Agroforestry on an Active Volcanic Small Island in Indonesia: Prospering with Adversity

This paper draws on the literature on agroforestry, disaster risk reduction, and livelihoods of people on small islands as it applies to a community prospering in conditions of adversity in Kinali village on Siau Island, Indonesia. Siau Island produces between one‐third and one‐half of all nutmeg and mace exported from Indonesia. The Kinali community has adopted strategies that enable it to prosper in spite of the risks of living on a small island with an active volcano. The paper charts the sociocultural dynamics of the village and examines how local coping mechanisms based on an agroforestry economy have assisted villagers in dealing with the multiple hazards and constraints arising from the biophysical characteristics of their island. The paper thus contributes to more informed responses to managing volcanic risk.     

Strongly aligned coastal boulders on Ko Larn island (Thailand): a proxy for past typhoon‐driven high‐energy wave events in the Bay of Bangkok

Recent studies of elevated carbonate boulder deposits on several rock islands near Bangkok have indicated that Thailand's capital city may not be as protected from typhoon strikes as previously thought. Here, new evidence is presented for past high‐energy wave (HEW) events in the form of statistically significant patterns of boulder alignment on exposed rocky shorelines of Ko Larn island. The long‐axis orientations of 193 coastal sandstone boulders were analysed across four study sites. Several scenarios for the unimodal, bimodal, and polymodal patterns found can be envisaged. Either the most recent HEW event was the strongest—in which case most clasts were rearranged unimodally (one observation site), or the strongest HEW event was earlier and subsequent weaker ones realigned only smaller boulders to produce bimodal or polymodal patterns (three observation sites). Inferred northeastward or eastward onshore flow directions are consistent with palaeo‐typhoons penetrating into the Bay of Bangkok on northwestward curving tracks. The calculated minimum flow velocities required to transport all sampled boulders are 5.5–7.8 m s^?1, similar to other findings throughout the Asia‐Pacific region. It was observed that the absence of a fitted boulder geomorphology lends credence to the earlier proposed time frame of 150–200 years between typhoon phases in the upper Gulf of Thailand. The current work has provided additional insights into the characteristics of past HEW events that have a possibility of reoccurring again at some time in the future. Our findings continue to raise awareness for a reassessment of the risks of coastal hazards for the Chao Phraya River delta and densely populated Bangkok, for which storm surge modelling should be an urgent priority, so as to give better perceptions on how typhoon‐driven marine incursion would impact the city.     

Fur-bearing species and Scottish islands

Analysis of a database comprising archaeological records of fur-bearing species in Scotland has highlighted the presence of foxes, badgers and other mustelids in areas outside their modern-day geographic range. Of particular interest is the apparent presence of foxes on Orkney for a number of centuries, from perhaps the last few centuries BC to the mid to late first millennium AD, pine marten on Orkney in the Neolithic, and badgers on the Outer Hebrides in the Early Bronze Age and 6–7th centuries AD. While zooarchaeological analysis of the data suggests the evidence from the Outer Hebrides is indicative of imported products of fur-bearing species, such as skins or ‘trophies’, the evidence from Orkney suggests populations of fur-bearing species may have been purposefully introduced by humans. This raises interesting questions regarding human perception and use of the different species in prehistoric North Atlantic Scotland.     

Insularity, Sovereignty and Statehood: The Representation of Islands on Portolan Charts and The Construction of The Territorial State

This article investigates the cartographic origins of the idea that the territorial state is a unified, bounded, homogeneous and naturally occurring entity, in a world of equivalent but unique entities. It is noted that this image of the territorial state closely resembles the representation of islands on sixteenth‐century portolan charts, and this suggests a historical link between the Renaissance‐era imagination of islands and the modern imagination of states. The article posits that the concept of territorial unity and boundedness, which appeared on portolan charts to signify islands as obstacles amidst maritime routes of movement, migrated in the late sixteenth‐century to form the basis for representing the emergent concept of the territorial state. It is suggested that the conceptual and aesthetic links between these representations of islands and states has led to an ongoing dilemma for those who seek to comprehend (or cartographically represent) islands that are divided between multiple states.     

陈序经的文化学与其社会问题研究的关系

在逐步确立自己文化学体系期间,陈序经曾倾心于社会问题的研究,积极参与包括民和华侨问题在内的西南社会的研究工作以及乡村建设运动的讨论。在西南社会研究中,他应用文化学方法,开展对民的调查研究,拟从中发掘出新的资料,印证西方文化学说,寻找文化发生、发展的一般法则;并宣传进步文化观,主张不同民族应共同发展。有关华侨研究本身是对文化主体的关注,其现实目的是为了保护华侨权益、激发华侨创造新文化的活力。在乡村建设运动的论战中,他以文化进步说、文化时境论、文化不可分论、文化动力论与文化中心论,反对复古趋向、以农立国说,主张立足都市,西化乡村。现实关怀则促使陈序经将其中零散的文化理论进一步明晰化、系统化。陈序经文化学与其社会问题研究之间存在着相辅相成、互相交融的关系。     

《旧唐书·地理志》西南地区正误

《旧唐书》虽经校勘,然仍有不少未尽善处。本文对《地理志》所记西南地区所涉诸州的州县领属、所领县数、设置时间及其变更等的失误,进行了订正和补遗。     

Women in parliaments in the Pacific region

The island states of the Pacific region are at the bottom of the international league table for the representation of women in parliament. Despite considerable efforts by international agencies and donor governments and by women of the region, progress on increasing representation is extraordinarily slow. Three major explanations for these low levels of representation can be identified. The most common explanation relates to cultural beliefs, while a second account locates the problem in women's socio-economic status. The third explanation argues that there are obstacles for women in the electoral and parliamentary institutions that warrant the introduction of legislated minimum representation of women. Each of these explanations contributes value to our understanding but each also has significant deficiencies, which are identified in the article.

就议会的妇女代表性而论,太平洋地区的岛屿国家可谓国际圆桌会议的垫底。尽管有国际机构和捐助国以及该地区女性的坚持不懈,提高妇女代表性的进展格外缓慢。对于这种低水平的代表性可以有三种解释。最常见的解释与文化观念有关,第二种强调妇女的社会经济地位。第三种解释认为,选举以及议会体制中存在一些障碍,使得妇女的代表性在立法上被最小化。三种解释都有助于我们对问题的理解,但它们又都存在着本文所指出的重要缺陷。     

The Shellfishers of St. Catherines Island: Hardscrabble Foragers or Farming Beachcombers?

ABSTRACT

St. Catherines Island (Georgia, USA) was separated from the mainland at about 3000 BC, creating massive estuarine tidal marshes, which aboriginal foragers began exploiting almost immediately. Correlative optimal foraging modeling and four decades of archaeological fieldwork demonstrate how this baseline shellfishing economy evolved and persisted, with some local impacts on estuarine resource patches, but no detectable changes in diet breadth over several millennia. The first St. Catherines islanders were likely tribal-level, egalitarian societies living in economically self-sufficient, virtually sedentary, and politically autonomous villages. They made the earliest pottery in North America. Shortly after AD 800, early Mississippian populations developed into chiefdoms characterized by ranked, inherited social hierarchies, ascribing social status and wealth at birth. This significant shift took place wholly in the context of their long-standing shellfishing economy. In the face of dramatically increasing populations, St. Catherines islanders gradually intensified their shellfishing and, at about AD 1400, they began cultivating maize and other domesticates. Shellfishing offers generally higher return rates than corn farming, so the adoption of a maize-based economy was likely driven by political, social, and perhaps adaptive changes in the Mississippian world rather than strictly provisioning strategies.     

郘亭诗论略

莫友芝,晚清诗坛宋诗派主将,郘亭诗近千首。述怀诗,塑造了一位晚清诗坛上具有进步思想、不慕荣利、不求爵禄的诗人形象;纪游诗,表现了时局的动荡,社会的黑暗,人生的艰辛;赠答诗,表达了朋辈友谊,真挚深诚的感情;山水诗,郘亭诗之精萃,以平淡的情态表现强烈的情感;记实诗,再现了清末社会生活,记载了农民起义的史实。     

Chasing the Halcyon Light – Human-Kingfisher Relations in Eastern Han-Dynasty China (CE 25–220) and Their Material,Sociocultural and Ecological Articulations

ABSTRACT

This article takes a fresh look at human-kingfisher relations in Eastern Han-dynasty China (CE 25–220). It argues that the confined appearance of kingfisher figurines in graves excavated in the southwest of the modern-day People’s Republic of China reflects the structural differences in human-kingfisher interactions between the centre(s) of the Han empire and its peripheries. By re-visiting the archaeology of the figurines and placing them into the wider cultural and ecological context, it is shown that distinct sociocultural transformations such as urbanisation processes and infrastructural projects profoundly changed the exposure and interactional dynamics between humans and kingfishers in the northern parts of the realm. This situation contrasted sharply with human-kingfisher interfaces in the southwest, where relatively ‘untamed’ environments harbouring a great number and diversity of kingfishers provided more favourable conditions for encountering them. I propose that this framework, in turn, fostered conceptualizations of kingfishers in which the birds came to encapsulate an experience fundamentally opposed to the type of human preponderance showcased in the core areas. By discussing a set of local practices and beliefs that might have further promoted this view, I suggest that they served as catalysts for the emergence of the kingfisher figurines at a particular time in a specific place. In this wider context, the article finally considers whether the southward expansion of the Eastern Han, with which the appearance of the figurines coincides, contributed to a re-configuration of north–south dynamics, shaping the general logic of human-kingfisher relations at the time.