1,720,965 research outputs found
Leaving No Ashlar Unturned. Definitions, Technical Features and Regional Synopsis of Cut-Stone Masonry in the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age
No full textCut-stone masonry is one of the most prominent features that characterizes monumental architecture, the appearance of which is imbued with symbolic meaning and is a corollary to wholesale changes in the societies of the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. The workshop held in Louvain-la-Neuve on the 8th and 9th of March 2018 aimed at exploring the specificities of building practices incorporating cut-stone masonry or components in Egypt, Syria, the Aegean, Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Levant in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. Specialists of the different regions of the Eastern Mediterranean discussed topics including the structural and formal features of standing architectural remains, extraction and shaping methods, tool kits, the visual effect of ashlar use and the symbolic impact of its abandonment. Before letting the reader enter the core of the volume and explore the range of approaches to ashlar offered by contributors specialized in different geographical areas and sites, it bears upon the editors to provide a terminological and contextual framework in this introductory chapter. Characterizing the forms, techniques and building processes associated with cut-stone masonry in the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age is a daunting task. Data are spread over an extensive geographical and chronological context – the latter often debated – and the description of ashlar components and masonries is often provided with varying degrees of details and a loose terminology. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a reminder of the terminology of cut-stone building components and masonry, to describe the specific techniques related to its production, and to provide a synopsis of ashlar use in the different regions of the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age. This regional synopsis is followed by a presentation of the challenges addressed during the workshop, and which fashioned the research questions addressed in the different, focused, contributions to this volume. These and the present introductory chapter address the research questions through varying case studies, datasets and methodologies, thus providing an in-depth understanding of the use of ashlar in the different regions of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, and providing a sound basis for discussion and comparison pertaining to this elaborate building technique
On the Ashlar Walls of Late Bronze Age Akrotiri (Thera)
No full textThis paper focusses on the noticeable presence of masons’ marks at Akrotiri (Thera) – the most prolific site outside Crete. These means of non-verbal communication are presented for the first time in an updated and revised overview, within their context and through a wide overview of the site’s architectural features and modalities of ashlar uses in the latest phase of the settlement. Particular attention is attributed to the types of signs identified at Akrotiri (after Notti 2014) and the physical characteristic of the carved blocks. Starting from a preliminary discussion on the specificities of the signs, and the perspectives and limits in this field of research – i.e. the possibility to study sets of signs within well-defined limits, trace the signs back to the carving and construction process, examine their distribution, concentration and relations with building functions, estimate the percentage of incised and non-incised blocks etc., among which the discovery of a number of incised blocks in situ is fundamental – the paper discusses also the recurring - though not systematic - patterns emerging from a general revision of the material
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
9. A Typology for Destruction Layers
No full text1. Introduction 1.1. The Late Bronze Age Southern Levant The Southern Levant, the region including modern day Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan, is located at the junction between the continents of Asia and Africa, and has always served as a bridge between cultures and empires. With the Mediterranean coast as its western border, the region has been heavily involved, in most periods, in the flourishing Mediterranean trade (Fig. 9.1). The southern Levant is split in two by the Syro..
Skeletons in bronze and Iron Age destruction contexts in the southern Levant: what do they mean?
Full text linkIl presente studio esamina gli scheletri rinvenuti in contesti di distruzione dell’età del Bronzo e del Ferro nel Levante meridionale, nell’ambito dell’archeologia comportamentale e dell’archeologia della distruzione. Sottolinea la rarità degli scheletri in tali contesti e ipotizza che ciò sia dovuto principalmente a due ragioni: 1) gli assedi veri e propri erano piuttosto rari e la maggior parte delle città capitolavano senza combattere, dunque non soffrivano vittime; 2) dopo ogni distruzione le città venivano attentamente ‘bonificate’, in primo luogo per ragioni igieniche. La rassegna dei contesti di rinvenimento degli scheletri mostra che la loro presenza in strati di sopravvivenza dopo la distruzione dipende dal fatto che non fu possibile individuare i cadaveri abbastanza presto dopo la morte oppure che il loro recupero risultava troppo difficile. Essi potevano anche rimanere sul posto in quanto il sito veniva abbandonato e l’igiene non costituiva una seria preoccupazione. In alcuni casi, tuttavia, sembra che gli scheletri siano stati lasciati negli strati di distruzione intenzionalmente, come per una sorta di punizione. L’autore suggerisce infine che l’assenza di armi in contesti di distruzione con scheletri non costituisce una ragione sufficiente per attribuire la distruzione a un evento sismico.The current study examines skeletons found in Bronze and Iron Age destruction contexts from the southern Levant, within the framework of behavioural archaeology and the archaeology of destruction. It addresses the rarity of skeletons in such contexts, and argues that it is due to two main reasons: 1) genuine siege warfare was rather rare, and most cities capitulated without a battle, and therefore suffered no casualties; 2) after any destruction cities were thoroughly ‘cleaned’, mostly for hygienic reasons. A review of the find contexts of skeletons shows that their presence in surviving destruction layers occurs either because the skeletons could not be found soon after death, or their recovery was too difficult at the time. They may also have remained in these layers because the sites were abandoned, and thus hygiene did not play a major role. Yet, in some cases, it seems that skeletons were left in destruction layers intentionally, as a sort of punishment. Finally, it is suggested that the presence of skeletons in destruction contexts with no accompanying weapons, should not be seen as evidence for an earthquake as the cause of the destruction
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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