雷家坪遗址出土六朝玻璃珠的相关研究

采用显微观察、X射线衍射物相分析和X射线荧光光谱成分测试等手段,对湖北省巴东县雷家坪遗址六朝时期墓葬出土的若干精美“珠饰”进行了观察和分析,阐述了它们的特征,确定其材质;并与其他遗址出土不同时期的玻璃制品进行比较,发现其配方和我国西周至汉代玻璃,以及西方传统玻璃差别甚大。结合考古背景资料分析,这批珠饰很有可能是我国古代工匠在原有玻璃技术基础上,借鉴和吸收了外来玻璃的制造技术,在中国境内自行烧制的。     

Canadian Political Economy and the Great Recession of 2008–9: The Politics of Coping with Economic Crisis

The emerging comparative political economy literature on the Great Recession of 2008–9 has devoted an increasing amount of time analyzing how domestic politics and the economic crisis were jointly determined. This article seeks to explore certain aspects of this dynamic relationship in the context of Canada, a country that has received little coverage in the comparative literature so far.     

Pursuing Moral Governance

A millennium ago in Northern Song (960–1127) China, Emperor Huizong initiated the “Eight Virtues of Conduct” in order to recruit morally upright officials. In place of the candidates’ skills in literary composition and understanding of the Confucian classics, this scheme adopted candidates’ moral virtues as their major criterion of selection. This paper analyzes how this scheme was implemented. It also shows that the rejection of certain genuinely virtuous nominees and the recruitment of some candidates who had exhibited objectionable conduct somehow compromised the emperor’s ideal. This analysis is followed by a discussion of the political and social implications of the scheme. Instead of perceiving this promotion channel as a means for Huizong and Chief Councilor Cai Jing to eliminate dissidents and install ideological conformity, the author argues that the scheme was an initiative of the emperor to counter the chief councilor’s dominance and alleviate factional conflicts. The final section examines the extent to which this scheme facilitated social mobility in the Song dynasty.     

The Emergence of a Story Space

For centuries, the Club War, a popular uprising on Finnish territory in the 1590s, constituted a minor side story in Swedish royal historiography. After the Napoleonic Wars, it was quickly appropriated as one of the most canonical historical events in the emerging Finnish national history. This article argues that, in order to understand the role of the Club War in early 19th-century Finnish historical culture, it is necessary to trace its interpretive tradition backwards in time, across established borders of national historiographies, in a thematic, transtemporal, and comparative framework. The paper will discuss eight pieces of Swedish and Finnish history writing from 1620 to 1860, focusing on the storylines, attributes attached to the protagonists, and historical agency allocated to different social groups against a backdrop of sources available within each context of writing, in order to pinpoint and analyse moments when the story space of the event altered. The article will demonstrate that textual traditions of regions that formerly belonged to multi-ethnic or conglomerate states provide particularly interesting material for transtemporal historiography. Through this case study, the article also argues that Swedish and Finnish historiography of the early 19th century should be studied as one, entangled, textual culture.     

The Importance of Status: The US–ROK Alliance Cohesion and the First Korean Nuclear Crisis, 1993–94

The US–ROK alliance during the First Korean Nuclear Crisis provides the most likely case of high alliance cohesion. Curiously, however, instead of dancing to the American tune in their joint management of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) threat, the Republic of Korea (ROK) caused frequent policy collisions – supporting the US–DPRK negotiations at one point and opposing it at another – at the risk of jeopardizing its physical security. The main finding here is that the variations in the South Korean behavior were a function of their experience of status inconsistency. In particular, the ROK became compliant with the US–DPRK talks when it believed that its desired status marker of taking the leadership role in crisis management was within reach, and unyielding otherwise. These fluctuations ended up not only eroding the US–ROK alliance cohesion but also inhibiting a successful resolution of the crisis. All this bears directly on the fundamental question of whether international politics is to be understood in essentially realist terms.     

What can supraspecies richness tell us?

Biogeographers, ecologists, palaeontologists, and conservation managers often deal with checklists in which not all individuals have been identified to a species level, or the accuracy of species identification is questionable. Is it possible and credible to investigate species richness based on such checklists? Studies on macrofauna in the Far Eastern seas, eastern Arctic seas, and adjacent waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans suggest that in different habitats and for diverse taxa, species, and higher taxa richness strongly correlate with each other and increase with an expansion in the study area and sample size according to the species–area law. Such an increase is higher in the bottom zone than in the pelagic. Species and higher taxa richness also show a decrease from lower to higher latitudes, which is in line with the Humboldt–Wallace’s law. According to Willis’ law and self-similarity in the organisation of taxonomic levels, species richness can be assessed based on the genus, family, and order richness. In other words, supraspecies richness itself can tell us the same as species richness and therefore certain global patterns revealed at the species level may also be revealed at the supraspecies level. Such a concordance in general trends among richness parameters at different taxonomic levels in practice implies that species richness can be studied based on lists that lack species identifications or lists with doubtful species identification. We suggest bolder use of supraspecies richness in science and practice, discussing the disadvantages and advantages of this approach.     

Epistemic Ignorance and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–1966: Righting the Wrongs of the Past and the Role of Faith Community

ABSTRACT

This study demonstrates how ignorance works in the Indonesian massacres of 1965–1966. This atrocity, which claimed roughly five hundred thousand lives, is one of the most forgotten human tragedies of the twentieth century. For many years, the massacres were hidden from public view. Ignorance was reinforced by the New Order under the presidency of Suharto. Drawing on contemporary political philosophers’ studies on the epistemology of ignorance, I contend that ignorance, like knowledge, has structures, criteria, and practices. Ignorance, thus, is not merely a “lack of knowledge” or a state of not knowing, but epistemic and political. By appropriating the epistemology of ignorance, I seek to show how the Indonesian people remember the historical wrongs and how Christian theology provides resources for right remembrance. To confront the epistemic ignorance of the Indonesian mass killings, I argue that the churches must assert their identity as the community of memory and lament.     

Terminal Pleistocene–Early Holocene lithic technological organization around Lake Mojave,California

Abstract

The surface lithic scatters at two areas around Soda Lake were intensively surveyed and 3133 artifacts were analyzed in the field using four main variables to infer how Terminal Pleistocene–Early Holocene foragers organized lithic technology around pluvial Lake Mojave, California. Results indicate that early stage bifaces and flake tool blanks were created at a fine-grained volcanic (felsite) quarry/workshop complex in the Soda Mountains survey area and transported elsewhere. In addition, fine-grained volcanic bifaces were reduced and bifaces and flake tools of cryptocrystalline silicates and obsidian were finished, used, and/or discarded at a habitation area on the ancient shorelines near Little Cowhole Mountain. Comparisons with nearby sites of similar ages (at Ft. Irwin and China Lake) reveal many similarities in lithic technological organization. Lake Mojave—an important locus of prior research—can now be integrated into recent Mojave Desert and Great Basin technological organization studies.