Foundational Insights
University of Malta (Valletta Campus)
On the Origins of Metalworking in China View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Peng Peng
The “independent invention versus diffusion” argument remains undecided regarding the inception—or rather inceptions—of copper-based metallurgy in China. The intriguing course leading to the substantial rise of a distinctive metallurgical tradition that can be confidently called “Chinese” was probably too perplexing to be explained by a single theoretical model. Even we choose to follow metallurgical diffusionism in understanding the case of early China, presumably two mechanisms of technological transmission existed simultaneously. One, was in the small-scale and irregular transregional communications of long standing, involving many cultural groups in China, the arc, Inner Asia, and southern Siberia. The other was rapid, direct, and long-distance transmission, represented by the diffusion of the Seima-Turbino metalwork. The current paradigm, unfortunately, still has difficulty explaining the isolated metal “alloys” from Middle Neolithic China, such as the fifth-millennium copper-zinc anomaly witnessed at Lintong Jiangzhai, Shaanxi province. If such incredible discoveries could finally be authenticated, that strange beginning in metal supposably had little, if anything, to do with the rest of the story (or a new story?) of Chinese metallurgy as a persistent endeavor; taking all things into consideration, the prehistoric “brasses” probably had nothing to do with, for example, the splendid Bronze Age of China. To better comprehend the origins of copper-based metalworking in China, we may need to move beyond “independent invention versus diffusion” for a new paradigm in Chinese archaeometallurgy.
Contemporary Urbanscapes and Technological Ruptures
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lineu Castello
In urban-architectural grounds it does not seem extravagant to think about urban morphology as a close companion to innovative technological ruptures. Modernity in urbanism got enormously magnified with the innovative use of technological progresses. A foundational example is given by the vertical mobilities facilitated by automatic elevators that have turned Chicago into a model of city modernity, backed by lifts moving up and down the skyscrapers that sprouted throughout the city. Postmodern urbanism, on the other hand, would not have flourished in Los Angeles were it not from the innovations forwarded by the copious progresses released by new conceptual frontiers opened up by placemaking and placemarketing strategies. Finally, now, in the current third decennium of twenty-first century, a sort of meta-urbanism is in full progress in the most technologically advanced global metropolises, most notoriously in those standing out for their oil-rich assets. All in all, several new thresholds have been transposed thanks to the innovative technologies that have empowered the issuing of several patterns of new urban configurations, which in parallel encompassed deep societal change. Obviously, the state-of-the-art of the spatial disciplines has been always kept acutely fine-tuned to the ground-breaking adjustments liberated by dramatic technological advances. Alas, when we talk about modernist urbanism, the manifestation of some unwelcome phenomena such as the so-called placelessness must be mentioned. When discussing postmodernist urbanism, we must praise the unquestionable benefits of placemaking and placemarketing. Finally, contemporary urbanscapes are much in debt to the so-called place-based knowledge urbanism.
Shipbuilding in South Asia for European Companies in the Eighteenth Century: Local Networks and Communities of Knowledge and Technology View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Urna Mukherjee
The eighteenth century saw European colonial enterprises like the Dutch (VOC) and the English (EIC) begin emerging as significant commercial and political interests in the Indian Ocean. Between trade and military naval conflicts, labour and technology as well as raw materials and resources local to communities in coastal South Asia were essential to European merchants and navies for ship building, maintenance and repair. Indian Ocean seaports had a long tradition of shipbuilding that predated the arrival of Europeans in the Indian Ocean by several centuries, and from long before Europeans were able to acquire territorial possessions in South Asia, they were dependent on the technological expertise and knowledge of resources of local coastal communities to cater to their specific needs and requirements of ships. Suffice to say, even after the establishment of territorial colonial empires, many continued to rely on their old networks to establish their own shipbuilding centres. Apart from the Wadia family of shipbuilders in British Bombay, there is very little extant research on the complex networks of knowledge and technology communities that Europeans in coastal South Asia relied on to establish and maintain their shipbuilding infrastructures during this period. Through archival research, this paper explores these networks and communities and the circulation of knowledge and technology facilitated by their interactions with European mercantile powers in two eighteenth-century seaports in South Asia, Bombay and Cochin, acquired and controlled by the English and the Dutch respectively.
