西汉早期出土金缕和丝缕玉衣部分玉料材质及其加工工艺特征管窥

广州西汉南越王墓和徐州狮子山汉墓是我国汉代最重要和出土玉器数量最多的两个王侯级墓地,两墓出土的丝缕和金缕玉衣是当时南方和中原汉王朝最重要的墓葬玉器之一。通过上手观察、显微镜拍照并利用环境扫描电镜和漫反射红外光谱、拉曼光谱技术对广州南越王墓及徐州狮子山汉墓出土玉衣部分玉片的质材和加工工艺进行了观察测试和对比分析。结果显示,两地玉衣的玉料均主要为透闪石质,从现存玉衣颜色及玉质结构上看,徐州狮子山汉墓出土玉衣玉料来源单一且玉质明显好于南越王墓,南越王墓玉料具有多来源的特征,玉衣中的“假玉”可能来自粤西。从南越王墓玉衣片部分切割痕迹判断,南越王墓所使用的切割工具可能接近当时的最高水平,也可能存在中原交换来源的玉材,无法排除南越王墓玉衣全部或部分在当地制作的可能;南越王墓和徐州狮子山汉墓出土玉衣加工工艺特征明显不同,显示两地玉衣系由不同 “玉作”体系加工完成,汉代可能存在多个不同的玉作体系,工艺水平参差不齐。     

成都市博物院几件院藏青铜兵器的分析研究

为了解巴蜀青铜兵器的制作技术及表面斑纹形成机理,采用金相显微镜分析,扫描电镜及能谱仪对成都市博物院的几件带斑纹的馆藏青铜兵器进行了分析。结果表明,两件截面样品均为青铜铸造组织,锡含量平均为11％。三件器物表面斑纹层均含锡和铜并具有一定抗氧化作用。斑纹工艺可分为二类：剑周99-1极可能为直接铸出凸凹不平的剑体,在凸起部位涂高锡合金膏剂,加热处理后得到。另一类可能先直接铸出金属基体,在欲成斑处涂抹合金膏剂或纯锡,加热处理打磨得到。分析结果可为深入研究巴蜀青铜兵器提供参考。     

The Social Role of Technology in Coastal Alaska

Novel technologies linked to women and men through identity-demarcated tasks and knowledge sets can potentially have differential and even long-term effects on each group. This study follows the trajectory of two significant imports into the coastal western Alaskan system, the firearm and the metal cook pot. These imports had different implications for coastal Yup’ik women and men, young and old. Over time the gun became an integral piece of a man’s tool kit and one that had the potential to boost production and thus a man’s access to status-building. However, these same tools had the potential to undermine the apprenticeship system of male authority. Likewise, the metal cook pot replaced the productive oversight and skill set of elder women’s ceramic production but created paths of independence for younger Yup’ik women. These changes in technology destabilized relative balances of gender and age based status, security, and authority and fashioned new gender and age based social and economic opportunities and limitations.     

崇庆寺宋代彩塑的病害调查与分析思考

为了科学保护山西省崇庆寺宋、明时期的彩塑文物,作者深入调查了该寺彩塑的现状与病害,分析检测了泥塑土的配比、成分与彩绘颜料,并对比分析了该寺不同时期彩塑的材质及工艺特点。结果表明,宋代彩塑的病害类型、严重程度等较其它时期的彩塑明显要少和轻。这一现象启示我们探讨这批彩塑的造型设计、制作技艺、材料选择等具有重要的现实意义。     

Petrography as a technique for investigating Iroquoian ceramic production and smoking rituals

Petrographic data and macroscopic observations are used to examine some of the social contexts and functional considerations underlying the production of pottery containers and smoking pipes at Antrex, a Middle Ontario Iroquoian village site located in southern Ontario. Results suggest that while pottery was produced by small groups of people for widespread consumption within the community, pipes were made by individuals for their own personal use. Overall, this research supports the hypothesis that by the beginning of the Late Woodland period, a shift away from communal ritual practices led by ritual specialists or shamans had occurred. Smoking might have, in some contexts, become a solitary religious experience.     

Assessing a Computer-aided Instructional Strategy in a World Geography Course

An experiment was conducted to compare student achievement under two differing instructional strategies: a small-group and computer-aided strategy versus lecture instruction. Evaluation was extended in several ways beyond comparison of overall student scores. Results show significant improvements in student achievement produced by the computer-aided strategy with reference to gender, ethnicity and levels of cognitive learning. The study concludes that experimental evaluations of CAI serve best as formative tools to match instructional strategies to specific types of content material and different types of students, and that instructional media are best evaluated along with the instructional method in which they are embedded.     

'Enlivening' Development Concepts through Workshops: A case study of appropriate technology and soil conservation

In comparison with the teaching of most other geography topics, where fieldwork can be conducted relatively easily and seminars can be based on some pre-existing knowledge and first-hand experience of the issues, the range of resources and approaches available to tutors teaching the geography of development is necessarily more limited. Tutors often have to rely more heavily on 'top-down' teaching and more passive learning approaches, such as using videos, slides and lectures. While students may gain a theoretical understanding of development concepts, issues and problems, they may be left without a deeper 'experience' of such material. This paper describes a practical workshop designed to communicate to students the idea of 'appropriate technology'. The workshop enables students to actively 'experience' a development concept rather than simply understand it in theory. It tests comprehension and understanding, through the application of a concept to real examples, stimulates discussion and debate, and draws upon problem-solving and critical thinking skills.     

Middle Bronze Age metallurgy in the Levant: evidence from the weapons of Byblos

This paper constitutes a synthesis of a technological investigation on copper base alloy weapons from Byblos. Most of the weapons are typical of the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant. Methods such as metallographic examination and chemical analyses by EDS were used to identify the different stages of the chaîne opératoire used in the making of these weapons. The results reveal precise information regarding the production of several types of weapons such as the type and performance of the moulds used for casting and the deformation process. Furthermore, these results highlight the contribution of economic and cultural factors in the choice of components in a copper base alloy recipe. Finally, the use of silver–copper brazes for joining copper base alloy objects is recorded for the first time for the period and region concerned.     

Oral/Past Culture and Modern Technical Means in the Literature of the Twentieth Century in Greenland

Abstract

The present article takes as its starting point a short story from 2001 and relates it to the development of the Greenlandic literature in the twentieth century. The Greenlandic literature evolved around 1900 and mirrors the socio-political trends and the stages of nation building through the twentieth century. The overall tendencies of the century start with a striving towards more knowledge of and competence in European culture (including technical know-how) before 1950. Then a feeling of overwhelming impact from Danish culture followed during the Danification policy of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and this resulted in a protest movement in the 1960s and 1970s and Home Rule from 1979. However, if we read the literature in details and supplement it with the contemporary newspapers a much more diverse picture of an appropriation process (i.e. a conscious adaptation of selective parts of the impact from outside) emerges. The present article focuses on how these sources give us glimpses of an ongoing debate already in the first half of the twentieth century i.e. in colonial times: the Greenlandic population was not just passively under colonial domination. The history of the twentieth century is the history about a fairly well functioning appropriation of technical means and cultural impact from outside up till 1950, and then – after three decades of heavy modernization and Danification –-a process from 1979 on towards more and more agency in a “ glocalized” Greenland.     

Pre-hispanic goldwork technology. The Quimbaya Treasure,Colombia

One of the most important pre-Columbian gold assemblages made up of more than one hundred objects from two tombs in the Cauca river valley, Colombia, was studied to obtain archaeometric information. Although several attempts have been made to arrange gold production in time and space from the stylistic point of view, no firm conclusions were possible due to the lack of archaeological contexts. This paper presents first results of a new, fully instrumental approach, in which different analytical techniques, including OM, SEM-EDS, XRF, PIXE, RBS, AMS and X-ray imaging, were applied in order to determine a technological, metallurgical and chronological frame of the so-called Quimbaya Treasure.