Hujiaying Site of Eastern Zhou in Yanqing, Beijing

From: Chinese Archaeology　Writer: 　Date:2012-7-19 9:08:00

In order to facilitate the construction of infrastructures, the Cultural Relics Research Institute of Beijing City and the Yanqing County Cultural Relics Management Institute have formed a joint archaeological excavation team and conducted a rescue excavation in the Hujiaying Site since 11 March 2011. Sixty features were unearthed including 24 house foundations, 21 ash pits, 11 stove remains as well as four ditches. Archaeological remains of five main categories namely pottery, stone, bone, iron and bronze were also yielded.

The Hujiaying Site is situated at Zhangshanying town in Yanqing county, about 6 km west of the Yuhuangmiao cultural burial ground. The site extends from Song Mountain in the north to Guishui River in the south and Hujiaying village in the west. The excavation area was on a terrace, gradually sloping from north to south.

The site can be divided into two areas, namely Area I and II. Twenty grids of 10 x 10 m were set up in Area I, while Area II was situated 283 m north of it with six grids measuring 5 x 5 m.

Two large ditches were identified in the southern part of Area I and a huge sediment concentration was found in G2, which are believed to have been a river during that particular period. Most of the house foundations were scattered at the northern side of the ditches, thus living alongside the river was the living style during that period.

Most of the house foundations were semi- subterranean structures. According to their floor plans, they can be divided into three types: square, near circular and irregular in shape. The house foundations were formed by doorways, postholes and stepping floors. However, only few of them contained a stove. The doorways faced northwest, east and south, thus no distribution pattern can be attributed. For the architectural style of the stove remains, it can be divided into stone or clay stoves. Furthermore, a wall mounted clay stove was discovered in F12. The ash pits were of bag shapes with small openings and large bottoms. The openings were regular and the depth did not exceed 1.5 m for most pits.

Five types of artifacts were identified, including pottery, which formed the majority, as well as tools made of stone, bone, iron and bronze. The pottery can be divided into five different types including stem-cups, pots with angular shoulders, coarse cauldrons, coarse pottery li tripod and li tripod in Yan vessel style. Furthermore, potteries of bat, yu vessel, urn and zeng steamer were found as well. A characteristic change over time can also be observed in these vessels. For instance, in the earlier period vessels were made of coarse grained clay in brownish colour and rough technique. On the other hand, vessels of the later period were grey with regular shapes and of sophisticated wheel technique.

The different types of stone artefacts include axes, adzes, balls, scrapers and axe. Moreover, polished stone ornaments and other tools were also found.

The various types of bone tools ranged from awls, needles, hairpins, arrowheads to bone spades.

Iron tools comprised axes, sickles, hoop knifes, hoes and awls.

However, only a small amount of bronzes could be found, which were arrowheads, awls and one bronze arrowhead with iron bottom.

Most of the features, including house foundations, stove remains and ash pits lay within one cultural layer and belonged to the same period. Only a small number of coarse pottery cauldrons with hooked rims were identified, which form the earliest style of coarse cauldrons. Another type fine clay pot with concentric pattern inside and scratch on shoulder showed the cultural characteristic of the Late period Yuhuangmiao Culture. Brownish tripods with fingernail pattern and coarse pottery earring were also common in Yuhuangmiao Culture. The above three types of artefacts can be dated from the late Spring and Autumn Period to early Warring States Period. Other artefacts include a huge amount of brownish stem-cups and a certain number of coarse pottery stem-cups with small sand particles and tall body. In addition, a great number of coarse pottery li tripod together with stone tools was unearthed in this site. Most spindle whorls are sandy ware and have rough technique. Most pyramidalis spindle whorls were located within the features and a huge amount of stone tools were yielded. In this connection, the features can be dated from late Warring States period to late Spring and Autumn Period. Other than coarse pottery cauldron and Yan style li tripod leg from Yan state Culture, pots with angular shoulder in the Yuhuangmiao Culture and tripods were also identified. The shape of the house foundations unearthed was very different from those on the Central Plains. The site depicts a diversified cultural style due to its location at the intersection of the Central Plains and North Culture.

The significance of the Hujiaying site can be expounded in terms of its location, period and the specialties of its features and artefacts. The site itself is located at the intersection between the Grassland Culture in the North and farming Culture on the Central Plains. There were also a cultural exchange period between the North and the Central Plains in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period of Eastern Zhou. Before this excavation, most of the archaeological remains were found in burials and the discovery of house foundations was rare in Beijing and even the northern area. The number of large scale settlement sites was also limited. The discovery of Hujiaying site not only revealed a great number of semi subterranean house foundations in different styles, it also allowed to study their architectural layout and features, which provided valuable information for understanding the living style during that particular period.

In accordance with the territory analysis, the site can be regarded as a linking area between the Grassland Culture in the North and Farming Culture in the Central China. Its features and artefacts fully illustrate a landscape with a semi nomadic settlement form in the northern nation. The Hujiaying site provides new materials for understanding of where this local group belongs to, and also the cultural exchange between the North and the South. (Translated by Li Langlin and revised by Markus Spring)

New discovery at the Huangsipu site, Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu Province

From: Chinese Archaeology　Writer: 　Date:2012-7-26 8:21:00

The Huangsipu site is situated in the junction area of the Qing’an village, Yangshe town and the Tanli village, Tangqiao town, Zhangjiagang. It is about 14 km south away from the Yangzi River and about 3 km away from Zhangjiagang downtown. From 2008 to 2010, two salvage archaeological excavations and coring were carried out at the site. As a result, an important discovery was achieved, revealing that the Huangsipu site was used to be an important market in the south bank of the Yangzi River estuary during the Tang and Song dynasties due to a large number of ceramics, pottery and iron daily wares unearthed from the site, particularly the ceramics which were produced in the various kilns nationwide.

In order to further know the cultural connotation of the Huangsipu site, the joint archaeology team combined with the Nanjing Museum and the Zhangjiagang Museum carried out another salvage excavation at the site during April to December, 2011. The excavation area was in the east district of the site and covered about 3000 square meter. As a result, some important cultural features were found, including house ruins, storehouses, wells, roads, etc. dating to the Tang and Song dynasties. Moreover, a large number of ceramics and a few bronzes, iron daily wares were also unearthed, particularly the ceramics which was produced in various types and kilns. The discovery supplied significant materials for further understanding the characters of the Huangsipu site as a port market and its frequent cultural exchange activities.

The excavation in 2011 was carried out at the west side of the Huangsipu river course, dissecting the river course dating to the Tang dynasty found in 2009. Its result showed that houses ruins, well preserved brick paved roads, parts of drainage, stone plinths and a pile of pottery tiles dating to the Song dynasty and so on were discovered above the abandoned Tang dynasty river course. The pile of pottery tiles were the plate tiles for roofs. They were intensively laid out and arranged in order. Moreover, on the south of the Tang river course, many building foundations dating to the Tang dynasty were found, including long row house ruins with porches, near square house ruins with one bay, rectangle house ruins, etc. These house ruins had foundation trenches, in which lots of broken bricks and tiles were filled in order to consolidate the foundation of the walls. And there was a large circular plinth in the corners of some house ruins. In addition, on the west of these house ruins, a Tang dynasty storehouse was found. The cultural remains are briefly introduced below:

F18 is a long row house with porches, facing south and arranging in east-west. It was combined with at least 5 houses and a south porch, covering 112.5 square meter in all. The 5 houses were basically similar because all of them had foundation trenches and circular column pits. The house with one single room was about 4.5 meters long in east-east and about 5 meters wide in south-north, covering about 22.5 square meters; the porch was about 23 meter long and 2 meters wide. In the inner side of the porch foundation trench, there was a square plinth with round corners on the points corresponding to the corners of the one-bay house ruin and several layers of pure grey yellow earth rammed inside. Moreover, a large number of broken bricks and tiles were found at the top of the house ruins, and some cultural relics, such as many ceramic bowls plate-bottom shards and coins inscribed with “Kaiyuantongbao”, were discovered.

F20 is a near rectangle house ruin with foundation trench remained. It was about 6.4 meters long in south-north and about 7.2 meters wide in east-west. There were many bricks and tiles filled in the foundation trench. A part of wall foundation was remained in the east part of the foundation trench and was paved with two rows of small grey bricks along the foundation trench.

"Marvels & Tales"--All Issues Available Digitally

“Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies” is happy to announce that all issues from its twenty-six year history are now available online—including those edited by Jacques Barchilon under the title “Merveilles et contes” during the journal’s first ten years (1987-96). Content is available through JSTOR, Digital Commons, and Project Muse, through institutions and libraries that have subscriptions to these services. Digital Commons also allows for individual purchases and subscriptions. Here are our direct links to those sites:


1987-2008 via JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=marvelstales


1997-present via the journal’s Digital Commons website at http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/



2001-present via Project Muse (2001-present) at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/



Donald Haase

Editor, "Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies"

Wayne State University


dhaase@wayne.edu

These Bridges For Animals Are Insanely Clever And Beautiful

Wildlife bridges are special crossings that help animals get across highways safely.
Lush foliage, soil and streams lure bears, deer, moose, panthers and other wildlife over or under busy roadways so as not to get crushed by cars. The crossings aren't just for protection. They also help connect habitats that are broken up by roads.
Here's an image of a crossing over a highway in the Netherlands posted to Reddit. The country is actually home to more than 600 of these friendly animal footbridges. Pretty clever, huh?

LIDAR Maya

Above the jungles of Central America, a device aboard an aircraft used millions of laser pulses to penetrate the thick forest canopy and map ancient Mayan settlements in 3-D. That demonstrated the power of LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a technology that has transformed archaeology over the past five years.







LIDAR's ability to image everything down to 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) means that archaeologists can create detailed reconstructions of everything from the siege works outside old U.S. forts to underground tunnels from World War I in France.

"Thirty years ago, using photographs and plain old pen and pencil to survey would take weeks," said Tony Pollard, director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. "Now, LIDAR can do it in minutes."

The technology can even measure subtle differences in crop height that may reveal buried features in everything from ditches to buildings, said Sarah Parcak, an Egyptologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. She added that using such 3-D mapping power with satellite imaging could give archaeologists a powerful combination of tools for the future

P/2010 A2

First Small-Body Collision between Asteroids

On 6 January 2010, the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project discovered a mysterious X-shaped Solar System body, named P/2010 A2, traveling at 11,000 mph. The object has confused astronomers because it shows characteristics of both an asteroid and a comet. It has the orbit of a main-belt asteroid and the tail of a comet. For this reason, P/2010 A2 was originally listed as a main-belt comet.

Within a month of the discovery, analysis of the images captured by the Hubble telescope suggested that P/2010 A2 was generated from a recent head-on collision between asteroids. It was the first time a small-body collision by asteroids had been observed. The evidence was supported by the position of the object’s nucleus, which is offset from the axis and outside of the dust halo. P/2010 A2 has no sign of an active nucleus, which has caused scientists to believe it was moved in an impact event.

NASA determined that the nucleus was the “surviving remnant of a hypervelocity collision,” when two small and previously unknown asteroids hit. This event created a shower of debris that is being swept back into the tail by the pressure of the sunlight. The X-shaped debris pattern of P/2010 A2 is unusual and has confused scientists.

Before it was determined that P/2010 A2 came from an asteroid collision, some speculated that it may be a rare carbonaceous asteroid located in the inner main belt. If true, this would suggest that there are more volatile-rich asteroids closer to Earth. The orbit of P/2010 A2 is consistent with the Flora asteroid family, which was produced more than 100 million years ago. The Flora family of asteroids may be the source of the K/T impactor, which is the likely culprit in the extinction of the dinosaurs. The discovery of P/2010 A2 has spawned a collection of conspiracy theories regarding the collision hypothesis.

Solar Storm of 1859

First Observed Solar Flare

A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a massive burst of solar wind. They are often associated with other forms of solar activity, most notably solar flares. A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the Sun, which has been interpreted as a large release of energy. The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions and atoms through the corona into space. These clouds typically reach the earth a day or two after the event. Most ejections originate from active regions on the Sun’s surface, such as sunspots. During the solar maximum, which is the time when the Sun shows the greatest amount of activity, the Sun produces about 3 CMEs every day, whereas near solar minimum there is about 1 CME every 5 days.

The next solar maximum is predicted to occur sometime between January and May 2013. When a coronal mass ejection is directed towards the Earth, the wave of particles can create a geomagnetic storm that may disrupt the magnetosphere. The process can cause strong auroras around the Earth’s magnetic poles, known as the Northern and Southern Lights. Coronal mass ejections and solar flares can disrupt communication lines, radio transmissions, and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission facilities, resulting in massive and long-lasting power outages on Earth. Humans in space or at high altitudes, in airplanes for example, risk exposure to intense radiation.

The solar storm of 1859 occurred during solar cycle 10. It was the most powerful solar storm in recorded history. The largest flare, observed by Richard Christopher Carrington, became known as the Carrington Super Flare. On 1 September 1859, Carrington and Richard Hodgson, another English amateur astronomer, independently made the first published observations of a solar flare. It should be noted that Scottish physicist Balfour Stewart recorded a super flare on the evening of 28 August 1859, at the Kew Observatory, and presented his findings in a paper on 21 November 1861. Despite this fact, Richard Carrington has been given the designation of being the first to demonstrate the existence of solar flares.

In 1859, the largest flare was caused by a coronal mass ejection directed toward Earth. The CME took only 18 hours to arrive. This is remarkable because such a journey normally takes three to four days. On 1–2 September 1859, the Earth experienced a huge geomagnetic storm. Auroras were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean and Rocky Mountain. In the wake of the storm, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed. Telegraph pylons threw sparks and paper spontaneously caught fire. Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies. A similar event in 2013 could devastate the world’s infrastructure.

Website: Historic Map Works, LLC

Based in Portland Maine, Historic Map Works, LLC is an Internet company formed to create a historic digital map database of North America and the world. Drawing on the largest physical collection of American property atlases of its type, it is our aim to be the single best online destination for map enthusiasts and researchers alike.

In addition to our own atlas collection, we incorporated our scans of the antiquarian world map collection from the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education located at the University of Southern Maine. Combining these collections allows site visitors a vast amount of information spanning several centuries of cartographic information.

Historic Map Works's map collection includes:

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The vast majority of our database was created by scanning an original map at a high resolution by our team of highly skilled image technicians. After scanning, this team processes out the major imperfections while maintaining the look of an antiquarian map.

Click here for a video demonstration.
Maps are then uploaded and cataloged for viewing on our website. Our technicians geocode each map to a modern map to enable the search by address function. Linking the historic images in our database with geocode data allows visitors to search by modern day address or latitude and longitude coordinates. Other methods to view our maps include browsing by geographic location as well as searching our maps via keywords, town names, makers names, or simply by year.

Prints and giftware are offered for the vast majority of images on our site. A Giclee printing process is used to create the images ordered from our site ensuring an archival print that will remain vibrant for years to come.

Historic Map Works has two websites which host our maps. The first is www.historicmapworks.com which is aimed at individual subscribers and the second is Historic Map Works Library Edition which is distributed by ProQuest to public libraries and universities.

Our map collection numbers over 1,595,425 individual images (click here for detailed statistics of maps available online) for you to explore. Track your ancestors to their homes; see the roads they traveled on, and the names of the neighbors they talked with. Multiple layers allow you to see an area change through time, and our Geocode feature allows you to compare historical and modern maps.

Website: Old Maps

Reproductions of historic town maps, state maps, birds eye views, and more. www.old-maps.com    (with a dash)

Old Maps  is the name of a small business that was established in 1980 to republish historical maps. We started with printed volumes of Cheshire County, NH, but our focus has since expanded to offering digital and printed reproductions of maps from all over New England.

We do our best to provide free content, such as compressed maps that are more easily downloaded by people with dialup internet. If you find any of the maps useful, please support us by buying a print or CD!