A petrified cycad trunk from the Late Cretaceous of the Larsen Basin,Antarctica

Cetricycas antarcticus gen. et sp. nov. occurs in the Late Coniacian to Campanian Lachman Crags Member of the Santa Marta Formation, Marambio Group, James Ross Island, Antarctica. The petrified trunk comprises a thick pith containing thin and thick walled parenchymous cells, vascular traces surrounded by a thin layer of loose secondary wood. Medullary bundles arise inside the wood zone and pass outwards through multiseriate medullary rays. The trunk anatomy indicates assignment to the Cycadales, and the presence of medullary bundles indicates the affinities with a clade comprising Lepidozamia, Macrozamia, and Encephalartos. This clade is presently confined to Australia and Africa, but fossil representatives extend the geographic range to India, South America and now Antarctica.     

Lapita before Lapita: The Early Story of the Meyer/O’Reilly Watom Island Archaeological Collection

ABSTRACT

Seventeen years before the first excavation at the archaeological site of Lapita (New Caledonia) in 1952, two men of the cloth met and exchanged artefacts, notes and ideas to produce some of the earliest analyses of what later became known as Lapita pottery. Otto Meyer (1877–1937), a Sacred Heart Missionary stationed on Watom Island, described chance finds of ‘prehistoric pottery’ in 1909, following these with more systematic excavations. Patrick O’Reilly (1900–88), a Marist Father associated with the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, drew on Meyer’s work, his own extensive bibliographical knowledge and his observations during a one-year mission in the region in 1934–5 to present part of the collection in France, laying the ground for further theories. The publication, interpretation and curation of the Meyer/O’Reilly collection represents an exemplary journey through the history of Pacific archaeology and the emergence of the Lapita paradigm. We consider the context of Meyer’s encounter with O’Reilly, the ideas both men advanced in analysing the collection and the site, and how these resonated during the development of Pacific and Lapita archaeology throughout the first half of the 20th century.     

New Insights into the Provenance of the Obsidian Fragments of the Island of Ustica (Palermo,Sicily)

In this study we applied a multidisciplinary approach, coupling geophysical and geochemical measurements, to unveil the provenance of 170 obsidian flakes, collected on the volcanic island of Ustica (Sicily). On this island there are some prehistoric settlements dated from the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age. Despite not having geological outcrops of obsidian rocks, the countryside of Ustica is rich in fragments of this volcanic glass, imported from other source areas. The study of obsidian findings was carried out first through visual observations and density measurements. At least two different obsidian families have been distinguished, probably imported from Lipari and Pantelleria islands. Analysing the magnetic properties of the samples, these two main sources were confirmed, but the possibility of other provenances was inferred. Finally, we characterized the geochemical signature of the Ustica obsidians by performing microchemical analyses through electron microprobe (EMPA) and laser ablation (LA–ICP–MS). The results were compared with literature data, confirming the presence of the Lipari and Pantelleria sources (Sicily) and indicating for the first time in this part of Italy a third provenance from Palmarola island (Latium). Our results shed new light on the commercial exchanges in the peri‐Tyrrhenian area during the prehistoric age.     

西汉合浦郡朱卢县新考——兼与李勃先生商榷

《汉书》记载朱崖、儋耳两郡的置废本甚清晰,但至迟从五代宋朝以来,一些典籍关于此事的记载却已模糊不清,甚至与事实多相抵牾。迄至明清时期,诸多方志递相沿用以往成说,层层相因,以致以讹传讹。近代以来,关于该问题的讨论一直没有停止。本文从多个角度论证西汉合浦郡之朱卢县不在今海南岛上,其后东汉之朱崖县也不在海南岛上。此外,本文还针对《西汉合浦郡之朱卢县考》一文观点,在此与李勃先生商榷。     

Dating of modified femora of extinct dwarf Hippopotamus from Southern Madagascar: Implications for constraining human colonization and vertebrate extinction events

Two significant events in the late Holocene history of Madagascar were (a) the arrival of people, and (b) the loss of nearly two dozen species of land vertebrates in the socalled “subfossil extinctions”. The consensus is that the faunal losses occurred shortly subsequent to human arrival, but the timing of these events is poorly constrained. The minimum age for initial human presence on the island may now be set at approximately 2000 bp, on the basis of AMS ¹⁴C dates for human-modified femora of extinct dwarf hippos from SW Madagascar. Assuming that this date also marks the beginning of deleterious human interactions with the subfossil fauna, and assuming that this fauna became completely extinct by 900 bp, the width of the anthropogenic “extinction window” may have been as long as c. 1000 a. This estimate, nearly twice the length of previous ones, is close to the unadjusted minimum for the duration of the terminal Pleistocene extinction event in the Americas. Whether or not this length of time comports with theoretical expectations of a “blitzkrieg” pattern of losses is uncertain, but greater refinement in dating the end of the subfossil extinctions is unlikely to produce radically shorter estimates of duration.     

从闽台动物化石看两岸亲缘关系

祖国大陆与台湾的历史关系可追溯到人类历史的早期阶段——旧石器时代,从对闽台鹿角化石的考古研究,发现4万年前台湾海峡已有古人类活动的遗迹,而闽南东山岛就是古代连接两岸的一个桥梁。     

金山潜龙:流散书写中的华工囚禁叙事

论文从中国历史和文化的视角出发,将天使岛诗歌作为一部华人囚禁叙事重新加以解读。认为天使岛华工诗歌通过特殊的艺术手法和完整鲜明的思想立场构成了一部华人囚禁叙事。它在意识形态上表现出与美国清教徒囚禁叙事三个不同的特点:一是它的种族化民族主义诉求是历史的产物,其目的是构建一个抵抗种族迫害的有效话语武器;二是它强调集体救赎,并且认为个体救赎只有通过集体救赎方可实现;三是它主张凭借集体奋斗和人类自身之力获得拯救,彰显了一种与中国传统文化精神相契合的人文主义解放哲学。     

Obsidian sources and distribution systems in Island Southeast Asia: new results and implications from geochemical research using LA-ICPMS

This paper discusses new evidence of long-distance interaction networks in Island Southeast Asia obtained from geochemical analyses using SEM-EDXA and LA-ICPMS of 101 obsidian samples from 25 locations including seven obsidian sources and 19 archaeological sites. Given that there are obsidian sources distributed throughout much of Island Southeast Asia, the potential for obsidian studies to provide greater understanding of patterns of mobility and exchange in the Pre-Neolithic and Neolithic periods would seem to be considerable. This potential, however, remains largely unrealised as obsidian sourcing has hitherto only been carried out intermittently in Island Southeast Asia using PIXE-PIGME, XRF and other methods.     

Sailing virtual canoes across Oceania: revisiting island accessibility

Understanding sailing conditions is a basic requirement for understanding the two periods of settlement of the distant islands of Oceania, initially from the Bismarck Islands off New Guinea as far as Samoa and later from Samoa throughout East Polynesia. The question of a “navigational threshold” between these two worlds is the focus of this paper. A computer simulation is presented that quantifies the difficulty of sailing virtual canoes in the differing wind conditions in both areas. The model demonstrates substantial differences in ease of voyaging up to and beyond Samoa. That this measure is so markedly different between these two worlds gives support for the hypothesised pause between the discovery and settlement of islands West and East of Samoa.     

Lessons in possession: colonial resource geographies in practice on Vancouver Island, 1859–1865

This paper considers the establishment of a major sawmill at the head of the Alberni Canal on the west coast of the colony of Vancouver Island in the 1860s and the legacy of that enterprise in producing geographies of colonial possession. I argue that the institution of industrial forestry in the colony relied upon a conception of property rights that turned on the identification of civilized and savage space, holding that only particular kinds of labour and land improvement warranted claims of ownership. This ideology found official state sanction within the regimes of Western liberal law, was mapped onto the region around Alberni by a uniquely placed individual, and was eventually made durable through the practices of everyday life at settlement sites. In these ways, I show, colonial possession relied upon precedents within British imperial culture. However, I also argue that another geography of possession was put in place along the way. By eventually adopting a scheme wherein timberlands could be brought into production without being alienated by land speculators, the state enabled the actual practice of possession in crown territory that was previously claimed through general appeals to the British imperative to overturn its wild nature. Showing that the lessons learned at Alberni were re-applied in other parts of the region, I conclude by arguing that the historical geographies of industrial forestry reinforced crown possession of much of the Pacific Northwest. Ultimately, I claim that this story demonstrates the centrality of practice to possession, thereby highlighting an analytical space that might yield fruitful insights into the intensely situated and local nature of colonial territorial control.