Feeling at Home: Gender and Creative Agency at Red House

Much has been written about Red House, the home of Jane and William Morris between 1859 and 1865, as an example of architectural innovation and a place of artistic fellowship. In accounts by Morris's contemporaries and subsequent scholars, Red House has also been represented as a site of conviviality, creativity and youthful idealism, where a utopian way of life proved unable to withstand the vagaries of mature responsibilities. This essay reconsiders the happy memories attached to Red House and explores how the affective investments that linked people, spaces and objects were created and enhanced by a shared process of creative improvisation there. Drawing on recent scholarly work on feelings, emotions and affect, this essay pays particular attention to the gendered experience of intimacy and creativity at Red House and seeks to redress a tendency to discount women's creative agency in the household. In the web of relationships at Red House, expressed and enacted through practices of creative labour and hospitality, Jane Morris and Georgiana Burne-Jones articulated an increased capacity for agency not merely as aesthetic objects but as creative subjects.     

Processing ochre in the Middle Stone Age: Testing the inference of prehistoric behaviours from actualistically derived experimental data

The increase in the presence of ‘ochre’ in African Middle Stone Age contexts has been employed, together with changes in human biology and behaviour, to support the hypothesis that ‘modern’ cognitive abilities arose in Africa. The consistent exploitation of ochre is interpreted as evidence for colour symbolism, a proxy for the origin of language and a defining aspect of ‘modern’ human behaviour. That humans attached considerable symbolic value to red ochres in particular is illustrated by ethnographic examples. Research has shown that wear patterns indicative of abrasive processing methods prevail, but many archaeological specimens also exhibit wear traces not derived from grinding or scraping alone. Building on former research, I present here the results of an experimental study devised to infer the methods employed to extract powder from ochre during the African Middle Stone Age. The prospect of ascertaining at least some of the likely uses to which ochre may have been put, is also explored. I conclude that functional data derived from actualistic experiments can be used to enhance our understanding of some aspects of prehistoric behaviour.     

A multi-technique characterization and provenance study of the pigments used in San rock art, South Africa

During the course of a conservation project at the rock shelter known as RSA TYN2 (Eastern Cape, South Africa), a sample of 33 painted fragments that had become detached from the wall were collected. They have been studied using a multi-technique approach (optical microscopy, SEM-EDS, Raman spectroscopy and FTIR), with the aim of achieving a better understanding of their paint stratigraphy, composition, and provenance. The paintings are on a Clarens Formation sandstone and are embedded in calcium sulphates and oxalates. The red pigments show two different ‘hues’, corresponding to two different compositions. The light red is a red ochre, possibly pure, which is probably a degradation product of the Clarens Formation sandstone. The dark red contains more iron oxides and may be a mixture between the red ochre and pure haematite. Because of the presence of crystals which may be identified as augite we suggest this haematite came from the basaltic upper part of the Drakensberg, at least 4 km away from the rock shelter. The black pigments have been identified as carbon black, that is to say, incomplete combustion products of organic compounds, and are radiocarbon dated to between 2120 and 1890 cal BP, making these samples the oldest directly dated South African rock art.     

Red abalone collecting and marine water temperature during the Middle Holocene occupation of Santa Cruz Island,California

Oxygen isotope values derived from prehistoric mussel (Mytilus californianus) shell calcite are used to determine whether sea-surface temperatures in the vicinity of the Punta Arena site (CA-SCRI-109) on Santa Cruz Island, California, were cooler than present between 6300 and 5300 cal BP. This site and others in the western sector of the island dating to this period are distinctive because of the presence of large red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) shells, a species that historically has been subtidal around Santa Cruz and the other northern Channel Islands. Comparison of temperature values derived from archaeological shells with those from modern mussel shells, along with water temperatures derived from satellites, indicates that waters were cooler during the 6300 to 5300 cal BP period. These results are consistent with a previous study and support the interpretation that collection of red abalone during the 6300–5300 cal BP period was partly the result of cooler water temperatures that made this large mollusk more available to foragers in the intertidal or shallow subtidal zone.     

东莞地区红砂岩文化遗存病害机理研究

红砂岩作为建筑材料,在广东历史上占有举足轻重的地位,故东莞地区遗留有众多的红砂岩文化遗存,它们具有较高的历史、科学和艺术价值。红砂岩文化遗存多处于露天状态,在多种因素的共同作用下,病害状况较严重。目前,针对这些文化遗存的保护研究还没有充分开展。为此,在对红砂岩文化遗存保存状况调查的基础上,使用XRD等分析手段研究该地区红砂岩文化遗存的风化腐蚀机理。结果表明,侵蚀破坏红砂岩文化遗存的主要因素是水(降雨、酸雨、毛细水)和可溶盐。本结果可为进一步开展该地区红砂岩文化遗存的规划保护提供依据。     

Disentangling long bones of foxes (Vulpes vulpes and Alopex lagopus) from arctic archaeological sites

To discern the presence of two anatomically close species within an archaeological assemblage is always a problem for the analyst. A particularly interesting case is the distinction between the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and the arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), which is often determined using non-rigorous criteria and producing results that must be regarded with caution. Classical methods for separating these two species and determining sexual dimorphism, and eventually the sex ratio, such as analyses using uni- and bivariate plots, are based on arbitrarily fixed limits between sexes. In this text, a more robust statistical method termed mixture analysis (MA) is used to determine the species of limb bones from foxes. First, the MA is applied to a sample of each species using metric data taken from a collection of present-day fox skeletons. Afterwards, the MA is applied to archaeological samples dated to the Dorset period and retrieved from the Tayara site (near Salluit, South Hudson Strait, Nunavik). The results clearly demonstrate that the greatest length (GL) of long bones, especially the humerus and tibia, is the best measurement for distinguishing the species, followed by the distal breadth and the proximal breadth; and that GL is better suited for sexing foxes. The results of MA applied to the Tayara site collection lead to the conclusion that the red fox is present along with the arctic fox among the assemblage, and that there is no fox body size change during the last two millennia in the Eastern Arctic.     

苏区时期的"赤白对立"--阶级革命中的非阶级现象

赤白对立是指苏维埃区域与非苏维埃区域之间的对立,出现于苏区周边地区,它不是由土地革命加剧的阶级间的对立,而是一种非阶级的由多种因素引发的以地域为中心的冲突。赤白对立的出现,既有中共自身的原因,也有国民党方面的推波助澜,还缘于社会革命与社会组织间的内在冲突。就中共方面看,前期和后期造成这一现象的原由也不尽相同。赤白对立给中共开展革命造成很大不利影响,某种程度上成为苏维埃时代的一个痼疾。     

Ancient “Red Cliff” battlefield: a historical-geographic study

The famous battle of Chibi, or “battle of Red Cliff”, took place in 208 CE, the 13^th year of the Jian’an period of the Eastern Han dynasty. This paper holds that the whole battle consisted of three inseparable stages, namely the initial clash at Chibi, the chase battle to Wulin, and Cao Cao’s disorganized escape along Huarong Road. The Red Cliff battlefield thus extended across a distance of more than 300 li (150km). Even if the Chibi where the initial military engagement took place (that is, Chiji Hill, southwest of Wuchang in modern Wuhan City) has already disappeared, it should be restored to its proper historical position. The chase battle along the Yangzi River came to an end at Wulin, across the river is Chibi Hill in today’s Chibi City. Although this Chibi is not the Chibi where the initial combat took place, it nonetheless forms an integral part of the ancient Chibi battlefield as a whole. The Huarong Road along which Cao Cao escaped runs through the middle of today’s Jianghan Plain. Finally, the text aims to show that Chibi (Red Nose) Hill in modern Huangzhou City has nothing to do with the Chibi of the “battle of Red Cliff.” __________ Translated from: Fudan Xuebao 复旦学报: 社会科学版 (Fudan Journal, Social Sciences), No.3, 2004, by Han Zhaoqing and Fabien Simonis. Han Zhaoqing thanks Merrick Lex Berman for his help in revising this version     

Measuring subsistence specialization: Comparing historic and prehistoric abalone middens on San Miguel Island,California

Red abalone middens, common on the Northern Channel Islands during the Middle Holocene, have often been interpreted as relatively specialized foraging camps. To test the degree of subsistence specialization of one such site, we compared faunal data from a 6400-year-old red abalone midden (CA-SMI-557) and an historic “Chinese” black abalone midden (CA-SMI-558) located along the same drainage on San Miguel Island. The historic assemblage, resulting from highly specialized abalone harvest, drying, and export activities, provides a baseline for evaluating the degree of subsistence specialization at the red abalone midden, where a wider range of economic and subsistence activities is represented. We illustrate how detailed comparative study of faunal remains, artifacts, site structure, and archival sources can help elucidate the economic function of both historic and prehistoric sites.