Ukrainians in Belarus: distribution and ethnolinguistic processes

The article analyzes the distribution and ethnolinguistic processes in the environment of the Ukrainian diaspora in Belarus. Because of the fact that the part of Ukrainian ethnic territory (currently Brest region) is located in Belarus, not all Ukrainians living in the country can be correctly named a diaspora. To avoiding terminology-related complications, in the article we use the general term Ukrainian diaspora. The study is based on the results of censuses conducted in Belarus after 1991. The article analyzes the ethnic environment of residence of the Ukrainian diaspora based on the ethnocultural and ethnolinguistic criteria of the censuses. In particular, using mathematical and statistical methods of analysis of the ethnic composition of the country’s population, we estimated such indicators as the index of ethnic diversity, ethnic mosaic, socio-ethnic density, etc. These indicators were estimated for districts and the largest cities of Belarus, taking into account the largest ethnic groups living in the country. The result of these estimations was the creation of a number of thematic maps that complement the article. The study highlights the areas of compact residence of Ukrainians, identifies districts and cities where the number of Ukrainians changed the most and the least during the inter-census periods of 1999–2009 and 2009–2019. The dynamics of the number and settlement of Ukrainians in the Ukrainian ethnic territories is analyzed. In this context, it was found that in addition to the Brest region, there is a dense concentration of Ukrainians in the capital, major cities of the country, a number of district centers in the southwestern part of the country. It was determined that the share of Ukrainians living in cities is growing. The growth rate of the number of Ukrainians for the period between 2009 and 2019 in the largest cities of the country ranges from + 7% (Mogilev) to 77.45% (Novopolotsk). It was found that the country is monoethnic in its ethnic composition based on the analysis of a number of indicators related to the ethnic composition of the population of Belarus. A more diverse ethnic composition of the population and therefore higher rates were recorded in large cities and areas densely populated with individual ethnic groups (Russians, Poles and Ukrainians). The Ukrainian diaspora in the country is undergoing processes of Russification, the share of Ukrainians who indicate Ukrainian as their mother tongue is declining. The share of Ukrainians whose native language is Belarusian is also declining. That is, it can be argued that Russification affects not only Ukrainians in Belarus, but also the Belarusians themselves. The research also revealed that villagers are more resistant to language assimilation,and Ukrainians in cities most often indicate Russian as their native language.

Coherently amplifying photon production from vacuum with a dense cloud of accelerating photodetectors

An accelerating photodetector is predicted to see photons in the electromagnetic vacuum. However, the extreme accelerations required have prevented the direct experimental verification of this quantum vacuum effect. In this work, we consider many accelerating photodetectors that are contained within an electromagnetic cavity. We show that the resulting photon production from the cavity vacuum can be collectively enhanced such as to be measurable. The combined cavity-photodetectors system maps onto a parametrically driven Dicke-type model; when the detector number exceeds a certain critical value, the vacuum photon production undergoes a phase transition from a normal phase to an enhanced superradiant-like, inverted lasing phase. Such a model may be realized as a mechanical membrane with a dense concentration of optically active defects undergoing gigahertz flexural motion within a superconducting microwave cavity. We provide estimates suggesting that recent related experimental devices are close to demonstrating this inverted, vacuum photon lasing phase.

Coherently amplifying photon production from vacuum with a dense cloud of accelerating photodetectors

We consider N>>1 accelerating (i.e., oscillating) photodetectors modeled as two level systems (TLSs) that are contained within a microwave cavity and show that the resulting photon production from vacuum can be collectively enhanced such as to be measurable. The cavity-accelerating TLSs system maps onto a parametrically driven Dicke-type model and when the detector number N exceeds a certain critical value, the vacuum photon production undergoes a phase transition from a normal phase to an enhanced superradiant-like, inverted lasing phase. Such a model may be realized as a mechanical membrane with a dense concentration of optically active defects undergoing GHz flexural motion and contained within a 3D, superconducting microwave cavity. We show that recent related experimental devices are close to demonstrating this inverted, vacuum photon lasing phase.

Survey and excavation at an Iron Age enclosure complex on Turin Hill and environs

This paper presents the results of a programme of survey and evaluative excavation at a complex of five enclosures on Turin Hill in Angus, Scotland. This includes one large bivallate hillfort, an oblong fort and three smaller duns. The aim of the investigation was to re-map the surviving archaeological features and clarify the chronology of the sites. Geophysical survey was also undertaken and clarified various aspects of the enclosures on the hill, revealing a dense concentration of features within the interior of the large bivallate hillfort. Keyhole excavation was undertaken with basic chronological information being obtained for four out of five of the enclosures and dating samples from one other dun on the same ridge at Rob’s Reed. All the samples produced dates falling in the Iron Age and importantly, despite their location overlooking the rich assemblage of early medieval sculpture at Aberlemno, there was no definitive indication of early medieval activity or settlement at Turin Hill or its immediate environs. Evaluation of the rampart of the large bivallate hillfort produced an Early Iron Age date, and as such, may represent one of the few dated forts from this time period presently known in Scotland. Canmore ID 34899 Canmore ID 33776 Canmore ID 34959

Personal Freedom and Identity Representation Performance in Modern Urban Subculture

Conglomerations of modern cities are becoming increasingly fractional/disintegrated. An urban person turns into a special type of a person called “homo urbis”, capable of living in a "stone jungle" of performance, in a dense concentration of urban culture objects and amongst the most heterogeneous human mass. The modern civilizational paradigm predetermines the dynamics of the processes of socio-cultural personal identity formation performance in urban culture environment, as well as its globalization and glocalization. The very phenomenon of personal identity in modern urban culture falls into the spectrum of multiple "identities", its evolutionary and critical performance processes. All socio-cultural and civilizational interactions of urban cultural environment are mixed up in existential contradictions. Clear and distinct bases of the traditional world are giving way to civilizationally complex chaos, diverse cultural multilayer and their intricate interlacement. The coexistence of numerous axiological patterns, stereotypes, narratives and metanarratives of the city result in colossal ideological and spiritual tension, where a person has been considered the core of the concentration of the crisis problems since the Socratic anthropological turn. In this connection, the problem of determination and creation of an urban personality, by all means, should be supplemented with the most important heuristic and ontological component – the search for personal identity, as the correlation of the ever-forming civilizational mass of existence with the process of self-reflection of an individual.

CLASSIC-PERIOD RITUAL CERAMICS FROM THE COAST OF CHIAPAS, MEXICO

In 1947 Philip Drucker excavated an unusually dense concentration of artifacts from the plaza of a small Late Classic site on the inner coastal plain of Chiapas, Mexico that he proposed was a possible end-of-cycle ceremonial dump. Although the deposit contained both utilitarian and ritual items, only some of the latter have survived for present day investigation. Here we describe Drucker's excavations and the surviving ritual items, neither of which had ever been published in detail. We also examine archaeological expectations for end-of-cycle dumps based upon ethnohistoric descriptions of this Mesoamerican ritual practice and we explore the iconography of effigy censers, which constitute an important set of the items that Drucker collected. We conclude that this singular deposit most likely represents the material remains an end-of-cycle ritual as Drucker had originally proposed.

Early procurement of scarlet macaws and the emergence of social complexity in Chaco Canyon, NM

High-precision accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) 14C dates of scarlet macaw (Ara macao) skeletal remains provide the first direct evidence from Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico that these Neotropical birds were procured from Mesoamerica by Pueblo people as early as ∼A.D. 900–975. Chaco was a prominent prehistoric Pueblo center with a dense concentration of multistoried great houses constructed from the 9th through early 12th centuries. At the best known great house of Pueblo Bonito, unusual burial crypts and significant quantities of exotic and symbolically important materials, including scarlet macaws, turquoise, marine shell, and cacao, suggest societal complexity unprecedented elsewhere in the Puebloan world. Scarlet macaws are known markers of social and political status among the Pueblos. New AMS 14C-dated scarlet macaw remains from Pueblo Bonito demonstrate that these birds were acquired persistently from Mesoamerica between A.D. 900 and 1150. Most of the macaws date before the hypothesized apogeal Chacoan period (A.D. 1040–1110) to which they are commonly attributed. The 10th century acquisition of these birds is consistent with the hypothesis that more formalized status hierarchies developed with significant connections to Mesoamerica before the post-A.D. 1040 architectural florescence in Chaco Canyon.

Analysis of Surface Collections from Areas A and B at the Sam Roberts Site (41CP8) on Prairie Creek, Camp County, Texas

The Sam Roberts site is a large ancestral Caddo mound center and habitation site on the floodplain of Prairie Creek, an eastward-flowing tributary to Big Cypress Creek, as well as on an upland landform south of the creek. Robert L. Turner, Jr.'s surface collections came from what he labeled Area A (in a plowed field in the floodplain) and Area B (in the uplands), several hundred meters apart. His notes with the collection also indicated that Caddo vessels had been plowed up in another cultivated field well to the east of Area A in the Prairie Creek floodplain. The two Turner surface collection areas appear to correspond to two of the five distinct subareas (AE) identified by Thurmond. Thurmond's Area A is the same as Turner's, and Thurmond describes it as a "dense concentration or occupation debris on a floodplain rise adjacent to Prairie Creek, associated with a dark brown greasy soil. Large, dark outlines associated with concentrations of wattle-impressed daub may mark the locations of structures." Area A has a Late Caddo Titus phase component. Thurmond's Area B is the same as Turner's Area B, and this area is marked by an apparent Early or Middle Caddo settlement. Although unnoted by Turner, there was a Late Caddo, Titus phase mound and a midden deposit about 200 m west of Area A, also in the floodplain of Prairie Creek (Thurmond's Area E). The mound (15.2 m in diameter and 1.1 min height) was built over a burned circular structure. Two radiocarbon dates on burned structural materials have median calibrated ages of A.D. 1567 and A.D. 1681; these dates, along with the brushed and brushed-punctated sherds recovered in the excavations, indicate that the Area E mound was built during Titus phase times, along with a number of other mounds in the Big Cypress Creek basin. Thurmond's Area D may be at the same location where Turner noted vessels had been plowed up; this area also has Titus phase occupational remains. Thurmond's Area Cis just east of Area B, and also represents an Early to Middle Caddo habitation area with substantial amounts of ceramic sherds. Finally, the recovery of Gary dart points from Area A indicates that there was a limited Woodland period use in this part of the Sam Roberts site.

Research on Planning and Design of High-Rise Buildings in Baotou from the Perspective of Urban Environment

The development of economic has cause many problems about emerging and dense concentration of High-rise buildings in Baotou,so that the urban natural environment, urban living environment, urban spatial structure ,the urban cultural environment have been greatly affected.Therefore, this article discusses the problem about high-rise buildings from the perspective of the urban environment, with an aim to find a harmonious development method on high-rise buildings and urban environment.

Paleoenvironmental and paleoecological reconstruction of a freshwater oasis in savannah grassland at FLK North, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

The records of early hominins are commonly localized both temporally and spatially even in archaeologically rich basins like Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The FLK North site was discovered in 1960, but the reason for the exact location of this dense concentration of fossils and stone tools on a lake-margin flat has not been explained. We present new geological and geochemical information from six excavations in upper Bed I, which revealed up to 1.4-m-thick carbonate deposits, attesting to the presence of freshwater springs in the area surrounding FLK North. The δ18O signatures of the tufa are typical for meteoric water that has evolved during evaporation. Tuff IF that caps the sequence was deposited on uneven topography with the highest area a low-relief ridge between two faults at the archaeological site and lowest areas being sites of groundwater discharge. The model proposed here is that rainfall on adjacent highlands was transported to the basin where faults acted as conduits for water. Similar hydrogeological settings at modern lakes Manyara and Eyasi, currently support lush groundwater forest and woodland despite arid climate. FLK North may have been an “oasis” offering freshwater and shelter for consuming meat by both carnivores and hominins.