明代延绥镇长城的修筑及其地理意义

本文对明代延绥镇长城的"二边"和"大边"的修筑时间、地点、修筑者等问题进行了系统研究,指出"二边"长城为余子俊督修,时间为成化九年(1473年)三、四月至次年的三、四月之间;"大边"长城则为文贵主持修建,时间在弘治十七年(1504年)九月至正德二年(1507年)四月之间。"二边"长度为2013里(明里)195步,约合1183.4公里;"大边"长度为1087里(明里),约合639.2公里。延绥镇长城的修筑过程与明代西北边防方略的发展过程密切关联,也间接反映了边地卫所土地屯垦的变化,对研究历史时期陕北长城沿线环境变迁具有重要意义。     

Strofilas (Andros Island,Greece): new evidence for the cycladic final neolithic period through novel dating methods using luminescence and obsidian hydration

The recently excavated coastal prehistoric settlement of Strofilas on Andros Island (Cyclades, Greece) in the Aegean sheds new light on the transitional phase from the Final Neolithic to Early Cycladic period regarding masonry, fortification, and richly engraved rock art. The fortification possesses early evidence of preserved defensive architecture, as evidenced from the plethora of scattered finds from within and around the settlement. Important features are carvings on rock walls which mainly depict ships, animals, and fish. Initial archaeometric dating via the application of luminescence dating of two samples from the fortified wall bearing engraved ships, and by obsidian hydration of two blades employing the new SIMS-SS method (secondary ion mass spectrometry via surface saturation), has been undertaken to determine the site's chronology. The former yields an average date of 3520 (±540) BC and the latter an average date of 3400 (±200) years BC, both of which, within overlapping errors, suggest the main settlement occurred during the Final Neolithic.     

蓬莱阁丹崖山岩体加固保护技术研究

探讨了我国大型古建筑群的基础岩体出现裂隙、破碎带、危岩体、负地形、崩塌、滑坡等相关病害成因,介绍了水平锚杆加固危岩体技术、斜锚杆加固海蚀洞技术、喷锚挂网处理表层破碎带技术、锚索加固城墙、表面作旧保护特色地貌等技术的研制和实施。     

Settlement fortification in village and ‘tribal’ society: Evidence from contact-era New Guinea

Using ethnographic data from contact-era New Guinea, this paper seeks to advance an understanding of the logic of settlement fortifications—i.e., the principles governing their design and operational functioning. This issue has been largely neglected because the principles involved seem so obvious: fortifications function to improve the security of a position by impeding an attacker’s efforts to penetrate it. For village and tribal societies, though, this can be an oversimplification. In these communities, people are generally most dependent on their settlement fortifications at night, when they are home and asleep; yet the cover of night is precisely when settlement fortifications are at their most vulnerable to penetration. What the New Guinea evidence reveals is that settlement fortifications were designed not just to keep attackers out but, even more important, to keep them in once they had penetrated and launched their attack. Defenders could then rally and annihilate their assailants, creating a powerful deterrent against attack in the first place—the best defense of all. These findings are applied to an early Late Woodland site in Ohio to illustrate their potential for informing an archeology of war.     

Baffles and Stockades: Entryway Construction at Southern Plains Fortifications,A.D. 1500–1850

Southern Plains archaeologists have for years reported piecemeal data suggesting that ancestors of the Wichita Indians periodically built fortifications. Since 2003, we have conducted archaeological and geophysical investigations at multiple Late Prehistoric and European contact era fortified Wichita sites occupied between about a.d. 1500 and a.d. 1811. We seek to better understand the areal extent, timing, and structural changes associated with facilities that appear to have functioned as redoubts (Drass, Perkins, and Vehik 2018). In this article, we focus on how the Wichita constructed and secured fortification entryways. Given the inherent vulnerability of entryways, architects across the globe have designed a variety of defensive configurations to confound attackers. For the Wichita, the introduction of horses and guns beginning in the 1600s magnified these challenges. Our findings indicate that baffled gates, often paired with fenced extended entryways, facilitated quick entry by defenders and dependents while serving as impediments to hostile intruders.     

Assessment of the Lines of Torres Vedras defensive system with visibility analysis

A method to assess the coherence of defensive systems based on the individual and combined visual coverage of fortifications is presented. The case study is the complex fortification system of Lines of Torres Vedras, around Lisbon, Portugal, activated in the first decade of the 19th century to halt the French armies of Napoleon in the Peninsular War. As messages between fortifications are known to have been exchanged visually by semaphore, GIS-based viewshed calculations enabled the assessment of the system's coherence and the exploration of how the undocumented communication with the defensive forces' headquarters in Lisbon might have been achieved. Results show that the defensive system with its two lines was highly effective per se with respect to the visual coverage of the terrain and the exchange of messages between fortifications, but it could have been improved with minor changes to the location of communication devices. It is also found that communication with the headquarters in Lisbon was not adequate, suggesting that additional devices were needed.