Shell beads from Mississippian sites in the northern Yazoo Basin,Mississippi

ABSTRACT

In this paper, which focuses on the Mississippian period in the northern Yazoo Basin, Mississippi, I present some interesting findings from research done over the past century. In this area, most shell beads come from surface collections, or from excavated burials in cemeteries or ossuaries. Burial styles include extended, flexed, semi-flexed, and bundles, with very few cremations having been encountered. Bead burials also seem to reflect both common and elite people, and there are some interesting discoveries concerning association of shell beads. I will use 33 archaeologically investigated major sites as examples to illustrate an unexpected paucity of shell beads and other shell ornaments at some of the most heavily populated Mississippian sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Two other sites with shell beads in the uplands will be used for comparison.     

Extraordinary Creatures: The Role of Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia

ABSTRACT

Depictions of birds are overrepresented in the Dolenjska Hallstatt culture, and appear on over a quarter of artefacts depicting animals. A wide variety of artefacts with birds have been found primarily in graves, and crosscut gender, status, and age. However, poor preservation of zooarchaeological remains has made reconstructions of lived human-bird interactions difficult. This study uses ecological and ethological data, combined with local imagery, to provide insight into prehistoric human-bird interfaces in this area, and the cultural conceptions surrounding these interactions. Birds would have been a constant presence in the lives of Dolenjska Hallstatt people; however, human relationships with them were based more on observation than direct interaction. Birds were ubiquitous in imagery, and it is proposed that this stemmed from Dolenjska Hallstatt conceptions of birds as important observers of human actions, ritual mediators, and possibly guides or guardians. Their differences from humans and other animals distinguished them – they were set apart, and depictions highlighted non-normative behaviours. Birds in the Dolenjska Hallstatt worldview were more than animals, ascribed extraordinary capabilities that made them ritually potent and richly symbolic creatures.     

The Prophetic and the Limitation of Authority in Modernist Islam

ABSTRACT

The “prophetic”, as a central concept in modernist Islamic political philosophy, has been invoked to show that Islamic political philosophy takes into account the spiritual as well as the material world. However, this expansion of the prophetic had remained relatively silent as to the authority that is granted to experiencing individuals. This essay is a story of these reinterpretations the “prophetic” by three major Muslim thinkers – Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), Ali Shari‘ati (d. 1977), and Abdolkarim Soroush (b. 1945). Writing in different periods and trying to respond to different questions, these authors engaged with the question of politics by reference to prophetic experience. I will explain their intellectual context, according to their cosmologies and their notions of language (participation vs. representation). Then, I will see how in different intellectual context, the force of a democratic notion of the prophetic was undermined by different reinterpretations.     

春秋战国书法论略

春秋战国时期的书法呈现出地域性、多样化、崇美性和变异性的显著特点，在书法史上是一个充满矛盾和裂变，由篆变隶的动态变异时期。     

A preliminary study on the photo - degradation of printing pigments on banknotes issued during the period of the Republic of China北大核心

为了初步评价光照对民国纸币的影响,为博物馆纸币文物的展陈照明和保存提供建议,本研究选取了八枚纸币分别进行LED灯和自然光老化实验,并通过拉曼光谱仪和X射线荧光光谱仪确定了纸币样品颜料的主要成分——合成有机颜料红49:1、普鲁士蓝、铬酸铅和炭黑。通过老化前后的色差分析可知,纸币红色颜料变化最大,其他颜色变化相对较小。因此,对于民国纸币类文物,尤其是含有红色合成有机颜料的纸币文物,需要控制其光照条件以防止老化变色。     

新时期文化发展战略的演变

改革开放30年来,我国文化发展战略的演变以中共十五大为界可划分为两个发展时期:前期从1978年到1996年,文化发展战略以精神文明建设为主导;后期从1997年中共十五大召开至今,文化发展战略在强调精神文明建设的同时,更加重视提升国家综合实力和文化软实力。这一发展历程表明,改革开放以来,执政党和全社会的文化自觉意识明显提高,文化建设的着力点已从强调政治思想教育转变为满足人民群众的基本文化权益和文化需求,文化的内涵和外延进一步扩大,文化认知达到新的高度。新时期我国文化发展战略的演变是建设中国特色社会主义的需要,是应对全球化浪潮的必然结果,也是适应新科技革命时代的自我调整。     

抗战时期重庆马克思主义史家对古代社会史和思想史的研究

抗日战争进入相持阶段后,随着社会形势的变化,马克思主义史学形成了延安、重庆两个中心,因政治环境、革命任务、个人治学领域等诸多因素的作用,重庆马克思主义史学对古代社会史和思想史的研究显示出明显的偏重。重庆马克思主义史家对中国古代社会史的研究,体现出马克思主义史学上承社会史论战的发展轨迹,从这个意义上说,重庆马克思主义史学更多地体现出与此前中国史学发展的连续性和继承性,而重庆马克思主义史家对思想史的研究则直接缘于社会史研究的成果。     

Documentation of the Yazdi-Bandi Vault at the Plaza of Sadr-e-A’zam,Tehran

ABSTRACT

This article intends to document a previously unsighted sample of yazdi-bandi over an outlying structure in the old Bazaar fabric of Tehran, namely a plaza known as Timché-ye Sadre-A’zam. Recent renovations of the plaza have concealed the work under an austerely flat drop ceiling in gypsum. The old yazdi ceiling was only accidentally discovered by the authors following the trail of hearsay and local legends. The plaza is of late 19th century construction, a period that witnessed an evolutionary and aesthetic climax in all aspects of architectural geometry in the country, including the various branches of kaarbandi. With the limitations that the authors faced, basic tools were used in the scanning and surveillance of the ceiling. Photographs were collected using a wide-angle lens. They served as raw data for the reconstruction of the yazdi plan in AutoCAD, This article presents the findings, and for a better understanding of the entire premise by the reader, supplements them with preambles on the evolutionary history, geometrical analysis, a preview of the state of scholarship and a collection of relevant terms and concepts in the study of yazdi, in particular, and kaarbandi as a whole.