谈清宫皇帝后妃油画半身像

油画对于中国来说是一个外来的画种,经过美术史家多年的努力,它东传的时间和途径已然大致明确。但研究中还是有很多缺环。近些年来对清朝宫廷绘画实物及相关资料的发现,为欧洲油画东传的过程提供了更多的信息。本文通过对流传至今的清宫油画作品进行梳理,提出一些想法,或可补充关于"西画东渐"的叙述。     

The Casas Grandes Regional System: A Late Prehistoric Polity of Northwestern Mexico

Casas Grandes, or Paquimé, is located in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, although it is one of the pueblo-style cultures that are best known from the adjacent southwestern U.S. At its apogee (ca. A.D. 1200–1450), Casas Grandes has been characterized as the largest and most complex prehistoric community in the puebloan world. It is further famous both as the center of one of the major interaction systems of the region, as well as a link between the cultures of Mesoamerica and those of the U.S. Southwest. Despite its acknowledged status as one of late prehistoric North America's few indigenous complex societies, the Casas Grandes polity has been so little studied that most aspects of its size, structure, level of centralization, and mode of operation remain obscure. The writers' work in Chihuahua has been designed to remedy this situation. In contrast to the original and highly influential interpretation that has prevailed for the last 25 years, the work reported here argues that the Casas Grandes polity, like its Chacoan and Hohokam counterparts of the adjacent southwestern U.S., existed at an intermediate level of sociopolitical complexity, so that it was not able to exert a uniform hegemony even over its near neighbors. Envisioned instead is a less comprehensive, less centralized situation of irregular control in a politically unstable context.     

多元族群视野下的华人特性——美国亚裔六大族群的比较

根据美国最新公布的各族群的普查、统计及抽样等数据与研究成果,对亚裔各族群进行比较分析发现,华裔、印度裔、菲律宾裔、日裔、韩裔和越南裔,在人口构成与地理分布、人口素质与职业构成、个人与家庭收入、企业数量及收益、自营职业状况等方面各有千秋。华裔呈现两极状态:高层次方面,华裔受教育水平、高级职业比例、企业平均收益等指标,都紧随印度裔之后居第二位;在硅谷和美国新经济中,华裔与印度裔相媲美;低层次方面,华裔贫困率高以及高中以下学历者多,都仅次于越南裔;偷渡移民在亚裔中最为突出。此外,华裔族群经济规模较大,自成一体,具有自我生成、自我扩张的能力,能够消化相当数量的移民。亚裔在美国的差异性与他们在亚洲本土的文化差异度没有直接的相关性,甚至大相径庭。这些差异是移民及其后裔在迁徙过程和异国谋生过程中适应环境所做出的不同的理性选择。中华文化与海外华人的独特性等既有观点,经不起客观数据比较的验证。     

“进步主义”背后的另一个面相:美国纽约市政改革中的坦慕尼协会

作为城市政治机器的代表,美国纽约市的坦慕尼协会一度被视为城市“毒瘤”,尤其在进步主义时代,改革者将其视为阻遏市政改革的罪魁祸首。这一脸谱化的负面形象在某种程度上是历史的选择性“记忆”,而坦慕尼协会对纽约城市发展的贡献却被选择性地“遗忘”。同时,坦慕尼协会的衰落并非缘于与城市进步主义运动互斥,相反,正是因为其拥抱改革,才瓦解了原有坦慕尼组织的权力网络。如果将坦慕尼协会置于更加宏观的历史视域下考察,还会发现美国政府与社会之间权力的消长,直接影响了坦慕尼协会的命运,而在其兴衰演变的过程中,美国政党政治从中获得了更大的发展空间。     

Long-Term Occupation and Seasonal Settlement of Eastern Eurasian Pastoralists at Begash,Kazakhstan

Abstract

Recent excavations of the prehistoric pastoralist settlement of Begash, located in the Semirech'ye region of eastern Kazakhstan, provide evidence of one of the earliest pastoralist settlements in the eastern Eurasian steppe region. The archaeological complex at Begash includes a multi-period cemetery and rock art in addition to the settlement—a site complex that is well distributed throughout the koksu River Valley. Excavations at Begash have revealed three major phases of architectural development and six phases of material transition and site use, dated by a series of 34 calibrated radiocarbon AMS dates. These data demonstrate that mobile pastoral populations were active in the Dzhungar Mountains and koksu River Valley (Semirech'ye) as early as 2460 CAL B.C., more than 800 years earlier than previous theories suggested. Pastoralist activity at this domestic locale spans nearly 4000 years, with no archaeological evidence for long-term abandonment of the site in prehistory. Rather the occupational phases of the site are only interrupted by short-lived periods of disuse followed by centuries of re-engagement by local pastoralist communities. Thus, the broadly continuous record of material culture, domesticated faunal remains, and settlement at Begash index a local evolution of herding economies in Semirech'ye throughout the Bronze Age, beginning in the middle part of the 3rd millennium B.C. Ultimately, the data from Begash contribute a new perspective on the dynamic nature of Eurasian mobile pastoralists while also illustrating broad continuity in the settlement ecology of local populations that had a key role in the regional transmission of numerous innovations throughout the Bronze Age and later.     

Estimating Antebellum Passenger Costs: A Hub-and-Spoke Approach

Abstract

Over 30,000 miles of railroad and 4,000 miles of canals were constructed in the United States between 1815 and 1861. However, the lack of data has prevented the study of this “transportation revolution” for most cities. This article thus enables a closer study of antebellum travel improvements by constructing a hub-and-spoke network that is capable of estimating the cost of passenger travel from New York City and Philadelphia to any U.S. city in 1836, 1850, 1856, 1859, and 1867. The semi-parametric approach provides an accurate cost estimate by using available historical information to determine the travel cost to all other cities.     

Spitzka and spitzka on the brains of the assassins of presidents

Abstract

Although four American Presidents have been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), only the assassins of Garfield (Charles Julius Guiteau) and McKinley (Leon Franz Czolgosz) were tried, convicted, and executed for their crime. In 1882 Edward Charles Spitzka, a young New York neurologist with a growing reputation as an alienist, testified at the trial of Guiteau. He was the only expert witness who was asked, based on his personal examination of the prisoner, a direct question concerning the mental state of Guiteau. Spitzka maintained the unpopular view that Guiteau was insane. In spite of aggressive and spirited testimony on Spitzka's part, Guiteau was convicted and hanged. However, even before the execution it was acknowledged, by some experts, that Spitzka was undoubtedly right. About 20 years later, in 1901, Edward Anthony Spitzka, the son of Edward Charles Spitzka, was invited to conduct the autopsy on Czologsz, the assassin of McKinley. At the time Spitzka the younger, who had just published a detailed series of papers on the human brain, was in the fourth year of his medical training. It was an unusual series of fortuitous events that presumably led to Edward A. Spitzka conducting the autopsy on the assassin of the President of the United States while still a medical student. This, in light of the fact that other experts were available. Each Spitzka went on to a career of note and each made a number of contributions in their respective fields. It is however, their participation in the ‘neurology’, as broadly defined, of the assassins of Presidents Garfield and McKinley that remains unique in neuroscience history. Not only were father and son participants in these important events, but these were the only times that assassins of US Presidents were tried and executed.