Differences between Sungai Mas and Oc-eo glass beads: One of the Indo-Pacific Beads-making centres
Zuliskandar Ramli & Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abd. Rahman
Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,
43600 UKM Bangi Selangor
Abstract
Arikamedu is where the Indo-Pacific beads industry begun, almost from its founding; there is no evidence for earlier drawn bead making. The city was flourishing port for more than centuries, and is identified with Pholemy’s Poduca Emporium, with a small colony of Roman merchants. Arikamedu was abandoned by the 3rd century and before it’s was abandoned bead making centre was transferred to three other sites by the 2nd century CE and Francis identified the three location are Mantai, Sri Lanka, Klong Thom, Thailand and Oc-eo, Vietnam. Mantai sold beads to Arabs and Persians and probably the first to reach African region. Oc-eo may have served prestigious East Asia markets. The market for Klong Thom beads may have been Southeast Asia. Recent archaeological finding in Pulau Kelumpang or Kuala Selinsing, it can be suggested that Kuala Selinsing were one of Indo-Pacific beads-making centres since 2nd century AD. By the 6th/7th century CE another bead making centres evolved such as Sating Pra, U Thong and Nan Yong in Thailand, Sungai Mas in Malaysia and Muara Jambi and Demak in Indonesia. On this paper, we would like to discuss further more about Sungai Mas glass beads and comparing them with the Oc-eo glass beads in compositional aspect. The results showed that Sungai Mas and Oc-eo produced their own glass beads and one of Indo-Pacific beads-making centre in Southeast Asia beginning from 2nd century CE to 12th century CE.
Keywords: Indo-Pacific beads, Arikamedu, Sungai Mas, Oc-eo
This study aims to analyze the factors on the decrease of machiya, which is a traditional wooden house in the historical city of Kyoto, Japan. The concatenation of them makes a typical Japanese landscape. Although it has great importance on city’s historical landscape, most of machiya aren’t assigned as a cultural property to conserve in the city landscape policy. Consequently these days more and more machiya are facing the problem of demolition, and the World Monument Fund places them on the Watch list. Based on the result of “Kyo-machiya Community-building survey”, the percentage of decreasing machiya counts approximately 2% per year. “Kyo-machiya Community-building survey” was conducted by the Kyoto City Government, Ritsumeikan University, and volunteer citizens from October 2008 through March 2010. As a result, about 56,000 machiya are examined and the number is nearly equal to the total existing machiya. The historical GIS team of Ritsumeikan University is constructing a GIS database on machiya. The database consists of several items as represented by geographical distribution, attributes of façade, the result of questionnaire survey to the residents of machiya, and so on. Thus, the database makes it possible to analyze the factors all together on GIS affecting decrease of machiya. Using the information surround decreasing machiya such as the number of vacant houses, narrow roads, and intention of residents to conserve it, this study intends to elucidate the critical factors of decreasing.
Our understanding about China during the early Bronze Age, conventionally known as the Shang period (c.1500—c.1045BC), largely comes from the archaeological finds in Henan in the mid-Yellow River region. Over the last two decades, however, archaeological excavations carried out in the Yangtze provinces revealed substantial numbers of fine bronzes quite different from those in Henan, suggesting that there existed bronze-casting societies other than that of the Shang on the territory now called China.
The Yangtze finds provide a significant aspect to renew the study of the early Bronze Age developments. Weapons present important issues for discussion. They are one of the most important types found in both Henan and the Yangtze areas. Each bronze-casting group produced particular types, yet it is striking that they employed similar forms of weapons, namely, blades to serve ritual purposes. Close connections between the Shang and the south must have existed, and they remain unexplained.
By studying the weapons and their archaeological contexts at Anyang, Hanzhong, Xin’gan, and Sanxingdui with reference to the concept of materiality, the author aims to 1. challenge the traditional idea about the Shang cultural dominance over the south; 2. find out the ways of contacts between different bronze-casting groups; and 3. establish a renewed understanding about early Bronze Age China in recognition of the contributions from many independent, settled societies; and 4. engage the Chinese materials into the world discourse of archaeological methods and theories.
Keywords: Archaeology, Bronze Age, Shang, Yangtze River, and Weapons
Shibuya has attracted diversified areas of scholarship, especially for its dynamic interactions between mediums, consumer cultures and people’s psychological and physical reactions to its space. Through the three phases of a project Sensing Cities from 2008 to 2010, we have examined sensorial factors and representations in Shibuya to find diverse characteristics of the ways of peoples’ formalization of their identity in Shibuya, Cat Street, and Omotesando, which are more residential neighbor area of Shibuya. Especially, compared to the rather aggressive consumer culture area of Shibuya, in Omotesando and Cat Street, we could observe more sensitive, characteristic and representing Japanese contemporary aspects of people’s relationship with others in the urban space.
The divisions between the public and private are frequently altered and spatially mobilized by pushing their properties/territories into the street, and occupying the parking lots temporally for different purposes etc,. In that situation of mobilizing public domain, people observe each other carefully and try to make their identity by differentiating in their detail parts, and by unifying to the general trend of the fashion. It may be possible to explain this phenomena based on Simmel’s notion of fashion, but in this study, I would like to explain its mechanism of the creation of a reflective identity in fashion relating to the affordance of urban space by connecting to the mechanism in eluding and slipping their logical and functional social context in the space, which allow people to coexist and adapt with the consumer culture of Shibuya.
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