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Middle Pleistocene environments, landscapes and tephrostratigraphy of the Armenian Highlands: evidence from Bird Farm 1, Hrazdan Valley
Get PDFThe significance of the southern Caucasus in understanding Pleistocene hominin expansions is well established. However, the palaeoenvironments in which Palaeolithic occupation of the region took place are presently poorly defined. The Hrazdan river valley, Armenian Highlands, contains a rich Palaeolithic record alongside Middle Pleistocene volcanic, fluvial and lacustrine strata, and thus offer exciting potential for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. We present the first results of sedimentological, geochemical, tephrostratigraphical and biological (diatoms) study of the sequence of Bird Farm 1, located in the central part of the valley. These data show six phases of landscape development during the interval 440–200 ka. The sequence represents the first quantitative Pleistocene diatom record from the Armenian Highlands and the southern Caucasus, and indicates the persistence of a deep, stratified lacustrine system, with evidence for changing lake productivity that is tentatively linked to climate. Furthermore, major element chemical characterization of visible and crypto-tephra horizons in the sequence enables the first stages of the development of a regional tephrostratigraphy. Together, the evidence from Bird Farm 1 demonstrates the importance of lacustrine archives in the region for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and highlights the potential for linkages between archives on both a local and regional scale
An exploration of dual task benefits to motor learning and effects on prefrontal cortex haemodynamics
Get PDFWas Jack the Ripper a slaughterman? Human-animal violence and the world’s most infamous serial killer
No full textReview: Medieval Art in Motion: The Inventory and Gift-Giving of Queen Clémence of Hungary, by Mariah Proctor-Tiffany
No full textReligion and Touch
No full textReligion is, at its very root, a sensual and often tactile affair. From genuflections, prayer, dance, and eating, to tattooing, wearing certain garments or objects, lighting candles and performing other rituals, religions of all descriptions involve regular bodily commitments which are mediated by acts of touch.Contributors to this volume have isolated the ‘sense of touch’ from the general sensorium as a particular ‘sense tool’ from which to creatively innovate and operationalize fresh concepts, theories, and methods in relation to a diverse range of case studies in Africa, South America, Polynesia, Europe, and South and Southeast Asia. Common and overlapping themes include how touch mediates direct physical (often deliberate) contact between physical bodies (human and other than human) and the things that are crafted, blessed, related with, engaged with, or worn. Understanding touch as the vehicle to alternative forms of knowledge-making in specific religious contexts is the driving force behind the contributions to this collection.The volume argues that touch is not only an intrinsic part of religion but the principal facilitating medium through which religion, religious encounters and performances take place. The diverse contexts presented here signal how investigations that centralise the body and the senses can produce nuanced, culturally specific knowledges and allow for the development of new definitions for lived religion. By placing both ‘body’ and the sense of touch at the centre of investigations, the volume asserts that material practice and bodily sensation are lived religion
Inferring Latent Patterns in Air Quality from Urban Big Data
No full textThe emerging paradigm of urban computing aims to infer latent patterns from various aspects of a city’s environment and possibly identify their hidden correlations by analyzing urban big data. This paper provides a fine-grained analysis of air quality from diverse sensor data streams retrieved from regions in the city of London. The analysis derives spatio-temporal patterns, i.e. across different location categories and time spans, and also reveals the interplay between urban phenomena such as human commuting behavior and the built environment, with the observed air quality patterns. The findings have important implications for the health of ordinary citizens and for city authorities who may formulate policies for a better environment
