舞在中国 舞向世界——对话铜雕大师朱炳仁

沿着杭州古朴的河坊街,有一座著名的江南铜屋,它的主人就是朱炳仁先生。朱炳仁是铜雕领域的非物质文化遗产传承人,也是一位国际级的工艺美术大师。他一生与铜为舞,通过熔铜技术,在中国大地上铸造了数十座著名的铜建筑。可以说,他是自青铜时代以来,在铜文化历史上,第一位有名有姓的工艺大师。他在他的诗歌《舞铜》中这样描述:"立定,太极推手;

The Biodiversity of Cyprus Island

The aspects considered in this paper refer to remains of food plants found in the archaeological area of Pyrgos （Early Bronze Age, 2000 B.C.） near Limassol in Cyprus, related to the history of agriculture and cultivated plant processing technologies. For the purposes of an initial comparison of the archaeobotanical data, the authors updated a map of rainfall distribution on Cyprus with rainfall and temperature data for the period from 1973 to 2007, to produce an updated view of possible microclimates on the island. Cyprus was one of the Mediterranean islands whose particular orographic features encouraged the phylogenetic evolution of many species, and today it is especially rich in endemic species. Cyprus located at the southeastern boundary among the Mediterranean region, the Pontic region （the Irano-Turanic element） and the Near East （the Syriac and Nubo-Sindic elements） it doesn＇t seem to have effectively influenced the most important endemic species, they were probably preserved by the island＇s microclimates and particular edaphic conditions.

Music in Prehistoric Armenia

Within the syncretic world view of prehistoric people, there was an inseparable link between word, song, and dance Hence it is not easy for the modern researcher to outline the border between these spheres. Using interdisciplinary methods, present paper touches the case of Armenian monodic music. Through analysis of song types （concerning labour, funeral, wedding, belief, worship, magic, mythology, epic, and dance）, music representatives, music performance places, and musical instruments, an attempt is made to consider the phenomenon within certain temporal borders. It turns out that the folk and folk-professional realistic music is simple and static in its essence and includes the invariant component of local culture, going back to the period of formation of early farming communities. Meanwhile with emerging social complexity since the Bronze Age, new and various forms of musical performance come to existence.

Etymological Connections Between the Ancient People of laones and the Tacitean Suiones

According to Felice Vinci＇s revolutionary theory of the Nordic origins of the Homeric poems, the Achaeans who migrated to the Aegean Sea to found the Mycenaean civilization--whose language actually was an Ionian dialect, similar to that of Homer--were the laones, deriving their origin from Sweden. The Italian scholar offers significant analogies to prove his hypothesis, drawing them from several scientific disciplines, such as history （the movement appears similar to that of Varangians, who in the Middle Ages moved from Sweden to found the kingdom of Rus＇）, geography （the promontory of Cape Sounion, located 43 miles south-southeast of Athens, seems to be a souvenir of the same name）, archaeology （the spiral shape, one of the most popular ones in the volutes of the Ionic capitals, was a common decoration also during the Nordic Bronze Age）, and literature （especially a remarkable quotation taken from Plato, Critias 111e）. In the author＇s contribution, he tries to check Felice Vinci＇s interpretation through a careful survey in ancient literature and linguistics, in order to verify the etymological connections between the ancient people of laones and the Tacitean Suiones.

Spatiotemporal evolution of prehistoric Neolithic-Bronze Age settlements and influencing factors in the Guanting Basin, northeast Tibetan Plateau

For almost two decades, the relationship between prehistoric natural disasters that struck the Guanting Basin in northeast Tibetan Plateau and the destruction of Lajia, an archeological site, has attracted scholarly attention and been widely discussed. Whereas most studies have focused on the impacts of disasters on a single site within the Guanting Basin, few have examined patterns of spatiotemporal evolution of human settlements from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Consequently, there is a lack of clarity on the processes and mechanisms underlying the evolution of prehistoric human-land relationships in the Guanting Basin. We therefore examined spatiotemporal variations in settlements in the Guanting Basin during the period, based on the locations, altitudes, and areas of archaeological sites. We found that four sites were located on the third terrace of the Yellow River during the late Yangshao period(5500–5000 cal yr BP) and distributed within a small area. During the period between the Majiayao and Qijia cultures(5300–3600 cal yr BP), the number of sites evidently increased and the scale and distribution of settlements expanded, with settlements generally shifting toward the lower elevation areas of the Guanting Basin.During the Xindian period(3400–2700 cal yr BP), the number and scale of sites showed a downward trend and the distribution of settlements contracted. The Xindian settlement underwent altitude-based spatial differentiation, with some groups moving to areas at higher altitudes and others remained in lower altitude areas. Moreover, we found that the number, scale, and distribution range of Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in the Guanting Basin were closely related to the evolution and distribution patterns of prehistoric cultures in the regions of Gansu and Qinghai, which were further affected by climate change and agricultural development. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the altitudinal distribution pattern of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements in the Guanting Basin was influenced by paleofloods rather it was primarily influenced by changes in subsistence strategies.