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Dr K. Kuman initiated the Limpopo research programme that at present is based on excavations conducted at three sites, Hackthorne, Kudu Koppie and Keratic Koppie. They are situated atop a remnant of an ancient Miocene terrace, approximately 4km from the present day course of the Limpopo River in the Mapungubwe National Park. A broad range of stone tool types is represented in the area, with mostly Earlier and Middle Stone Age artefacts found on the higher ground and Later Stone Age pieces found primarily on the Limpopo’s floodplain. One of the obstacles to understanding the archaeology of the region is the widespread episodic deflation that occurred here during arid periods of the Pleistocene, which had an impact on stratified sequences in the Stone Age. While all three sites have been subject to deflation, Hackthorne and Keratic Koppie are single component sites. Kudu Koppie, however, preserves some stratigraphy and provides a means of comparing and assessing the single component assemblages which have undergone varying degrees of mixing. It was therefore vital to establish a pattern of change through time at Kudu Koppie, with a sequence of late Earlier, Middle and Later Stone Age deposits, using a combination of strategies including typology, technological analysis and a study of raw material exploitation. These data suggest that Hackthorne is primarily a late Earlier Stone Age (ESA) assemblage with some Middle Stone Age (MSA) mixing, while Keratic Koppie preserves an ESA assemblage with a more significant MSA component. The ESA component is further argued to be a final post-Acheulean industry with a major component of woodworking tools, suggesting it may be a local variant of the Sangoan Industrial Complex.

Thesis advisor: Mark Thatcher / Rome changed throughout its history and the city that existed during the fourth century CE was different from the city that Virgil and Cicero lived in and described in their writings. The Roman state and society changed during the intervening four centuries as Rome ceased to be politically significant, elite behavior became increasingly disconnected from any role in governance, and the traditional religious cults were neglected as Christianity gained prominence. Despite these changes, Roman tradition dictated an idealization of ancestral custom, which was preserved in the corpus of extant literature. I argue that among the elites of fourth century society, there were individuals such as Ammianus Marcellinus or Symmachus who interpreted and responded to their society through the filter of these fossilized images of an idealized Rome. Although they lived in largely post-classical time, their writings express a worldview that is congruent with the late Republic and early Principate. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2017.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council, held at Chalcedon in 451, began a period of extraordinary social and political crisis across the Eastern Mediterranean. In Palestine, as elsewhere, the centuries that followed were characterised by internecine conflict between local Christians, persisting until the collapse of Roman authority in the region during the reign of the emperor Heraclius. Since Edward Gibbon, historians have struggled to contextualise this debate, ostensibly an argument between proponents of rival, but also substantially identical, Christologies. This thesis considers what role socio-economic factors may have played in shaping contemporary accounts of the Council's fraught reception. It asks whether this may have distorted our understanding of a defining Late Antique debate. Chalcedon's reforms had wide-reaching consequences, not only for the Empire's official Christological policy, but for the broader structure of the 'Church economy,' the systems through which Christian institutions were financed and maintained, referred to at length in the Council's disciplinary canons. Its rulings held particular significance for Palestine in its status as the Christian 'Holy Land.' Here I explore this facet of Chalcedon's legacy, whilst considering how the language of doctrinal controversy generated by the Council served to frame episodes of material competition between rival communities of clerics and monks. The thesis offers a new reading of the texts produced by key actors in these confrontations, many of which have been historically neglected. It follows in the wake of recent attempts to analyse other religious conflicts of this period in light of contemporary social or political conditions, or through reference to 'networks' of influence and patronage. I apply this methodology to the study of the Palestinian partisans in the antagonism which followed Chalcedon, whilst also drawing upon the archaeologically-grounded study of material culture which has influenced so many other areas of early medieval history.

Conserving biodiversity in the current global ecological crisis requires a robust understanding of a multitude of abiotic and biotic processes operating at spatial and temporal scales that are nearly impossible to study on a human timescale and are therefore poorly understood. However, fossil data preserve a vast archive of information on past ecosystems and how they have changed through time. My PhD research is composed of three studies that look at biogeogaphic distribution, ecosystem structure, and trends in richness and diversity. Identifying organisms to the species level is a common practice in ecology when conducting community analyses. However, when species-level identification is not feasible, higher level taxonomic identifications are used as surrogates. This study tests the validity of supraspecific identifications for vertebrates in regional biogeography studies, using the recorded occurrences of terrestrial and aquatic taxa from 16 national parks on the Colorado Plateau and culling the data set based on a series of taphonomic processes to generated fossil assemblages. Changes in community structure as a result of increased magnitude and/or frequency of perturbations have been well documented in terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Unfortunately, the long-term effects of sea-level rise on vertebrate communities in coastal habitats are poorly understood and difficult to study on a human time scale. This study examines the long term effects of relative sea-level change on coastal plain ecosystems of the Belly River Group (Campanian) in southern Alberta using microvertebrate fossils. Most Cretaceous freshwater deposits in North America produce only a couple of articulated fish skeletons. Because of this preservational bias many workers suggested that freshwater teleosts were largely absent from North America until the Eocene or later. Late Cretaceous fish assemblages are of particular interest, because these assemblages undergo a major compositional change. Pre-Cretaceous fish assemblages are dominated by non-teleosts, while Paleogene assemblages are dominated by teleosts that are members of extant families. This study provides a first approach in characterizing long-term trends in richness and the distribution of Late Cretaceous, nonmarine actinopterygians of the Western Interior of North America.

Habilitationsschrift--Munich. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [222]-230).

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国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。