Study of medieval glass fragments from Savona (Italy) and their relation with the glass produced in Altare

Altare was in the medieval and post-medieval period an important glassmaking center in the Liguria region in Northern Italy. The first historical evidence of glassmaking in Altare is dated to the twelfth century. In spite of that, due to the continuity of glassmaking up to the present time and the contemporaneous intensive urbanization of the territory, no medieval glass from Altare or its immediate vicinity has been analyzed up to now. In this work, glass from archaeological excavations in the center of Savona, city with close ties with the glassmaking center, was studied. Glass fragments, dated from the tenth to the sixteenth century were selected from the collections of the Archaeological Museum in Savona and non-destructively analyzed with quantitative PIXE-PIGE. The resulting compositions, compared with known glass productions of the same time and evaluated on the basis of historical documents, offer an interesting panorama on the variety of glass circulation in Liguria.     

Captivating thoughts: nocturnal pollution,imagination and the sleeping mind in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

ABSTRACT

Medieval attempts to understand nocturnal emissions – involuntary bodily excretions during sleep which were identified as morally ambiguous – became extensive explorations of the unique and problematic features of sleep and the mental state it produced. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, nocturnal pollutions became the object of an intensive scrutiny of sleep as a site of moral concern. Causal explanations often centred on human psychology, in particular the unusual status of the sleeping mind, in an attempt to understand the intricate ways in which mind, body and soul were uniquely bound together in sleep. The mental states before, during and after sleep were understood to interact with one another in complex ways which centred on questions of culpability and its lack. A comparison of medical, natural-philosophical, theological and canon law materials discussing nocturnal pollution reveals a preoccupation with the sleeper’s mind as exceptional, uncontrollable and problematic.     

Chemical analysis of white porcelains from the Ding Kiln site, Hebei Province, China

The Ding kilns were some of the most famous early kilns of medieval China, producing huge quantities of white and cream-white porcelains of outstanding technical and aesthetic quality. Since 1949 they have been excavated three times, in 1965, in 1987, and in 2009 respectively. In this latest study 69 white porcelain sherds from assured contexts and from the 2009 excavations were analyzed using laser ablation techniques (ICP-AES). The samples date from Five Dynasties, Northern Song and Jin Dynasties respectively (early 10^th to early 13^th C CE). The results show that Ding wares of different times show different characteristics that can be demonstrated through chemical composition. During the early phase of production the Ding ware bodies consisted largely of high firing kaolinitic clays with predominantly calcareous materials as fluxes. After the early Northern Song Dynasty, some calcareous material was replaced by a more potassic material. The compositions of the glazes show a parallel evolution to the bodies. However, because the glazes are very low in titania it seems unlikely that the main clay ingredients of the bodies could have been used in the glaze recipes. For much of the kiln site’s history the glazes appear to have been made mainly from the same siliceous flux-rich materials that had been blended with the main body-clays used to make the Ding ware porcelains, plus some extra calcareous material. The P₂O₅ contents of the glazes suggest that wood ash may have been one source of CaO in the glaze recipes.     

田猎卜辞新缀五则

本文介绍了作者新缀合的五版甲骨,发现了新的同文卜辞,校正了前人字体分类中的错误,为十二版甲骨形态的确定提供了详实的论据,为商代田猎历史的复原研究提供了新材料。     

Psychics,crystals, candles and cauldrons: alternative spiritualities and the question of their esoteric economies

Studies of alternative and ‘New Age’ spiritualities and of the paranormal in popular culture hint at the existence of underlying economic relationships that are, though small in size by some measures, both significant and influential. This paper seeks to foreground the economic relationships underpinning the beliefs, practices and activities associated with alternative spiritualities. For, as we argue, these have either been marginalised in most studies of alternative spirituality or been understood in very limited terms, as a narrow reflection of contemporary capitalist consumer culture. This paper consequently asks how we might bring to view the economic relationships that necessarily accompany alternative spiritualities by exploring their size, shape and reach. Here, we draw on UK-based case studies of Manchester and London. Our exploration of alternative spiritualities and their economic relationships concludes that even while alternative spiritualities are woven into, and out of, ordinary economic relationships, there remains an intriguing sense that there is something distinctively esoteric about their economies. This, we believe, warrants further investigation (in the UK and beyond) into this too often marginalised aspect of contemporary culture and modern economic life.     

Cuerpo y nación a través del poema "Su cuerpo es una isla en escombros" de Domingo de Ramos

This article is devoted mainly to one poem, "Su cuerpo es una isla en escombros," by Domingo de Ramos (1960), and its relationship to the Peruvian armed conflict that lasted from 1980 to 2000. The article focuses on one incident, the Peruvian prison massacre of June 1986. As part of the analysis, poetry by Alejandro Romualdo (1926-2008) and the Andean myth of the Inkarri are also used. The article shows how Domingo de Ramos's poetry, like similar work by other Peruvian poets, participates in a long tradition that uses the body as a space to represent sociohistorical processes.     

From the stigmatized tattoo to the graffitied body: femininity in the tattoo renaissance

This article analyzes the spectacularly rising popularity of tattoos by showing that tattoos have become a spatial project in the largest sense: the way they participate in the creation of social space is different from that of tattoos before the Tattoo Renaissance. I explain this project as a shift from tattoos to body graffiti. In the past (predominantly male) tattoo-spheres could be located within the margins of society. Once an identity had been assumed through the adoption of a tattoo, the person could be assigned a particular geographical position within an urban sphere. Contemporary tattoos have this one-dimensional identifying function to a much lesser extent, which influences the way in which these tattoos create space. Within the new tattoo space, the skin does not wear the stigmatic mark, nor does it function as a screen of male desire, but it becomes a wall on which multiple desires are projected. In this sense, tattoos have become graffiti. I establish the particularity of the female tattoo as opposed to the masculine tattoo by focusing on an important element of the pro/contra discussion of female tattoos: the purity and ‘blankness’ of the female skin. Jean Baudrillard's concept of the blank female skin as a ‘void’ that men rush to fill with their own desires is central to this discussion. Finally, I show that the spatial function of narcissistically oriented female tattoos is at least partly established within the Suicide Girls interactive website.     

Stature estimation in a central Patagonian prehispanic population: development of new models considering specific body proportions

Stature estimation of individuals from extinct human populations is a classic topic in anthropology. The estimations, using regression formulae generated from different reference samples, display different results. This fact is related to inter‐populational differences in body proportions, which is a phenotypic trait mainly correlated with climatic parameters. The aim of this paper is to address the problem of stature estimation of an archaeological skeletal sample from Patagonia – a region for which there are no specific models available – using different methods and considering differences in body proportions between reference and target populations. The sample used in this analysis is composed of 35 Late Holocene adults of both sexes recovered in central Patagonia (Argentina). The stature of each individual was first reconstructed using the anatomical method [Fully G. 1956 . Une nouvelle me´thode de de´termination de la taille. Annales Medicine Legale 35 : 266–273], which has no assumptions on body proportions. The results were compared with estimations based on 32 different regression formulae [Trotter M, Gleser G. 1958. A re‐evaluation of estimation of stature based on measurements taken during life and the long bones after death. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 16 : 79–124. 10.1002/ajpa.1330160106] and three femur/stature ratios [Feldesman MR, Fountain RL. 1996. Race specificity and the femur/stature ratio. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100 : 207–224. 10.1002/(SICI)1096‐8644(199606)]. The average reconstructed stature was 160.8 cm for females (95% confidence band = 155.6–166.2 cm), and 170.5 cm for males (95% confidence band = 168.8–172.2 cm). Most of the comparisons of the regression formulae and femur/stature ratios showed significant differences, which are explained by differences in body proportions between the Patagonian sample and the ones chosen as reference. Finally, a set of new equations was developed using simple regression techniques. It is suggested that whenever possible, population‐specific formulae should be used in archaeological studies. In any other situation, the choice of a reference population should be made by taking into account its geographic (latitudinal) provenance. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Population Affinities of the Jebel Sahaba Skeletal Sample: Limb Proportion Evidence

The Lower Nubian Epipaleolithic site of Jebel Sahaba (Sudan) was discovered in 1962. From 1962 to 1966, a total of 58 intentionally buried skeletons were uncovered at the site. Diagnostic microliths indicative of the Qadan industry as well as the site's geology suggest an age of 14–12 ka for these burials. In this study, the body proportions of the Jebel Sahaba sample are compared with those of a large (max N = 731) sample of recent human skeletons from Europe, Africa and circumpolar North America, as well as to terminal Pleistocene ‘Iberomaurusian’ skeletons from the Algerian sites of Afalou‐Bou‐Rhummel and the later Capsian‐associated Ain Dokhara specimen, as well as Natufian skeletons from the southern Levantine site of El Wad. Bivariate analyses distinguish Jebel Sahaba from European and circumpolar samples, but do not tend to segregate them from recent North or sub‐Saharan African samples. Multivariate analyses (principal components analysis, principal coordinates analysis with minimum spanning tree and neighbour‐joining cluster analyses) indicate that the body shape of the Jebel Sahaba humans is most similar to that of recent sub‐Saharan Africans and different from that of either the Levantine Natufians or the northwest African ‘Iberomaurusian’ samples. Importantly, these results corroborate those of both Irish and Franciscus, who, using dental, oral and nasal morphology, found that Jebel Sahaba was most similar to recent sub‐Saharan Africans and morphologically distinct from their penecontemporaries in other parts of North Africa or the groups that succeed them in Nubia. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Examining Activity Patterns and Biological Confounding Factors: Differences between Fibrocartilaginous and Fibrous Musculoskeletal Stress Markers

The present study examines a sample of 105 hunter–gatherer California Amerinds to determine whether fibrocartilaginous musculoskeletal stress markers (MSMs) are better for activity reconstructions than fibrous MSMs. Femoral and humeral head diameters were measured as proxies to body size. All data were analysed for statistical significance using non‐parametric tests. Fibrous MSMs of the left deltoideus, left and right hip adductors, and left and right tibial soleus correlate positively with body size proxies. For fibrocartilaginous MSMs, the right humeral teres minor insertion negatively correlates with humeral head diameter. Both types of MSMs correlate positively with age. More upper limb fibrocartilaginous MSMs display asymmetry than do upper limb fibrous MSMs. Lower limb sex differences were found at the same MSM sites that correlated with body size. Upper limb sex differences at the right teres major, a fibrous site, and the right triceps brachii, a fibrocartilaginous site, seem to reflect activity patterns. Results suggest that fibrocartilaginous MSMs are more useful in reconstructing activity patterns because they display more asymmetry in upper limbs and are less affected by body size than are fibrous MSMs. Yet, correlations with age and a lack of variability at fibrocartilaginous MSM sites may hinder their utility in activity reconstructions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.