It is generally believed that liquid water was once stable on the surface of Mars. In the rather thin and nearly oxygenfree atmosphere of Mars UV-radiation from the Sun reaches the martian surface, and in aqueous environment UV-light is a source of oxidation of Fe2+ (aq). As a Mars simulation experiment, we have studied the precipitates forming from the photochemical oxidation of Fe2+ (aq) in the laboratory by means of Mössbauer spectroscopy.Our results show that α-FeOOH (goethite) must have precipitated in martian aqueous environments as a result of photostimulated oxidation of Fe2+ (aq).
The ‘Great Bronze Athena’, or the Athena Promachos by Pheidias, was a famous statue on the Akropolis of Athens, according to the literary sources. Numerous attempts have been made in the 19th and 20th centuries to reconstruct the image of the statue based on various sources: coins, gems, lamps, Byzantine miniatures, and sculpture. However, some of these attempts have revealed a number of inconsistencies in treatment and interpretation of the various sources. This article, therefore, endeavours to separate the valid from the invalid through a careful assessment of all the available evidence relating to the Athena Promachos as the Pheidian statue rather than the iconographic type.
It may be regarded as brave of an author to start a book by volunteering in the very first sentence that he conceivably should not be writing it. But this turns out to be symptomatic of A.'s style throughout, which is filled with an uncompromising delight in identifying and assessing problems and lacunae in the source and subject-matter, and meeting them head-on-often to conclude that nothing can be known for certain, and the problem will in fact admit of no solving. Thus the dilemma A. highlights at the outset of the book, with the question he asks but does not answer-how valid a study of women's history can be if written by a man. All I would wish to say in this connection is that a refreshingly cool and clear-eyed take on the topic such as this book presents will always be a most welcome addition to a fast-growing field. This is an interesting and painstakingly thorough study of legal attitudes to women (and female experiences of the law) which quite deliberately takes a broad-brush view of 'late antiquity in its widest possible sense' (p. 1), i.e. as ranging from the second to the seventh century. Lucidly written and methodically presented, on this wide band A. considers the evidence of a comprehensive range of legal, literary, and ecclesiastical sources, presenting chapters on Historical Setting and Sources, Fathers and Children, Mothers and Children, Married Women, Separation and Single Life, Sexual Relations outside Marriage, and Women and the Society of Men, followed by some General Conclusions; each chapter is clearly subtitled and its general arguments restated succinctly in a closing 'Summary and Conclusions'. Throughout each section A. proceeds methodically from legal theory to a general assessment of practical arrangements, and then to individual cases, in a most accessible format, giving a commendably clear picture of female rights and obligations, well leavened by actual experiences. The clarity of layout and thinking is, however, occasionally undermined by odd opacities of language-for instance, a sentence such as 'There were also the fathers who did not manage to produce a single child.' (p. 71) could stand more clarification than is given. There is a full and useful bibliography; but the index is oddly perfunctory and unhelpful. A. commences with a comprehensive summary of the evolution of the legal material used, offering a calm and logical assessment of the disputes surrounding some of the sources. The advantage of legal texts as source matter is that 'there is no other group of evidence which one could follow continuously' (p. 1) through such a period; the weakness of it is that it can seem to bear little resemblance to what its subjects actually did. A. is perhaps at his strongest in examining critically the validity and level of purchase of the laws as they were made and modified amongst the 360
on the excavation of a group of pottery kilns in the countryside near Chiusi-Clusium. Working for twenty-µve weeks between 1987 and 1991, a team from Siena University was able to explore entirely the small 'production complex', in which eight individual kilns were in successive use from the end of the third to the beginning of the µrst century .. The total excavation of any ancient feature from top to bottom and over its whole extension is an extremely rare event that permits a more than usually wide-ranging elaboration and deµnitive interpretation of the µnds-both µxed and mobile. Here, the careful analysis of the ceramic materials provides the basis for understanding the stratigraphic sequences and their association with very confused structural remains. While the procedure is legitimate and indeed indispensable, its presentation is less so, since Part II (Lo scavo, 17-72) eschews an objective description of the remains as found, and proceeds straight to their interpretation, from virgin soil to modern intervention (six working periods are thus deµned, which are followed by abandonment in the µrst century, and then limited reuse for µring lime rather than pottery). This should have come as a second level of elaboration and not the only one available to the reader; parallels and discussions are useful, but they do not compensate for entirely missing measurements and virtually unreadable sections. The treatment of the small µnds (Part III: I materiali, pp. 75-328, including archaeometric and environmental analyses) is, however, almost exemplary in its thoroughness, despite the fact that, apart from ten worn bronze coins, the rest is a mass of fragmentary discarded pottery of a quality that was mediocre even when at its saleable best. Ten categories are deµned by technique or function: black-and red-glaze, thin-walled, coarse, and plain wares (the latter including some timeless money-boxes); and commercial amphorae, lamps, loom-weights, stacking-rings, and tubuli for vault construction (while tiles, which are plentiful and probably also µred in loco, are not catalogued anywhere). The slow changes in types and quality are well described, as is the major break around the mid-second century, when a still craft-like variety of forms and categories gives way to a more standardized and careless production.
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