Doma: a new multi-technological lithic occurrence in the Lower Son Valley (north-central India) and its regional context

2021 ◽  
pp. SP515-2020-205
Author(s):  
Shashi B. Mehra

AbstractThe Lower Son Valley is generally overlooked despite a lengthy history of archaeological and geological studies in the adjacent Middle Son Valley. However, recent explorations in the former have yielded a large number of Palaeolithic and microlithic sites. This paper provides an initial report on Doma, a newly discovered site with the first-known stratified bifaces in this part of the valley. The site preserves multi-period technologies in different contexts including terminal Acheulean/early Middle Palaeolithic, and Upper Palaeolithic (all tentatively assigned based on respective typologies). Preliminary field observations are presented on the sedimentary sequence, archaeological surveys, topographical mapping, raw material, and the overall palaeoanthropological assessment of Doma. The raw material utilised at the site is primarily porcellanite, derived from exposures of the Semri Group of the Vindhyan Supergroup. The oldest Palaeolithic evidence at Doma broadly resembles Late Acheulean sites dated to ∼140-120 ka in the nearby Middle Son Valley. The Pleistocene sediments here also yielded mammalian fossil specimens such as long bone fragments, dental specimens and antler fragments. Along with the lithics and fossils, the site also preserves datable sedimentary sequence with calcrete, all key proxies to develop a testable model of technological transitions within a palaeoenvironmental framework, in the future.

Author(s):  
David L. Haberman

Loving Stones: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan is based on ethnographic and textual research with two major objectives. First, it is a study of the conceptions of and worshipful interactions with Mount Govardhan, a sacred mountain located in the Braj region of north-central India that has for centuries been considered an embodied form of Krishna. In this capacity it provides detailed information about the rich religious world associated with Mount Govardhan, much of which has not been available in previous scholarly literature. It is often said in that Mount Govardhan “makes the impossible possible” for devoted worshipers. This investigation includes an examination of the perplexing paradox of an infinite god embodied in finite form, wherein each particular form is non-different from the unlimited. Second, it aims to address the challenge of interpreting something as radically different as the worship of a mountain and its stones for a culture in which this practice is quite alien. This challenge involves exploration of interpretive strategies that aspire to make the incomprehensible understandable, and engages in theoretical considerations of incongruity, inconceivability, and like realms of the impossible. This aspect of the book includes critical consideration of the place and history of the pejorative concept of idolatry (and secondarily, its twin, anthropomorphism) in the comparative study of religions. Accordingly, the second aim aspires to use the worship of Mount Govardhan as a site to explore ways in which scholars engaged in the difficult work of representing other cultures struggle to “make the impossible possible.”


2006 ◽  
Vol 118 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 491-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Myrow ◽  
K. R. Thompson ◽  
N. C. Hughes ◽  
T. S. Paulsen ◽  
B. K. Sell ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor Aleksandrovich Vilensky ◽  
Aleksander Pavlovich Pozdeev ◽  
Edgar Valentinovich Bukharev ◽  
Andrey Aleksandrovich Pozdeev ◽  
Timur Faizovich Zubairov ◽  
...  

The article is dedicated to computer-assisted external fixation devices, so-called hexapods. The main advantage of these frames is capability to make mathematically precise correction of bone fragments in three planes and six degrees of freedom on the base of calculations made in special software application. Recently these devices are mostly applied in long bone deformity correction but the sphere of its effective useis not limited by only this direction. The article presents the history of investigation of these devices, their development, implemented comparative analysis of the basic hexapods: TSF (Taylor Spatial Frame), IHA (Ilizarov Hexapod Apparatus) and Ortho-SUV Frame.


2012 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 191-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Haslam ◽  
Clair Harris ◽  
Chris Clarkson ◽  
J.N. Pal ◽  
Ceri Shipton ◽  
...  

Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oron Catts ◽  
Ionat Zurr

The paper discusses and critiques the concept of the single engineering paradigm. This concepts allude to a future in which the control of matter and life, and life as matter, will be achieved by applying engineering principles; through nanotechnology, synthetic biology and, as some suggest, geo-engineering, cognitive engineering and neuro-engineering. We outline some issues in the short history of the field labelled as Synthetic Biology. Furthermore; we examine the way engineers, scientists, designers and artists are positioned and articulating the use of the tools of Synthetic Biology to expose some of the philosophical, ethical and political forces and considerations of today as well as some future scenarios. We suggest that one way to enable the possibilities of alternative frames of thought is to open up the know-how and the access to these technologies to other disciplines, including artistic.


1983 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amechi Okolo

This paper traces the history of the relationship between Africa and the West since their first contact brought about by the outward thrust of the West, under the impetus of rising capitalism, in search of cheap labour and cheap raw material for its industries and expanding markets for its industrial products, both of which could be better ensured through domination and exploitation. The paper identifies five successive stages that African political economy has passed through under the impact of this relationship, each phase qualitatively different from the other but all having the common characteristic of domination-dependence syndrome, and each phase having been dictated by the dynamics of capitalism in different eras and by the dominant forces in the changing international system. Its finding is that the way to the latest stage, the dependency phase, was paved by the progressive proletarianization of the African peoples and the maintenance of an international peonage system. It ends by indicating the direction in which Africa can make a beginning to break out of dependency and achieve liberation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
pp. 150370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Bell ◽  
Haripriya Rangan ◽  
Christian A. Kull ◽  
Daniel J. Murphy

To investigate the pathways of introduction of the African baobab, Adansonia digitata , to the Indian subcontinent, we examined 10 microsatellite loci in individuals from Africa, India, the Mascarenes and Malaysia, and matched this with historical evidence of human interactions between source and destination regions. Genetic analysis showed broad congruence of African clusters with biogeographic regions except along the Zambezi (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania), where populations included a mixture of individuals assigned to at least two different clusters. Individuals from West Africa, the Mascarenes, southeast India and Malaysia shared a cluster. Baobabs from western and central India clustered separately from Africa. Genetic diversity was lower in populations from the Indian subcontinent than in African populations, but the former contained private alleles. Phylogenetic analysis showed Indian populations were closest to those from the Mombasa-Dar es Salaam coast. The genetic results provide evidence of multiple introductions of African baobabs to the Indian subcontinent over a longer time period than previously assumed. Individuals belonging to different genetic clusters in Zambezi and Kilwa may reflect the history of trafficking captives from inland areas to supply the slave trade between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Baobabs in the Mascarenes, southeast India and Malaysia indicate introduction from West Africa through eighteenth and nineteenth century European colonial networks.


Paleobiology ◽  
10.1666/12030 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy V. Looy

Within conifers, active abscission of complete penultimate branch systems is not common and has been described mainly from juveniles. Here I present evidence for the abscission of penultimate branch systems within early so-called walchian conifers—trees with a plagiotropic branching pattern. The specimens studied originate from a middle Early Permian gymnosperm-dominated flora within the middle Clear Fork Group of north-central Texas. Complete branch systems of three walchian conifer morphotypes are preserved; all have pronounced swellings and smooth separation faces at their bases. The source plants grew in a streamside habitat under seasonally dry climatic conditions. The evolution of active branch abscission appears to correspond to an increase in the size of conifers, and this combination potentially contributed to the restructuring of conifer-rich late Paleozoic landscapes. Moreover, trees shedding branch systems and producing abundant litter have the potential to affect the fire regime, which is a factor of evolutionary importance because wildfires must have been a source of frequent biotic disturbance throughout the hyperoxic Early Permian.


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