scholarly journals Crossbows and imperial craft organisation: the bronze triggers of China's Terracotta Army

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (339) ◽  
pp. 126-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuzhen Janice Li ◽  
Andrew Bevan ◽  
Marcos Martinón-Torres ◽  
Thilo Rehren ◽  
Wei Cao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Craft Production ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Administrative Control ◽  
The Third ◽  
Trigger Mechanisms ◽  
Qin Shihuang

The Terracotta Army that protected the tomb of the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang offers an evocative image of the power and organisation of the Qin armies who unified China through conquest in the third century BC. It also provides evidence for the craft production and administrative control that underpinned the Qin state. Bronze trigger mechanisms are all that remain of crossbows that once equipped certain kinds of warrior in the Terracotta Army. A metrical and spatial analysis of these triggers reveals that they were produced in batches and that these separate batches were thereafter possibly stored in an arsenal, but eventually were transported to the mausoleum to equip groups of terracotta crossbowmen in individual sectors of Pit 1. The trigger evidence for large-scale and highly organised production parallels that also documented for the manufacture of the bronze-tipped arrows and proposed for the terracotta figures themselves.

What's in a hump? Re-examining the hunchback in the Villa-Albani-Torlonia

2009 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 130-156
Author(s):  
Lisa Trentin
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
Drilling Technique ◽  
And Shifts

The private collection of the Villa Albani-Torlonia in Rome holds the only surviving large-scale sculpture of a hunchback [fig. i]. Although this hunchback has been intensely studied, it remains enigmatic. The hunchback is generally agreed to be Roman and dated to the second century CE on the basis of its portrait head, particularly in the drilling technique of its hairstyle, though the realism of its misshapen and ugly body is in the direct tradition of works of the third century BCE.Whether this hunchback is an original of its time or a copy of a now lost Greek work is still contentious. Since its discovery in the Baths of Caracalla, the figure has been identified as the famous Greek fabulist Aesop, who, according to literary tradition, may have been a hunchback. Although several scholars have suggested new possibilities for the identity of this hunchback, including the proposition that it is a Roman original representing a jester of the imperial court, its association with Aesop has remained. But is its identity necessarily key to understanding its significance? This article intends to move away from the identification of this figure to consider the hunchback primarily as a type, rather than a person, and shifts the emphasis to its context within a bathhouse.

Pottery Manufacture in Roman Egypt: A New Papyrus

1981 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 87-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Cockle
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Chemical Analyses ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Pottery Industry ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman Egypt

Our knowledge of the pottery industry in ancient Egypt has so far been derived from sculptured reliefs showing potters at work, from a few excavations of kilns and from chemical analyses of pottery wares. Documentary evidence has now come to light in the form of three pottery leases from Oxyrhynchus, all dated to the middle of the third century a.d.They are so closely related in subject-matter, terminology, date and the names of the contracting parties that I publish in full only the earliest and most complete (which I shall refer to as A); but I include references to the more significant details of the other two (B and C). Their importance lies in the fact that they reveal a remarkably large scale industry, and also much concerning the techniques and terminology of the pottery industry, especially the names of the clays used and the sizes of the jars.

Why Did Decius and Valerian Proscribe Christianity?

1933 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Thomas Oborn
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Rapid Rise ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The People ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Direct Explanation ◽  
Hard Times

Severe economic depression had the Roman world in its grip during the middle of the third century A. D.; a condition from which the Mediterranean countries never fully recovered. There is much evidence to show that the economic structure of the Empire was crumbling. Very soon the outlying territories of the Empire were overrun by barbarians, trade collapsed, and brigandage and piracy reappeared on a large scale. All of this was accompanied by a rapid rise in the prices of the commodities of life. To-day we look for the causes of economic depressions in intricate and far-reaching social forces. In the third century Romans of the old school had a much more simple and direct explanation. When the Empire fell on hard times and disaster stalked the corners there was only one cause: the gods who had given Rome her power and the Empire its prosperity in the years gone by were being neglected, foreign gods and oriental cults had usurped the religious fervor of the people, and the venerable gods of the Eternal City were angered. The remedy was likewise simple: revive and stimulate the worship of the ancient gods of Rome, thus appeasing their anger, and prosperity would return.

scholarly journals The third century of electrochemistry: Lowering the horizon or raising it further?

2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (12) ◽  
pp. 2165-2177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetomir Hadzi-Jordanov
Keyword(s):  
Fuel Cells ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
H2 Evolution ◽  
The Third ◽  
Interdisciplinary Nature ◽  
A Priority ◽  
Advanced Development

A survey is given of the development of electrochemistry with an author?s non-hidden wish for more advanced development in future. The survey is based on past achievements of electrochemistry listed shortly here. As far as the recent state is concerned, dissatisfaction is expressed with the acceptance of electrochemistry both as profession of graduated students, and a priority field in financing research, as well. For the sake of truth an alternative view is mentioned that takes the recent state of electrochemistry as normal and in accordance with the usual course of development, (i.e. birth, rise, achieving of maximum and then decay, fading, etc.), that is common in the nature. This statement is based on a belief that today electrochemistry exists on a broader basis than before, and is mainly incorporated in other (new) branches of chemistry and science. Examples are given where recent electrochemistry failed to fulfill the promises (e.g., production of cheap hydrogen by means of electrocatalysts with high performance for H2 evolution, economical use of large scale fuel cells, etc.). In summarizing the recent fields of interest that covers electrochemistry, it is stressed out their diversification, specialization, complexness and interdisciplinary nature. A list of desirable highlights that could possibly help electrochemistry to improve its rating among other science branches is composed. Also, a list of author?s personal preferences is given.

Sidi Khrebish Excavations, Benghazi, 1974 and 1975

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
J. A. Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
The City

Two six week programmes of excavation took place in July and August 1974 and 1975 at Sidi Khrebish on the site of part of the Hellenistic and Roman city of Berenice. Large scale excavation ceased in September 1973 and the work of the last two years was directed towards the completion of areas unfinished in 1973 together with a certain amount of new excavation.The major discovery of the last two seasons has been a section of a two-period circuit of defensive walls, including a tower (Figs 1 and 2). The walls are Hellenistic in construction and from the associated dating material appear to post-date Queen Berenice's initial fortification of the city which was founded in the middle of the third century B.C. They are possibly as late as the first century B.C.

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

Pèlerinages barrésiens

2013 ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Claire Bompaire-Evesque
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The Self ◽  
Joan Of Arc ◽  
The Third ◽  
National Importance ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
The Dead

This article is a inquiry about how Barrès (1862-1923) handles the religious rite of pilgrimage. Barrès stages in his writings three successive forms of pilgrimage, revealing what is sacred to him at different times. The pilgrimage to a museum or to the birthplace of an artist is typical for the egotism and the humanism of the young Barrès, expressed in the Cult of the Self (1888-1891). After his conversion to nationalism, Barrès tries to unite the sons of France and to instill in them a solemn reverence for “the earth and the dead” ; for that purpose he encourages in French Amities (1903) pilgrimages to historical places of national importance (battlefields; birthplace of Joan of Arc), building what Nora later called the Realms of Memory. The third stage of Barrès’ intellectual evolution is exemplified by The Sacred Hill (1913). In this book the writer celebrates the places where “the Spirit blows”, and proves open to a large scale of spiritual forces, reaching back to paganism and forward to integrative syncretism, which aims at unifying “the entire realm of the sacred”.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara K. Gold
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Status ◽  
Key Issues

This chapter discusses the key issues surrounding Perpetua’s life and her narrative, the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. It introduces the most perplexing circumstances around her life and times: the authorship of her Passio (which is written in at least three different hands); her life and family; the conditions of her martyrdom and of martyrdoms during the pre-Constantinian period; the status of martyrdom texts as personal, social, or historical documents; whether persecutions can be historically verified or were exaggerated by the Christians and others; and the afterlife of Perpetua and her text in writers from the third century to contemporary times. The introduction lays out the arguments for these thorny issues and tries to find a reasonable position on each one.

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