Journal articles on the topic 'Coran – Chronologie'

Abstract This study challenges the widespread scholarly assumption that the Qurʾān can only be properly understood when its suras are assigned to a chronological order based on the traditional biography of the Prophet. The first section of the study addresses the origins of this assumption, beginning with Islamic tradition and its reception in the XIXth century works of Gustav Weil and Theodor Nöldeke. The second section involves a critique of more recent defenses of the idea of a Quranic chronology. The third and final section of the article illustrates the problem of this idea by way of a comparison with scholarship on the Psalms.

Reef fishes support important fisheries throughout the Caribbean, but a combination of factors in the tropics makes otolith microstructure difficult to interpret for age estimation. Therefore, validation of ageing methods, via application of Δ14C is a major research priority. Utilizing known-age otolith material from north Caribbean fishes, we determined that a distinct regional Δ14C chronology exists, differing from coral-based chronologies compiled for ageing validation from a wide-ranging area of the Atlantic and from an otolith-based chronology from the Gulf of Mexico. Our north Caribbean Δ14C chronology established a decline series with narrow prediction intervals that proved successful in ageing validation of three economically important reef fish species. In examining why our north Caribbean Δ14C chronology differed from some of the coral-based Δ14C data reported from the region, we determined differences among study objectives and research design impact Δ14C temporal relationships. This resulted in establishing the first of three important considerations relevant to applying Δ14C chronologies for ageing validation: 1) evaluation of the applicability of original goal/objectives and study design of potential Δ14C reference studies. Next, we determined differences between our Δ14C chronology and those from Florida and the Gulf of Mexico were explained by differences in regional patterns of oceanic upwelling, resulting in the second consideration for future validation work: 2) evaluation of the applicability of Δ14C reference data to the region/location where fish samples were obtained. Lastly, we emphasize the application of our north Caribbean Δ14C chronology should be limited to ageing validation studies of fishes from this region known to inhabit shallow water coral habitat as juveniles. Thus, we note the final consideration to strengthen findings of future age validation studies: 3) use of Δ14C analysis for age validation should be limited to species whose juvenile habitat is known to reflect the regional Δ14C reference chronology.

Varved sediments of the tropical Cariaco Basin provide a new 14C calibration data set for the period of deglaciation (10,000 to 14,500 years before present: 10–14.5 cal ka bp). Independent evaluations of the Cariaco Basin calendar and 14C chronologies were based on the agreement of varve ages with the GISP2 ice core layer chronology for similar high-resolution paleoclimate records, in addition to 14C age agreement with terrestrial 14C dates, even during large climatic changes. These assessments indicate that the Cariaco Basin 14C reservoir age remained stable throughout the Younger Dryas and late Allerød climatic events and that the varve and 14C chronologies provide an accurate alternative to existing calibrations based on coral U/Th dates. The Cariaco Basin calibration generally agrees with coral-derived calibrations but is more continuous and resolves century-scale details of 14C change not seen in the coral records. 14C plateaus can be identified at 9.6, 11.4, and 11.7 14C ka bp, in addition to a large, sloping “plateau” during the Younger Dryas (∼10 to 11 14C ka bp). Accounting for features such as these is crucial to determining the relative timing and rates of change during abrupt global climate changes of the last deglaciation.

Abstract. The ability to precisely date climate proxies is central to the reconstruction of past climate variations. To a degree, all climate proxies are affected by age uncertainties, which are seldom quantified. This article proposes a probabilistic age model for proxies based on layer-counted chronologies, and explores its use for annually banded coral archives. The model considers both missing and doubly counted growth increments (represented as independent processes), accommodates various assumptions about error rates, and allows one to quantify the impact of chronological uncertainties on different diagnostics of variability. In the case of a single coral record, we find that time uncertainties primarily affect high-frequency signals but also significantly bias the estimate of decadal signals. We further explore tuning to an independent, tree-ring-based chronology as a way to identify an optimal age model. A synthetic pseudocoral network is used as testing ground to quantify uncertainties in the estimation of spatiotemporal patterns of variability. Even for small error rates, the amplitude of multidecadal variability is systematically overestimated at the expense of interannual variability (El Niño–Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, in this case), artificially flattening its spectrum at periods longer than 10 years. An optimization approach to correct chronological errors in coherent multivariate records is presented and validated in idealized cases, though it is found difficult to apply in practice due to the large number of solutions. We close with a discussion of possible extensions of this model and connections to existing strategies for modeling age uncertainties.

Abstract. The ability to precisely date climate proxies is central to the reconstruction of past climate variations. To a degree, all climate proxies are affected by age uncertainties, which are seldom quantified. This article proposes a probabilistic age model for proxies based on layer-counted chronologies, and explores its use for annually-banded coral archives. The model considers both missing and doubly-counted growth increments (represented as independent processes), accommodates various assumptions about error rates, and allows to quantify the impact of chronological uncertainties on different diagnostics of variability. In one dimension, we find that time uncertainties primarily affect high-frequency signals but also significantly bias the estimate of decadal signals. We further explore tuning to an independent, tree-ring based chronology as a way to identify an optimal age model. In the multivariate case, a synthetic pseudocoral network is used as testing ground to quantify uncertainties in the estimation of spatiotemporal patterns of variability. Even for small error rates, the amplitude of multidecadal variability is systematically overestimated at the expense of interannual variability (ENSO, in this case), artificially flattening its spectrum at periods longer than 10 yr. An approach to correct chronological errors in coherent multivariate records is presented and validated in idealized cases, though it is found difficult to apply in practice due to the large size of the solution space. We end with a discussion of possible extensions of this model and connections to existing strategies for modeling age uncertainties.

SUMMARYIsolation can provide marine ecosystems with a refuge from human impacts. However, information on the biodiversity, ecology and fisheries of remote regions is often sparse. The proposed Coral Sea Marine Reserve could create one of the world's largest and most remote marine parks, yet little information is available to inform discussions. Fish captures from the Coral Sea and adjacent Great Barrier Reef (GBR) were assessed from reports contained in a chronology of spearfishing publications from 1953 to 2009, and reveal for the first time the history of recreational spearfishing in the Coral Sea. Although the area is perceived as relatively untouched, the data indicate that spearfishers have frequented Coral Sea reefs for at least 43 years and reported captures have increased exponentially. Post-1993 trophy captures in the Coral Sea (mean 23 kg) were larger than the adjacent GBR (9 kg). Reef species characterize the GBR catch, while large pelagic species characterize the Coral Sea catch. Provided that functionally important fishes are not targeted, the relatively small scale of recreational spearfishing and the focus on pelagic species suggests that spearfishing currently exerts limited pressure on the ecology of Coral Sea reefs.

Use of coral skeletons to determine growth histories of reefs situated in warm, clear tropical waters is well established. Recently, however, there has been increasing awareness of the significance of reefs occurring in environments that are considered as marginal for coral growth, such as turbid inshore settings characterized by episodes of elevated turbidity, low light penetration, and periodic sediment burial. While these conditions are generally considered as limiting for coral growth, coral reefs in these settings can exhibit high live coral cover and species diversity, and thus can be both ecologically and geologically significant. Turbid-zone reefs are also commonly concentrated along eroding shorelines with many analogues to erosional shorelines developed during the Holocene transgression. A growing number of studies of these previously undocumented reefs reveal that the reef deposits are detrital in nature, comprising a framework dominated by reef rubble and coral clasts and set within a fine-grained terrigenous sediment matrix. In addition to the recognized effects of diagenesis or algal encrustations on the radiocarbon signature of coral samples, episodic high-energy events may rework sediments and can result in age reversals in the same stratigraphic unit. As in other reef settings, the possibility of such reworking can complicate the reconstruction of turbid-zone reef growth chronologies. In order to test the accuracy of dating coral clasts for developing growth histories of these reef deposits, 5 replicate samples from 5 separate coral clasts were taken from 2 sedimentary units in a core collected from Paluma Shoals, an inshore turbid-zone reef located in Halifax Bay, central Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Results show that where care is taken to screen the clasts for skeletal preservation, primary mineralogical structures, and δ13C values indicative of marine carbonate, then reliable 14C dates can be recovered from individual turbid reef coral samples. In addition, the results show that these individual clasts were deposited coevally.

Abstract. Recently, an absolute "calibration" was proposed for the GRIP and GISP2 Greenland ice-core time scales (Shackleton et al., 2004). This calibration attempted to reconcile the stratigraphic integration of ice-core, marine and speleothem archives with the absolute age constraints that marine and speleothem records incorporate. Here we revisit this calibration in light of the new layer-counted chronology of the NGRIP ice-core (GICC05). The GICC05 age-scale differs from the proposed absolute calibration by up to 1200 years late in the last glaciation, with implications both for radiocarbon cycling and the inferred timing of North Atlantic climate events relative to radiometrically dated archives (e.g. relative sea-level). By aligning the stratigraphy of Iberian Margin marine cores with that of the Greenland ice-cores, it can be shown that either: 1) the radiocarbon content of mid-latitude Atlantic surface-waters was extremely depleted (resulting in average surface reservoir ages up to 1700 years prior to ~22 ka BP); or 2) the GICC05 age-scale includes too few years (is up to 1200 years too young). It is shown here that both of these possibilities are probably correct to some degree. Based on the assumed accuracy of coral and speleothem U-Th ages, Northeast Atlantic surface reservoir ages should be revised upward by ~350 years, while the NGRIP age-scale appears to be "missing" time. These findings illustrate the utility of integrated stratigraphy as a test for our chronologies, which are rarely truly "absolute". This is an important point, since probably the worst error that we can make is to entrench and generalise a precise stratigraphical relationship on the basis of erroneous absolute age assignations.

The technique of obsidian-hydration dating contains great potentials for error, from both laboratory determinations of rate constants and measurements of effective hydration temperatures (EHTs) in the field. The rate constants used to determine these dates are of questionable validity and need to be independently verified. Significantly, no measurements of EHTs were taken at the site of Copán, Honduras, until the majority of the obsidianhydration dates were calculated. An error of but a few Kelvins in estimated EHT can lead to dates that are in error by several centuries. In view of the likelihood of large errors in the Copán obsidian dates, the assertion that the Late Classic Coner phase should be extended beyond A. D. 900 (Webster and Freter 1990a) is premature.

AbstractAs a consequence of long-term archaeological research at Copan, 1,425 archaeological sites containing 4,507 structures have been located and mapped over an area of 135 km2. As part of the PAC II research, 200 archaeological sites representing a 15% stratified random sample of all valley sites were test excavated from 1983–1989. From these excavations, 2,150 obsidian hydration dates were processed, representing the largest number of chronometric dates from controlled contexts currently available from any southern Lowland Maya site. Based on this chronological research, there appears to be an excellent fit with various other available chronological techniques for all time phases except the ending date of the important Coner ceramic phase, which now appears to have extended to A.D. 1250. This more detailed Copan chronology suggests that the political collapse of the Main Group and immediate vicinity was quite sudden, taking place c. A.D. 800–830. Beyond that, however, the chronometric data provide evidence that some of the secondary elite, or lineage heads, and large numbers of rural commoners continued to reside within the valley in reduced courtyard groups or small rural hamlets for about 400 years following the decentralization of the Copan polity.

New sea-level and δ18O curves for the past 34,000 yr, based on uranium–thorium chronology, are proposed for the southwestern part of the Indian Ocean. The archives include cores drilled from onshore coral reefs and submersed samples from foreslope corals of Mayotte in the Comoro Islands. The Mayotte sea-level curve shows a lowstand of 145 ± 5 m below the present level during the last glacial maximum dated at 18,400 yr. This lowstand is supported by the maximum18O enrichment in the coral colonies. The residual signal (Δδ18O), controlled by sea-surface temperature changes, indicates that surface waters 18,400 yr ago were approximately 5°C cooler than present. The deglacial sea-level rise is clearly recorded, with a mean rate of about 1.7 cm yr−1between 18,400 and 10,000 yr ago. The deglaciation phase is characterized by a strong18O depletion marked by two pulses related to meltwater discharges into the North Atlantic Ocean but also characterized by responses specific to the tropical Indian Ocean.

AbstractRecent excavations in the first chamber of Gordon's Cave #3 encountered a use floor with a substantial quantity of sherds and artifacts. Middle Preclassic, Gordon subphase sherds were recovered, but overall the ceramics suggest that Preclassic use of the cave was minor with the most intensive use occurring during the Classic period. The artifact assemblage provides a fuller picture of cave rituals which appear to be similar in many respects to those practiced by modern groups in the Guatemalan highlands.

Abstract Understanding the history of the response of coral reefs to past climate changes can provide valuable information for predicting the future response of modern reefs. However, dating such ancient biotic carbonate is still challenging because of its sensitivity to diagenetic alteration processes, scarcity of well-preserved fossils, and low magnetic mineral content. There have been a long debates about the origin and evolutionary history of coral reefs in the northern South China Sea, mainly due to the lack of direct and reliable age constraints. This provides us with a good opportunity to verify the practicability of different dating approaches, especially the strontium (Sr) isotope analysis of bulk carbonate. Here, we retrieved a 972.55-m-long core from the Xisha Islands to provide a credible chronologic constraint on the carbonate platform evolution. The lithostratigraphy, strontium isotope stratigraphy, and magnetostratigraphy were analyzed throughout the whole reef sequence. The lithostratigraphic results show that the 873.55 m reef sequence developed on an ancient volcaniclastic basement and experienced multiple evolutionary phases. The 87Sr/86Sr results of all 100 bulk carbonate samples vary from 0.708506 to 0.709168 and show a monotonic increase with decreasing depth, except for a few outliers. Trace-element criteria and stable isotope (δ18O and δ13C) methods were applied to these bulk carbonate samples, and results imply that the primary or near-primary seawater 87Sr/86Sr values were likely preserved, although different degrees of diagenetic alteration occurred. In addition, the paleomagnetic results indicate 10 normal polarity and eight reversed polarity magnetozones. Based on the 87Sr/86Sr ratios of the selected 58 samples and paleomagnetic reconstruction of polarity reversals, the bottom of the reef sequence is dated to 19.6 Ma, and the observed polarity chronozones extend from chron C6 (19.722–18.748 Ma) at 866.60 m to present at the top. Based on the new data, we propose a new chronologic framework for the evolutionary history of the reef islands, where: (1) the reefs initiated in the early Miocene (19.6 Ma) and were drowned until 16.26 Ma; (2) during 16.26–10.66 Ma, lagoon to lagoon slope environments prevailed; (3) the lagoon environment progressively transformed into a reef crest environment from 10.66 to 4.36 Ma and 4.36 to 1.59 Ma; and (4) the reef started to be drowned again during 1.59–0 Ma. Our study provides a new and reliable chronologic constraint on the general evolutionary history of the reef islands in the northern South China Sea. Furthermore, the 87Sr/86Sr results from bulk carbonate indicate that strontium isotope stratigraphy is a powerful dating tool only when rigid sample selection, sequential leaching procedures, and strict trace-element and isotopic criteria are applied.

For a better understanding of pre-Holocene cultural history, archaeologists are in need of an absolute time scale that can be confirmed and duplicated by different dating methods. Proxy data available from archaeological sites do not, in themselves, allow much reflection on absolute age. Even when founded on supporting radiocarbon data, Paleolithic chronologies that are beyond the actual limits of 14C calibration still remain relative ones, and thus are often quite tentative. Lacking the possibility of calibration for the Paleolithic, archaeologists often attempt to correlate their data with different time scales from different archives that are thought to be absolute or calendric. The main result of this paper is that the GISP2 and U/Th chronologies duplicate each other over their entire range of data overlap, while other time scales (i.e., GRIP, most varve sites) differ significantly. The context-derived 14C calibration curve provides a large potential to correlate the various climate archives as recorded in ice cores and deep ocean drillings with terrestrial sequences.

AbstractU-series chronologies of the emerged coral limestone terraces on Barbados, West Indies, together with those of the terraces from New Guinea, have formed the basis for most late Pleistocene eustatic models. The so-called “Barbados sea level model” has been challenged in recent years, however. A major issue is whether during oxygen isotope stage 5e, when Rendezvous Hill reef complex on Barbados Island formed, the sea rose above the present position for one relatively brief period of <10,000 yr, or for two or more periods spanning approximately from 140,000 to 115,000 yr B.P. Evidence for the latter scenario has not come from initial studies of Barbados but from elsewhere; it is also inconclusive because of the dating uncertainties involved. We have carried out careful redeterminations of U-series ages on a suite of 29 Acropora palmata samples systematically collected from four of the lowest terraces on the island. Diagenetic disturbance may have caused the age spreads at some sampling outcrops. A model for the diagenetic exchange of uranium isotopes in coral samples with those in groundwater explains the anomalous 234U/238U ratios in samples with apparently unaltered mineralogy (aragonite) and trace element (Mg and Sr) chemistry. It shows that age dispersions of 5–10% can be engendered by a U exchange coefficient of the order of 10−6 yr−1. The lower-limit terrace ages, estimated from averaging the multiple measurements, are 81,000 ± 2000 yr (Worthing), 105,000 ± 1000 yr (Ventnor), 120,000 ± 2000 yr (Maxwell), and 117,000 ± 3000 yr (Rendezvous Hill). No evidence was found of previously inferred bipartite sea levels centering around 118,000 and 135,000 yr ago. This study documents the need of dating coral with the high precision/sensitivity mass-spectrometric techniques for future resolution of the temporal relationships among sea level changes, climate oscillations, and astronomical forcing—relationships originally addressed by the Barbados sea level model.

Abstract. In this review we compile and document the elevation, indicative meaning, and chronology of marine isotope substage 5a and 5c sea level indicators for 39 sites within three geographic regions: the North American Pacific coast, the North American Atlantic coast and the Caribbean, and the remaining globe. These relative sea level indicators, comprised of geomorphic indicators such as marine and coral reef terraces, eolianites, and sedimentary marine- and terrestrial-limiting facies, facilitate future investigation into marine isotope substage 5a and 5c interstadial paleo-sea level reconstruction, glacial isostatic adjustment, and Quaternary tectonic deformation. The open-access database, presented in the format of the World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines (WALIS) database, can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5021306 (Thompson and Creveling, 2021).

Some of the most basic questions of sea turtle life history are also the most elusive. Many uncertainties surround lifespan, growth rates, maturity and spatial structure, yet these are critical factors in assessing population status. Here we examine the keratinized hard tissues of the hawksbill ( Eretmochelys imbricata ) carapace and use bomb radiocarbon dating to estimate growth and maturity. Scutes have an established dietary record, yet the large keratin deposits of hawksbills evoke a reliable chronology. We sectioned, polished and imaged posterior marginal scutes from 36 individual hawksbills representing all life stages, several Pacific populations and spanning eight decades. We counted the apparent growth lines, microsampled along growth contours and calibrated Δ 14 C values to reference coral series. We fit von Bertalanffy growth function (VBGF) models to the results, producing a range of age estimates for each turtle. We find Hawaii hawksbills deposit eight growth lines annually (range 5–14), with model ensembles producing a somatic growth parameter ( k ) of 0.13 (range 0.1–0.2) and first breeding at 29 years (range 23–36). Recent bomb radiocarbon values also suggest declining trophic status. Together, our results may reflect long-term changes in the benthic community structure of Hawaii reefs, and possibly shed light on the critical population status for Hawaii hawksbills.

AbstractHolocene climate change in the South Pacific is of major interest to archaeologists and Quaternary researchers. Regional surface ocean radiocarbon (14C) values are an established proxy for studying changing oceanographic and climatic conditions. Unfortunately, radiocarbon variability in the marine environment over the period of specific importance to human colonization of the remote Pacific islands—the last 3500 years—has been poorly studied. In order to build robust and accurate archaeological chronologies using shell, it is important to rectify this. In this paper, radiocarbon marine reservoir offsets (ΔR) are presented from eight archaeological sites, ranging in age from 350 cal BP to 3000 cal BP, and compared to coral datasets from the east Australian coastline. The results indicate that a significant decrease in the South Pacific Gyre ΔR occurred between 2600 and 2250 cal BP, most likely caused by changes in ocean circulation and climate. Accurately recording the timing of variability in reservoir offset is critical to untangling changes in society that took place in the Pacific, in particular, the development of Ancestral Polynesian Society.

Geophysical survey at Kilwa Kisiwani, southern Tanzania, has recovered evidence for several aspects of town layout and the use of space within the town that enhance our understandings of this important Swahili site. Although excavations in the 1960s recovered substantial monuments at this stonetown and traced a chronology for the development of the site from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries AD, the overall site layout has remained poorly understood. This paper outlines the possibilities that geophysics creates for positioning the excavations within a broader urban landscape, and reports on a preliminary season of survey at Kilwa. Two areas were the focus of fieldwork during 2011. First the main town centre was surveyed, and the results suggest a denser town plan of coral-built houses that have subsequently been robbed. Second, the enigmatic enclosure of Husuni Ndogo was explored, and revealed evidence for activity relating to metalworking in this monumental space.

Lophelia pertusa, a cosmopolitan cold-water coral, offers potential for new palaeoclimate proxies. This study investigated its skeletal growth patterns to aid in this development. Corallite characteristics (calyx diameter, height, thecal width and banding) of L. pertusa sampled from oil platforms in the northern North Sea were examined. The mean distance between daughter polyps along a growth axis (27.4 ± 5 mm, SD) was equivalent to the estimated annual growth rate; hence, the polyps bud once a year. The majority of growth occurred in the first year when the characteristic trumpet shape of a corallite was formed, while the thecal wall thickened more consistently. Further examination of two polyps showed a dark growth band and centres of calcification along the full length of the inner theca, which represents early skeletal growth. Skeletal sampling adjacent to this area along sequential polyps shows promise as an annual chronology in these North Sea corals.

The first high-resolution time series of pre- and post-bomb radiocarbon measurements is reported for surface waters in the western Mediterranean Sea. The Δ14C record was obtained from the aragonite skeleton of Cladocora caespitosa using a 50-yr-old corallite collected in the Ligurian Sea in 1998. Laser-ablation ICP measurements of trace elements (Li/Mg and Sr/Ca) show a strong seasonal variability, enabling the chronology of the Δ14C record to be determined at annual timescales. The mean Δ14C of pre-bomb surface water is -56 ± 3%, corresponding to a reservoir age of 262 ± 29 yr. The post-bomb maximum occurs in 1972 with a Δ14C value of 90%, significantly lower than the peak of 150% observed in the North Atlantic. The dilution of the peak-amplitude of Δ14C in western Mediterranean surface waters is attributed to mixing of North Atlantic Central Water inflow with relatively depleted underlying Intermediate Mediterranean and Levantine Intermediate waters. Intensification of this mixing is observed in 1963–1964, consistent with the change in atmospheric circulation from a positive to negative NAO phase (1960–1967). The post-peak Δ14C variability is relatively limited, reflecting mainly local vertical mixing forced by wind stress.

Abstract. The fast growing calcareous skeletons of zooxanthellate reef corals (z corals) represent unique environmental proxy archives through their oxygen and carbon stable isotope composition (δ18O, δ13C). In addition, the accretion of the skeleton itself is ultimately linked to the environment and responds with variable growth rates (extension rate) and density to environmental changes. Here we present classical proxy data (δ18O, δ13C) in combination with calcification records from 15 massive z corals. The z corals were sampled from four interglacial units of the Florida carbonate platform (USA) dated approximately 3.2, 2.9, 1.8 and 1.2 Ma (middle Pliocene to early Pleistocene). The z corals (Solenastrea, Orbicella, Porites) derive from unlithified shallow marine carbonates and were carefully screened for primary preservation suited for proxy analysis. We show that skeletal accretion responded with decreasing overall calcification rates (decreasing extension rate but increasing density) to warmer water temperatures. Under high annual water temperatures, inferred from sub-annually resolved δ18O data, skeletal bulk density was high, but extension rates and overall calcification rates were at a minimum (endmember scenario 1). Maximum skeletal density was reached during the summer season giving rise to a growth band of high density within the annually banded skeletons (“high density band”, HDB). With low mean annual water temperatures (endmember scenario 2), bulk skeletal density was low but extension rates and calcification rates reached a maximum, and under these conditions the HDB formed during winter. Although surface water temperatures in the Western Atlantic warm pool during the interglacials of the late Neogene were ∼ 2 °C higher than they are in the present day, intermittent upwelling of cool, nutrient-rich water mitigated water temperatures off south-western Florida and created temporary refuges for z coral growth. Based on the sub-annually resolved δ18O and δ13C records, the duration of the upwelling episodes causing the endmember 2 conditions was variable and lasted from a few years to a number of decades. The episodes of upwelling were interrupted by phases without upwelling (endmember 1) which lasted for at least a few years and led to high surface water temperatures. This variable environment is likely one of the reasons why the coral fauna is dominated by the eurytopic genus Solenastrea, also a genus resistant to high turbidity. Over a period of ∼ 50 years, the oldest sub annually resolved proxy record available (3.2 Ma) documents a persistent occurrence of the HDB during winter. In contrast, the HDB forms in summer in modern z corals from the Florida reef tract. We suggest this difference should be tested as being the expression of a tendency towards decreasing interglacial upwelling since the middle Pliocene. The number of z coral sclerochronological records for the Plio-Pleistocene is still rather low, however, and requires more data and an improved resolution, through records from additional time slices. Nonetheless, our calcification data from the warm periods of past interglacials may contribute to predicting the effects of future ocean warming on z coral health along the Florida reef tract. The inconsistent timing of the HDB within single coral records or among specimens and time slices is unexpected and contrasts the common practice of establishing chronologies on the basis of the density banding.

Abstract. Multiple proxy records (tree-ring, coral, ice and documentary) were examined to isolate ENSO signals associated with both phases of the phenomenon for the period A.D. 1525-2002. To avoid making large-scale inferences from single proxy analysis, regional signals were aggregated into a network of high-resolution records, revealing large-scale trends in the frequency, magnitude and duration of pre-instrumental ENSO using novel applications of percentile analysis. Here we use the newly introduced coupled ocean-atmosphere ENSO index (CEI) as a baseline for the calibration of proxy records. The reconstruction revealed 83 extreme or very strong ENSO episodes since A.D. 1525, expanding considerably on existing ENSO event chronologies. Significantly, excerpts of the most comprehensive list of La Niña events complied to date are presented, indicating peak activity during the 16th to mid 17th and 20th centuries. Although extreme events are seen throughout the 478-year reconstruction, 43% of the extreme ENSO events noted since A.D. 1525 occur during the 20th century, with an obvious bias towards enhanced El Niño conditions in recent decades. Of the total number of extreme event years reconstructed, 30% of all reconstructed ENSO event years occur post-1940 alone suggesting that recent ENSO variability appears anomalous in the context of the past five centuries.

Abstract. Here we show the use of the 210Pb-226Ra excess method to determine the growth rate of two corals from the world's largest known cold-water coral reef, Røst Reef, north of the Arctic circle off Norway. Colonies of each of the two species that build the reef, Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata, were collected alive at 350 m depth using a submersible. Pb and Ra isotopes were measured along the major growth axis of both specimens using low level alpha and gamma spectrometry and trace element compositions were studied. 210Pb and 226Ra differ in the way they are incorporated into coral skeletons. Hence, to assess growth rates, we considered the exponential decrease of initially incorporated 210Pb, as well as the increase in 210Pb from the decay of 226Ra and contamination with 210Pb associated with Mn-Fe coatings that we were unable to remove completely from the oldest parts of the skeletons. 226Ra activity was similar in both coral species, so, assuming constant uptake of 210Pb through time, we used the 210Pb-226Ra chronology to calculate growth rates. The 45.5 cm long branch of M. oculata was 31 yr with an average linear growth rate of 14.4 ± 1.1 mm yr−1 (2.6 polyps per year). Despite cleaning, a correction for Mn-Fe oxide contamination was required for the oldest part of the colony; this correction corroborated our radiocarbon date of 40 yr and a mean growth rate of 2 polyps yr−1. This rate is similar to the one obtained in aquarium experiments under optimal growth conditions. For the 80 cm-long L. pertusa colony, metal-oxide contamination remained in both the middle and basal part of the coral skeleton despite cleaning, inhibiting similar age and growth rate estimates. The youngest part of the colony was free of metal oxides and this 15 cm section had an estimated a growth rate of 8 mm yr−1, with high uncertainty (~1 polyp every two to three years). We are less certain of this 210Pb growth rate estimate which is within the lowermost ranges of previous growth rate estimates. We show that 210Pb-226Ra dating can be successfully applied to determine the age and growth rate of framework-forming cold-water corals if Mn-Fe oxide deposits can be removed. Where metal oxides can be removed, large M. oculata and L. pertusa skeletons provide archives for studies of intermediate water masses with an up to annual time resolution and spanning over many decades.

Abstract. Here we show the use of the 210Pb-226Ra excess method to determine the growth rate of corals from one of the world's largest known cold-water coral reef, the Røst Reef off Norway. Two large branching framework-forming cold-water coral specimens, one Lophelia pertusa and one Madrepora oculata were collected alive at 350 m water depth from the Røst Reef at ~67° N and ~9° E. Pb and Ra isotopes were measured along the major growth axis of both specimens using low level alpha and gamma spectrometry and the corals trace element compositions were studied using ICP-QMS. Due to the different chemical behaviors of Pb and Ra in the marine environment, 210Pb and 226Ra were not incorporated the same way into the aragonite skeleton of those two cold-water corals. Thus to assess of the growth rates of both specimens we have here taken in consideration the exponential decrease of initially incorporated 210Pb as well as the ingrowth of 210Pb from the decay of 226Ra. Moreover a~post-depositional 210Pb incorporation is found in relation to the Mn-Fe coatings that could not be entirely removed from the oldest parts of the skeletons. The 226Ra activities in both corals were fairly constant, then assuming constant uptake of 210Pb through time the 210Pb-226Ra chronology can be applied to calculate linear growth rate. The 45.5 cm long branch of M. oculata reveals an age of 31 yr and a~linear growth rate of 14.4 ± 1.1 mm yr−1, i.e. 2.6 polyps per year. However, a correction regarding a remaining post-depositional Mn-Fe oxide coating is needed for the base of the specimen. The corrected age tend to confirm the radiocarbon derived basal age of 40 yr (using 14C bomb peak) with a mean growth rate of 2 polyps yr−1. This rate is similar to the one obtained in Aquaria experiments under optimal growth conditions. For the 80 cm-long specimen of L. pertusa a remaining contamination of metal-oxides is observed for the middle and basal part of the coral skeleton, inhibiting similar accurate age and growth rate estimates. However, the youngest branch was free of Mn enrichment and this 15 cm section reveals a growth rate of 8 mm yr−1 (~1 polyp every two to three years). However, the 210Pb growth rate estimate is within the lowermost ranges of previous growth rate estimates and may thus reflect that the coral was not developing at optimal growth conditions. Overall, 210Pb-226Ra dating can be successfully applied to determine the age and growth rate of framework-forming cold-water corals, however, removal of post-depositional Mn-Fe oxide deposits is a prerequisite. If successful, large branching M. oculata and L. pertusa coral skeletons provide unique oceanographic archive for studies of intermediate water environmentals with an up to annual time resolution and spanning over many decades.

Patterns of stable isotopes recorded in metabolically stable, serially synthesized, structures such as eye lenses can yield robust descriptions of resource use across the life histories of individual fish. We performed stable isotope analysis of eye lenses sampled from invasive lionfishes Pterois spp. and a potentially competitive native mesopredator, the graysby Cephalopholis cruentata, to compare lifelong patterns of trophic resource use on a coral reef ledge in Biscayne National Park, Florida, USA. In both lionfishes and graysby, stable isotope values increased logarithmically with eye-lens radius, likely reflecting increases in trophic position with growth. Tissue samples toward the interior of the lens were the most isotopically similar between lionfish and graysby, suggesting interspecific resource use overlap may be strongest in smaller fish. We observed substantial variation in isotopic chronologies around the underlying logarithmic trend within individual fish, potentially driven by patterns of movement across measured environmental isotopic gradients, intraspecific variation in resource use specificity, or other ecological variables of interest. These results are the first to describe patterns of size-structured resource use across the life of individual lionfish, an important objective for researchers studying the interactions of this highly invasive species with the surrounding ecological communities. Additionally, through this example, we illustrate analytical approaches and considerations for the application of eye-lens stable isotope analysis to the study of vertebrate ecology.

The Qur'an, being central to both the Islamic faith and its practice, hasbeen studied in a plethora of orientalist writings-ranging from such a crudelypolemical one as Alexander Ross's English translation of the Qur'an entitledThe Alcoran of Mahomet . . . for the Satisfaction for all those who Desireto look into the Turkish Vanities (1649) to those with scholarly pretensionsand claiming to be "objective" studies, such as Noldeke's Geschichte des Qorans(1860), Goldziher's Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslesung (1920),Bell's The Quran translated with a Critical Rearrangement of the Surahs(1937-39), Wansbrough's Quranic Studies (1977), and Burton's The Collectionof the Quran (1977).The book under review, first published in 1983, recounts the full tockof the orientalists' misconceptions, down the ages, about the Qur'an-theiroutlandish theories about its authorship (pp. 7-18), their assaults on its textualhistory and its arrangement (pp. 52-63), their brazen attempts at twistingits meaning in their Qur'an translations (pp. 64-92), and their bizzare viewson abrogation in the Qur'an (pp. 93-104). Khalifa deserves every credit forassembling so much information. What is more remarkable is that it is followedby a stout refutation of these allegations about the form and contents of theQur'an and an extensive, authentic exposition of the Qur'anic teachings,concepts, and morals, all of which constitutes the second part of the book(pp. 111-205). In elucidating the Qur'anic worldview, Khalifa's discussion issubtle, in large part persuasive, tenaciously pursued, and well presented.Appended to the book are two highly informative appendices on the orderof the Qur'an's surahs.This well-intentioned and detailed scholarly study, however, does notreally succeed in delivering what its title promises. In discussing the orientalists'ventures into establishing the chronology of Qur'anic surahs, Khalifa sayslittle about Gustav Fli:lgel's Corani Textus Arabiscus (1834) and the theoriespropounded by Grimme and Hirschfield's New Researches in the Compositionand Exegesis of the Quran (1902). More serious is the lack of any referenceto a host of orientalists' writings on the philological and lexical aspects ofthe Qur'an, namely Baljon's Modern Muslim Quran Interpretation (1961),Torrey's The Commercial-Theological Terms in the Quran (1892), Watt's ...

Neighbourhood of the City and the Provinces in Dalmatia in the Light of Chosen Examples of Early Modern French Travel LiteratureIn early modern period Dalmatia was a region which was culturally diversified. Such cities as Zadar or Split were the centres of Italian culture, while province was a part of the Slavic world. Their location on the route to Turkey made of them a frequent stop for such French travellers as Jacob Spon (1675) or Louis-François Cassas (1782), which testimonies became a basis for printed publications. In their testimonies readers could find the information about Dalmatian cities and province and differences between then. The latter issue is important, yet often neglected addition to the discussion on the shaping of the image of the Balkans.In this study we concentrate on this French approach to this problem, because it can be considered as representative for the other Western European perspectives. The French look at the issue of neighbourhood of the city and the province was characterized by a distance, which is rarely found in Venetian sources. This wide chronologic scope will allow to show changes which occurred in the French image of Dalmatia during the age of Enlightenment.The paper tries to analyse the travel literature in the perspective of the issue of image of neighbourhood of the city and province in Dalmatia and proves that this image had two perspectives. The first related to the neighbourhood of the sophisticated Italian culture (synonymous with the city) and the province, equated mostly with little known in the West Slavic world. The second perspective, which appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century dealt with these relationships in the wider context of the neighbourhood civilization and backwardness. Sąsiedztwo miasta i prowincji w Dalmacji w świetle wybranych przykładów francuskiej literatury podróżniczej z czasów nowożytnychDalmacja stanowiła w epoce nowożytnej niezwykle zróżnicowany kulturowo obszar, w którym miasta takie, jak Zadar czy Split, stanowiły przede wszystkim ośrodki kultury włoskiej, podczas gdy prowincja przynależała do świata słowiańskiego. Położenie na szlaku do Turcji sprawiało, że do miast trafiali podróżnicy tacy, jak Jacob Spon (1675), czy Louis-François Cassas (1782), którzy opisywali ich zabytki (w tym te z czasów Cesarstwa Rzymskiego), a także obyczaje ich mieszkańców. Bardzo często zwracali uwagę na kulturowy i etniczny kontrast miasta z prowincją, większy niż w przypadku zachodnioeuropejskich centrów i ich okolic – bo dotyczący również kwestii etnicznych. Francuskie spojrzenie na kwestię sąsiedztwa miasta i prowincji na obszarze Dalmacji jest o tyle istotne, że charakteryzuje się dystansem, który rzadziej spotykamy w źródłach weneckich. W owych opisach już na wstępnym etapie badań można wydzielić dwie perspektywy – pierwsza dotyczy spotkania wyrafinowanej kultury włoskiej (utożsamianej z miastem) i prowincji, utożsamianej najczęściej z mało znanym na Zachodzie światem słowiańskim. Druga perspektywa, która pojawiła się w drugiej połowie XVIII wieku, rozpatrywała te relacje w szerszym kontekście sąsiedztwa cywilizacji i zacofania, które łączyło wspominaną refleksję dotyczącą stosunków włosko-słowiańskich z historyczną refleksją nad sąsiedztwem rzymskiej cywilizacji (której wiele świadectw zachowało się miastach dalmatyńskich) z barbarzyństwem – które doprowadziło do jej kresu. Szersza perspektywa chronologiczna umożliwi uchwycenie zmiany, jaka zaszła w we francuskim spojrzeniu na Dalmację, a której katalizatorem były nie tylko coraz większe zainteresowanie tym regionem (mające swoje apogeum w krótkim okresie napoleońskich rządów w Dalmacji w okresie istnienia Prowincji Iliryjskich), lecz również oświeceniowa refleksja dotycząca cywilizacji i prymitywizmu.

(francuski) La question de l'origine du tsar bulgare Constantin Asen (1257-1277), plus souvent appel? dans l'historiographie moderne Constantin Tich (Tih), a ?t? depuis longtemps pos?e. Les sources susceptibles d'y r?pondre sont peu nombreuses et parfaitement r?pertori?es. A commencer par Constantin Asen lui-m?me qui, dans sa charte d?livr?e au monast?re Saint-Georges pr?s de Skopje, range 'saint Simeon Nemanja, a?eul de mon empire' au nombre des anciens kt?tors de cet ?tablissement. Pour ce qui est des auteurs byzantins, chez Georges Akropolyt?s, son contemporain, ce tsar est ? plusieurs reprises appel? Constantin fils de Tich ou simplement Constantin; un peu plus tard Georges Pachym?re le d?signe une premi?re fois comme Constantin Tich, puis, par la suite, r?guli?rement comme Constantin avec l'int?ressante pr?cision que celui-ci ?tait par sa naissance pour moitie (ex ?miseias) serbe; plus tard encore, Nic?phore Gr?goras, parle d'un puissant seigneur portant le pr?nom de Constantin et le 'nom' (ep?nymon) de Tich. En 1258/59, dans son inscription de kt?tor appos?e dans une ?glise ? Bojana, un certain s?bastocrator Kalojan fait ?tat, en sa qualit? de 'fils du fr?re du tsar' et de 'petit-fils du saint roi Stefan', de liens de parente avec le tsar r?gnant en Bulgarie, Constantin Asen, et le d?funt roi de Serbie, Stefan le Premier Couronne (Prvovencani). Enfin, dans l'historiographie byzantine, il ressort clairement du r?cit relatif a la crise de succession en Bulgarie en 1257 que Constantin n'?tait pas membre de la dynastie des Asen. Jusqu'a pr?sent, le lien de parente de Constantin Tich (Tih) avec le grand joupan de Serbie Stefan Nemanja (1166-1196), plus tard devenu moine et saint sous le nom de Simeon, a ?t? le plus souvent recherch?e ? travers une lign?e f?minine, soit une hypoth?tique fille de Nemanja inconnue des sources, qui aurait ?t? la m?re ce tsar. Cette solution pourrait cependant ne pas ?tre la seule piste envisageable. Pour cela il faut revenir ? la charte de Saint-Georges et au terme d''a?eul (de mon empire)' qui marquant la parente, peut s'appliquer dans des cas d'ascendance directe mais aussi indirecte. Constantin aurait donc pu tout aussi bien afficher a travers celui-ci une parente quelque peu plus ?loigne avec Nemanja, passant par un des fr?res, voire une tr?s hypoth?tique s?ur, de ce dernier. Ainsi, celui que nous appellerions aujourd'hui un 'grand-oncle', a pu ?tre d?sign? dans cette charte comme un 'a?eul (de mon empire)'. Qu'un tel lien de parente, m?me indirect, surtout avec saint Simeon (notamment au vu de l'essor de son culte), c'est-?-dire non seulement l'existence d'une ascendance et d'un droit de succession directs, ait pu ?tre un raison suffisante pour en appeler ? celle-ci est attest?e par l'exemple chronologiquement proche de l'inscription fun?raire du joupan Stefan Prvoslav, appos?e vers 1220, dans laquelle ce dernier est, entre autre, qualifie de 'neveu de saint Simeon Nemanja'. En ce sens, la pr?cision relev?e chez Pachym?re pourrait, elle aussi, sugg?rer, par sa formulation, que Constantin ?tait d'origine serbe par son p?re et non par sa m?re. Cet auteur s'en tenait assur?ment au principe selon lequel l'origine par le p?re ?tait sous-en-tendue, alors que l'origine par la m?re devait ?tre signal?e si n?cessaire. Les meilleurs exemples en sont les passages o? il rapporte, s'agissant du fils du roi de Hongrie Stefan IV, qu'il ?tait d''origine rom?e (r?mogen?s), par sa m?re' la fille de l'empereur Th?odore Ier, et, s'agissant du tsar de Bulgarie Th?odore Svetoslav, qu'il ?tait 'Bulgare par sa m?re, car son p?re Terter ?tait Coman'. Hormis ces remarques de nature g?n?rale, une m?me conclusion concernant l'origine du tsar de Bulgarie Constantin s'impose ?galement ? la lecture du r?cit de Pachym?re. Sa relation des troubles survenus en 1257 lors de la succession au tr?ne de Bulgarie montre qu'en l'absence de descendant male de la lign?e des Asen, les liens de parente et l'origine nationale des pr?tendants ont jou? un r?le cl? dans la r?solution de la question de la l?galit? du pouvoir et, plus g?n?rale, de la crise de succession. On y apprend que le premier candidat Myts?s (Mico), ?tait ? la fois gendre d'Ivan II Asen (1218-1241), ainsi que beau-fr?re de Th?odore II Lascaris (1254-1258) et Bulgare (Boylgaros ?n), et pouvait pr?tendre - ? ce double titre - ? exercer le pouvoir sur les Bulgares, mais que les puissants se sont ranges aux cotes de Constantin, qui ?tait pour moitie serbe (ek Serb?n ex ?miseias to genos echonta). De fait, ne pouvant se pr?valoir de quelque lien de parente avec les Asen et d'un droit quel qu'il soit ? la succession au tr?ne, Constantin a par la suite pris pour ?pouse Ir?ne, fille de Th?odore II Lascaris et ni?ce de Ivan II Asen, ce qui lui a conf?re le m?me droit au tr?ne des Asen qu'a son concurrent Myts?s (ep' is?n eiche to pros t?n toy Asan basileian dikaion t? Mytz?). Et c'est pr?cis?ment le fait que tout en ayant un p?re serbe, et une m?re, par cons?quent bulgare, c'est lui qui a ?t? d?sign? tsar gr?ce ? son prestige de puissant seigneur de Bulgarie, qui a amen? la remarque de Pachym?re. On peut difficilement imaginer que la situation inverse, ? savoir si Constantin avait eu un p?re bulgare et une m?re serbe, aurait pu avoir quelque incidence de nature politique sur le r?sultat de la crise de succession au tr?ne, au point de trouver ensuite un ?cho dans l'historiographie. Dans l'historiographie moderne il a depuis longtemps ?tait avanc? que Tich (Tih) devait ?tre une abr?viation de Tihomir, Tihoslav, Tihota ou Tihotica. Ceci nous am?ne ici ? supposer que le p?re de Constantin s'appelait en fait Tihomir. Il nous appara?t, en effet, en raison d'une similitude, voire identit?, de pr?nom que le fr?re a?n? de Nemanja, dont on pense que le pr?nom ?tait Tihomir et qui a ?t?, en son temps, grand joupan (1163/65-1166), pourrait ?tre un ?l?ment tout particuli?rement int?ressant s'agissant de la question de l'origine du tsar Constantin. Son activit? entre 1166 et 1168, apr?s que son fr?re Stefan Nemanja l'a destitu? du pouvoir, pourrait m?me ?tre rattach?e ? la Skopje byzantine. Par ailleurs, un document de l'archev?que de Ochrid Dimitrius Chomatianos, en date de 1220, fait mention d'un certain archonte de Skopje du nom de Jovan Tihomirov ou Jovan Tihomir (?toy ?I?annoy toy Teichomoiroy) - Tihomir est ici tr?s vraisemblablement un patronyme, puisqu'il est peut probable qu'il s'agisse de deux nom propres - qui, vers la fin du XIIe si?cle, r?gnait quasiment en ma?tre sur la ville. Il est donc permis de supposer l'existence d'un lien de parente entre ce Jovan et, d'une part l'ancien grand joupan Tihomir (fils) et, d'autre part, le tsar de Bulgarie Constantin (oncle ou p?re). Cette construction ne repose toutefois, pour l'essentiel, que sur une similitude de pr?noms. Partant de cette suppos?e parente entre le tsar Constantin et l'archonte de Skopje Jovan Tihomir certains chercheurs ont d?j? avance l'hypoth?se que Constantin est mont? sur le tr?ne bulgare en 1257 en tant que puissant seigneur de Skopje ou gouverneur de la r?gion de Skopje. On note cependant que d'autres chercheurs consid?rent que cette m?me ann?e 1257 a vu une br?ve domination du roi de Serbie Uros sur Skopje. Cette information, qui n'est en fait connue que d'apr?s une seule source tardive, ? savoir la charte du fils d'Uros, Milutin d?livr?e au monast?re de Chilandar en 1299/1300, a ainsi ?t? rapproch?e des ?v?nements mentionn?s dans l'Histoire de Georges Acropolit?s pour l'ann?e 1257, lorsque le roi de Serbie, en tant qu'allie du despote Michel II Ange, a pris Kicevo et d?vast? les environs de Prilep. Or, dans une charte de Milutin d?livr?e au monast?re skopiote - d?j? nomme - de Saint-Georges (Gorg) datant de cette m?me ann?e 1299/1300, le tsar bulgare Constantin figure avant le roi Uros au nombre des anciens kt?tors et donateurs du monast?re. Et il s'entend que les kt?tors sont ici tr?s certainement mentionnes selon l'ordre chronologique de la domination exerc?e sur Skopje. La charte de Constantin d?livr?e au m?me monast?re, dont la date n'est pas conserv?e, ne fait, elle non plus, nullement ?tat d'une charte ant?rieure de Uros. Et Il convient ici de prendre avec r?serve le suppose itin?raire - passant par Skopje et Polog pour atteindre Kicevo et Prilep - de l'exp?dition du roi de Serbie Uros en 1257, car des t?moignages attestent parfaitement l'existence d'un itin?raire alternatif, mais tout aussi important et utilise, allant de Prizren ? Tetovo en logeant les contreforts du massif de la Sara, de sorte qu'il ?tait possible d'atteindre Kicevo depuis les territoires du roi de Serbie sans passer par Skopje. Compte tenu de tout cela, il para?t permis d'accepter la supposition voulant que l'origine du tsar Constantin soit li?e ? Skopje et ? la r?gion de Skopje. Dans les travaux s'?tant int?ress?s ? l'origine du tsar Constantin Tich, la r?ponse ? cette question a ?galement ?t? rattach?e, sur la base de l'inscription de l'?glise de Bojana, ? celle concernant l'origine du s?bastocrator Kalojan. Il ne fait aucun doute que lui non plus n'?tait pas un Asen, car, si cela avait ?t? le cas, il aurait eu le droit de pr?tendre au tr?ne laiss? vacant ? la suite des meurtres de Michel Asen et de Kaliman, or les auteurs byzantins nous apprennent pr?cis?ment que le pouvoir n'avait pas d''h?ritier l?gal' en Bulgarie. Le t?moignage apport? par l'inscription de Bojana, selon laquelle Kalojan est un 'fils du fr?re du tsar' (? savoir le tsar Constantin) et 'petit-fils du saint roi de Serbie Stefan' (? savoir Stefan le Premier Couronn?), semblerait ?tre contradictoire. Cela n'est toutefois le cas que si nous perdons de vue le fait que la notion de parent? induite par 'fils du fr?re' (bratoucad), pouvait ?galement se rapporter ? des personnes appartenant ? diff?rentes g?n?rations. Nonobstant notre connaissance encore insuffisante des d?tails prosopographiques concernant le tsar Constantin Tich et le s?bastocrator Kalojan, ces deux Nemanjic, porteurs de titres particuli?rement ?lev?s, sont deus personnages int?ressants qui attestent parfaitement de la mobilit? horizontale et verticale au sein du monde byzantin, autrement du 'commenwealth byzantin', compris au sens le plus large.

Artykuł składa się z wypowiedzi polskich bibliologów na temat edycji źródeł do historii książki oraz jej społecznego oddziaływania. Bez dostępu do materiałów źródłowych trudno jest prowadzić i rozwijać badania bibliologiczne, które zostaną – w przyszłości – zwieńczone syntezą dziejów książki polskiej. Baza źródłowa coraz bardziej jest rozpraszana i maleje, wskutek naturalnych zniszczeń, kradzieży, różnych przeobrażeń organizacyjnych (przenoszenie i rozbicie zespołów). Swoje uwagi w sprawie konieczności podjęcia zakrojonych na szeroką skalę kwerend archiwalnych, bibliotecznych i muzealnych oraz edycji źródeł do dziejów książki i bibliotek przedstawili: Barbara Bieńkowska, Halina Chamerska, Radosław Cybulski, Henryk Holender, Zbigniew Mikołejko, Edward Potkowski, Jan Rogala, Elżbieta Słodkowska, Kazimierz Warda, Józef Wojakowski. Uwagi te dotyczyły kwestii formalnych (np. źródeł finasowania prac, powoływania zespołów, formy prezentacji wyników) oraz merytorycznych (np. metodologii opracowywania dokumentów, ich typologii oraz chronologii przygotowywania publikacji materiałów źródłowych.

As climate-driven heat waves become more frequent and intense, there is increasing urgency to understand how thermally sensitive species are responding. Acute heating events lasting days to months may elicit acclimation responses to improve performance and survival. However, the coordination of acclimation responses remains largely unknown for most stenothermal species. We documented the chronology of 18 metabolic and cardiorespiratory changes that occur in the gills, blood, spleen, and muscles when tropical coral reef fishes are thermally stressed (+3.0°C above ambient). Using representative coral reef fishes (Caesio cuning and Cheilodipterus quinquelineatus) separated by >100 million years of evolution and with stark differences in major life-history characteristics (i.e. lifespan, habitat use, mobility, etc.), we show that exposure duration illicited coordinated responses in 13 tissue and organ systems over 5 weeks. The onset and duration of biomarker responses differed between species, with C. cuning – an active, mobile species – initiating acclimation responses to unavoidable thermal stress within the first week of heat exposure; conversely, C. quinquelineatus – a sessile, territorial species – exhibited comparatively reduced acclimation responses that were delayed through time. Seven biomarkers, including red muscle citrate synthase and lactate dehydrogenase activities, blood glucose and hemoglobin concentrations, spleen somatic index, and gill lamellar perimeter and width, proved critical in evaluating acclimation progression and completion, as these provided consistent evaluation of thermal responses across species.

If Continental social theory emerges from a climate of intensely cold winters and short mild summers, how does Australia (or any nation defined by its large masses of aridity) function as an environment in which to produce critical theory and new knowledge? Climate and weather are intrinsic to ambience, but what impact might they have on the conditions of producing academic work? How is ambience relevant to thinking and writing and research? Is there an ambient epistemology? This paper argues that the ambient is an unacknowledged factor in the production of critical thinking, and draws on examples of academics locating their writing conditions as part of their thinking. This means paying attention to the embodied work of thinking, and so I locate myself in order to explore what it might mean to acknowledge the conditions of intellectual work. Consequently I dwell on the impact of heat and light as qualities specific to where I work, but (following Bolt) I also argue that they are terms that are historically associated with new knowledge. Language, then, is already a factor in shaping the way we can think through such conditions, and the narratives available to write about them. Working these conditions into critical narratives may involve mobilising fictional tropes, and may not always be ambient, but they are potent in the academic imaginary and impact the ways in which we can think through location. Present Tense As I sit in Perth right now in a balmy 27 degrees Celsius with the local afternoon sea-breeze (fondly known as the Fremantle Doctor) clearing the stuffiness and humidity of the day, environmental conditions are near perfect for the end of summer. I barely notice them. Not long ago though, it was over 40 degrees for three days in a row. These were the three days I had set aside to complete an academic paper, the last days available before the university opened and normal work would resume. I’d arranged to have the place to myself, but I hadn’t arranged for cooling technologies. As I immersed myself in photocopies and textbooks the intellectual challenges and excitement were my preoccupation. It was hot, but I was almost unreceptive to recognising the discomforts of the weather until sweat began to drip onto pages and keyboards. A break in the afternoon for a swim at the local beach was an opportunity to clarify and see the bigger picture, and as the temperature began to slide into the evening cool it was easier to stay up late working and then sleep in late. I began to work around the weather. What impact does this have on thinking and writing? I remember it as a haze. The paper though, still seems clear and reasoned. My regimen might be read as working despite the weather, but I wonder if the intensity of the heat extends thinking in different directions—to go places where I wouldn’t have imagined in an ambiently cooled office (if I had one). The conditions of the production of knowledge are often assumed to be static, stable and uninteresting. Even if your work is located in exciting Other places, the ‘writing up’ is expected to happen ‘back home’, after the extra-ordinary places of fieldwork. It can be written in the present tense, for a more immediate reading experience, but the writing cannot always happen at the same time as the events being described, so readers accept the use of present tense as a figment of grammar that cannot accommodate the act of writing. When a writer becomes aware of their surroundings and articulates those conditions into their narrative, the reader is lifted out of the narrative into a metaframe; out of the body of writing and into the extra-diegetic. In her essay “Me and My Shadow” (1987), Jane Tompkins writes as if ‘we’ the reader are in the present with her as she makes connections between books, experiences, memories, feelings, and she also provides us with a writing scene in which to imagine her in the continuous present: It is a beautiful day here in North Carolina. The first day that is both cool and sunny all summer. After a terrible summer, first drought, then heat-wave, then torrential rain, trees down, flooding. Now, finally, beautiful weather. A tree outside my window just brushed by red, with one fully red leaf. (This is what I want you to see. A person sitting in stockinged feet looking out of her window – a floor to ceiling rectangle filled with green, with one red leaf. The season poised, sunny and chill, ready to rush down the incline into autumn. But perfect, and still. Not going yet.) (128)This is a strategy, part of the aesthetics and politics of Tompkins’s paper which argues for the way the personal functions in intellectual thinking and writing even when we don’t recognise or acknowledge it. A little earlier she characterises herself as vulnerable because of the personal/professional nexus: I don’t know how to enter the debate [over epistemology] without leaving everything else behind – the birds outside my window, my grief over Janice, just myself as a person sitting here in stockinged feet, a little bit chilly because the windows are open, and thinking about going to the bathroom. But not going yet. (126)The deferral of autumn and going to the bathroom is linked through the final phrase, “not going yet”. This is a kind of refrain that draws attention to the aesthetic architecture of locating the self, and yet the reference to an impending toilet trip raised many eyebrows. Nancy Millar comments that “these passages invoke that moment in writing when everything comes together in a fraction of poise; that fragile moment the writing in turn attempts to capture; and that going to the bathroom precisely, will end” (6). It spoils the moment. The aesthetic green scene with one red leaf is ruptured by the impending toilet scene. Or perhaps it is the intimacy of bodily function that disrupts the ambient. And yet the moment is fictional anyway. There must surely always be some fiction involved when writing about the scene of writing, as writing usually takes more than one take. Gina Mercer takes advantage of this fictional function in a review of a collection of women’s poetry. Noting the striking discursive differences between the editor’s introduction and the poetry collected in the volume, she suggestively accounts for this by imagining the conditions under which the editor might have been working: I suddenly begin to imagine that she wrote the introduction sitting at her desk in twin-set and pearls, her feet constricted by court shoes – but that the selection took place at home with her lying on a large beautifully-linened bed bestrewn by a cat and the poems… (4)These imaginary conditions, Mercer implies, impact on the ways we do our intellectual work, or perhaps different kinds of work require different conditions. Mercer not only imagines the editor at work, but also suggests her own preferred workspace when she mentions that “the other issue I’ve been pondering as I lay on my bed in a sarong (yes it’s hot here already) reading this anthology, has been the question of who reads love poetry these days?” (4). Placing herself as reader (of an anthology of love poetry) on the bed in a sarong in a hot climate partially accounts for the production of the thinking around this review, but probably doesn’t include the writing process. Mercer’s review is written in epistolary form, signaling an engagement with ‘the personal’, and yet that awareness of form and setting performs a doubling function in which scenes are set and imagination is engaged and yet their veracity doesn’t seem important, and may even be part of the fiction of form. It’s the idea of working leisurely that gains traction in this review. Despite the capacity for fiction, I want to believe that Jane Tompkins was writing in her study in North Carolina next to a full-length window looking out onto a tree. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and imagine her writing in this place and time. Scenes of Writing Physical conditions are often part of mythologising a writer. Sylvia Plath wrote the extraordinary collection of poems that became Ariel during the 1962/63 London winter, reputed to have been the coldest for over a hundred years (Gifford 15). The cold weather is given a significant narrative role in the intensity of her writing and her emotional desperation during that period. Sigmund Freud’s writing desk was populated with figurines from his collection of antiquities looking down on his writing, a scene carefully replicated in the Freud Museum in London and reproduced in postcards as a potent staging of association between mythology, writing and psychoanalysis (see Burke 2006). Writer’s retreats at the former residences of writers (like Varuna at the former home of Eleanor Dark in the Blue Mountains, and the Katherine Susannah Pritchard Centre in the hills outside of Perth) memorialise the material conditions in which writers wrote. So too do pilgrimages to the homes of famous writers and the tourism they produce in which we may gaze in wonder at the ordinary places of such extraordinary writing. The ambience of location is one facet of the conditions of writing. When I was a doctoral student reading Continental feminist philosophy, I used anything at hand to transport myself into their world. I wrote my dissertation mostly in Townsville in tropical Queensland (and partly in Cairns, even more tropical), where winter is blue skies and mid-twenties in temperature but summers are subject to frequent build-ups in pressure systems, high humidity, no breeze and some cyclones. There was no doubt that studying habits were affected by the weather for a student, if not for all the academics who live there. Workplaces were icily air-conditioned (is this ambient?) but outside was redolent with steamy tropical evenings, hot humid days, torrential downpours. When the weather breaks there is release in blood pressure accompanying barometer pressure. I was reading contemporary Australian literature alongside French feminist theories of subjectivity and their relation through écriture féminine. The European philosophical and psychoanalytic tradition and its exquisitely radical anti-logical writing of Irigaray, Cixous and Kristeva seemed alien to my tropical environs but perversely seductive. In order to get ‘inside’ the theoretical arguments, my strategy was to interpolate myself into their imagined world of writing, to emulate their imagined conditions. Whenever my friend went on a trip, I caretook her 1940s unit that sat on a bluff and looked out over the Coral Sea, all whitewashed and thick stone, and transformed it into a French salon for my intellectual productivity. I played Edith Piaf and Grace Jones, went to the grocer at the bottom of the hill every day for fresh food and the French patisserie for baguettes and croissants. I’d have coffee brewing frequently, and ate copious amounts of camembert and chocolate. The Townsville flat was a Parisian salon with French philosophers conversing in my head and between the piles of book lying on the table. These binges of writing were extraordinarily productive. It may have been because of the imagined Francophile habitus (as Bourdieu understands it); or it may have been because I prepared for the anticipated period of time writing in a privileged space. There was something about adopting the fictional romance of Parisian culture though that appealed to the juxtaposition of doing French theory in Townsville. It intensified the difference but interpolated me into an intellectual imaginary. Derrida’s essay, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”, promises to shed light on Freud’s conditions of writing, and yet it is concerned moreover with the metaphoric or rather intellectual ‘scene’ of Freudian ideas that form the groundwork of Derrida’s own corpus. Scenic, or staged, like Tompkins’s framed window of leaves, it looks upon the past as a ‘moment’ of intellectual ferment in language. Peggy Kamuf suggests that the translation of this piece of Derrida’s writing works to cover over the corporeal banishment from the scene of writing, in a move that privileges the written trace. In commenting, Kamuf translates Derrida herself: ‘to put outside and below [metre dehors et en bas] the body of the written trace [le corps de la trace écrite].’ Notice also the latter phrase, which says not the trace of the body but the body of the trace. The trace, what Derrida but before him also Freud has called trace or Spur, is or has a body. (23)This body, however, is excised, removed from the philosophical and psychoanalytic imaginary Kamuf argues. Australian philosopher Elizabeth Grosz contends that the body is “understood in terms that attempt to minimize or ignore altogether its formative role in the production of philosophical values – truth, knowledge, justice” (Volatile 4): Philosophy has always considered itself a discipline concerned primarily or exclusively with ideas, concepts, reason, judgment – that is, with terms clearly framed by the concept of mind, terms which marginalize or exclude considerations of the body. As soon as knowledge is seen as purely conceptual, its relation to bodies, the corporeality of both knowers and texts, and the ways these materialities interact, must become obscure. (Volatile 4)In the production of knowledge then, the corporeal knowing writing body can be expected to interact with place, with the ambience or otherwise in which we work. “Writing is a physical effort,” notes Cixous, and “this is not said often enough” (40). The Tense Present Conditions have changed here in Perth since the last draft. A late summer high pressure system is sitting in the Great Australian Bite pushing hot air across the desert and an equally insistent ridge of low pressure sits off the Indian Ocean, so the two systems are working against each other, keeping the weather hot, still, tense, taut against the competing forces. It has been nudging forty degrees for a week. The air conditioning at work has overloaded and has been set to priority cooling; offices are the lowest priority. A fan blasts its way across to me, thrumming as it waves its head from one side to the other as if tut-tutting. I’m not consumed with intellectual curiosity the way I was in the previous heatwave; I’m feeling tired, and wondering if I should just give up on this paper. It will wait for another time and journal. There’s a tension with chronology here, with what’s happening in the present, but then Rachel Blau DuPlessis argues that the act of placing ideas into language inevitably produces that tension: Chronology is time depicted as travelling (more or less) in a (more or less) forward direction. Yet one can hardly write a single sentence straight; it all rebounds. Even its most innocent first words – A, The, I, She, It – teem with heteroglossias. (16)“Sentences structure” DuPlessis points out, and grammar necessitates development, chronological linearity, which affects the possibilities for narrative. “Cause and effect affect” DuPlessis notes (16), as do Cixous and Irigaray before her. Nevertheless we must press on. And so I leave work and go for a swim, bring my core body temperature down, and order a pot of tea from the beach café while I read Barbara Bolt in the bright afternoon light. Bolt is a landscape painter who has spent some time in Kalgoorlie, a mining town 800km east of Perth, and notes the ways light is used as a metaphor for visual illumination, for enlightening, and yet in Kalgoorlie light is a glare which, far from illuminating, blinds. In Kalgoorlie the light is dangerous to the body, causing cancers and cataracts but also making it difficult to see because of its sheer intensity. Bolt makes an argument for the Australian light rupturing European thinking about light: Visual practice may be inconceivable without a consideration of light, but, I will argue, it is equally ‘inconceivable’ to practice under European notions of light in the ‘glare’ of the Australian sun. Too much light on matter sheds no light on the matter. (204)Bolt frequently equates the European notions of visual art practice that, she claims, Australians still operate under, with concomitant concepts of European philosophy, aesthetics and, I want to add, epistemology. She is particularly adept at noting the material impact of Australian conditions on the body, arguing that, the ‘glare’ takes apart the Enlightenment triangulation of light, knowledge, and form. In fact, light becomes implicated bodily, in the facts of the matter. My pterygiums and sun-beaten skin, my mother and father’s melanomas, and the incidence of glaucoma implicate the sun in a very different set of processes. From my optic, light can no longer be postulated as the catalyst that joins objects while itself remaining unbent and unimplicated … (206).If new understandings of light are generated in Australian conditions of working, surely heat is capable of refiguring dominant European notions as well. Heat is commonly associated with emotions and erotics, even through ideas: heated debate, hot topics and burning issues imply the very latest and most provocative discussions, sizzling and mercurial. Heat has a material affect on corporeality also: dehydrating, disorienting, dizzying and burning. Fuzzy logic and bent horizons may emerge. Studies show that students learn best in ambient temperatures (Pilman; Graetz), but I want to argue that thought and writing can bend in other dimensions with heat. Tensions build in blood pressure alongside isometric bars. Emotional and intellectual intensities merge. Embodiment meets epistemology. This is not a new idea; feminist philosophers like Donna Haraway have been emphasizing the importance of situated knowledge and partial perspective for decades as a methodology that challenges universalism and creates a more ethical form of objectivity. In 1987 Haraway was arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people’s lives. I am arguing for the view from a body, always a complex contradictory structuring and structured body versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. (Haraway 588)Working in intellectual conditions when the specificities of ambience is ignored, is also, I suggest, to work in a privileged space, in which there are no distractions like the weather. It is also to work ‘from nowhere, from simplicity’ in Haraway’s words. It is to write from within the pure imaginary space of the intellect. But to write in, and from, weather conditions no matter what they might be is to acknowledge the affect of being-in-the-world, to recognise an ontological debt that is embodied and through which we think. I want to make a claim for the radical conditions under which writing can occur outside of the ambient, as I sit here sweating over theory again. Drawing attention to the corporeal conditions of the scene of writing is a way of situating knowledge and partial perspective: if I were in Hobart where snow still lies on Mount Wellington I may well have a different perspective, but the metaphors of ice and cold also need transforming into productive and generative conditions of particularised knowledge. To acknowledge the location of knowledge production suggests more of the forces at work in particular thinking, as a bibliography indicates the shelf of books that have inflected the written product. This becomes a relation of immanence rather than transcendence between the subject and thought, whereby thinking can be understood as an act, an activity, or even activism of an agent. This is proposed by Elizabeth Grosz in her later work where she yokes together the “jagged edges” (Time 165) of Deleuze and Irigaray’s work in order to reconsider the “future of thought”. She calls for a revision of meaning, as Bolt does, but this time in regard to thought itself—and the task of philosophy—asking whether it is possible to develop an understanding of thought that refuses to see thought as passivity, reflection, contemplation, or representation, and instead stresses its activity, how and what it performs […] can we deromanticize the construction of knowledges and discourses to see them as labor, production, doing? (Time 158)If writing is to be understood as a form of activism it seems fitting to conclude here with one final image: of Gloria Anzaldua’s computer, at which she invites us to imagine her writing her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), a radical Chicana vision for postcolonial theory. Like Grosz, Anzaldua is intent on undoing the mind/body split and the language through which the labour of thinking can be articulated. This is where she writes her manifesto: I sit here before my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. (75) References Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Bolt, Barbara. “Shedding Light for the Matter.” Hypatia 15.2 (2000): 202-216. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity, 1990. [1980 Les Edition de Minuit] Burke, Janine. The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud’s Art Collection. Milsons Point: Knopf, 2006. Cixous, Hélène, and Mireille Calle-Gruber. Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing. London: Routledge, 1997. [1994 Photos de Racine]. Derrida, Jacques, and Jeffrey Mehlman. "Freud and the Scene of Writing." Yale French Studies 48 (1972): 74-117. DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work. Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 2006. Gifford, Terry. Ted Hughes. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Graetz, Ken A. “The Psychology of Learning Environments.” Educause Review 41.6 (2006): 60-75. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Grosz, Elizabeth. Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 2005. Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14.3 (1988): 575-99. Kamuf, Peggy. “Outside in Analysis.” Mosaic 42.4 (2009): 19-34. Mercer, Gina. “The Days of Love Are Lettered.” Review of The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems, ed. Jennifer Strauss. LiNQ 22.1 (1995): 135-40. Miller, Nancy K. Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. New York: Routledge, 1991. Pilman, Mary S. “The Effects of Air Temperature Variance on Memory Ability.” Loyola University Clearinghouse, 2001. ‹http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/306.php›. Tompkins, Jane. “Me and My Shadow.” New Literary History 19.1 (1987): 169-78.