1,720,983 research outputs found
Researching on the margins:Landscape Archaeology in the Polcevera Valley
No full textSince the late 1980s the Laboratory for Ancient Topography of the University of Pisa has been carrying out archaeological surveys within the mountainous area of the Polcevera Valley (North Apennines, Central Liguria).
Towards an appraisal of the ancient history of this landscape it seemed clear that data retrieved from traditional survey approaches (i.e. site-recovery issues) and interpretations based on traditional material classes (i.e. Roman fine-wares) could only emphasise the marginal character of the Valley as related to Rome and its territorial expectations (in fact mirroring the general views expressed by ancient authors about Liguria). At the same time, an outstanding epigraphic source, the Sententia Minuciorum (117 BC), reported of Ligurian economic and social structures, surviving even along a major Roman road (the via Postumia, 148 BC) and preserving a specific way of life.
This paper aims to outlining the distinctive character of the Valley across Antiquity from a more embedded perspective, touching also on both the methodological and interpretative implications that researchers have to face in dealing with such a liminal - marginal landscape
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Peasants and slaves. The rural population of Roman Italy (II c. BC - I c. AD)
No full textStudies like Hannibal’s Legacy by Arnold Toynbee (1965) and Italian Manpower by Peter A. Brunt (1971) developed a specific interpretive model which accounted for the overall transformations of Roman politics, economy and society in Italy. Indeed, it was argued that something had irreversibly changed in the relationship between the citizen-peasant-soldier and his landscape. Laying at the forefront of this interpretation was the idea of a decline of the Italian free peasantry (being supplanted by imported slaves), that is a formal demographic argument whose origin can be traced back to Karl Julius Beloch’s Bevölkerung (1886). However, such readings were not universally accepted and have been increasingly debated among scholars of the ancient economy, arguing for or against traditional explanations of what happened to the countryside of Late Republican Italy.
To what a degree the contribution of archaeological survey to this debate could be fruitful (or even appropriate) is a matter of debate in itself, but it is equally undeniable that surface scatters of potsherds from all over Italy have produced a huge amount of data related to ancient settlement patterns, from time to time being interpreted as an argument for the persistence of the Italian free peasantry. Accordingly, this research aims at developing a formal synthesis of archaeological (survey-derived) evidence to be fully integrated within the traditional debate on the rural population of Roman Italy (II c. BC – I c. AD). It is a clear objective of this study to show that a deep permeation of archaeological and historical researching is not only desirable and profitable, but rather necessary, such interdisciplinary attitude being explicitly inherited from grand traditions within both Italian and British scholarship
Roman Urbanism in Italy
Get PDFThe study of Roman urbanism – especially its early (Republican) phases – is extensively rooted in the evidence provided by a series of key sites, several of them located in Italy. Some of these Italian towns (e.g. Fregellae, Alba Fucens, Cosa) have received a great deal of scholarly attention in the past and they are routinely referenced as textbook examples, framing much of our understanding of the broad phenomenon of Roman urbanism. However, discussions of these sites tend to fall back on well-established interpretations, with relatively little or no awareness of more recent developments. This is remarkable, since our understanding of these sites has since evolved thanks to new archaeological fieldwork, often characterised by the pursuit of new questions and the application of new approaches. Similarly, new evidence from other sites has since prompted a reconsideration of time-honoured views about the nature, role and long-term trajectory of Roman towns in Italy. Tracing its origins in the Laurence Seminar on Roman Urbanism in Italy: recent discoveries and new directions, which took place at the Faculty of Classics of the University of Cambridge (27–28 May 2022), this volume brings together scholars whose recent work at key sites is contributing to expand, change or challenge our current knowledge and understanding of Roman urbanism in Italy. The individual chapters showcase some of the most recent methods and approaches applied to the study of Roman towns, discussing the broader implications of fresh archaeological discoveries from both well known and less widely known sites, from the Po Plain to Southern Italy, from the Republican to the Late Antique period (and beyond)
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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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