Conflicts Over Trees and Waves on Siberut Island

ABSTRACT The paper describes some recent developments with respect to logging operations and the tourist industry on the island of Siberut (West Sumatra, Indonesia). It discusses these developments from the perspective of the notions of equitable access and benefit sharing and prior informed consent. These are often referred to as basic principles in dealing with external intervention within the territory of indigenous peoples. After the initial logging boom during the 1970s and 1980s about half of the island was declared a nature reserve in the early 1990s. All logging operations were terminated. Backpack tourism started to develop more or less simultaneously, stimulated by the lure of a Stone Age culture on a tropical paradise island. This contributed greatly to the efforts to safeguard the island's rich biodiversity. Recently, however, a new form of logging started on the island, with a university as concession holder. But also a new kind of tourism discovered Siberut: its waves are supposed to be of excellent quality and allow for first‐class surfing. As a result of regional autonomy and the process of democratisation in Indonesia, the local people are not willing to accept these new forms of resource use without at least sharing in their benefits. This paper is based on extensive periods of fieldwork on Siberut over the past twenty years.     

Human corpse manipulation and the body as symbol: A case study from the Eastern Pampa–Patagonia transition (Argentina) during the Final Late Holocene

Human body manipulation and secondary burials are widespread funerary practices in many areas of the world. The archaeology of the Pampas and North-Eastern Patagonia, Argentina, is no exception. In this paper, archaeological case studies from the lower basin of the Colorado River during the Final Late Holocene (ca. 1000–250 years BP) are presented and discussed. Secondary burials were recovered that indicated an intentional manipulation of bodies. Evidences of cut marks and the coloring of bone surfaces were recorded. The bundles were composed of individuals of both sexes and diverse age categories. The Pampean region and North-Eastern Patagonia witnessed significant hunter–gatherer population dynamics during the last 1000 years BP. Climatic, ecologic, demographic, and economic explanations have been proposed as the background to these changes. In this paper, it is argued that accompanying these factors, as part of a broader socio-cultural scenario, were significant social interaction networks and processes of social complementarity between groups. In this context, it is proposed that the complexity observed in relation to the handling of bodies is part of a worldview in which the body was seen as material culture – as a symbol – that played an important role for the community in group identity maintenance in a cultural context undergoing significant organizational changes.     

Trilobite biofacies of the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary interval in northern North America

Regional biofacies analysis has been neglected in biostratigraphic studies of the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary interval. Cluster analysis of relative abundance data of trilobites in thirty-seven large collections from ten localities in North America outlines eleven biofacies in the mid-Trempealeauan to early Tremadocian interval. The biofacies are largely lithofacies-specific and are differentiated at generic and familial levels. The composition of trilobite zonal associations in the boundary interval is controlled principally by the sequence of biofacies. Available trilobite zonal schemes can be used only within single lithofacies. The biofacies patterns and faunal dynamics across the upper boundary of the Ptychaspid Biomere do not support hypotheses requiring catastrophic events. In coherence and geographic distribution, Late Cambrian trilobite biofacies are similar to post-Cambrian benthic biofacies.     

梁启超对洋务派的批判

批判洋务思想和洋务派是梁启超变法思想的重要组成部分之一。梁氏认为 ,洋务派也讲变法 ,也谈西学 ,但成效甚微 ,最根本的原因是其变法不知“本原”;并指出 ,洋务派的病根在于“不以民为重 ,其一切法制皆务压制其民”,从而击中了洋务派的要害 ,从政治上划清了维新派与洋务派的界限