Advanced design of Chinese traditional materials for the conservation of historic stone buildings

The conservation of historic stone buildings and sculptures is recently receiving growing attention and becoming a focus of research because of rapid changes in weather conditions (pollution, acid rain, etc.). Presently, techniques for stone conservation primarily involve the use of organic coating treatments, but their side effects have been recognized. In contrast, some traditional materials used in historic stone buildings function well for thousands of years. In this paper, we report our research on the reasons why traditional protective materials can provide an unexpected long-term protection. First, calcium carbonate was prepared according to a formula for making Chinese traditional consolidating materials, and its structure and morphology were examined by different instruments. Second, the reinforcing effectiveness of the prepared CaCO₃ powders was tested and analyzed by investigating its surface characteristics. The experimental results reveal that a biocontrolled process occurs, in which an organic template can induce the precipitation of a mineral structure, which in turn results in a great improvement in the conservation of the historic stone buildings protected by these traditional protective materials. This provides a contribution toward the development of new researches on biocontrolled processes and on some protective materials with excellent performance through biocontrolled synthesis.     

合肥北门大房郢水库汉代墓葬出土红色颜料研究

中国先民使用红色颜料的历史悠久,最早可以追溯到新石器时期,它在中国的物质生产和文化发展中发挥了重要的作用。在2006年发掘的大房郢水库汉墓群中发现了两种红色颜料,通过采用X射线衍射、X射线荧光分析和傅立叶变换红外分析等分析方法对其进行了研究,发现它们是赤铁矿(α-Fe2O3)和朱砂(HgS),其用途分别为制造化妆品和红色漆膜。     

Vehicle Writings in an Iranian Context: The Interplay of Habitus and Field

The main objective of this paper is to problematize writings on vehicles in an Iranian context. Previous studies have indicated that vehicle stickers can be employed to express emotions and social status, political views, ideology and identity, and religious beliefs. However, very little has been done on this discursive practice in Iran. This study is the result of the content analysis of 122 vehicle writings collected from April 2011 to March 2012. This paper will draw on six of the most frequent themes: religion, humor, playing pessimism, didactic expressions, ethnic-geographic identification, and love. Employing Bourdieu's conceptual frameworks of “habitus,” “field,” and “doxa,” and Heath and Street's social practice perspective on literacy, it will be argued that vehicle writings in this study can be regarded as situated literacy practices reflecting the dominant undisputed discourses in the context, but at the same time displaying the dynamic interplay of power relations, the relationship of cultural structures and individual customized versions of those structures in vehicle writings.     

Coral Roads and their Sorcery: Lost Authority and Spectral Commodification in Buka

Sorcery in Buka, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, is understood as reprehensible in most present contexts, but it is also believed to have once played a constructive role in maintaining social order. This mytheme is important both to the analysis of how traditional systems of sorcery come to be rearticulated in postcolonial contexts, and as a means of understanding how villagers conceptualise social order itself. Here, an analysis of the selective means by which vernacular forms of sorcery are assimilated to the Tok Pisin term poisen is presented together with an examination of the history of institutions of social control in which sorcery is remembered ‐ and forgotten ‐ to have played key roles. In the past, sorcery would have been gavman blong peles, a ‘village government’, a power over and from people, accumulated by the hierarchical integration of lineages within houses known as tsuhana. Sorcery has been privatized and commodified, slipping out of control of traditional authorities, who now pursue a strategy of achieving power over land. Power from people entails, in the Buka context, sorcery or other forms of internalised violence; power over land entails the assertion exclusivist genealogical claims. The pursuit of such claims is mediated by courts, and frequently creates rifts in communities. Sorcery, once freed from its role as government, returns to haunt traditional authorities as the spectre of their former power, and as the spectre of resistance to their current power: to the extent that they emphasize the historical role of poisen, the more they are suspected of it; imagined as the anarchy of jealousies, poisen multiplies in proportion to their success in parlaying forms of traditional authority into economic and political advantage.     

Disorienting Rhythms: Gypsyness, “Authenticity” and Place on the Greek–Albanian Border

Against a located background—a focus that highlights the significance of place in the constitution of Gypsy identifications and runs counter to most of the assumptions shared by recent studies on Gypsies—the article tries to explore the tensions, ambiguities and contradictions generated by the involvement of the Gypsy musicians of Parakalamos, a village on the Greek–Albanian border, in issues concerning “tradition” and “authenticity”. More specifically, the article considers how Gypsy music playing practices initially allowed Gypsy practitioners to be included in the nation‐state project in a somewhat “dishevelled” form as local musicians; however, in the face of recent shifts in politics, culture and representation in Greece concerning multiculturalism and “cultural heritage”, Gypsy musicians find themselves in the position of being recognised as “musical outsiders” that should by implication adhere to their distinct musical tradition. In this respect, although it has hardly been admitted, such a move runs counter to what constitutes the core of Gypsy musicianship: their locatedness. The article argues that within such “identitying” practices lurks an occlusion of the ways Parakalamos Gypsyness has been, and continues to be, dependent on place and music, and not on a separate, distinct and self contained Gypsy identity, thereby casting doubts on assumptions about what constitutes identity as such.     

Addressing the 'Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education' with Internet-enhanced Education

This paper evaluates the use of the Internet to enhance learning and to promote good practice in undergraduate education according to Chickering and Gamson's (1991) principles. Results from a survey of 236 geography students over the past 2 years indicate that the Internet can facilitate good educational practices. Students believe use of email encouraged student-faculty contact. Active learning is encouraged, but is not overwhelmingly favoured by students. Prompt feedback is facilitated. Students also believe the Internet materials allow more efficient use of time in and out of the classroom, and enhance their learning .     

我国宗教文物保护的特殊性初探

宗教文物作为我国文化遗产的重要组成部分和传统文化的重要载体,近年来引起了业内及社会的广泛关注和讨论.作者在文中就”宗教文物”这一对象,从其特殊性、保存现状和问题、宗教文物的有形与无形价值,等几个方面进行了分析和讨论,强调了宗教文物的独特性,以及相关保护修复工作的特殊意义.     

Landscape Archaeology,Heritage and the Community in Devon: An Oral History Approach

In the context of recent media, governmental, academic and popular attention and enthusiasm for debates surrounding the construction and meaning of the British countryside, this paper outlines the potential for oral history to make a contribution. Working in Devon, the authors outline how an oral history methodology can engage with the fields of landscape archaeology and heritage studies. As well as augmenting and supporting more traditional approaches to landscape, oral history techniques can be used to challenge and destabilise existing knowledge, thereby moving the process of ‘democratisation’ in knowledge construction of the rural landscape from practices of scientific ‘complicity’ towards one of critical engagement.     

How to Make an Unfired Clay Cooking Pot: Understanding the Technological Choices Made by Arctic Potters

Between about 500 a.d. and the late nineteenth century, clay cooking pots associated with the Thule culture were produced in the Arctic region. Ethnographic and archaeological records indicate that these vessels were typically underfired (often even unfired), highly porous, and easily broken. Despite these characteristics, the evidence indicates that they were used to heat water over open fires. In this paper, we examine how Arctic potters were able to produce unsintered vessels capable of holding liquids without disintegrating. We conclude that the application of seal oil and seal blood to the pot’s surface was the key to their success.

佛教文化与传统法律制度刍议

佛教作为外来宗教在中国民间流传了两千多年的岁月,佛教文化影响了中国的传统法律制度,对传统社会的行政法律和刑事法律的影响尤为深远。系统地研究和整理佛教文化与传统法律制度的关系,可以更好地揭示出外来文化与本土文化之间的互动作用。