacity as extensions of warriors’ bodies, may have substituted for humans in ritual depositions. The metalworkers also come into play, due to their capacities in the processes of making weapons and shaping weapon technologies. Although we consider the three depositions that we discuss to relate to rituals on the occasion of warfare, we are not aiming for a uniform explanation. In the same way as the patterned human behaviour of a ritual is a means of subsuming individual events into a greater order, so a focus on general patterns may subsume the complexity of the past by ignoring the many different events leading to, e.g., the deposition of metalwork. Far from seeing these perspectives as contradictory, we try to use three well-documented individual cases to shed light on the variability within the pattern.     

Pollen-Analytical Results from Lake Katajajärvi – Aspects of the History of Settlement in the Finnish Inland Regions

Abstract

The Early Metal Period (1800 cal BC–AD 300) of the Finnish inland regions is characterized by a scarcity of archaeological remains. Its latest stages, in particular, have proved to be difficult to interpret. This paper discusses the continuity of settlement in the Early Metal Period as indicated by archaeological survey and pollen-analytical data. The study area is situated in Repovesi National Park in southeastern Finland. The pollen analysis was constructed from a sediment sequence taken from Lake Katajajärvi. The archaeological survey data from Repovesi National Park supports earlier hypotheses of the small number of Early Metal Period sites. In the pollen data, the first anthropogenic impact is recorded from about 2600 BC onwards, with weak signs of cultivation around 2370 BC. From around 1900 BC onwards a clear change in tree, shrub and herb pollen percentages indicates anthropogenic impact, possibly grazing, in the area. The pollen-analytical results also revealed a cultivation period of about 900 years at the end of the Early Metal Period, providing proof of continuity in settlement during a period characterized by a scarcity of archaeological material. A new beginning of cultivation from cal AD 1160 to 1250 onwards can be considered as indicating population growth, developing settlements and the colonization of new areas. The results from Repovesi are challenging from an archaeological point of view, because they represent slash-and-burn cultivation that appears to have been practised in total wilderness conditions. Comparison of the Lake Katajajärvi results with other areas raises new questions that call for a discussion of early slash-and-burn cultivation in new perspective.     

Notes from County Correspondents.

In 1503, the canons of Ripon Minster initiated a building campaign to replace the church’s nave. Through a careful study of the documentary evidence, including sources that have not previously been considered, this article investigates how Ripon’s clergy organised and funded the project. It offers a more precise chronology of the works and an assessment of their impact on the use of the church by its parishioners. The article also considers the clergy’s motives for rebuilding, proving that the renovation was not a reaction to the old nave’s deterioration so much as an initiative to create a grander architectural setting for processions and more space for burial within the church.     

An Early Islamic Inter-Settlement Agroecosystem in the Coastal Sand of the Yavneh Dunefield,Israel

This study examines the remains of an agricultural complex found in the Yavneh coastal dunefield, central Israel. Known as a plot-and-berm agroecosystem, the complex consisted of earthworks in a crisscross pattern of sand berms and sunken agricultural plots that were used for groundwater harvesting. The plots, which provided easy access to the high groundwater table and the berms around them, are overlaid by a gray sand unit covered by pottery sherds and artifacts. This gray sand is more fertile than the underlying sand, suggesting refuse enrichment. Artifactual similarity of the finds to those of inland (Tel) Yavneh suggests that Yavneh was the main source for the refuse additive. Based on artifacts and OSL ages it seems that this agroecosystem was active during the 10th to early 12th centuries a.d. The agroecosystem demonstrates an early example of an Early Islamic agrotechnological attempt in marginal and sandy regions of the Mediterranean basin.     

Terminal Pleistocene–Early Holocene lithic technological organization around Lake Mojave,California

Abstract

The surface lithic scatters at two areas around Soda Lake were intensively surveyed and 3133 artifacts were analyzed in the field using four main variables to infer how Terminal Pleistocene–Early Holocene foragers organized lithic technology around pluvial Lake Mojave, California. Results indicate that early stage bifaces and flake tool blanks were created at a fine-grained volcanic (felsite) quarry/workshop complex in the Soda Mountains survey area and transported elsewhere. In addition, fine-grained volcanic bifaces were reduced and bifaces and flake tools of cryptocrystalline silicates and obsidian were finished, used, and/or discarded at a habitation area on the ancient shorelines near Little Cowhole Mountain. Comparisons with nearby sites of similar ages (at Ft. Irwin and China Lake) reveal many similarities in lithic technological organization. Lake Mojave—an important locus of prior research—can now be integrated into recent Mojave Desert and Great Basin technological organization studies.     

Range of motion and energy cost of locomotion of the late medieval armoured fighter: A proof of concept of confronting the medieval technical literature with modern movement analysis

ABSTRACT

Study of technical, normative, and narrative medieval literature and of archaeological pieces allows the motor skills of armoured members of the aristocracy to be outlined but not quantified. The authors present novel data on the impact of wearing armour on both the freedom of movement and the energy cost of locomotion, and confront the results to systematic analysis of medieval written sources. An accurate harness replica realized in an informed archaeological experimental way, close to medieval material and manufacturing conditions, was used for the experiments. Measurements of the energy cost of locomotion in and out of armour were taken during walking and running on a treadmill. Gait analysis and range of motion of joints were performed with 3-D kinematics. The results indicated an increase in the energy cost of locomotion in slight excess to the added weight and for most movements studied reductions in the range of motion over the joint, potentially to the advantage of the wearer during combat. This proof of concept appears promising for further study in this field of scholarly endeavor.