Faculty of History, Art and Oriental Studies

In der Dichotomie zwischen Kulturwandel und Migration wurde die C-Keramik zu Beginn ihrer Erforschung als Indiz auf Wanderungsbewegung sowie einen dadurch stimulierten Kulturwandel und sogar als Beleg für die indoeuropäische Wanderung bewertet. Oftmals wird die C-Keramik als Importkeramik angesprochen und sie wird damit als ein Fremdelement gedeutet. Gleichwohl diese spezifische Ware gewisse Steppenmarker trägt, belegen zahlreiche Merkmale, dass die C-Keramik eher als ein Element zu verstehen ist, das innerhalb der Cucuteni-Tripol´e-Kultur seine eigenständige Genese erfuhr.

Der Beitrag unternimmt einen Streifzug in die Welt der textilen Techniken im IV. Jt. v. Chr. Da aus dieser Zeit bis auf einige Feuchtbodenkontexte nur sehr wenige Textilfunde bekannt sind, bilden Bildwerke aber auch Spinnwirtel und Webgewichte wichtige, indirekte Nachweisgruppen für die Technik der Textilherstellung. Sie lassen sich durch Gewebeabdrücke auf Keramikböden präzisieren und ermöglichen konkrete Aussagen zur Kenntnis der Textilherstellung. Aus der Siedlung Petreni in der Moldaurepublik werden exemplarisch einige solche Nachweise vorgelegt und generelle Überlegungen zur Textilentwicklung im Untersuchungsgebiet angestellt.

The function of the plan-schematic settlements of the so called Cucuteni-Tripolye-Complex in the northwestern pontic region remains enigmatic and yet, these structures haven´t been approached holistically. The article aims to address basic aspects as the construction plan and the chronology at one of these sites, the settlement Petreni in the Republic of Moldova.

Im Verlauf der Ausgrabungen am Tripol’e-CI-zeitlichen Fundplatz Petreni in der nördlichen Moldaurepublik wurden in den Jahren 2011-2015 neben einer Vielzahl an Keramik und aufschlussreichen Baubefunden ebenso Objekte freigelegt, die in der Literatur bisher eher marginal behandelt wurden. Unter anderem handelt sich dabei um kleine, gebrannte Tonobjekte einfacher geometrischer Formen, die gehäuft besonders in Grubenkontexten dokumentiert werden. Exemplarisch sollen jene Artefakte mitsamt Kontext ihres Auffindens in Kürze vorgestellt werden.

This paper studies the development of the Ottoman Press law during the middle of the 19th Century and its effect on the Press in Beirut. Beirut has been a center for journalism during the nahda in the 19th Century and Hadiqat al-Akhbar is one of the oldest and longest living private newspaper established by Khalil al-Khuri. Furthermore Khalil al-Khuris' role as both editor and censor is analyzed. The establishment of newspapers and journals has been one factor in creating a new forum for intellectuals in order to express their views for or against the Ottoman administration in Istanbul.

The March 11 disaster in Japan, the continuing drought in East Africa or the floods in Thailand in 2011 – in the current debate about climatic change and increasing population along high-risk earthquake zones, natural disasters seem to be an urgent and up-to-date issue. Unexpected, universal, and often fatal, they present a huge challenge to any society – no matter where or when. The ancient cultures of both the Mediterranean and Eastern Asia, too, have been confronted with a large number of natural disasters. Both civilisations processed these occurrences in mythology, historiography and natural speculations.
Whereas the huge differences in their languages and structures of thinking make it hard to directly compare the images of nature in Ancient Europe and Early China, a closer look into the descriptions of similar disastrous natural phenomena in the ancient written records can provide insights into their respective systems of thought. By this, the ancient scientific, religious, and philosophical dispositions as well as the complex construction of nature of that time become clearer.
In the communication, some outstanding examples of the integration of natural disasters into ancient philosophical and historiographical sources from the Greco-Roman era and early Imperial China will be presented, their respective functions in the composition and messages of the texts will be discussed, and implications for the images of nature will be drawn.

The reconstruction of the date on which extraordinary natural phenomena occurred presents a number of difficulties as well as important chances for modern research into ancient European history.
Among the most important problems are the several calendric systems that were in use in the Greco-Roman world and that were applied to the ancient scriptural sources. Their different points of reference as well as varying beginnings and lengths of the year make it hard to convert the dates handed down in the ancient sources to our modern chronology. Another, less obvious, though even bigger obstacle is created by the characteristics of these sources themselves. Due to the integration of descriptions of disasters into larger historiographical or philosophical works, the events were adjusted to the author’s intention, which means that they were deliberately invented or neglected, duplicated or rearranged. By taking the phenomena out of their actual time and placing them in the temporal proximity of decisive historical moments, the author constructs a new meaning of what happened and directly links natural processes to the ones within the society.
Therefore, dating historic phenomena like earthquakes yields important insights into the mentality of the ancient societies as well as their attitudes towards nature. Using interdisciplinary research methods, the actual time of onset can be reconstructed and compared to the time given in the ancient sources. Discrepancies can be detected, analysed and interpreted.

The presentation shortly introduces important methods to dating earthquakes in antiquity before focusing on the meaning of date and chronology in the description, interpretation and tradition of ancient natural disasters within ancient historiographical works.

The first millennium BC saw the rise of two great civilisations on opposite edges of the Eurasian continent: the Greco-Roman culture in the west and the Chinese culture in the east. Hardly aware of each other, the thinkers of both civilisations have always been fascinated by what lay beyond their frontiers and speculated about the features of land and people in these unknown territories.

Within these speculations, verifiable information about the civilisations on the continent’s respective other edge can be traced, although so far no direct contacts between the two cultures or their members could be reconstructed. The key to solving the mysterious existence of this knowledge lies in Central Asia. In the context of long-distance trade along the so-called Silk Roads that existed from as early as the Bronze Age, traders not only transported valuable goods from east to west and vice versa, but also knowledge about their producers. Due to a frequent lack of a written tradition among the Central Asian peoples, this knowledge generally had an oral character that enabled additions and alterations as well as adaptions of the original motifs to various languages. In this way, some facts became blurred or were lost, while other elements were preserved and found their way into the traditions of Ancient Greece and Early China.

This presentation will focus on the development of the earliest of these images on either end of the Silk Roads during the 1st millennium BC, and will consist of two parts. First, the early Greek images of China as well as the early Chinese images of Greece will be extrapolated from the written sources and compared to the historical civilisation they depict. It will thus be possible to separate sustained historical facts within these ideas from later, mostly mythological additions by Central Asian people or European and Chinese travellers. Moreover, the motifs identifiable within the added information will allow assumptions about the route along which the images were handed on. Second, the effects of the new images on the receiving cultures as well as their incorporation into the existing world views will be discussed.