Variation in Venues of Slavery and Freedom: Interpreting the Late Eighteenth-Century Cultural Landscape of St. John, Danish West Indies Using an Archaeological GIS

An archaeological GIS is used to examine the late eighteenth-century cultural landscape of St. John, US Virgin Islands. Land use patterns are reconstructed using a combination of historic maps, tax records, and survey reconnaissance. The study demonstrates significant, heretofore undocumented, transitions taking place that reflect dynamic cultural and economic change within Danish West Indian plantation society that includes a significant trend towards land ownership by free-colored St. Johnians more than a half a century before emancipation. These venues of freedom are discussed in relation to broader patterns of estate consolidation and economic shifts.     

苏州狮子林《听雨楼法帖》考略

《听雨楼法帖》为清代云南人周于礼撰集,金陵穆文、宛陵刘宏智等人镌刻。第一卷为褚遂良、颜真卿、蔡襄三家;第二卷为苏洵、苏轼、苏辙父子;第三卷为黄庭坚;第四卷为米芾、赵孟頫。本文对各家书法风格及刻石流传作了简要阐述。     

Branded cities: outdoor advertising,urban governance,and the outdoor media landscape

Abstract: In many cities both rich and poor, new forms of outdoor advertising are emerging with potentially significant implications for the nature of the urban public realm. Public–private partnerships for advertising‐funded provision of basic items of urban infrastructure such as bus shelters, street signs and public telephones have grown as a result of structural changes in the advertising industry and shifts towards neoliberal forms of urban governance. This article critically interrogates the implications of these new outdoor advertising arrangements for the urban public realm, and argues that they have potentially harmful consequences for the accessibility and diversity of the outdoor media landscape. It then proposes three strategies for the democratisation of that landscape. These strategies are not premised on an outright rejection of outdoor advertising, but rather seek to contest the monopolistic capture of outdoor media by public–private partnerships involving urban authorities and outdoor advertising companies.     

论“雪域牧耕文明板块”在中国疆域底定过程中的地位

青藏高原特有的高山地带适宜游牧、河谷地带有利农耕的自然条件,带来了该地域定居农业与游牧社会二元分割的态势。因二者势均力敌、彼此难以统合对方,造成该地域在前近代除了吐蕃王朝暂短统一外,大部分时间处于分裂割据状态。此既是藏传佛教趁势崛起之缘由,亦为元、清两朝政治力量始终对该地域起着决定性影响的深层机理。同时,由于藏传佛教通过宗教的力量将雪域高原的文明一体性延续下来,妙用文化的力量参与并深刻地影响着古代中国疆域构建历程,使得该地域在中国疆域底定过程中起着不可替代的作用。     

Recovering social memories from the past: the 1884 novel Ramona and tourist practices in turn‐of‐the‐century southern California

Scholars studying social memory have identified a priority for future work: using the study of documented social memories to understand constructions of the past and social identities in the present. Recovering such lived, individual engagements with social memory is challenging when those engaging the memory are deceased, yet that is what this article attempts to do: Through fine‐grained study of archival traces, I explore the lived practices of tourists in an attempt to understand how the immensely popular 1884 novel Ramona changed the way people thought about southern California's past, creating a new, Ramona‐inspired social memory for the region. In so doing I suggest that those interested in recovering social memories (like these) from the past use such detailed analysis, paying close attention to even the tiniest of details.     

Reconnecting with darkness: gloomy landscapes,lightless places

This paper investigates the effects and affects of darkness, a condition that is progressively becoming less familiar for those of us in the over-illuminated West. In countering the prevailing cultural understanding that darkness is a negative condition, I draw attention to other historical and cultural ways of positively valuing darkness. Subsequently, in drawing on two sites, a gloomy landscape at a dark sky park in South Scotland, and a tourist attraction in which a simulation of New York is experienced in a completely dark environment, I explore the multivalent qualities of darkness. In foregrounding the becoming of sensory experience in gloomy space, I highlight the mobilisation of alternative modes of visual perception in as well as the emergence of non-visual apprehensions, and suggest that the potentialities of darkness might foster progressive forms of conviviality, communication and imagination.     

The nature of third-millennium settlement: The example of al-Tikha (Rustaq) an Umm an-Nar site on the Batinah coast of Oman

al-Tikha is a mid to large Umm an-Nar (c. 2700–2000 BC) settlement situated near Rustaq at the back of the Southern Batinah coastal plain in the Sultanate of Oman that was discovered (or rediscovered) in 2014. The site is unique because its layout and spatial organisation are very largely (possibly completely) visible on the surface. This includes two separate areas of stone-built housing, a large pottery scatter of varying density, three or four typical Umm an-Nar round towers and a small cemetery consisting of at least four tombs, along with a few other features. The layout of the site is described and discussed in detail, in particular, in relation to what it might tell us about the nature of Umm an-Nar settlement and social organisation more generally. The location of the site within a pattern of repeating Umm an-Nar settlement along Wadi Far (Wādī al-Farʿī) is also described and discussed.     

Beyond dots with dates: A landscape approach to the Sohar hinterlands

Landscape archaeology, as a type of research based on a systemic surface survey and that results in quantifiable datasets of high quality, has started to be practiced in southeastern Arabia only in recent years. In this paper, I will briefly review the short history of landscape archaeology in the area and its relevance. I will then present the approach and methods used in the Wadi al Jizzi Archaeological Project and discuss some of the results obtained to discuss both the potential and problems of the data that the project generated. In particular, I will focus on ephemeral sites and assemblages, data quality and data representativity.