The MSA sequence of Diepkloof and the history of southern African Late Pleistocene populations

This paper presents the first multidisciplinary synthesis of the Middle Stone Age sequence of Diepkloof Rock Shelter (South Africa). We explore the main cultural changes that characterized southern African hunter–gatherer societies from OIS 5 to the beginning of OIS 3. We discuss the tempo of these changes, test the current interpretative hypotheses and explore an empirical model to explain the early appearance of symbolic marking within the Pleistocene hunter–gather societies of southern Africa.     

重新看近代史——近代三次改革运动的再思考

本文在反思意识形态史学的基础上,把中国近代史用五次战争、三场改革、一次革命串连起来。用解释学的方法,从人类文化学、心理文化变迁、思想文化层面、政治制度层面等视角重新审视、解读中国近代史。提出一个民族要不失时机地进行制度创新,要避免政治参与所引发的井喷效应。     

From the modern to the archaeological: starch grains from millets and their wild relatives in China

Starch grains from 31 modern samples of millets derived from the seeds of 7 species within the genus Setaria and 2 species within the genus Panicum were analyzed to determine diagnostic morphological characteristics. Ancient starch grains recovered from a sample of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) excavated from the Cishan site (10.0-7.6 cal yr BP) in the North China Plain were then subjected to the same analyses to determine the differences in morphologies, if any, between modern and ancient samples. The data indicate that morphological features, and particularly surface and fissure features, will allow for solid identifications of ancient millet starches, while size classes will be helpful, but will not be dependable taxonomic indicators.     

现代科学技术对中国文物保护的影响和启示

中国文物保护事业的发展是紧紧伴随着现代科学技术的发展而发展的.经过清末的国门被打开、建国后的现代化建设以及改革开放后的科学发展,现代科学技术数度冲击促进着我国的发展,推动文物保护工作上了三个台阶,并具有显著特征.展望现代科学技术在文物保护中应用研究的同时,我们也要认识到建立文物保护理论体系和文物保护技术方法的重要性.     

浅析近世误读进化论所产生之负面效应

本文分别从个人主义的泛滥与新道德和民主政治构建的难产、理想主义的滥觞与激进主义者实践道路的迷惘、唯科学主义思潮的横行与国人人生观的困惑等视角发掘出误读进化论所产生的近代社会转型问题,希望唤起学界对进化论展开深刻反思,审视它在近代所带来的负面效应.     

"文革史学"初探--以中国近代史研究为例

“文革史学”是指1966-1976年“文化大革命”期间中国“史学”的发展和演变的历史,它既是中国史学史、也是“文革”研究的重要组成部分。“文革史学”是动乱年代政治运动的特殊产物,是中国史学史上极为黑暗的一页,给中国史学蒙上了极大耻辱。它截断了中国史学的优良传统,并离群索居,与不断前进的世界史学背道而驰;中国史学成了政治史学、影射史学的代名词,失去了作为一门科学的独立性与尊严。     

Maisons Tropicales/Maisons Coloniales: contesting technologies of authenticity and value in Niamey,Brazzaville, Paris,New York and Venice

This article draws on multi-sited anthropological fieldwork to analyse institutional practices of producing cultural authenticity and value under conditions of globalization. It focuses on the ‘re-discovery’ of three so-called Maisons Tropicales as modern architectural heritage in Niamey and Brazzaville. These prototypes of a colonial building project were subsequently translocated, commoditized and displayed as modern works of art in Paris and New York. The article describes the global connections and disconnections between the actors involved, claiming that the alternative practices of appropriating the Maisons Tropicales rely on competing and conflicting technologies of authenticity and value. Adding to scholarship on exchanges of material culture, as well as on the production of cultural authenticity and value, the article reframes debates in heritage studies pertaining to the ethics of site-specificity, material integrity, and integrity of place; preservation, conservation, and restoration; restitution and repatriation; as well as questions of cultural identity and the notion of a ‘shared’ colonial heritage. Ultimately, the article re-contextualizes the Maisons Tropicales in their (post-)colonial legacies. It concludes that critical interjections by artists and ethnographers suggest potential to reassemble the dominant technologies of authenticity and value in the fields of art and heritage preservation.     

Beyond the One-World Frame of Fiction: The Breakdown of Reality in Hushang Golshiri's Stories

The debate over political commitment in Iran was never limited to adjudicating content: it was frequently a debate over form as well. In the realm of fiction, this debate fixated on realism, the nature of mimesis, and the autonomy of art and the literary text. Within a few short years after forming the iconoclastic journal Jong-e Esfahan in 1965 with a group of likeminded colleagues, the writer Hushang Golshiri had become the preeminent modernist fiction writer in Iran. His critical essays represented a passionate defense of aesthetic autonomy at a time when realism and, particularly, socialist and “engaged” literature were powerful shibboleths in the Tehran literary scene. This paper begins with a look at Golshiri's critical interventions in this debate and then moves on to show how the short stories he produced in the Jong era were an even more integral part of his response to the mimesis question. By reading his stories with a methodology drawn from “possible worlds” theories of narratology, Todorov's fantastic, and Golshiri's own theories, we see how these works break down the “one-world” frame of reality that realism takes for granted, and require the reader to grapple with multiple, often contradictory, possible realities in its stead.     

The functional threshold of modern heritage: form versus function and the struggle over Tel Aviv’s concert hall

Abstract

This article examines conflict associated with efforts to conserve modern architecture. The tension between preservation and functional concerns and the cleavage between form and function are brought to the fore by looking at a prominent case study of the concert hall of Tel Aviv, Israel. Between 2005 and 2013, the historic concert hall was the subject of a substantial renovation plan, which became contentious owing to its impact on the interior and exterior features of the building. With the help of interviews, content analysis of proceedings, planning decisions and court rulings, the paper examines the obstacles for attaining a balance between form and function, and particularly: (1) the role of cultural elites in shaping historic places and in determining the ‘functional threshold’ of modern buildings; (2) how emotional attachments to cultural properties impact the course of built heritage conflicts; and (3) the failure of public participation. Overall, the analysis suggests that participatory avenues can be pursued in order to bridge the gap between opponents and proponents of structural modifications. When collaboration fails, however, the opinion of the professionals using the modern building should be given greater consideration, and legal redress should be a last resort.     

The Dialogical Tradition of Iranian Modernity: Monazereh,Simultaneity, and the Making of Modern Iran

Iranian modernity has chiefly been examined in the context of a dialectical antagonism between “traditionalists” and “modernists”—main categories comprised of related sub-headings such as “Islamist” versus “secular,” “reactionary” versus “revolutionary,” and “regressive” versus “progressive.” Following this approach, Iranian adaptations of modernity have often been (de)historicized as a theater of national “awakening” resulting from the toils of secular intellectuals in overcoming the obstinate resistance of traditional reactionaries, a confrontation between two purportedly well-defined and mutually exclusive camps. Such reductionist dialectics has generally overwritten the dialogic narrative of Iranian modernity, a conflicted dialogue misrepresented as a conflicting dialectic. It has also silenced an important feature of Iranian modernity: the universally acknowledged premise of the simultaneity and commensurability of tradition with modernity. The monazereh (disputation or debate) is the account of the interaction between rival discourses that engaged in opposing, informing, and appropriating each other in the process of adapting modernity. Narrativizing the history of Iranian modernity as the conflict between mutually exclusive binaries overlooks its hyphenated, liminal¹1 The notion of liminality has been theorized in different capacities. The anthropologist Victor Turner first used the idea of liminality in his study of tribal and religious rituals during which an initiate experiences a liminal stage when he belongs neither to the old order nor yet accepted into his new designation. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969). Turner’s insight has been expanded to investigate the general question of status in society. See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynam, Fragmentation and Redemption (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 27–51. Bynam applies Turner’s notion of liminality to the lives of Medieval female saints, arguing that Turner’s liminal passage applies more readily to the male initiate but does not in most cases reflect the experience of female initiates in Medieval times. Jungian psychology has shifted the focus from liminality as a stage in social movement to a step in an individual’s progress in the process of individuation. Jeffrey Miller, The Transcendent Function (New York: State University of New York Press, 2004), 104. See also: Peter Homans, Jung in Context: Modernity and the Making of a Psychology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Others have used liminality to describe cultural and political change, have prescribed its application to historical analysis, or have made reference to “permanent liminality” to describe the condition in which a society is frozen in the final stage of a ritual passage. Respectively, Agnes Horvath, Bjorn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra, “Introduction: Liminality and Cultures of Change.” International Political Anthropology (2009); Agnes Horvath, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013); and Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 23. Finally, the notion of liminality has been applied to the analysis of mimetic behaviour and to the emergence of tricksters as charismatic leaders, given the association of the figure of the trickster with imitation. Respectively, Agnes Horvarth, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013), 55; and Arpad Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 155. This latter sense seems to apply to the history of Iranian modernity, for the anxiety of imitation was indeed one of its central concerns, and influential figures such as Mirza Malkum Khan (1833–1908) were sometimes perceived (though this was not universally the case) as saviours or tricksters alternatively by different people. On this issue, Fereydun Adamiyat notes how different people had different views of Malkum. The “despotic prince Zill al-Sultan” considered him to be of equal status to Plato and Aristotle. Aqa Ibrahim Badayi’ Nigar thought he was devoid of “the fineries of knowledge and literature (latīfah-i dānish va adab). Minister of Sciences and chief minister Mukhbirul Saltanah Hidayat thought “whatever Malkum wrote has been said in other ways in [Sa’di’s] Gulistan and Bustan.” Fekr-e Azadi (Tehran: Sukhan, 1340/1961), 99. Mehdi Quli Khan Hedayat’s view of Malkum Khan was summed up in these words: “This Malkum knew some things in magic and trickstery and finally did some dishonorable things and gave the dar al-fonun a bad reputation,” Khaterat va Khatarat (Tehran: Zavvar, 1389/2010), 58. Having said that, my use of the notion of liminality, though informed by the theoretical perspectives cited above, diverges from them in one important aspect: liminality as perceived by contemporary theory seems to be based on a pre-/post- understanding of non-liminal statuses accompanied by a desire on the part of the subject to emerge from the liminal state. This approach does not explain liminality as a site for the synthesis of coexisting identities. The munāzirah is precisely the account of such a process. In the context of Iranian modernity, the discourse of tradition was not perceived as prior to the discourse of modernity, as we shall amply see. In fact, European civilizational progress was deemed to have resulted from the successful implementation of Islamic principles. Therefore, while the history of Iranian modernity can still be analyzed as a liminal stage where a weakened old order meets the promise of a new order, it must be understood in terms of the encounter of simultaneous and parallel discourses. It is in this sense that liminality is employed in this study.View all notes identity—a narrative of adaptation rather than wholesale adoption, of heterogeneity rather than homogeneity, of dialogues rather than dialectics. The monazereh is the account of modern Iranian histories.