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A Characterisation of Mortuary Ceramics from Ban Non Wat, Northeast Thailand
No full textAfter numerous seasons of excavation, a long sequence of occupation has been revealed at Ban Non Wat in Northeast Thailand from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. In this paper, the results of a characterisation of ceramic vessels identified in burial contexts are provided. The studied sample included Bronze and Iron Age ceramics. The analysis involved a characterisation of morphology, surface treatment and the fabrics to uncover the technology for pottery manufacture at Ban Non Wat in prehistory. The fabric analysis of the clays and tempers was conducted with the electron microprobe. The results revealed two distinct manufacturing methods. The Bronze Age phase 2 and 3 burials were tempered with sand in almost all of the studied sherds, while fibre tempered ceramics were dominant in the assemblage in burials from Bronze Age phase 4 to the Iron Age phases. The adoption of fibre tempering appears to have taken place between Bronze Age 3 and 4 at Ban Non Wat, positing the earliest known use of this method on the Khorat Plateau at c.800 BC
The Neolithic of the Russian Far East and Neighboring East Asia: Definition, Chronology, and Origins
No full textThe exact definition of the term “Neolithic” is discussed and the spatio-temporal coordinates of the two main Neolithic-related phenomena in greater East Asia, pottery and cultivation of plants and animals, are presented. In this part of Eurasia, pottery-making preceded agriculture by several millennia. Pottery may be accepted as the major criterion of the Neolithic epoch in the hunter-fisher-gatherer continuum of East Asian prehistory. This situation differs from that in the Near East, where plant and animal husbandry developed before the emergence of pottery, and Europe, where pottery and agriculture appeared almost simultaneously. Thus today, three main ‘trajectories’ for Neolithisation may be defined in Eurasia. The ultimate reason for the origin of pottery in East Asia remains unclear
Explanations for patterning in the ‘package of traits’ of modern human behaviour within Sahul
Get PDFLate Pleistocene Sahul has provided a test for the debate surrounding the appearance of the ‘package’ of modern human behaviour within the archaeological record. A detailed review of the late Pleistocene archaeological record of Sahul (Franklin and Habgood 2007; Habgood and Franklin 2008) found both chronological and geographical patterning for the appearance of the individual traits - four broad Phases and seven ‘Zones of Innovation’. We consider potential causes for this patterning including taphonomy and artefact function, but conclude that it reflects material culture differences and cultural preferences
Identifying and characterizing a “consumer medical vocabulary”.
Get PDFProblem: To identify and analyze similarities and differences between professional, intennediary ("media"), and lay medical vocabularies (e.g., myocardial infarction vs. heart attack)
Social discovery tools: Cataloguing meets user convenience
Get PDFThis paper examines how library users access, use, and interact with two social discovery systems used in two Canadian public library systems. How do public library users interact with social discovery systems? How does usage between the two social discovery systems compare? Daily transaction logs of the social discovery systems used by the two libraries were compiled from May-August, 2010. Fifty sets of bibliographic records were compared to evaluate user-contributed content. Results indicate that features that allow for user-generated content are underused in both systems. Future research will thus focus on clients' motivations for engaging with the social features of social discovery systems, and their perceptions of, and satisfaction with, the benefits of these features
Multidimensional classifications: Past and future conceptualizations and visualizations
Get PDFThis paper maps the concepts “space” and “dimensionality” in classifications, in particular in visualizations hereof, from a historical perspective. After a historical excursion in the domain of classification theory of what in mathematics is known as dimensionality reduction in representations of a single universe of knowledge, its potentiality will be explored for information retrieval and navigation of the World Wide Web
Contentious categories
Get PDFWikipedia is an online encyclopedia created entirely of user‐generated content. Roughly two years after Wikipedia began, the community decided to create a category system to organize the content of the site. The category system has changed over time, as have conceptualizations of what role it should serve in Wikipedia. In this paper, I consider six months of discussion about the design and implementation of the category system in Wikipedia. I analyze the comments editors shared and attempt to understand how these early decisions shaped the category system as it currently exists
Anticipating new media: A faceted classification of material types
Get PDFThe emergence of new media types, many seemingly without counterparts in the non-digital world, challenges the readiness of existing knowledge organization schemes to accommodate them. A knowledge organization scheme based on a faceted analysis of existing classes of bibliographic materials is likely to accommodate new developments better than one based on a list of unanalyzed material types. The faceted analysis undertaken here, in which seven facets are recognized (content, generation of content, recording of content, publication/distribution, physical characteristics, perception/use, and relationships) shows the inadequacy of the traditional view of the bibliographic community of a fundamental distinction between content and carrier; interaction between content and carrier is common and enters into the characterization of material types. The facet analysis is validated by applying it to two new material types, wikis and blogs
