Bronze Alloying Practice in ancient China - Evidence from Pre-Qin Coin Analyses

Genetic analyses from ancient DNA.

About 20 years ago, DNA sequences were separately described from the quagga (a type of zebra) and an ancient Egyptian individual. What made these DNA sequences exceptional was that they were derived from 140- and 2400-year-old specimens. However, ancient DNA research, defined broadly as the retrieval of DNA sequences from museum specimens, archaeological finds, fossil remains, and other unusual...

The Ancient Origins of Chinese Traditional Female Gender Role: A Historical Review from Pre-Qin Dynasty to Han Dynasty

There were different courses of gender development in China and the West. Traditional Chinese ethical culture, as the guiding principles in dealing with gender relations, laid the foundation of moral character of men and women, and also caused the formation of the feudal ethics of women in ancient China. This paper discussed the ancient origins of Chinese traditional female gender role in two p...

Roman bronze artefacts from Thamusida (Morocco): Chemical and phase analyses

Twenty-six objects (1st to the 3rd century AD) found at the archaeological site of Thamusida (Morocco), which is a military settlement between the 1st and the 3rd century AD, have been investigated by means of portable X-ray fluorescence and time of flight-neutron diffraction. The combination of element-sensitive X-ray fluorescence and structure-sensitive neutron diffraction yields, in a totall...

Bronze, Jade, Gold, and Ivory: Valuable Objects in Ancient Sichuan

If negotiations about value are essentially political (Graeber 2001:115), our understanding of past political systems is illuminated by an understanding of how and through what processes value is attributed to objects in a particular context. We cannot examine this “object value” through a focus on only one attribute or set of attributes, such as scarcity of raw material or labor investment, bu...

Chemical Investigation of Two Ancient Bronze Statuettes Found in Greece