How old is the city of Taxila?

Antiquity ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 56 (216) ◽  
pp. 8-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. R. Allchin

The city of Taxila, more properly Takṣaśilā, was one of the most important in ancient India. It is frequently mentioned as one of the two great cities of Gandhara (approximately the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan), along with its neighbour Puṣkalāvatī (modem Charsada north of Peshawar) some 80 miles (130 km) to the west. It was first identified in modern times by Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1863, after he had visited the extensive series of mounds lying near the village of Shah Dheri, east of Hasan Abdul, in the Punjab province of Pakistan (Cunningham, 1871). His identification was soon confirmed by the discovery there of early inscriptions referring to Taxila by name.

1978 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 309-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia M. L. Christie ◽  
S. M. Elsdon ◽  
G. W. Dimbleby ◽  
A. Saville ◽  
S. Rees ◽  
...  

The ancient village of Carn Euny, formerly known as Chapel Euny, lies on a south-west slope just above the 500 foot contour in the parish of Sancreed in West Cornwall (fig. 1). The granite uplands of the region are rich in antiquities, as a glance at a recent survey shows (Russell 1971), not least those of the prehistoric period. The hill on which the site is situated is crowned by the circular Iron Age Fort of Caer Brane (pl. 27). Across the dry valley to the north-west rises the mass of Bartinny Down, with its barrows, while in the valley below the site near the hamlet of Brane is a small, well preserved entrance grave and other evidence of prehistoric activity. To the south-east about one mile away is the recently excavated village of Goldherring dating from the first few centuries of our era (Guthrie 1969). From later times, the holy well of St Uny and the former chapel which gave its name to the site, lie nearby to the west. The village contains a fine souterrain, locally known as a fogou, after a Cornish word meaning a cave (Thomas 1966, 79).Nothing appears to have been known of the settlement or Fogou before the first half of the 19th century when the existence of an unexplored fogou at Chapel Uny is first mentioned by the Reverend John Buller (1842), shortly followed by Edmonds (1849) who described to the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society an ‘Ancient Cave’ which had been discovered by miners prospecting for tin.


1951 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Dipeso

The Amerind Foundation, Inc. spent the first three weeks of December, 1948, excavating a ball court at the archaeological site of Arizona:BB:15:3, which is located in Cochise County, Sec. 20, T15S, R20E. The actual village area is located on the west bank of the San Pedro River twenty-two miles north of the city of Benson at an approximate elevation of 3300 feet.The ball court was located in the north half of the village on a terrace some forty feet above the river channel. It appeared as a shallow but conspicuous oval depression which was overgrown with mesquite trees and other desert flora of the Sonoran plateau type. Fortunately the court had not been disturbed by any previous excavations nor by erosion (Fig. 86, a).


2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (s1) ◽  
pp. s309-s338
Author(s):  
Laurie K. Bertram

How did marginalized and racialized ethnic immigrants transform themselves into active, armed colonial agents in nineteenth-century Western Canada? Approximately twenty Icelanders enlisted to fight Louis Riel’s forces during the North-West Resistance in 1885, just ten years following the arrival of Icelandic immigrants in present-day Manitoba. Forty more reportedly enlisted in an Icelandic-Canadian battalion to enforce the government’s victory in the fall. This public, armed stance of a group of Icelanders against Indigenous forces in 1885 is somewhat unexpected, since most Icelanders were relatively recent arrivals in the West and, in Winnipeg, members of the largely unskilled urban working class. Moreover, they were widely rumoured among Winnipeggers to be from a “blubber-eating race” and of “Eskimo” extraction; community accounts testify to the discrimination numerous early Icelanders faced in the city. These factors initially make Icelanders unexpected colonialists, particularly since nineteenth-century ethnic immigration and colonial suppression so often appear as separate processes in Canadian historiography. Indeed, this scholarship is characterized by an enduring belief that Western Canadian colonialism was a distinctly Anglo sin. Ethnic immigrants often appear in scholarly and popular histories as sharing a history of marginalization with Indigenous people that prevented migrants from taking part in colonial displacement. Proceeding from the neglected history of Icelandic enlistment in 1885 and new developments in Icelandic historiography, this article argues that rather than negating ethnic participation in Indigenous suppression, ethnic marginality and the class tensions it created could actually fuel participation in colonial campaigns, which promised immigrants upward mobility, access to state support, and land.


1959 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 35-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. V. Nicholls

Traces of fortifications around the area apparently once occupied by the city of Old Smyrna were observed by Louis Fauvel, and our first detailed description of them is that of Prokesch von Osten, who accompanied him there on a second visit in 1825. As we shall see later, it seems likely, though proof is no longer possible, that most of the circuit wall around the tell, as well as that on the low spur to the west of it on which the modern village now stands, as described by Prokesch, may have belonged to the defences of the classical city. Nothing today survives of these above ground, owing to extensive stone-plundering in the interval; and it is to be feared that the fate of much of this rather exposed classical enceinte has been to provide masonry either for the houses of the modern village or for the terrace walls which today encircle the tell.The plundering of this outermost circuit probably left the earlier ones inside it rather more exposed to view. I have not been able to verify which of the city walls it was that was photographed by Keil in 1911, but when Franz and Helene Miltner excavated here in 1930 a part of the late-seventh-century B.C. circuit was visible on the east side of the city. Here they cleared about 80 metres of its face, for the most part to no great depth, then picked up its line again with a small probe some 20 metres farther north. Two further small trenches seem to have located more of this late-seventh-century wall-line south-south-west of their long cut, in addition to traces of yet other circuits. Besides this they report sinking two shafts into the mound dominating the north-west corner of the tell and making two small probes in occupation levels within the city itself.


Author(s):  
Mike Searle

The Hindu Kush Mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Following the First Anglo-Afghan war of 1839– 42 the British government in Simla decided that the North-West Frontier of British India had to have an accurate delineation. Sir Mortimer Durand mapped the border between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1893 and this frontier is known as the Durand Line. Unfortunately it is a political frontier and one that splits the Pathan or Pushtun-speaking lands into two, with the North-West Frontier Province and Waziristan in Pakistan to the east and the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nangahar, Khost, Paktiya, and Kandahar to the west. The border regions north of Baluchistan in Quetta and Waziristan are strong tribal areas and ones that have never come under the direct rule of the Pakistani government. Warlords run their drug and arms businesses from well-fortified mud-walled hilltop fortresses. During the period that Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 the entire border regions of British India were mapped out along the Karakoram, Kashmir, Ladakh, and south Tibetan Ranges. During Partition, in 1947, once again an artificial border was established separating mostly Muslim Pakistan from India. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, gave Sir Cyril Radcliffe the invidious task of delineating the border in haste to avoid a civil war that would surely have come, and on 17 August 1947 Pakistan inherited all the territory between the Durand Line and the new Indian frontier, the Radcliffe Line. In the north, the disputed Kashmir region still remained unresolved and the northern boundary of Pakistan ran north to the main watershed along the Hindu Kush, Hindu Raj, and Karakoram Ranges. To the west, Afghanistan was a completely artificial country created by the amalgamation of the Pathans of the east, Hazaras of the central region, the Uzbeks in the Mazar-i-Sharif area, and the Tadjiks of the Panjshir Valley along the border with Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The British lost three wars trying to invade this mountainous land between 1839 and 1919, and the Soviet Union which occupied Afghanistan for ten years from 1979 also withdrew across the Oxus River in failure in February 1989.


1948 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Challinor

During the war a large new quarry was opened in the Longmyndian rocks of Haughmond Hill, Shropshire. It is near the south-east edge of the hill, to the west of the road running north from Upton Magna and one mile from the village. On the sketch-map in the Shrewsbury Memoir (p. 58) two arrows are shown, at about this locality, recording dips of 50° in a south-easterly direction. I was told that there was a very small quarry here before the large quarry was excavated. The present quarry is even larger than that near Haughmond Abbey (Shrewsbury Memoir, p. 48), on the north-west side of the Pre-Cambrian outcrop, and the two quarries offer extensive and splendidly displayed exposures of Longmyndian rocks, one in the coarse-grained Western Longmyndian and the other in the fine-grained Eastern Longmyndian.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Sultan -i- Rome

This paper presents a study of riwaj (customary law) in the traditional society of the present-day Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) of the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. Under riwaj only males could own land; women had no right to inherit land. During the Swat State era (1915-1969), on the whole, the traditional practice remained the law of inheritance and ownership of land under which the women folk were not entitled to inherit. However, during the reign of Miangul Jahanzeb in some cases the women were given the right to inherit and own land. The pattern of land ownership remained the same, in general, after the merger of the state in 1969. In this scenario, The West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1962 (W. P. Act V of 1962), with exception to the proviso of section 3 and 7, was extended to the area on 15 January 1976. Although extension of The West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1962, brought no practical change for the time being, its extension along with the land settlement carried out by the provincial revenue department, in most of the study area, were destined to bring the required change.


Vita Antiqua ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 129-138
Author(s):  
V.O. Shumova ◽  

Rescue archaeological excavations at the Trypillia settlement of Hordasivka-II (Zvenigorodka district, Cherkassy region) were started in 1996. This settlement is located at western bank of Hirs’kyy Tikych river, in 2.5 km to the west from the south-eastern edge of the village. It is placed on a part of plateau formed by the creek valley from the north and long cavin from the east. Visual observations indicate elliptic structure composed of a single row of dwellings. Settlement size did not exceed 3 ha. The rectangular-shaped Dwelling 1 excavated in Hordashivka (12.5 x 5.0 m) was oriented from north-west to southeast. It is reconstructed as a house with the lower storey’s floor covered by clay and massive ceiling of the lower storey (= floor of the upper storey). Most of the interior details were found on the floor of the lower storey. These are the fireplace, working space, elevations. Collection of finds is mostly represented by pottery (70% of the assemblage is referred to kitchen pottery and 30% of the assemblage is referred to table pottery). Part of the table pottery is decorated in black monochromic painting. Analysis of ceramics allows dating the settlement to Tripolye CII. Considering the relative and absolute chronology (radiocarbon dates obtained for Sharin III), this site may be dated to c. 3400 – 3200 BC. Materials from Hordashivka are “genetically” linked to post-Kosenovskaya group populations in the Southern Bug and Dnieper interfluve. This is traced by the specifics of the technology of vessels production and their decoration. It is important to admit ceramic influences from Sofievskaya group populations in the Middle Dnieper region. Settlements which are chronologically similar to Hordashivka II in the Southern Bug and Dnieper interfluve are not numerous. Later sites in this area are not known, while Trypillia traditions continued in other regions. Keywords: Hordasivka-II, Late Trypillia (C II), settlements, houses, reconstruction, ceramics, chronology.


1916 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 11-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. B. Wace

Early in 1915 during a short journey in Macedonia I took the opportunity of exploring the site and neighbourhood of Olynthus (Fig. 1), because it is hoped that the British School at Athens will before long be able to begin excavations there. I spent two days in the territory of Olynthus examining sites at Hagios Mamas, Myriophyton and Molivopyrgos as well as the ruins at Pizla, Magazudia and Palaioportes, all near Polygyros, which are those of mediaeval or modern villages. Although somewhat impeded by a heavy fall of snow I had the satisfaction of seeing for myself the comparative warmth of the climate of Olynthus even in winter. All about the reputed site of Olynthus the snow soon melted, whereas to the west beyond the village of Portaria towards the Kara Burun promontory, the snow remained for several days. The biting north-west Vardar wind which freezes the western end of Chalkidike in winter is kept off from Olynthus by the range of hills behind Polygyros, some of which are over three thousand feet high. Along the coast from Hagios Mamas to Molivopyrgos the territory of Olynthus is warm, faces south and is fertile, producing oil, corn, wine and silk. The low ground towards the coast is covered with olive groves, while the hills to the north are clothed with oak woods which were undoubtedly finer in antiquity than they are to-day. In most of the houses in Polygyros the doors and floors are of oak instead of the usual pine. These circumstances, coupled with the good anchorage at Molivopyrgos (the ancient Mekyberna), make it easy to understand the wealth and commercial importance of Olynthus. In addition to its other advantages, from Polygyros there runs the best road northwards into the upper country. Iron is said to be found in the hills and to-day mines of chrome and magnesite are worked along the coast.


X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Camiz ◽  
Marika Griffo ◽  
Emilia Valletta ◽  
Almira Khafizou

The so-called “beach-tower” is the smallest of the three remaining towers belonging to the Kyrenia’s medieval enceinte. Semi-circular in plan, with circa 6 m of diameter, the tower is today partially obliterated by the medieval urban tissue and is visible only from one side. Built during the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, this harbour overlooking tower is raised on a pedestal in the north-west inner corner of the city walled enclosure. The tower shows on the outside two windows that might belong to a later phase, being too wide as defensive openings, and includes fragments of the adjoining city walls that ran to the east, towards the castle and to the west towards the beach city gate. Kyrenia city’s walled defensive system was dismantled by the Venetians when the use of gunpowder cannon became prevalent, however, traces and records still remain enshrined in the medieval constructions. The paper, following the historical research, attempts to date the construction of this tower, and by examining the fortification remains with a digital survey, applies the comparison with other coeval examples together with the comparative analysis of the different masonry types.


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