1,721,091 research outputs found
The lagoonal harbour of Portus Pisanus (N Tyrrhen- ian Sea, Italy): a long history of human adaptation to changing coastline
Full text linkDuring the last millennia human and natural processes have become increasingly intertwined, especially in the Mediterranean coastal and alluvial plains where major urban and trade centres developed since protohistoric times. The construction of ports represents one of the human activities that have mostly contributed to modify coastal environments, inducing a variety of hydrodynamic and hydrochemical changes especially since Roman times (Marriner et al., 2014).
Exceptions in this common manner to plan harbours have been recognised along the N Tyrrhenian coast, where no high-impact defense works are explicitly documented by either historical sources or archaeological excavations for three main harbours developed during Etruscan-Roman times (IV-I century BC): Portus Lunae (Bini et al., 2012), Portus Pisanus and Vada Volterrana.
Roman literary sources (i.e., Itinerarium Maritimum 501; Rutilio Namaziano) mentioned Portus Pisanus as a flourishing commercial site within a natural protected area (called Sinus Pisanus by Tacito) characterized by Posidonia meadows and located at the foot of Leghorn hills, ca. 18.5 km south of the Pisa city. Accordingly, recent excavations undertaken close to the hills slope, 3 km inland from modern coastline, unearthed a wooden palisade, stone piers and a warehouse dated to the Roman period (Pasquinucci, 2013; Morhange et al., 2015).
However, the precise location of the lagoonal harbour basin is still controversial. This study aims to contribute to fill this knowledge gap and shed new light on the main stages of harbour history in the framework of the mid-late Holocene palaeogeographic evolution of the Pisa Plain.
The application of a multidisciplinary approach (sedimentological and micropalaeontological core analyses, radiocarbon dating, geomorphological field survey, remote sensing and historical cartography) has revealed that a wide lagoonal basin formed in the study area during the marine transgression peak (ca. 8000 cal yr BP). This basin, recorded by a m-thick subsurface succession of soft grey clays with brackish meiofauna, persisted for several millennia and corresponds to Sinus Pisanus. The available stratigraphic data document that during Roman times the lagoon became progressively less connected to the sea and turned into a coastal lake/pond. Filling processes started two-three millennia later respect to the lagoon occupying the Pisa city area during the Holocene (Rossi et al., 2011). This seaward facies shift forced the westward transferring of the Middle Ages harbour.
These results show that natural sheltered conditions along with the distance from coeval Arno River made more advantageous for humans following the shoreline changes, rather than making high-impact interventions.
2012, Bini M., Bruckner H., Chelli A., Da Prato S., Gervasini L., Palaeogeographies of the Magra Valley coastal plain to costrain the location of the Roman harbour of Luna (NW Italy), Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 337-338, 37–51.
2014, Marriner N., Morhange C., Kaniewski D., Carayon N., Ancient harbour infrastructure in the Levant: tracking the birth and rise of new forms of anthropogenic pressure, Nature Scientific Reports, 4, 5554.
2015, Morhange C., Marriner N., Baralis A., Blot M.L., Bony G., Carayon N., Carmona P., Flaux C., Giaime M., Goiran J.-P., Kouka M., Lena A., Oueslati A., Pasquinucci M., Porotov A., Dynamiques géomorphologiques et typologie géoarcheologique des ports antiques en contextes lagunaires, Quaternaire, 26, (2), 117–139.
2013, Pasquinucci M., Guida all’archeologia delle coste livornesi. Nardini Editore. Provincia di Livorno. 271 pp.
2011, Rossi V., Amorosi A., Sarti G., Potenza M., Influence of inherited topography on the Holocene sedimentary evolution of coastal systems: An example from Arno coastal plain (Tuscany, Italy), Geomorphology, 135 (1-2), 117–128
Evolution des rivages d’Alexandrie à l’Holocène récent, marge occidentale du delta du Nil, Egypte
No full textClimatic control on the formation of marine-notches in microtidal settings: New data from the northwestern Mediterranean Sea
No full text
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
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
- …
