Bam Citadel is a unique complex with some mediocre buildings in it. Construction started in the Achaemenid period (550–330 BC) and is still being completed and repaired up to the 21st century. Although the Bam region is located in south-western Iran in an active seismic zone, the City of Bam had not reported any major historical earthquake before 26th Dec. 2003. The massive earthquake that day killed or injured more than 37,000 people and most of the city collapsed. Bam Citadel became a unique adobe complex for the World Heritage community after this disaster. According to the surveys, the earthquake caused damage to about 23% of the ancient monuments close to and inside the Citadel. Most of the ruins were the parts that already added to the main body of work or were repaired during the last intervention of 1993. For this reason the technical method, used for the enhancing of the adobe building, is highlighted as the main task. There are four items which are very important for any seismic upgrading in heritage sites: seismology of the area, quality of the construction, function of the building and cultural values. A wide variety of intervention strategies and techniques have been considered for the repair and the seismic retrofitting of the adobe buildings in the Citadel. With respect to that point, the possible relationship between the cultural values and seismic upgrading are always polar opposites. Obviously the buildings in Bam Citadel have many problems, for example the geometry data are not available, there are large variability layers, construction sequence is unknown, existing damage in the structures is very serious, regulation and codes are non-applicable and so on. In fact in this research I am trying to adjust the stability and safety measures with values of the cultural heritage property as much as possible; on the other hand I am trying to optimize the strengthening methods to an acceptable amount of side affect on values. This PhD thesis focuses on the strategies and the techniques that have been applied to preserve the historical monuments and to evaluate the traditional and modern engineering methods that are used in conservation projects in Bam Citadel.

Methodical and detailed excavation of room and feature fill at Homol'ovi I pueblo has allowed for the study of structure and feature closure and dedication practices. At least six reoccurring ash closure deposit types have been identified, and several can be tied to the renewal and re-use of features, structures, and pueblo space. Other ritual closure deposits serve to cover and seal off space, and based on the various colors of sediment, ash, and objects used in the creation of elaborately layered structure and feature fill, the deposits are suggestive of conservation efforts that are connected to traditional Hopi cosmology, color symbolism, and religious ideology. Still other ash closure deposits may have been an element of ritual purification. A large number of plants have prominent roles in traditional Hopi ritual practices. This study specifically explores the plant taxa that are present within the six reoccurring ash closure deposit types, and Hopi ethnography and recent collaborative efforts are used to draw inferences between past and the present plant uses. The closure deposits are compared amongst each other, as well as against non-ritual deposits in an attempt to define patterns of plant use and ritual behavior.

碩士 / 臺南藝術學院 / 藝術史與藝術評論研究所 / 92 / Abstract Paintings of Buddhist historical events, composed of plenty of tales and sacred images such as monks’ stories, Buddhist historic remains, auspicious images, and Buddhist communication, span a period from early Tang to early Sung Dynasties. In spite of their lower popularity than that of paintings for Buddhist classics or early Buddhist stories, their varied genres and presentations reflect the influences of Dunhuang’s Buddhism and political powers that time. It was in early Tang when historical paintings appeared for the first time. Only in Cave No. 323, the paintings were sequentially arranged like comic strips in the north and south wall. This cave’s subjects and presentation are greatly different from historic auspicious image painting in middle Tang and Uprising Army period. Considering the themes and coincidence of historical events, I think this cave’s paintings have well reflected the political atmosphere in which Empress Wu enthroned herself. Khotan and India are the themes of paintings of middle Tang. Thirty to forty sacred images are arranged in fixed order around the top of the west shrine, with captions of the sacred images on it. Due to the lack of description of Khotan in mandarin literature, Khotan motif failed to become the base of mural paintings in spite of its slight mention in Tibetan literature of《Li-yul chos-kyi-lo-rgyul》,《Li-yul lung-bstan-pa》, and《Ri-Glang-ru lung-bstan-pa》. On top of that, board paintings similar to the sacred images around the shrine top were discovered in Khotan and its vicinity, chances of historical event paintings around the west shrine of Middle Tang to base on picture albums that were initially from Khotan are strong accordingly. Paintings on the corridor top of Cave No.9 belong to Uprising Army period in late Tang. These paintings inherit and mix some of the changed subjects and images about Khotan and India with other historic subjects of Khotan, India and China to create paintings of historic events on Bullhead Mountain of Khotan. Since then, a large number of paintings of historic events similar to those in Cave No. 9 had appeared on the corridor top, and as time went by, decorations on Bullhead Mountain became more elaborate. The number of subjects on Khotan’s historic events was striking in middle Tang, and in Uprising Army period the subjects became the themes of historic event paintings. Paintings of historic events at that time were different from the pure transplanted images around the top of the west shrine. The subjects were sensibly arranged on Dunhuang’s mural paintings. I think paintings of historic events in that period somehow reflect Uprising Army regime’s attempt to transform Dunhuang into an independent Buddhist country like Khotan. In short, we can definitely catch a glimpse of Buddhist arts affected by different political conditions through the evolution and passage of Dunhuang’s paintings of historic events and auspicious images and their presentations.

No description available.

Mammalian scavenging, disarticulating, scattering and removal of human remains can alter and obscure both soft tissue and skeletal remains which are essential to making interpretations and identifications during forensic investigations. The effects of scavenging vary between regions, environments, scavenger species, and crime scene scenarios due to a variety of factors. Nonetheless, there is a gap in the knowledge of scavenger species found within Northwestern Europe. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and Eurasian badger (Meles meles) are the largest wild mammalian scavenger species inhabiting peri-urban and rural environments within Northwestern Europe. These mammalian scavengers have dentitions and bite forces capable of heavily modifying and widely transporting human remains yet there are currently no species-typical and region-specific studies of these scavengers and their impacts on forensic investigations and physical searches for human remains. Forensic scientists, investigators and police search officers have been forced to rely on anecdotal evidence and scavenging studies focused on scavengers not found in this region. Scavenging studies have previously concentrated on scavenger species found in North America and Africa, such as coyote (Canis latrans), wolf (Canis lupus), hyena (Crocuta crocuta), lion (Panthera leo) and leopard (Panthera pardus), which have differing species-typical scavenging behaviour and patterns in comparison to foxes and badgers. Likewise, knowledge of the characteristics of the effects on bone surfaces of fox and badger scavenging is lacking, more so for the latter scavenger. The overall aim of this thesis is to aid forensic investigations by filling the gaps in the knowledge and identification of red fox and Eurasian badger species-typical scavenging behaviour and patterns. Avian scavenging can also modify soft tissue and skeletal remains. The buzzard (Buteo buteo) and carrion crow (Corvus corone) are the most common avian scavengers within this region. The scavenging behaviours of these avians modified soft tissue and affected mammalian scavengers’ scavenging behavours. A survey of police search officers within the U. K. indicated that the scavenging of surface deposited human remains within this region is common and that scavenging affects the recovery rates of remains. Despite the impact of scavenging on the recovery of scavenged remains, there is a lack of knowledge and literature available to forensic scientists, investigators, and police search officers to aid in the identification of scavenger species and scavenger species-typical scavenging behaviour and patterns. Thus these forensic professionals have been relying primarily on anecdotal evidence to identify scavengers or have not made efforts to identify scavengers. Experiments, conducted in southern England, using deposited deer (Cervus nippon; Capreolus capreolus) and the observation of captive scavengers found that within a woodland environment common scavengers include wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), carrion crow, buzzard, Eurasian badger, and red fox. Scavenging activities by all scavenger species observed at remains were affected in various ways by seasonality, trophic resources, territoriality, insect activity, carcass size and condition, and decomposition. Of those scavengers, the red fox was the most frequent scavenger of surface deposited remains. The species-typical scavenging behaviour and pattern, as well as bite mark dimensions, of the red fox proved to differ to that of badgers and other canids, such as domestic dogs (Canis familiaris), coyotes and wolves. The benefits of the knowledge of scavenger species-typical scavenging behaviour and pattern to forensic investigations and physical searches were assessed by applying the results gained from the experiments within this research to current forensic investigations and search exercises performed with police search officers. The application of information on species-typical scavenging behaviour and patterns was found to improve police search officers’ search and recovery efforts of scavenged remains.

The accumulation of capital is a widely recognised, but little studied, feature of early urbanisation in Mesopotamia during the fourth-millennium BC. Current research links the concentration and mobilisation of capital in urban centres to the expansion of cross-regional trade routes. However, the social and cultural mechanisms through which primary accumulation took place remain poorly understood. A related aspect of urban growth is the virtual disappearance of human burials from the archaeological record. This contrasts with earlier traditions where burials were routinely incorporated into domestic contexts. Adapting Weber‟s insights regarding the origins of modern capitalist accumulation in changing modes of religiosity, this research investigates the changing relationship between funerary rituals and wealth consumption. Detailed study of burial practices over the long-term (Late Neolithic through to Late Uruk) will isolate major trends in funerary consumption over time. This will situate the phenomenon of large-scale accumulation within a wider social matrix. The analogous treatment of human remains and artefacts in Late Neolithic funerary contexts highlights complex relationships between persons and objects. Late Neolithic funerary consumption suggests that acquisitive behaviour was morally sanctioned by interaction with the dead. The decreasing importance placed on funerary consumption during the fifth-millennium is reflected in the separation of the adult dead from habitation areas, inhibiting contact with the living. Goods were now channelled through households, and underwent ritually mediated (intramural infant burials) processes of transformation into new commodity forms. Trajectories of accumulation reinforced through provisioning ancestral cults and personal display in death developed during the Early-Middle Uruk period, only to be reversed with the onset of the Urban Revolution. The profound social changes that accompanied the urban expansion transformed conceptions of persons and things. The dead were expelled from the context of the living and the flow of commodities was now regulated by new forms of religious institution.

The United States Department of Education issued a blueprint in 2010 outlining intended changes for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Included was a focus on selecting effective teachers per new criteria. Information about teacher selection and assignment systems as related to teacher retention is beneficial to school district leadership as they prepare for the new federal expectations. This study extends previous research by Liu and Johnson (2006) that examined the experiences of newly hired teachers and introduced the construct of an information-rich hiring process, in which a district hiring process provides both the teacher applicant and district employer with sufficient interaction and adequate information-exchange to make informed decisions leading to a position fit of teacher to teaching position and campus. In addition to the use of an information-rich hiring process as a hypothetical construct, other theories incorporated in this research include: realistic job preview theory; human resource management theory; person-job-fit, person-organization-fit, and person-group-fit theories; and two-sided matching theory. The problem addressed in this study: The selection and assignment of teachers is often done in complex systems leading to poor matches that culminate in job dissatisfaction and teachers’ intentions to leave the classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine how newly hired teachers perceived their hiring experience and their fit with their campus and classroom assignments in order to determine if these perceptions predicted their intentions to remain in the classroom. This study used a nonexperimental approach with an ex-post facto design and a quantitative methodology to examine associations between variables. Participants in the study included 1,430 newly hired teachers at 92 campuses located across 13 Texas school districts who were administered an electronic survey instrument. / text

No description available.

The aim of this study was to characterise waterlogged burial environments and to assess their potential for the in situ preservation of organic archaeological remains. To characterise these environments, environmental parameters were monitored through the soil profile and integrated with a study of the composition and activity of the microbial community. Soil cores were taken from two wetland sites located in the Humberhead Levels in Yorkshire: Hatfield Moor and Sutton Common. Cores were subsampled at depth intervals down to 100 cm depth, to allow for the examination of the vertical distributions of the variables being studied. Redox potential, water level variation and other physico-chemical parameters were measured down the soil profile. Bacterial abundance was determined by direct counts; activity was assayed by extracellular enzyme activity and leucine assimilation. The physiological profile of the microbial community was analysed using BIOLOG and the bacterial community structure was examined by PCR-DGGE. Redox potential readings were positive above the water table and negative below. The bacterial abundance and activity were greatest at the soil surface and, in general, decreased with depth. BIOLOG showed both depth variation and between site variation in microbial physiological profile. DGGE gels presented a different bacterial community structure with depth and between-sites. The results from monitoring of redox potential combined with water table height and determination of bacterial abundance and activity allowed the recognition of stratigraphic horizon where there was less potential for microbial degradation of organic archaeological artefacts. The information from BIOLOG and DGGE holds the potential for the development of a more subtle understanding of between-depth and between-site differences in the degradation process. The physico-chemical and the conventional and molecular microbiological results presented in this thesis have shown that microbial activity is implicated as a key factor that could lead to compromised in situ preservation conditions at the sites studied.

No description available.