Stable isotope dietary analysis of prehistoric populations from the Minusinsk Basin,Southern Siberia,Russia: a new chronological framework for the introduction of millet to the eastern Eurasian steppe

We report the results of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of 354 human and faunal samples from five archaeological cultures of the Minusinsk Basin, Southern Siberia – Afanasyevo, Okunevo, Andronovo, Karasuk and Tagar (ca. 2700–1 BC) – a key location in Eurasia due to its position on a northern corridor linking China and central Eurasia. The results indicate that the diet of Eneolithic to Middle Bronze Age (Afanasyevo to Andronovo) populations was primarily C₃-based, with C₄ plants only becoming an important component of the diet in the Late Bronze Age Karasuk and Early Iron Age Tagar cultures. Freshwater fish seems to have been an important constituent of the diets in all groups. The findings constitute the earliest concrete evidence for the substantial use of millet in the eastern Eurasian steppe. We propose that it was probably introduced from Northwestern China during the Karasuk culture at the start of the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1500 BC. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for the nature of pastoralist economies on the steppes.     

The Double Movement of Immovable Property Rights in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of many countries around the world where the relationship between customary land tenure and economic development has been hotly debated for a long time. A commonplace of the debate in PNG is that 97% of the nation's land is held under customary tenure, while only 3% has been alienated, and these proportions have not changed since the country became independent in 1975. This paper shows that the boundary between customary and alienated forms of land or immovable property was already showing signs of instability in the late colonial period, and this instability has been greatly magnified in the post-colonial period. The areas of land subject to some form of partial alienation have increased along with the ways and means by which immovable property has been ‘mobilised’, while a variety of customary claims to previously alienated areas have grown stronger over the same period. Although Karl Polanyi's idea of a ‘double movement’ can throw some light on this phenomenon, the PNG case also reveals a new side to the application of this concept.     

Let there be light … and bread: the United Nations,the developing world,and atomic energy’s Green Revolution

Although President Eisenhower’s 1953 ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech typically is associated with the promotion of nuclear power, it also recommended other peaceful uses of the atom, including applications in agriculture. ‘Developing’ countries in particular took a keen interest in food preservation, grain disinfestation, fertilizer studies, insect control, and mutation breeding, all using irradiation. A conflict of philosophies emerged at the United Nations between the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA stood accused of promoting a narrow range of technological solutions, ignoring more sensible but less sensational techniques, and tempting the poorest countries of the world to achieve ‘modernization’ with unproven technologies. The present essay outlines the origins of FAO/IAEA conflict and collaboration in the 1960s, and explores the failed effort of plant geneticist Ronald Silow to stop what he saw as the IAEA’s hijacking of agriculture at the UN.     

The paradoxical nature of growth in the US bison industry

In the bison industry, a paradox has emerged in which the ideal of bison restoration has become increasingly disconnected from the management practices that orient and coordinate the lives of bison on private ranches. Although the industry has spurred the growth and reintroduction of the species, it has not been able to restore it in a theoretically significant way that approximates historic bison populations. This article examines the economic, cultural, and material variables that have generated this paradox. While considerable diversity remains within the industry, economic crises, consumer expectations and governmental regulations have reduced the influence of alternative practices and perspectives. Representations of the bison industry should acknowledge these contradictory forces to facilitate better understanding of the costs and benefits of these developments.     

Valuing place/placing value: the elusive normativity of landscape in rural Tuscany

Rural Tuscany has become both a paragon of harmonious beauty and a terrain of legal conflict and recrimination. When they do not resort to essentialist notions of taste, many commentators are prone to explain the ‘preservation’ of Tuscany's countryside as the outcome of locally rooted legislative interventions meant to prevent ‘speculation’ and ‘debasement’ (scempio). Tuscany is indeed the site of layers of normative constraints and guidelines, ranging from local zoning regulations to the expectations associated with UNESCO's World Heritage Site status. Far from being self-evident, however, these normative constructs have been debated in Tuscan society over decades of rapid and often chaotic change. The reinvention of rural Tuscany as a paragon of beauty emerged from the search for an elusive form of coherence and meaning, whose features generated both conflict and accommodations. By focusing on a valley in southern Tuscany which obtained the status of World Heritage Site in 2004 (the Orcia valley), the article shows the power of the circumventions, negotiations and reinterpretations in which rural Tuscans have engaged while navigating the alternative temporalities of global validation, national legitimation and local belongings.     

Bao Shichen and Agrarian Reform in Early Nineteenth-Century China

Known primarily for his reformist proposals in the areas of military affairs, foreign policy, the salt monopoly, and the grain tribute system, the influential early nineteenth-century literatus Bao Shichen 包世臣 (1775–1855) also made throughout his life numerous suggestions regarding the improvement of agricultural practice and of rural life. Contrary to the arguments of his older contemporary Hong Liangji that the empire was facing an imminent demographic and provisioning crisis, Bao argued that there was ample possibility for increasing crop yields, and improving popular livelihoods, if a more rational approach was taken to cropping decisions, farm labor allocation, agricultural commercialization, and local-level social organization. Bao was fond of quantification, and, far more than Hong, employed statistical analysis (albeit crude) to bolster his arguments. Fundamentally committed to increasing the power and wealth of the imperial state in the face of threats both foreign and domestic, Bao was highly optimistic that this could be achieved simultaneously with fulfilling his other basic commitment, relieving what he saw as widespread popular immiseration.     

关于中国稻作起源证据的讨论与商榷

本文是对傅稻镰等人最近的文章批评中国栽培水稻起源研究缺乏证据、提出长江下游水稻栽培开始于公元前4000年这一观点一文的回应。我们首先考察中国从野生稻采集到水稻栽培过程研究的相关文献．进而从水稻形态学和考古学的角度对早期水稻遗存加以研究。讨论集中在以下三个方面：长江流域最早水稻栽培的时间：长江下游和淮河流域初期栽培水稻的遗存;考古遗存所见水稻粒形态大小变化的意义。我们也考察了傅文用来区分野生水稻和栽培水稻的几个标准：考古纪录中所见的未成熟稻遗存、水稻粒的增大和水稻粒的形态。根据已经发表的资料和我们对水稻的研究,我们认为到全新世早期（距今9000年前后）,南北中国的新石器时代居民就可能已经收获野生稻并开始水稻栽培了。     

民国时期三任北京女子师范大学校长毛邦伟述略

毛邦伟是一位民国时期颇有社会名望的教育家、著名学者,曾亲身经历过辛亥革命,在新民主主义期间,他作为进步人士十分重视师资队伍建设,毕生致力于教育事业。     

清末至民国时期赣闽粤边区农业变迁与转型

清末民国年间,赣闽粤边区①农业面对新的市场竞争环境,经历了兴衰嬗变、重组调适的过程,这一过程有衰落、有收缩、有扩张;并出现了诸多近代农业新因素,农业正朝着积极的方向作渐进性转型和变迁。近代农业完全衰败的观点在边区缺乏强有力的证据。赣闽粤边区农业渐进性转型的例子说明,对近代中国农业整体变迁评价应立足于多区域的实证研究,任何单一区域的农业评价都无法涵盖近代中国农业的整体变迁内容和特点。     

黄土高原旱作区新农村建设关键技术分析

黄土高原旱作区是关系国家生态安全、经济发展、"三农"问题的重要区域。围绕黄土高原旱作区新农村建设已积累了广泛的科研成果,但由于缺乏系统性的整合与示范推广,导致收效有限。针对此问题,文章提出了黄土高原旱作区新农村建设的3类关键技术体系:以优化水资源配置为核心的现代集水农业与农业主导产业技术体系,以类型化为核心的新农村绿色生态社区规划建设技术体系,以及以循环农业模式为核心的农村环境综合治理与可再生能源利用技术体系,并逐一进行了分析。