Contextualising Ancient Technology

The diffusion of innovations from the Near East into the ‘static’ surrounding peripheries has become a well-known archaeological paradigm, often summed up as Ex Oriente Lux. While this conflicts with modern, scientifically controlled chronologies, it is difficult to explain as mere local developments and pure chance the appearance of large-scale communication networks, the transformation of power concentrations in the first states, or the diffusion of the wheel, alloyed metals, and writing. The papers in this volume follow two approaches to convene on new insights into the prehistoric and ancient innovation process. Theoretical perspectives attempt to challenge and modify traditional models of innovation diffusion that lack the chronological depth of archaeological sources, while case studies from the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages of Europe, southwest Asia, and North Africa analyze the specific archaeological and sociopolitical contexts, the technological traditions of innovations, and the specifications of their emergence, spread, and improvements

Ricerche di Geomatica 2011

Questo volume raccoglie gli articoli che hanno partecipato al Premio AUTeC 2011. Il premio è stato istituito nel 2005. Viene conferito ogni anno ad una tesi di Dottorato giudicata particolarmente significativa sui temi di pertinenza del SSD ICAR/06 (Topografia e Cartografia) nei diversi Dottorati attivi in Italia

The Venetian Money Market

The long awaited conclusion to the magisterial Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice.Originally published in 1997. In 1985 Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller published the magisterial Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, volume 1: Coins and Moneys of Account. Now, after ten years of further research and writing, Reinhold Mueller completes the work that he and the late Frederic Lane began. The history of money and banking in Venice is crucial to an understanding of European economic history. Because of its strategic location between East and West, Venice rapidly rose to a position of preeminence in Mediterranean trade. To keep trade moving from London to Constantinople and beyond, Venetian merchants and bankers created specialized financial institutions to serve private entrepreneurs and public administrators: deposit banks, foreign exchange banks, a grain office, and a bureau of the public debt. This new book clarifies Venice's pivotal role in Italian and international banking and finance. It also sets banking—and panics—in the context of more generalized and recurrent crises involving territorial wars, competition for markets, and debates over interest rates and the question of usury

The influence of language on spatial memory and visual attention

This thesis examines the relationship between language and non-linguistic processes. The experimental work presented, focusses on the influence of language on two non-linguistic processes: spatial memory and visual attention. In the first series of experiments, the influence of spatial demonstratives (this/that) and possessives (my/your) on memory for object location was examined in four experiments, using an adapted version of the memory game procedure (Coventry et al., 2008, 2014). The experiments were designed to test between different models regarding how language affects memory: the Expectation model, the Congruence model, and the Attention-allocation model. Over a series of experiments, our data supports the Expectation model, which suggests, consistent with models of predictive coding (cf., Lupyan & Clark, 2015), that memory for object location is a concatenation of the actual location and the expected location. The expectation of a location can be elicited by language use (e.g., demonstrative or possessive pronouns). The second series of experiments examined demonstratives and memory in English and Japanese. We chose Japanese, because it purportedly employs a three-demonstrative system, compared to a binary system as in English (this, that). Three-way systems can be used to explicitly encode parameters that are not encoded in English, for example the position of a conspecific. In four experiments, we wanted to test whether a system as different as the Japanese demonstrative system is from English, has a similar influence on non-linguistic cognition. To this aim, we had to first experimentally establish which parameters are encoded in the Japanese demonstrative system. Second, we tested how this three-term demonstrative system acted in light of the Expectation model. The idea that Japanese demonstratives encode the position of a conspecific, which we confirmed in this study, poses an interesting problem for the Expectation model. The Expectation model works via the idea of an expected location; but the expected location calculated from a speaker gives a contradicting expectation value to the expected location from a hearer. Our memory data did not completely support any of the current models. However, interestingly, the position effect found in Japanese was also apparent in English. This might suggest that demonstrative pronoun systems, despite the fact that they seem different, could be based on universal mechanisms. However, the effects we found were stronger in Japanese, suggesting the weight of a parameter (such as position) might be influenced by whether or not a language explicitly codes the parameter. In the last experiment, we considered the influence of language on visual attention. Specifically, we examined if language expressing different spatial frames of reference affect how people look at visual scenes. The results showed different eye-movement patterns for different frames of reference (i.e., intrinsic vs. relative). These eye-movement signatures were consistent with participants’ verbal descriptions and persisted throughout the trials. We show for the first time that different reference frames, expressed in language, elicit distinguishable eye-movement patterns. The work presented in this thesis shows effects of language on memory for object location and visual attention. Effects of language on memory for object location were consistent with models of predictive coding. Furthermore, despite the fact that English and Japanese employ different demonstrative systems, results for both languages were remarkably similar. These results could indicate universal parameters underlying demonstrative systems, but perhaps parameters differentially weighted, as a function of whether or not they are explicitly encoded in a language. Finally, we showed that spatial language (prepositions) guide visual attention. To our knowledge this is the first time frames of reference are associated with identifyable eye-movement patterns. The results are discussed and situated in current literature, with theoretical implications and directions for future research highlighted

It’s about time:Essays on temporal anchoring devices

This thesis seeks to shed light on the ubiquitous, yet rarely studied, phenomenon temporal anchoring devices (TADs). TADs are short references to time often accompanied by a descriptor, such as “since year”. They are used, for instance, on organizations’ buildings, products, logos, etc. In the introduction, chapter 1, TADs are explored conceptually, both their meanings and origins. Chapter 2 shows that TADs cross organizational field boundaries and are used by varying organizations. Chapter 3 focuses on the use of TADs over 200-years by three chocolate producers. Not only do the studied organizations vary in their use of TADs, from almost no use to very extensive use, the use of TADs over time by these organizations is not stable. Chapter 4 focuses on how TADs affect audience perception of the organization, with the use of two experiments. The results of the first experiment that TAD are noticed and capture the attention of observers. The results of the second experiment show that each TAD, whether referring to the past, present, or future, affects audience members’ perception of an organization. Overall this thesis contributes to the literatures on organizational symbolism, history, and temporality

Oceanus.

v. 28, no. 1 (1985

Read my QR: Quilla Constance and the conceptualist promise of intelligibility

This essay contributes to the ongoing questioning of the definitions and boundaries of conceptualism from intersectional feminist psychoanalytic perspectives, and specifically through the practice of Quilla Constance, aka QC or #QC, the post-punk, neo-glam, gender-questioning performance persona of Jennifer Allen. A songwriter and musician, painter and visual performer in costumes designed and made by Jennifer Allen, #QC’s performance practice occasionally incorporates fragments of musical performances on cello and always includes some crypto-linguistic vocal improvisation, a verbal automatism that references trance states and ‘speaking in tongues’ as well as scat singing in jazz