The Agote Map of Hainan Island,China: A Case Study for Cultural Dialogue in Eighteenth-Century Cartography

The idea of cartography as an example of Western imposition or process of cultural transfer is one that has long fascinated scholars interested in the margins of empires. This article analyses the maps in the possession of Manuel Agote, a Spanish factor in Canton at the end of the eighteenth century. The focus is on the use made by Agote of a Chinese map of Hainan, together with the European maps available already in China for commercial interests, and the way this reflects the cultural dialogue that was operating among local and foreign cartographers engaged in similar European mapping activities in the region.     

‘Caught’ between foreign cultural and development policies: perspectives of German Studies and German as a foreign language in Africa

The promotion of the German language abroad and of German Studies plays a central role in German Foreign Cultural Policy. With regard to Sub-Saharan Africa, otherwise a peripheral region for foreign policy, German as foreign language is firmly established as second language after English. Learners especially in Francophone West and Central Africa have increased over the past decade. Numerous funding programmes and actions are supported by German nongovernmental organizations at college/university levels. But bilateral cooperation between German and African academic institutions are challenged both by negative perceptions of the ‘Global South’ among Western colleagues and by an infrastructure adverse to research and to career development in most African countries. Additionally, North/South relations are traditionally seen in terms of (under-)development by German institutions, effecting cooperation. The paper develops a differentiated picture of African Studies in Africa, and outlines benefits that can be attained through collaboration ‘at eye-level’.     

Masters of Healing: Cocaine and the Ideal of the Victorian Medical Man

This article offers a new perspective on the relationship between cocaine and medical practitioners in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Cocaine is often understood as one of a number of potentially addictive substances to which Victorian physicians and surgeons were regularly exposed, and tempted to indulge in. However, while cocaine has frequently been associated with discourses of addiction, this article proposes that it was also widely represented as a technological triumph, and that the drug was frequently used as a symbol for the scientific and moral virtues of the medical man. The argument draws on popular journalism, medical publications, and fiction to establish the cultural context of cocaine at the fin de siècle. In 1884, cocaine was revealed to be the first effective local anaesthetic, and this article traces the processes by which cocaine came to be regarded as the iconic achievement of nineteenth-century therapeutic science. This aura of innovative brilliance in turn communicated itself to the medical professionals who employed cocaine in their work, so that many patients and practitioners alike depicted cocaine as a most fitting emblem for the idealized selfhood of the modern medical man. This idea also informs portrayals of the drug in fiction, and I conclude with a detailed analysis of L. T. Meade’s 1895 short story, ‘The Red Bracelet’ (published in the Strand Magazine as part of Meade’s series, ‘Stories from the Diary of a Doctor’), as an example of the way in which cocaine functions as metaphor for the physician’s unassailable moral primacy and technical excellence.     

略议风景植被

文本提出了风景植被的含义,阐述了风景植被的发生是人类文明进化的结果,分析了风景植被的宏观构景和微观信息特征。同时还以西安临潼骊山旅游区为例,介绍了风景植被的分类系统。     

河南南阳市一中新校址汉墓发掘简报

20 0 1年 2月～ 10月 ,南阳市文物考古研究所在市一中新校址发掘古墓葬 4 4 7座 ,出土了大量随葬器物。其中在M 3 6中出土两件泥质灰陶虎座钫壶 ,为古代陶塑艺术佳作 ,系豫西南地区首次发现。     

刘遗民非"遗民"考

刘程之,号遗民,晋宋问人,晋末弃官归隐。后人往往根据其不仕之事与“遗民”之号,将其理解为易代后出于政治立场与道德自觉不仕新朝的“遗民”。其实,遗民一词的此一义项在晋宋之世尚未确立,刘遗民不过是一位追求山林玄远之趣的隐逸之士。并且,由于刘遗民的历史存在,还产生了“遗民”一词不被广泛注意的另一义项——隐士。     

《云笈七签》卷113（上）所收14则仙传归属置疑

《云笈七签》卷——三(上)收录的14则仙传,通常以为《逸史》佚文,李剑国先生《唐五代志怪传奇叙录》虽曾怀疑为《神仙感遇传》内容,但经过分析,还是归为《逸史》佚文。本文在此基础上进一步对比考察,认为这14则仙传乃是杜光庭改编自《逸史》的篇目,与《逸史》原文已经有很大差别,应属在《神仙感遇传》名下。     

Die ‚Deutsche Physik’︁ in der Selbstkritik des NS‐Ideologen Alfred Bäumler

In 1944, the Nazi ideologist Alfred Baeumler wrote a memorandum for his boss Alfred Rosenberg, Adolf Hitler's commissioner for the political education of party members. In this sensational memo, which did not become known until long after 1945, Baeumler spoke out against the promotion of under‐performing physicists who oust highly‐qualified non‐Nazi scientists at the universities without submitting adequate research results. – Rosenberg's response is not known. What is known, however, is that Baeumler did not manage to change the situation criticised by him.     

Micromorphological perspectives on the stratigraphical excavation of shell middens: a first approximation from the ethnohistorical site Tunel VII,Tierra del Fuego (Argentina)

Due to their problematic stratigraphy, shell middens have traditionally been excavated by artificial stratigraphical cuts. This approach has often led to the obliteration of the original depositional sequence, removing important information regarding depositional and post-depositional processes, and human frequentation. Since the 1970s, an Argentinian team has been excavating archaeological shell middens in the Beagle Channel with a detailed stratigraphical approach, based on the excavation of actual depositional units (peeling), rather than artificial cuts. In the 1980s, Spanish archaeologists joined the Argentinean team and launched a series of new projects involving the excavation of ethnohistorical Yamana fisher-hunter-gatherer sites. The first excavated midden site was Tunel VII, from which two monolith columns of about 50 cm each (C11 and C12) that spanned the whole stratigraphy were extracted. The two columns were consolidated with resin, and two series of thin sections produced to corroborate stratigraphical observations made in the field, and to verify hypotheses related to the formation of archaeological shell midden sites. We present here the first results obtained from the microscopical observation of seven thin sections from column 11 (West column), extracted from a portion of the profile originally described as corresponding to the hut entrance and associated floor. The observation of microscopical features invisible in the field has provided supplemental information about the depositional and post-depositional processes affecting shell midden sites. We have also preliminarily defined a number of micromorphological characteristics identifying human activities such as discrete shell deposition events, phases of preparation of the hut floor, and compression by repeated trampling. Finally, we have explored the possibility of establishing some guidelines to characterise the length and character of frequentation phases of the site previous to its final abandonment at the beginning of the 20th century.     

张衡地动仪的发明、失传与历史继承

地动仪的发明和失传存在深厚的社会背景.悬挂物对地震的良好反应是诞生科学思想的物质基础.地动仪是对天然验震器的发展,张衡不仅在利用物体惯性测震上,也在检测和记录地震微弱信号上有技术创新,成功测到公元134年12月13日陇西地震.天诫观念把自然现象与社会问题混为一谈,导致张衡晚年和地动仪的悲剧.仪器可能失传于东汉末年,当时发生了洛阳大火、毁铜铸钱、京师搬迁、人口剧减和灵台被毁等极端严重的社会混乱.张衡的科学思想和实践对现代地震学的起步发挥过思想启迪作用.对地动仪的研究需要开展科学实验,学术观点的统一只能建立在科学实验的基础上.