Having a Baby | Stages of Pregnancy

fetus, baby, development
Stages of fetal development over 38 weeks, from embryo to full-term.
Credit: Dragana Gerasimoski | Shutterstock

Having a baby and feeling a new life developing inside is an amazing, life-changing experience for pregnant women, even though they may not always feel their best along the way.

"Pregnancy is a long, 10-month journey," said Dr. Draion Burch, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Magee-Womens Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

A normal pregnancy usually lasts about 40 weeks, counting from the first day of a woman's last menstrual period, which is typically about two weeks before conception occurs.

During each trimester, distinct changes take place in a pregnant woman's body as well as in the development of the fetus, and they will be described in greater detail below.

Conception and implantation

About two weeks after a woman has her period, she ovulates and her ovaries release one mature egg. The egg can be fertilized for 12 to 24 hours after it's released as it travels down the fallopian tube toward the uterus.

At fertilization, the sex of the fetus is already determined, depending on whether the egg receives an X or Y chromosome from a sperm cell. If the egg receives an X chromosome, the baby will be a girl; a Y chromosome means the baby will be a boy.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, it takes about three to four days for the fertilized egg (or embryo) to move to the lining of the uterus, where it attaches or implants to the uterine wall. Once the embryo is implanted, the cells start to grow eventually becoming the fetus and the placenta, which is tissue that can transport oxygen, nutrients and hormones from the mother's blood to the developing fetus throughout pregnancy.

First trimester (weeks 1-12) changes in the mother's body

A woman will experience a lot of symptoms during her first trimester as she adjusts to the hormonal changes of pregnancy, which affect nearly every organ in her body. The pregnancy may not be showing much on the outside of her body, but inside many changes are taking place.

Human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) is a hormone that will be present in a woman's blood from the time conception occurs. Produced by cells that form the placenta, hCG can be detected in a woman's urine about a week after a missed period and is responsible for a positive result on a home pregnancy test

Rising levels of pregnancy hormones may also bring on the waves of nausea and vomiting known as morning sickness that a woman typically feels during her first few months of pregnancy. Some smells may be more bothersome now and provoke queasiness.

She will also feel more tired than usual, a symptom that's linked with rising levels of the hormone progesterone, which increases sleepiness. A woman's uterus is growing and begins to press on the bladder, causing her to urinate more frequently.

Early in pregnancy, a woman's breasts will feel more tender and swollen, another side effect of rising pregnancy hormone levels. A woman's areolas, the skin around each of her nipples, will darken and enlarge.

Her digestive system may slow down to increase the absorption of nutrients, but this might also lead to such common complaints as heartburn, constipation, bloating and gas, according to womenshealth.gov.

In addition, a pregnant woman's heart will be working even harder, increasing the volume of blood it pumps to supply the uterus with the additional blood it needs to supply the fetus and elevating her pulse rate.

As more blood circulates to a woman's face, it will give her skin a rosier complexion, described as a "pregnancy glow."

Besides the physical changes in a woman's body, she will also experience emotional highs and lows in the early months of her pregnancy and throughout it. These emotions may range from weepiness, mood swings and forgetfulness to fear, anxiety and excitement.

First trimester development of embryo/fetus

By the end of the second month, eight to 10 of the fetus' main organs will have formed, Burch said, which is why he stresses to pregnant women that it's extremely important to not take harmful medications, such as illegal drugs during that time. The first trimester is also the period when most miscarriages and birth defects occur.

During the third month of pregnancy, bones and muscles begin to grow, buds for future teeth appear, and fingers and toes grow. The intestines begin to form and the skin is almost transparent.

Second trimester (weeks 13-27) changes in the mother's body

Nausea and vomiting usually gets better and goes away, Burch said. But other symptoms may crop up as the fetus continues its growth and development.

A more visible baby bump appears as the uterus grows beyond a woman's pelvis, and the skin on her expanding belly may itch as its stretches, according to womenshealth.gov.

As the fetus is getting bigger and a woman is gaining more pregnancy weight in the front of her body, she may also experience more back pain, Burch said.

Somewhere between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy a first-time mother may feel the first fluttering movements of the fetus known as quickening, Burch said. If a woman has had a baby before, she is likely to feel the fetus kicking, squirming or turning even sooner because she knows what to look for and expect, he explained.

The 20th week usually marks the halfway point of a woman's pregnancy.

Burch encourages his patients to take a "baby-moon" — a mini-vacation or weekend getaway — during the second trimester, and he said the best time to get away is around the 28th week of pregnancy. A woman is generally feeling pretty good at this point, there's a lower risk of miscarriage and premature labor, and some health professionals may discourage airplane travel after the 36th week.

Second trimester development of the fetus

In the second trimester, the fetus is growing a lot and will be between 3 and 5 inches long, Burch said. Somewhere between 18 and 22 weeks an ultrasound may reveal the sex of the baby, if parents want to know it in advance.

pregnancy, development
Stages of pregnancy over nine months.
Credit: Dragana Gerasimoski | Shutterstock

Third trimester (weeks 28-40) changes in the mother's body

During the third trimester, as a woman's enlarged uterus pushes against her diaphragm, a major muscle involved in breathing, she may feel short of breath because the lungs have less room to expand, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Her ankles, hands, feet and face may swell as she retains more fluids and her blood circulation slows.

A mother-to-be will need to pee more frequently because more pressure will be placed on her bladder. She may also have more backaches and more pain in the hips and pelvis, as these joints relax in preparation for delivery.

Her breasts may experience some leakage of colostrum, a yellow liquid, as they get ready for breastfeeding, according to womenshealth.gov.

False labor, known as Braxton-Hicks contractions, may begin to occur as a woman gets closer to her due date. A "nesting instinct" may kick in as a woman and her partner baby-proof their home, shop for baby items, prepare the nursery and eagerly await their new arrival.

It will become harder to find a comfortable sleeping position during the final weeks of pregnancy, so women may be extremely tired, Burch said.

As delivery approaches, "some women love the experience of being pregnant, while others may feel like they don't want to go through it again," Burch said.

Third trimester development of the fetus

By the seventh month of pregnancy, the fetus kicks and stretches, and can even respond to light and sound, like music, Burch said. The eyes can open and close.

During the eighth month of pregnancy, the fetus gains weight very quickly. Bones harden, but the skull remains soft and flexible to make delivery easier. Different regions of the brain are forming, and the fetus is able to hiccup, according to ACOG.

The ninth month is the home stretch of pregnancy and the fetus is getting ready for birth by turning into a head-down position in a woman's pelvis. The lungs are now fully mature to prepare for functioning on their own. The fetus continues to gain weight rapidly.

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Climate change is driven by anthropogenic inputs of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases into the atmosphere. The release of these gases is largely the direct or indirect product of economic activities such as transportation, land-clearing, electricity generation, and many others. These activities will increase in intensity as the world’s population and its economy grow. Indeed, economic growth is a central policy initiative of most countries, but the logic of perpetual economic growth is questionable and may be unsustainable.

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GDP calculation must be tightened
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The central government should strengthen legislation on GDP calculations to stop provincial and regional governments from fudging economic growth figures to curry favor from higher officials, says an article in the Beijing Times. Excerpt:

The sum of provincial and regional GDP values exceeded the national GDP value by 1.4 trillion yuan (9.9 percent) for the first half of this year. Official data show only 5 provinces have GDP growth rates below the national figure of 7.1 percent.

The conflict between the GDP figure of all the provinces and regions and the national average makes it very difficult for the central government to take decisions on macro-economic policies.

The difference has existed for years, with the largest gap between the two being 19.3 percent.

In China, the values of the national GDP and that of the provinces and regions put together are calculated separately, and the difference between them may be because of repeated calculations and different references. But it obviously is not a technical issue because the total of provincial and regional GDP values has always been higher than the national one.

Even the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said some local governments could be fabricating their GDP values to add glitter to their economic performances and please higher officials. Some government leaders have even suggested doing away with local GDP calculations.

It's good to see the NBS making the gap between the two calculations public. It has shown respect to people's right to know, and is a brave step toward changing the situation. But it's a pity that the information released is still not complete. For example, it doesn't tell us which provinces could have fudged the GDP data.

China enacted a law on statistics 26 years ago. The need now is to introduce in stricter provisions and heavier penalties.

(China Daily August 14, 2009)

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examples of monocot and dicot leaves

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From Wikipedia

Monocotyledons, also known as monocots, are one of two major groups of flowering plants (or angiosperms) that are traditionally recognized, the other being dicotyledons, or dicots. Monocot seedlings typically have one cotyledon (seed-leaf), in contrast to the two cotyledons typical of dicots. Monocots have been recognized at various taxonomic ranks, and under various names (see below). The APG II system recognises a clade called "monocots" but does not assign it to a taxonomic rank.

According to the IUCN there are 59,300 species of monocots. The largest family in this group (and in the flowering plants as a whole) by number of species are the orchids (family Orchidaceae), with more than 20,000 species. In agriculture the majority of the biomass produced comes from monocots. The true grasses, family Poaceae (Gramineae), are the most economically important family in this group. These include all the true grains (rice, wheat, maize, etc.), the pasture grasses, sugar cane, and the bamboos. True grasses have evolved to become highly specialised for wind pollination. Grasses produce much smaller flowers, which are gathered in highly visible plumes (inflorescences). Other economically important monocot families are the palm family (Arecaceae), banana family (Musaceae), ginger family (Zingiberaceae) and the onion family Alliaceae, which includes such ubiquitously used vegetables as onions and garlic.

Many plants cultivated for their blooms are also from the monocot group, notably lilies, daffodils, irises, amaryllis, orchids, cannas, bluebells and tulips.

Name, characters

The name monocotyledons is derived from the traditional botanical name Monocotyledones, which derives from the fact that most members of this group have one cotyledon, or embryonic leaf, in their seeds. By contrast, the traditional dicotyledons typically have two cotyledons. From a diagnostic point of view the number of cotyledons is neither a particularly handy (as they are only present for a very short period in a plant's life), nor totally reliable character.

Nevertheless, monocots are a distinctive group. One of the most noticeable traits is that a monocot's flower is trimerous, with the flower parts in threes or in multiples of three. That is to say, a monocotyledon's flower typically has three, six, or nine petals. Many monocots also have leaves with parallel veins.

Monocots evolved from a single ancestor, and are younger than dicots, from which they probably branched off, as recent genetic research has shown. They evolved 100-120 million years ago, shortly after the flowering plant explosion.

Morphology, compared to the (broadly defined) dicotyledons

The traditionally listed differences between monocotyledons and dicotyledons are as follows. This is a broad sketch only, not invariably applicable, as there are a number of exceptions. The differences indicated are more true for monocots versus eudicots.

A number of these differences are not unique to the monocots. For example, trimerous flowers and monosulcate pollen are also found in magnoliids. Exclusively adventitious roots are found also in Nymphaeaceae and some of the Piperaceae. Similarly, at least one of these traits, parallel leaf veins, is far from universal among the monocots. Monocots with reticulate leaf veins are found in a wide variety of monocot families: for example, Trillium,Smilax(greenbriar), andPogonia(an orchid), and theDioscoreales. Nevertheless, this list of traits is a generally valid set of contrasts, especially when contrasting monocots with eudicots rather than non-monocot flowering plants in general.

Vascular system

Monocots have a distinctive arrangement of vascular tissue known as an atactostele in which the vascular tissue is scattered rather than arranged in concentric rings. Many monocots are herbaceous and do not have the ability to increase the width of a stem (secondary growth) via the same kind of

Epigeal versus hypogeal development

From Encyclopedia

Monocots Monocots

Monocots, or monocotyledons, are a class of the flowering plants, or angiosperms. Monocots are named for and recognized by the single cotyledon , or seed leaf, within the seed. The first green blade emerging from the seed upon germination is the cotyledon, which contains sugars and other nutrients for growth until the leaf is able to photosynthesize. Monocots comprise about 67,000 species, or one-quarter of all flowering plants. They include not only the very large grass family (Poaceae, 9,000 species), but also the orchid family (Orchidaceae, 20,000 species), and the sedge family (Cyperaceae, 5,000 species), as well as palms, lilies, bromeliads (including pineapple), and the Araceae, which includes skunk cabbage and philodendron. The angiosperms have traditionally been divided into monocots and dicots alone, but recent work has shown that while monocots form a natural evolutionary group, dicots do not, and so the angiosperms are now grouped into monocots, eudicots , and basal angiosperms. In addition to the single cotyledon in the seed, monocots can be recognized by the arrangement of vascular tissue in the stem. Vascular tissue includes xylem , used for water transport from the roots, and phloem , which carries sugars and other nutrients from the leaves to other tissues throughout the plant. Unlike other angiosperms, whose vascular tissue is arranged in rings around the periphery, the vascular bundles of monocots are scattered throughout the stem. One consequence of this is that monocots cannot form annual rings of hardened tissueâ€”woodâ€”and so are limited in the strength of their stems. Nonetheless, some monocots, notably the palms, do attain significant height. Leaves of monocots have parallel veins, as seen in grass. The roots of monocots also differ from other flowering plants. In monocots, the first root to emerge from the seed dies off, and so no strong, central tap root forms. Instead, monocots sprout roots from shoot tissue near the base, called adventitious roots. The familiar fibrous root system of grasses is an example of this rooting pattern. Many monocots form bulbs, such as onion, gladiolus, and tulips. These are not root structures, but rather modified stems, made of compact leaves. This can be easily seen in the layers of the onion. Most monocot flowers have flower parts in sets of three, so that there may be three or six petals, for instance, along with three egg-bearing carpels and pollen-bearing stamens in some multiple of three. The pollen grains of monocots have a single slit, or aperture, which splits open to allow the pollen tube to grow during fertilization . In contrast, the pollen grain of eudicots has three apertures. Orchid flowers are among the most beautiful and complex of all flowers, due in part to their long and specialized relationship with specific pollinators. Some orchid flowers have evolved to resemble the female of the bee species that pollinates them, luring the male in to attempt copulation. During this process, the pollen, all of which is retained in a single, sticky mass, is transferred to the male bee, who will carry it to the next flower in another fruitless attempt to find a mate. In contrast to the showy orchids, grass flowers are rather simple and dull, in keeping with the absence of any need to attract insects. Grass flowers are suspended at the tip of the plant, where wind can carry the pollen away to land on the female flower of a neighboring plant. Three grassesâ€”corn, wheat, and riceâ€”provide the vast majority of calories consumed by humans throughout the world. Their seeds, called grain, are rich in carbohydrates and contain some protein and vitamins as well. see also Angiosperms; Eudicots; Evolution of Plants; Flowers; Grain; Grasses; Leaves; Roots; Seeds; Shoots Richard Robinson Raven, Peter H., Ray F. Evert, and Susan E. Eichhorn. Biology of Plants, 6th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1999.

From Yahoo Answers

Question:Identify each by their leaf venation, flower arrangement, root system, number of cotyledons, arrangement of leaves in stem Example: Name of plant: Apple Tree Leaf venation: Netted flower arrangement: multiples of 4 or 5 Root system: tap root arrangement of leaves in stem: whorled(this is a question too, what is the true leaf arrangement of apple tree:whorled, alternate or opposite....? For identifying, choose here Leaf venation: Netted or parallel Flower arrangement: Multiples of 4 or 5, multiples of 3 root system: taproot or fibrous number of cotyledons: one (monocot) or two (dicot) Arrangement of leaves in stem: Alternate, Opposite, Whorled Complete Identification and 10 examples will be the best answer

Answers:Monocotyledonous Plant Orders & Their Families http://www.floresflowers.com/taxa/Monocots.html http://www.pierce.ctc.edu/biology/EMbuja/BIOL203/Monocots.htm Dicot plant families & their genera http://www.floresflowers.com/taxa/Dicots.html Pick you plants and look them up on Zip Code Zoo. For example the palm tree family Arecaceae are monocots. Cocos nucifera (Coconut Palm) http://zipcodezoo.com/Plants/C/Cocos_nucifera/


Archive for the ‘Pottery’ Category

Utah Welcome Sign

Utah Welcome Sign

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Black-on-white Sherd at Pueblo Alto

Black-on-white Sherd at Pueblo Alto

In keeping with what seems to be the recent pattern around here, my previous post led to some interesting discussion in the comments. Frequent commenter marcaeolog provided a link to a pdf version of Anna Shepard’s Ceramics for the Archaeologist, a classic work that challenges some of Florence Hawley’s theories that I discussed in the post. Andy Ward, who has done extensive experimental work attempting to recreate prehistoric pottery-making techniques, then chimed in with some information on his own efforts, focusing specifically on the question of what keeps carbon-based pigments from burning off during firing. Here’s part of his comment:

I have been doing research in just this area by collecting clays and firing them in open mesquite fires. While it is easier to keep carbon based paint on a pot in a reducing atmosphere this doesn’t account for polychromes. To make polychrome with a carbon based paint, like the ubiquitous Gila Polychrome, requires an oxidizing atmosphere. Certain kinds of clays have the ability to hold these carbon paints through a firing, bentonite clay in particular. Modern pueblo potters have used a slip called Cochiti slip which has these properties, ancient potters in cultures such as the Salado had access to similar slips.

As it turns out, Shepard had the same theory, based on her own experiments, which also provided solid evidence against Hawley’s theory, based on experiments with hydrofluoric acid, that it was compounds in the ash of the organic material that reacted with silica in the clay to protect the pigment from burning away. She acknowledged that this was a reasonable conclusion based on the information available to Hawley at the time, but Shepard’s own experiments comparing organic material with and without this sort of ash showed no substantial difference. Instead the biggest factor was clay type:

The most striking fact brought out by these tests is the effect of the type of clay on the permanence of the carbon. Bentonitic and other highly adsorptive clays retained a good black under firing conditions that completely oxidized the carbon on unnadsorptive, sedimentary clays. All of the clays that held the paint well required a high percentage of wafer to bring them to the plastic state and they had high shrinkage. These clays take up much more of the paint solution than the less adsorptive clays, and on drying, the clay plates are drawn tightly together, protecting the film of paint that surrounds them. The effectiveness of hydrofluoric acid in facilitating oxidation of carbon paints is explained by the fact that it attacks the clay, opening the surface and loosening the bond and thus exposing the carbon to air.

The upshot of this in cultural terms is that, contrary to what I said in an earlier post, it seems like the difference between mineral- and carbon-based black pigments is actually technological rather than cultural. Here’s Shepard again:

The relation of the type of clay to the depth of color of carbon paint from a plant extract is not a matter of merely theoretic interest to the technologist. It has a bearing on the distribution of this class of paint because it could not be produced in regions lacking adsorptive clays unless such clays could be obtained in trade. The use of plant extracts is not open to free choice or established merely by custom; it is limited by ceramic resources.

This is particularly interesting given the well-documented expansion of carbon-based pigments at the expense of mineral ones over the course of the late prehistoric period. If special clays were required to make this work, and those clays had restricted distributions, what accounts for the change? In areas that switched from mineral to carbon paint, such as Chaco, was this the result of a change in clay sources? The discovery, perhaps due to increased contact with other areas that had long used carbon, of which local clay sources worked for this? Importation of clay? Importation of finished pots? This raises a lot of questions, which to my knowledge have not received much attention in the archaeology of these areas, despite the fact that it’s now been several decades since Shepard’s research.

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Black-on-white Potsherd at Kin Bineola

Black-on-white Potsherd at Kin Bineola

“Never read the comments” is generally sage advice, so it’s likely that many of my readers have missed the interesting comment thread in response to my previous post. I won’t try to summarize it all here, but the gist is that a potter showed up and took issue with my use of the word “paint” to describe the pigments applied to prehistoric Pueblo pottery. Apparently, while archaeologists routinely refer to these pigments as paints, that’s not actually an accurate characterization and they are instead best described as types of “slip,” a term that archaeologists usually use only for the underlying layer of thin clay that the “paints” are often applied to. There’s a long history of archaeologists appropriating and misusing terminology from other fields, so it’s not surprising that they would have done this in this case too, but I’m not sure how best to proceed with the terminology, as it is pretty useful in practice to be able to distinguish the underlying “slip” from the “painted” designs on top of it. For now I’ll try using the (hopefully) more neutral term “pigment” for the “paint” and continue to use “slip” for the underlying clay.

Another issue that came up in the discussion, however, is separate from the terminology. This is the question of how the carbon-based pigments that are so well known from many parts of the Southwest could have adhered to pots after firing at all. After all, at the temperatures necessary to create usable ceramics any purely carbon pigment would burn right off. As I started to think about it, I realized that this was indeed a puzzle, and I went looking back into the literature to see if it had been addressed anywhere.

As it turned out, it had, and in the very first research on this subject, that of Florence Hawley in the 1920s. Hawley was an important figure in Southwestern archaeology throughout much of the twentieth century, and her early chemical studies of pottery pigments were fundamental in establishing the classification system by which they have been interpreted ever since. The most important aspect of this system was the division between “carbon-based” and “mineral-based” black pigments, although looking back at her initial publication on this topic from 1929, it’s clear that the dichotomy is more subtle than the terms imply. In fact both types of pigment contain both carbon and mineral elements, the difference being the relative proportions and the specific minerals involved. Both involve the boiling of certain plants, usually Tansy mustard or Rocky Mountain beeweed, to create a thick, black substance that can be applied to an unfired pot with a brush. The carbon type consists only of this substance, while the mineral type involves a subsequent step of adding ground iron oxide before applying it to the pot. Hawley also identifies a third type using manganese, which she speculates was used for certain types of pottery made of clay to which the usual carbon pigment wouldn’t adhere properly. (She also identifies a fourth type, so-called “smudged” pottery, that resulted from adding organic material after firing and letting it sink into the clay. This type is generally associated with the Mogollon culture in the highlands of east-central Arizona and west-central New Mexico and is quite different from the others in appearance.)

The chemical tests Hawley suggests to distinguish among these types of pigment are complicated and involve the use of dangerous acids, so they have not caught on as routine methods for archaeological analysis in more recent years. The tests appear to have been worked out and conducted mainly by Hawley’s father Fred Hawley, who was a chemist at a smelter in one of the mining areas of Arizona. Instead of these tests, archaeologists have generally tried to learn to distinguish the more common types by sight. As one of the papers I discussed earlier found in a test of this method, it works pretty well except in more marginal cases that are difficult to interpret using the standard visual criteria. The methods that have been proposed more recently using modern imaging technology have also not yet become very popular. In general the visual criteria seem to work fine.

As I noted in the previous post, the fact that both organic and mineral pigments seem to work to create black designs, but the mineral type is basically the same as the carbon one, raises the question of why there were two types at all. I suggested that cultural tradition rather than technological considerations probably was the main factor. Hawley doesn’t address the question in those terms, but she does argue that the different pigment types correspond to different cultural traditions, and the second half of the paper consists of her conclusions about cultural provinces and their spheres of influence based on pigment types through time. Her basic scheme of carbon pigments predominating in western areas and mineral pigments further east has generally held up, but otherwise her interpretations show how little was known at the time about Southwestern prehistory. She was clearly writing before tree-ring dating had established a firm foundation for the absolute chronology of cultural developments and pottery types, and the assumptions she makes about which sites were contemporary are strikingly wrong in light of that chronology. This makes her conclusions about changing patterns of cultural influence through time basically useless.

All that said, what about the question I mentioned earlier? How does the carbon pigment survive firing? Hawley’s answer, backed up by the chemical tests, was that it actually contains some mineral inclusions in addition to the carbon, especially silica and carbonates that melt in the process of firing and form a very thin film over the carbon that protects it from burning away. She considers this layer too thin to be considered a glaze, but it appears to serve the same basic function. It only works, however, when firing is in a reducing atmosphere, i.e., with oxygen prevented from reaching the surface of the pot. It’s not totally clear from her explanation where these mineral compounds come from, but the implication seems to be that some are from the plants from which the pigment is made and others are perhaps from the clay of the underlying pot. In the case of the mineral pigments, these potential sources are complemented by the trace silica in the iron oxide. As the more recent papers note, this interpretation has been questioned by others, most significantly Anna Shepard (another pioneering ceramic analyst at the same time as Hawley). It seems clear, however, that getting these pigments to survive firing requires some sort of chemical reaction along these lines, involving compounds in the pigment and/or the clay, along with a reducing atmosphere during the firing process itself.

It turns out pottery is pretty complicated! Archaeologists usually use pottery types primarily as a means to date sites and establish trade relationships, but studying potsherds intently with an eye to technological issues can reveal a lot of additional and potentially useful information.
Hawley, FM (1929). Prehistoric Pottery Pigments in the Southwest American Anthropologist, 31 (4), 731-754 DOI: 10.1525/aa.1929.31.4.02a00110

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Hachured Potsherds at Casamero Pueblo

Hachured Potsherds at Casamero Pueblo

One of those questions had to do with the black-on-white pottery that is a hallmark of Chaco. A guy once asked me what they had used as a fixative to get the paint to adhere to the pottery, and I didn’t know. I didn’t really make much of an effort to find out then, as I didn’t really have any idea where to look. Recently, though, I’ve read two papers that shed interesting light on this question. Understanding them, though, requires some background on Pueblo pottery in general.

Hachured Potsherd at Pueblo Alto

Hachured Potsherd at Pueblo Alto

Basically, there are three main types of paint that were used in the prehistoric Pueblo Southwest. Two of these were in use during the period when Chaco was occupied: mineral and carbon. (The third, lead glaze, wasn’t used until later.) Both were used to produce a black color. Other colors were occasionally produced by a variety of means, but for this period black was the overwhelmingly dominant color of painted ceramics. It’s generally possible for experienced archaeologists to tell mineral and carbon paint apart by sight. Although they both tend to look black on a well-fired pot, there are various subtle differences between the two.

Carbon paint is basically just plant material, usually Rocky Mountain beeweed or tansy mustard, boiled down into an extract and applied to the pot. Mineral paint is made of ground iron-rich minerals, usually hematite, mixed with either water or an organic extract similar to those used alone as carbon paint, and sometimes with clay as well. Both types have been used both in prehistory and among the modern Pueblos. However, there were some marked patterns to usage of the different types of paint both geographically and temporally. Overall, the trend was of increasing use of carbon rather than mineral paint over time, spreading from west to east. Chaco ceramics at the height of the Chaco phenomenon in the eleventh century AD were overwhelmingly mineral-painted, while Chuska and Mesa Verde ceramics, while very similar in decoration and imported to Chaco in large numbers, were generally carbon-painted. Around AD 1100 there was a marked shift, and even Chaco pottery began to be primarily carbon-painted. By the 1200s use of mineral paint only continued in areas on the eastern and southern fringes of the Pueblo world. Distinguishing between carbon and mineral paint is thus quite useful for making inferences about culture history during this period. (In subsequent periods things became much more complicated with extensive long-distance migration and the introduction of glaze paints.)

Sherd with Checkered Pattern, Kin Klizhin

Sherd with Checkered Pattern, Kin Klizhin

Both of the papers I mentioned above are about using more formal means than visual criteria to tell mineral and carbon paint apart. One, by Joe Stewart and Karen Adams, used a scanning electron microscope-energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (SEM-EDS) system to differentiate the two based on the amount of iron detected in the pigment. The other, by Robert Speakman and Hector Neff, used laser ablaction-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), a simpler and potentially less expensive method to distinguish between the two types of paint based on the concentrations of various elements. Both found that the methods they used came up with similar results to traditional visual methods, and were superior for certain sherds with unusual mixes of characteristics that made them visually ambiguous. Speakman and Neff also found a surprising amount of variety in elemental composition even within the “carbon” and “mineral” groups, suggesting that there were multiple “recipes” used to mix paint in prehistory, not just the two broad categories. This isn’t all that surprising given that this is clearly the case in modern times based on ethnographic data, but it’s still interesting.

That’s all well and good, but one thing that occurred to me in reading these papers was that it’s not at all clear why there would be multiple paint recipes, since they all ended up with pretty much the same result and some were definitely more complicated than others. This is particularly the case when considering mineral paint, since in many cases it appears that it was actually mixed with the plant concoctions that were in other places used independently as carbon paint. If boiling down beeweed produced a perfectly suitable black paint, why bother adding hematite? This might well explain why the trend over time was from mineral to carbon paint, but it’s still unclear why mineral paint originated in the first place. It does not appear to have predated carbon paint overall, at least at Chaco, where both carbon and mineral types are present as early as Basketmaker III.

Hachured Potsherds at Kin Ya'a

Hachured Potsherds at Kin Ya’a

The lack of obvious functional reasons for preferring mineral to carbon paint suggests that the choice may have been more a matter of cultural tradition, which is interesting and implies that some sort of cultural differentiation may have been present quite early in the prehistory of the northern Southwest. This isn’t really surprising, as there is plenty of other evidence for this, but teasing out the implications of all these different lines of evidence pointing to differentiation in material culture is a task that archaeologists have only recently begun to take on. It should be interesting to see what more we have to learn from these differences.
Speakman, RJ, & Neff, H (2002). Evaluation of Painted Pottery from the Mesa Verde Region Using Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) American Antiquity, 67, 137-144 DOI: 10.2307/2694882

Stewart, JD, & Adams, KR (1999). Evaluating Visual Criteria for Identifying Carbon- and Iron-Based Pottery Paints from the Four Corners Region Using SEM-EDS American Antiquity, 64, 675-696 DOI: 10.2307/2694212

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Monks Mound Sign at Cahokia Mounds

Cahokia Interpretive Center from Monks Mound

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United Country Mimbres Realty, Silver City, New Mexico

Inspired by my recent visit to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, I’ve been reading about the Mimbres Mogollon culture of southwestern New Mexico.  As I noted earlier, the cliff dwellings themselves aren’t actually Mimbres, instead belonging to the Tularosa Mogollon culture more common to the north, and they postdate the “Classic” Mimbres period (ca. AD 1000 to 1150, exactly contemporary with the florescence of Chaco further north) by over a century.  They do, however, fall well within the area occupied by the Classic Mimbres, and there is in fact a Mimbres village, the TJ Ruin, within the monument boundaries.  The upper Gila River valley was a major area of Mimbres settlement during the Classic period, and it had some of the largest Classic villages, although it is not nearly as well understood as the Rio Mimbres valley which is often considered the Mimbres “heartland” and which gave the culture its name.  A review article by Michelle Hegmon from 2002 provides a good and relatively recent overview of the major issues in Mimbres archaeology.

The Mimbres are best known for their pottery, some of which features elaborately painted naturalistic designs unlike anything else known from the prehistoric Southwest.  This pottery was painted with black paint on a white slip, as was Anasazi pottery from Chaco and other areas at the time, and many of the abstract geometrical designs that form the bulk of the decorated pottery are reminiscent of Anasazi styles.  There’s no equivalent among the Anasazi to the naturalistic designs, however, which show elaborately detailed people, animals, possible mythical scenes, and much else.  No two designs are exactly alike.  Most of the figurative designs were on bowls which were placed with burials, usually with a “kill-hole” through the center of the vessel, which was then placed over the face of the buried individual.  Iconographic study of Mimbres pottery dates back nearly a century, starting with the work of Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian in the 1910s, but in the past 20 years it has been supplemented by studies taking a more technological approach.  Particularly important has been a series of studies using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) to determine the sources of the clay used in the pots and untangle patterns of production and exchange.  The results of these studies have generally been consistent with widely distributed production of pottery throughout the region, which is in contrast to other documented cases of community-level specialization in pottery production known from other parts of the Southwest at various times.  Design analysis has led some to suggest that the finest of the black-on-white bowls were made by a very small number of potters, however, which implies that perhaps a few specialists in villages scattered across the region made almost all of the well-known naturalistic vessels.

Tune Town Music Exchange, Silver City, New Mexico

Speaking of villages, one of the most interesting things about the Mimbres is that theirs were quite different from communities found throughout the rest of the Southwest during the Classic period.  While most areas, including the Chaco region, had communities of loosely clustered small house sites, the Mimbres were aggregated into large, dense villages made up of roomblocks very similar to those that would become increasingly common in Pueblo sites to the north starting in the thirteenth century and continuing into the historic period.  Indeed, some have argued that the Classic Mimbres invented the “Pueblo” as a type of community, and even that many of the social institutions of the modern Pueblos, such as the kachina cult, derive ultimately from Mimbres precursors.  There is definitely a clear continuum in artistic style from Mimbres pottery through Jornada Style rock art to the Rio Grande style of rock art and mural painting that appears among the northern Pueblos beginning around AD 1300.

After the decline of Chaco around AD 1130, the northern Southwest witnessed a pattern of ever-increasing aggregation eventually resulting in the modern Pueblos with their very Mimbres-like plans and institutions.  There have been various explanations offered for why this occurred, and I think those that attribute it largely to increased warfare are among the most persuasive.  There is definitely much more direct evidence for violence after about AD 1150 than before then.  Whatever was causing trouble in Pueblo societies at this time, it seems very likely that solutions drawn from the Mimbres experience became increasingly attractive further north.

But what was that experience?  Why did the Mimbres aggregate into large Pueblos at a time when everyone else lived in scattered small houses?  The Classic Mimbres period coincides with a time of remarkable peace throughout most of the Southwest, so defense seems less likely as an explanation here than it does later on.  Some of the Mimbres pots do show scenes of violence, including a well-known beheading, but it’s not at all clear that these show actual events rather than myths.  In general, there doesn’t seem to be any more evidence for warfare among the Classic Mimbres than anywhere else at the same time, which makes their much denser settlement pattern particularly mysterious.  It may have had something to do with irrigation agriculture, which the Mimbres had probably adopted somewhat earlier under the influence of the Hohokam in southern Arizona, who were by far the most accomplished irrigators of the prehistoric Southwest.  Among the Mimbres, as among other Mogollon groups, there was extensive Hohokam influence early on, which seems to have largely ceased by AD 1000, possibly replaced by increased influence from the Anasazi to the north (although this is controversial).  Steve Lekson, who has done a lot of work in the Mimbres area in addition to his work at Chaco, has argued that the Classic Mimbres consists of “an Anasazi lifestyle supported by Hohokam infrastructure,” and I think there may be something to that.  The labor demands of irrigation may have led to residential aggregation, although it’s important to note that the Hohokam themselves never aggregated to anything like the same degree despite their much more elaborate irrigation systems.

Welcome Sign, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

What’s even more puzzling about the Mimbres, however, is what they did after the end of the Classic period.  The large villages and figurative pottery seem to come to a rather sudden end around 1150, about the same time that Chaco declined and the northern Southwest entered a long, difficult period of warfare, aggregation, and regional abandonment.  It used to be thought that the Mimbres just “collapsed” at this time, with their ultimate fate unknown, but more recent research, especially in the eastern Mimbres area along the Rio Grande near the modern town of Truth or Consequences, has shown that the real story is more complicated.  Margaret Nelson has been researching settlement patterns in the eastern Mimbres area, and she has found that one notable shift after the end of the Classic period involved the dissolution of the aggregated Classic villages and the dispersal of people into small hamlets, often built on the sites of Classic fieldhouses.  She also sees continued production of Mimbres pottery, although apparently without the distinctive naturalistic designs, for a long time after the end of the Classic.  Hegmon, who has collaborated with Nelson on much of this work, has proposed calling these occupations “Postclassic Mimbres.”  They show much more extensive trade of pottery with surrounding areas than during the Classic period, as well as more variable architecture, implying that whatever social controls had held the large Classic villages together had broken down and been replaced by a more flexible social system.

What’s remarkable about this is that it’s basically the opposite of what was happening everywhere else in the Southwest, where the dominant trend during this period was aggregation.  The Mimbres, at least in the east, were instead dispersing.  The picture is less clear in the Mimbres and Gila valleys further west, but at least some of the Classic villages seem to have continued to be occupied at lower population levels (similar to what was going on at Chaco), while a new type of occupation seen at some sites in the area, known as the Black Mountain Phase, may or may not represent a change in Mimbres culture.  There is debate over whether the Black Mountain Phase actually shows continuity with Classic Mimbres or not.  It’s also possible that some people headed south, to the rising center at Casas Grandes, in which case they would be participating in the trend toward aggregation.

It’s becoming increasingly clear, then, that the Mimbres didn’t really collapse or totally abandon their region in 1150.  Instead, they seem to have sort of splintered, with some scattering to hamlets on the sites of former field houses, others possibly reorganizing their communities into Black Mountain Phase sites, and still others migrating away from their region either south to Casas Grandes or east to the Jornada area, where the very Mimbres-like Jornada petroglyph style seems to appear around this time.  This process of dispersal when everyone else was aggregating, combined with their earlier aggregation when everyone else was sprawling across the landscape, gives a distinct “out of phase” feel to Mimbres cultural dynamics.

I certainly don’t have any solutions to propose to the mysteries of the Mimbres, and as far as I can tell no one else really does either.  They’re among the most fascinating of the many peoples who inhabited the prehistoric Southwest, and while they are by no means the most obscure, outside of specialist circles they are known almost exclusively for their pottery.  The pottery is amazing, of course, and quite deserving of attention, but there’s much more to the Mimbres than their pots.
Fewkes, J. (1916). Animal Figures on Prehistoric Pottery from Mimbres Valley, New Mexico American Anthropologist, 18 (4), 535-545 DOI: 10.1525/aa.1916.18.4.02a00080

Gilman, P., Canouts, V., & Bishop, R. (1994). The Production and Distribution of Classic Mimbres Black-on-White Pottery American Antiquity, 59 (4) DOI: 10.2307/282343

Hegmon, M. (2002). Recent Issues in the Archaeology of the Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest Journal of Archaeological Research, 10 (4), 307-357 DOI: 10.1023/A:1020525926010

Hegmon, M., Nelson, M., & Ruth, S. (1998). Abandonment and Reorganization in the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest American Anthropologist, 100 (1), 148-162 DOI: 10.1525/aa.1998.100.1.148

Nelson, M., & Hegmon, M. (2001). Abandonment Is Not as It Seems: An Approach to the Relationship between Site and Regional Abandonment American Antiquity, 66 (2) DOI: 10.2307/2694606

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Whiteware Sherd at Una Vida

Pottery is the most important type of artifact for archaeology in the Southwest.  This is because the agricultural societies of the prehistoric Southwest made huge numbers of pots and often decorated them in distinctive ways that differed both from place to place and over time, often within quite short periods.  With the precision available from tree-ring dating, certain pottery types can be dated to remarkably short periods, in some cases consisting of less than 100 years, and those types in turn can be used to date unexcavated sites with no tree-ring dates of their own.  Differences in decoration over time are more obvious than differences among places for most periods, which is an interesting fact that probably deserves more attention than it has gotten.  Ceramic design styles changed at roughly the same times over amazingly large areas that in some cases don’t show any other evidence of substantial contact.  During the Chaco era, from about AD 1030 to 1130, the dominant design style throughout the northern Southwest used a lot of hachure, for example.  The specific types have different names, assigned to them by archaeologists working in different regions, and despite the general similarity in design these can be distinguished by distinctive aspects of their manufacture.  These include the type of clay used for the vessel (known as the “paste”), the presence and nature of an additional type of clay (the “slip”) put on top of the paste especially for painted types, the type of paint used, and the material used to temper the clay.  Tempering is the addition of some material to the paste to make it easier to work.  Almost all Southwestern pottery types are tempered, and the type of tempering material is one major way different regional wares are distinguished.

To make this more concrete, let’s look at the Cibola pottery tradition, to which Chaco’s pottery belongs.  There are two “wares” within this tradition: Cibola white ware and Cibola gray ware.  The gray ware is the “utility ware” used for cooking pots and other mundane vessels.  It is never painted, and when it has any type of decoration this typically consists of some sort of corrugation.  Types of corrugation vary over time.  During the height of the Chaco era, the dominant type was corrugation all over the vessel, whereas in earlier times only the neck would be corrugated.  Corrugated sherds are very common at Chacoan sites, because these vessels were made in large numbers, broke frequently from heavy use, and were mostly large jars that broke into many pieces.  Vessels forms are almost entirely jars rather than bowls.  Temper is typically either sand (in some cases probably from ground-up sandstone) or ground-up sherds.

Black-on-white Sherd at Pueblo Alto

Cibola white ware is more complicated.  This is the main “decorated” ware made at Chaco and in the area to the south of it.  These vessels have the same sand- or sherd-tempered gray paste as the gray wares, but the decorated surface also has a white slip that gives vessel a white appearance from the exterior.  The slips are thin and often applied in a sort of “washy” manner, and in some cases the gray paste can be seen beneath them.  Designs are painted on with mineral-based paint (usually made with iron oxide), at least until about AD 1100.  Forms are both jars and bowls.  Jars are decorated on the exterior, while bowls are usually decorated on the interior.

Similar gray and white wares are present for most other regions during the same period.  San Juan gray and white wares were made north of the San Juan River and are distinguished primarily by the use of crushed volcanic rock rather than sand or sherds as temper.  The white slips on the white ware are also thicker and often highly polished.  To the west, in the Kayenta area, white wares were generally painted with organic (carbon-based) paints, and over time this practice spread eastward, until after 1100 it was common in the Cibola and San Juan areas as well.

Chuska Mountains from Peñasco Blanco

A particularly important ceramic area for understanding the Chaco system is the Chuska Mountain area to the west, along the Arizona-New Mexico border.  In regional ceramic terms this area basically separates the Cibola and Kayenta traditions, and in some ways it was transitional between the two.  Chuskan potters adopted carbon paint earlier than those in the Cibola and San Juan areas, so imported white wares from the Chuskas to Chaco are typically carbon-painted although the designs on them are generally the same as local types.  The thing that really distinguishes Chuska pottery, though, is temper.  Chuskan ceramics are nearly universally tempered with trachyte, a rare and very obvious type of volcanic rock that outcrops only in a small area in the Chuskas.  Trachyte-tempered pottery is therefore virtually guaranteed to have been imported from the Chuskas.

Why is this?  Because potters are generally thought to have used local materials for temper (and for clay, but pinpointing clay sources is much more difficult).  Designs might be similar over a wide area, but if the temper in a vessel is a material only found in a very restricted area, it’s virtually certain that the vessel was made near there.  Unfortunately, most of the materials used for temper in the Southwest are very widespread; there’s sand everywhere, sherds would be present wherever anyone had broken pottery (so, again, everywhere), and the types of volcanic rock used in the San Juan region were quite widespread.  Luckily, however, trachyte-tempered Chuska pottery is an exception to this, which makes it very easy to identify imports from the Chuska area at Chaco and elsewhere.

Corrugated Grayware Sherd at Wijiji

There are other ways to determine the source areas for pottery.  X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) are two widely-used methods of determining clay sources by the concentrations of trace elements in sherds, but they are very expensive and the results can be difficult to interpret.  Some studies using these techniques have been done in the Southwest, and a database of element concentrations for different source areas is beginning to develop.  At Chaco, however, analysis of pottery sources has so far depended primarily on the more traditional techniques of looking at paint, slip, and especially temper.  The biggest study was that done in connection with the Chaco Project, the results of which were presented in a 1997 publication by Wolky Toll and Peter McKenna (available on the Chaco Archive website).  Some of the data from this study was also used by Toll in his 2001 article that I have discussed before.

In brief, what Toll and McKenna found was that the Chacoans imported a lot of pottery.  The amounts of imports and their sources varied over time, however.  Imports were relatively rare before AD 800, making up 16.6% of the sample, but they came from a variety of sources, including the Chuskas, the San Juan region, and the Mogollon region to the south, which has very distinctive brownwares that are obvious imports when they appear.  Trachyte temper is only present in 3.6% of the total sample.  The period from 800 to 920 has a rather small sample from the Chaco Project excavations, but an increase in imported ceramics is apparent, with 28.1% imports and 9.7% trachyte-tempered.  The most common non-local temper, however, was chalcedonic sandstone, thought to come from the area to the south of Chaco, which comprised 13.2% of the ceramics from this period.  This is consistent with other evidence for intense contact with the area to the south at this time.

Pots from Early Periods at Chaco Museum

From 920 to 1040, overall imports drop slightly to 25.1%.  Chalcedonic sandstone drops to 7.9%, while trachyte rises to 12.3%, the highest percentage for any specific type of import.  This trend continues in the following period, from 1040 to 1100, which corresponds to the height of the Chaco system and the construction of most of the great houses in the canyon.  The overall percentage of imports rises to 39.8%, with almost all of that (30.7%) being trachyte-tempered.  It’s well-known that many other goods were being imported from the Chuskas at this time, especially wood, so it’s not surprising that Chuskan pottery would also have been popular.  There were a lot of Chacoan great houses and communities in the Chuska area, which seems to have been closely integrated into the overall Chacoan system, perhaps to a greater degree than other “outlying” areas.  The shift from south to west in the focus of the system seen in the pottery data is echoed in other types of evidence from this period.

The trend toward higher imports reaches a peak in the 1100 to 1200 period, which includes the end of Chaco’s regional dominance (but perhaps also its peak).  Imports constitute an astonishing 50.4% of all the ceramics from this period, and trachyte-tempered pots comprised 31.3%, a gain in overall percentage from the previous period but a loss relative to other imported types.  Chalcedonic sandstone continued to decline, while Kayenta wares increased to 4.8% after never having exceeded 1% before.  It’s important to note, however, that the sample from this period is much smaller than that for the previous period and it may not be totally representative.  The last period, from 1200 on, has a very small sample but continues to show a high percentage of overall imports (45.7%).  Trachyte drops to 21.6%, and San Juan wares skyrocket to 16.4% after never having exceeded 5% before.  This shift to the north for ceramic sources surely has to do with the relative decline of Chaco in this period and the rise of centers to the north, especially Aztec, which probably succeeded Chaco as the center of whatever Chaco had been the center of.  This is also the period during which Mesa Verde became a major population center, but despite the fact that the main decorated white ware type is known as “Mesa Verde Black-on-white” it’s unlikely that many of the San Juan wares found at Chaco came from Mesa Verde itself.  It’s much more likely that they came from Aztec or elsewhere in the Totah area, which had much closer ties to Chaco than Mesa Verde proper ever had.

Pots from Later Periods at Chaco Museum

So basically, the pattern that emerges from the ceramic data is of a shift in imports from the south to the west as the Chaco system really got going, followed by a shift to the north as it faltered or changed.  This is paralleled in other types of artifacts, as well as in settlement patterns.  The outlying communities to the south in the Red Mesa Valley were being abandoned in the late eleventh century even as new outliers like Salmon were being built to the north.  There are enough lines of evidence pointing in this direction to suggest that it corresponds to something real, but it’s hard to say what exactly was going on and why.

It’s also important to note the weaknesses in this analysis.  Remember, this is Chaco Project data.  It doesn’t include any of the pottery excavated from Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo del Arroyo, or any other sites excavated prior to the 1970s.  It also has a heavy bias toward data from Pueblo Alto, which as I’ve mentioned before can be problematic in overall interpretations of Chaco.  However, at least the heavy importation of Chuska wares does seem to be supported by data from Pueblo Bonito.  Anna Shepard, the ceramic analyst who pioneered many of the techniques that are now standard in the Southwest, analyzed the sherds from Neil Judd’s excavations at Bonito in the 1920s and concluded that many of them were imported from the Chuskas based on the presence of trachyte temper.  Judd, who was heavily devoted to the currently prevailing notion that Pueblos were self-sufficient for utilitarian goods like pottery, was so skeptical of this finding that he actually wrote a rebuttal to Shepard’s analysis and published both in his report.  As it turns out, however, Shepard was right, and ahead of her time, in seeing substantial importation of pottery to Chaco.

Corrugated Grayware Sherds at Kin Ya'a

Of course, this leaves open the question of why the Chacoans would have imported so much pottery.  Was it due to a shortage of materials?  Surely there was no shortage of clay or sand; Chaco may be lacking in most resources, but it has virtually inexhaustible supplies of clay and sand.  Wolky Toll is inclined to think that a shortage of fuel for firing may have been a factor, and that the heavily forested Chuskas may have been a better place to find fuel and thus to make pots.  Certainly local wood resources in the sparsely wooded area around Chaco would have run out quite quickly what with all the monumental construction, but I don’t really buy this.  Wood isn’t the only type of fuel you can use to make fires.  There is plenty of evidence that the Chacoans burned corncobs and other material in their domestic hearths, and Toll and McKenna refer in their report to an apparent pottery production location in the Chuskas, dating to Basketmaker III times, that was not near wood sources but did have “complex hearths with substantial fuel waste build up (primarily corn stalks).”

So if not for lack of fuel, why all the imports?  One clue may come from the types of vessels imported.  The Chuska imports were primarily gray ware utility vessels, which were used for cooking.  It has been proposed that trachyte provides better resilience to thermal shock from repeated heating and cooling than other tempers, and Chuska vessels may thus have been higher-quality cooking pots than other local or imported vessels.  (Similar arguments have been made for the superiority of corrugated pots as compared to plainwares.)  This is certainly possible, but in light of the numerous other Chuskan imports it’s not really clear to me that functional considerations were primary determinants of Chacoan trade patterns.  Maybe the Chacoans just had particularly close social and political ties to Chuskan communities, and that led to closer economic ties.  A lot of this depends on the nature of the Chaco system, which of course we don’t know much about.

In any case, the large-scale importation of pottery is one of the most striking examples of how Chaco was very much at the center of a regional system.  We may not know what that system was, exactly, or how it functioned, but we can see that it existed.  The evidence is right there in all those potsherds that litter the ground around the sites in the canyon.

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National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health

Meditation for Health Purposes Workshop

July 8, 2008 to July 9, 2008

Event Description

Executive Summary

The workshop participants highlighted the need to strengthen the evidence base regarding the mechanisms of action, and the efficacy and effectiveness of meditation for physical and mental health outcomes. It was noted that outcomes of interest would include not only the potential for the prevention of disease and modification of disease course, but also the management of symptoms and promotion of positive health and well-being. The participants also emphasized the need for greater collaboration among research teams, with a goal of improving cross-study comparability.

Specific needs and recommendations that were articulated to enhance further development of the evidence base included investigations in foundational clinical research and translational tools, treatment development studies, and a range of study designs testing efficacy.

  • Foundational clinical research. Foundational research to provide the basic information on which subsequent investigations of efficacy and effectiveness should be built is essential. Such foundational studies must be designed to forecast clinical relevance.
    • Clarify biological mechanisms and pathways by which meditative strategies may impact on health
    • Identify biological measures of the impact of meditation
    • Develop valid, standardized, unbiased, and objective measures and instruments to describe meditative interventions and assess dose effects
    • Develop precise criteria (processes and practices) of intervention fidelity for specific meditation practices
    • Develop indices of expectancy and adherence specific to investigations of meditation practices
  • Treatment development. Studies to develop meditation-based treatments could allow meditation strategies to be optimized for specific health conditions and populations.
    • Develop standardized treatment protocols for specific mental and physical health disorders to improve reproducibility, quality assurance, and cross-study comparability
    • Identify well-characterized patient populations for inclusion in subsequent efficacy studies
    • Develop strategies for monitoring and identifying potential risks and adverse effects
  • Studies to enhance the evidence base for efficacy. A variety of study types and designs are needed to contribute to the evidence base, ranging from retrospective and prospective observational studies to well-designed clinical efficacy investigations. Such studies must be well-controlled and focused, and will further the evidence base for potential clinical applications.
    • Explore opportunities to add measures and gather important descriptive data including recurrent cross-sectional studies such as large national surveys (NHANES, NHIS) and on-going cohort investigations
    • Ensure that studies are sufficiently powered and that the study designs are appropriate to answer the research questions
    • Incorporate inclusion of specific biological and psychological outcomes, with plausible mechanisms linking the specific meditative practice with relevant outcomes
    • Ensure outcomes are clinically significant, measurable, and linked to health importance, including short-term and long-term measures of symptom management, coping with illness, quality of life, prevention of disease, and biological indices of health and disease from multiple systems
    • Develop and incorporate validated and standardized measures of expectancy, treatment adherence, and treatment fidelity for cross-study comparisons. Such cross-study comparisons would be particularly powerful should there be a well-characterized participant specimen repository available for investigations conducted using standardized measures and protocols.
    • Include appropriate control groups that are carefully developed with a consideration of the specific question(s) to be addressed. Factors to be controlled should be specifically identified (e.g., contextual factors not relevant to the specific study hypotheses such as time, attention, built environment, etc)
    • Integrate masking strategies to reduce sources of bias. As with the control group design, such strategies must be developed in light of specific potential sources of bias.

Essential to the success of research to understand and assess the role of meditation for health purposes are focused, effective multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborative teams that incorporate expertise in basic science including cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, translational science, contemplative practices, clinical trials development, medicine, psychology, and biostatistical and trial design strategies and tools.


1. Fulltime.sh - Report both Oracle Wait and CPU time details

    from OraPub / Added

    Oracle provides session wait time details, like db file sequential reads. But there is nothing like this for CPU time, just DB CPU or background cpu time. That's it! So when asked, "What is Oracle doing with all that CPU?" we do not have the details and must infer based on a number of other pieces of information. This tool collects, for a selected Oracle process, both wait time and CPU time. Then it merges them together into a single report. The wait time is collected from v$session_event and the CPU is collected using the OS tool perf. This tool is the result of a collaborate effort of Craig Shallahamer (craig@orapub.com) and Frits Hoogland (frits.hoogland@gmail.com).

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Distance Between > Cities > Dubrovnik to Sarajevo

Distance Between Dubrovnik and Sarajevo is

135.44 kilometers
84.16 miles
Flying time between Dubrovnik and Sarajevo can take around 0 hours 14 minutes under avarage conditions.
Seems like it is a better idea to drive between Dubrovnik and Sarajevo.

Latitude: 42.6506
Longitude: 18.0914
State: Dubrovacko-Neretvanska, 03
Country: Croatia, HR
Continent: Europe
Timezone: +01:00

Latitude: 43.85
Longitude: 18.3833
State: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 01
Country: Bosnia Herzegovina, BA
Continent: Europe
Timezone: +01:00
If you want to travel by car you can see the driving route and driving distance between Dubrovnik and Sarajevo by car on the map below.
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How far between Dubrovnik to Sarajevo?

Your starting point Croatia, Dubrovnik is located at (42.6506, 18.0914).
Your ending point Bosnia Herzegovina, Sarajevo is located at (43.85, 18.3833)
Total distance from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo is 135.44 kms. 135.44 kms equals to 84.16 miles and 73.08 nautical miles.

Distance information is flight distance as a line. Flight time between Dubrovnik to Sarajevo can change depending on many different conditions.
Timezone for Dubrovnik and Sarajevo is +01:00

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Good housekeeping but what of human pain?

Matthias Corman says a governance policy will be released in the second part of the year.
Matthias Corman says a governance policy will be released in the second part of the year. Photo: Nic Walker

The day after the budget, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann quietly released a 39-page ministerial statement, Smaller and More Rational Government 2014-15, which provided an orderly and detailed overview of the Smaller Government initiatives in the budget.

It cited savings earmarked at $530 million through to 2017-18 (but excluding those from reduced grant, loan and other program expenses).

This is more than the $470 million savings reported a few days before the budget. The statement also provided a glimpse of what’s to come for the public service but nothing of the human pain involved.

Senator Cormann said an Australian Government Governance Policy would be released in the second part of the year “to support better decision-making and limit the creation of new government bodies in the future". And, as previously reported, the third phase of restructuring will be included in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.

To recap and summarise the rather complex position so far, the statement said the first two phases of the coalition’s Smaller Government agenda would together affect 88 bodies and another three funded by the previous government, resulting in the abolition of 76 bodies.

Some 16 of those reforms involved consolidating functions from abolished bodies into government departments. Another 25 bodies would be merged into other types of government entities.

36 bodies to be abolished

One privatisation had commenced (Medibank Private) and five scoping studies announced in the budget (Defence Housing Australia; Australian Hearing; the Royal Australian Mint, the registry function of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Defence Service Homes Insurance Scheme). The second phase (the budget measures) would affect 48 government bodies and two proposed bodies committed to by the previous government.

In this phase, 36 bodies would be abolished, the creation of the two would be stopped and the back-office functions of seven more (the arts collection agencies) would merge.

As reported, 10 entities would cease and a number be absorbed into departments, the most significant being moving Customs into Immigration to form the Australian Border Force.

Others were the absorption of four health bodies into Health; the Telecommunications Universal Management Agency into Communications; and two wine entities into Agriculture.

Then there were mergers: Comsuper and the Commonwealth Superannuation corporation; the five civilian merit review tribunals; functions of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner with the Human Rights Commission, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Attorney-General’s Department; two private health insurance bodies and their functions with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission[ACCC], the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman; the AQUAPLAN Working Group with the Aquaculture Committee; several biosecurity bodies absorbed into the National Biosecurity Committee; the National Competition Council Secretariat into the ACCC; and the National Blood Authority into the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority.

Significant initiatives

There was more to be resolved in consultation with the states and territories (good luck with that in the current climate), in particular the various health bodies to be merged into a new health productivity and performance commission.

Asset sales would be conducted in the next three years and also a “contestability framework" set up to assess what functions should be open to competition and how this should occur.

Several of the most significant initiatives from the first phase of agency rationalisation had been included as measures in the 2014-15 budget, in particular savings from the absorption of AusAID into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; savings from consolidating key parts of the old Department of Regional Australian Local Government, the Arts and Sport into the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development; and proceeds from the sale of Medibank Private.

Although most of the phase two initiatives were to take effect by July 1, 2015, some may take longer, especially where negotiation with the states was required or where legislation was required to create replacement bodies.

The governance policy issued later this year would consider introducing a requirement for cost-benefit analyses for future proposals to create new government bodies, to guard against a future loss of discipline over decisions on the size and shape of government.

Turmoil to thousands of families

It would ensure that fundamental efficiency and effectiveness considerations were given proper attention, with a number of principles from the National Commission of Audit considered for inclusion. The government would also put in place (as recommended by the commission) a publicly-searchable directory of government bodies to put an official number on the total bodies (currently numbering around 1000) and provide more clarity on how to find the most appropriate part of government to deal with.

Whatever you think of the budget itself and the turmoil to thousands of public service families that it involves, a lot of this is reasonable housekeeping. That’s apart from a few apparently ideologically-driven bits and pieces that might not provide much gain for the pain.

What remains to be seen is how far political ideology rather than good management will drive the third phase.

The Australian Financial Review


Asthma: Saffron

Asthma: Saffron

ASTHMA: Taken in meat it (saffron) causeth a long and easie breathing, and helpeth the Asthma.
Gardeners Labyrinth, 1577

Recipe Instructions:
Source: Alice Cooke Brown. Early "American Herb Recipes", (1966)

Tags and Uses for this Remedy

  • Archaic :Many early herbal remedies are culled from books in the public domain and continue to be of great interest to modern herbalists and others interested in the history and practice of botanical medicine. They are presented here for informational purposes only, and are not meant to be taken without the knowledge required to adapt them to modern herbal practices.
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Active Galaxy

Active Galaxies are galaxies characterized by certain properties: (1) High Luminosity, (2) Nonthermal Spectra that do not look like the sum of many stellar spectra, (3) Most of the luminosity is in a region of the spectrum other than optical (e.g., radio, UV, Infrared), (4) bright, star-like nucleus, (5) strong emission lines (most), (6) rapid variability, and sometimes (7) radio jets.

The central region of an active galaxy is called an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). This is where the energtic activity is concentrated. The active galactic nuclei are believed to contain supermassive black holes that power the nonstellar phenomena associated with active galaxies.

Examples of Active Galaxies include Seyfert Galaxies, Radio Galaxies, and BL Lac objects.

Figure: Artist's conception of an accretion disk and jet around a supermassive black hole in the core of an active galaxy. (Greg Foss; PSC)


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Text-Only Site

Women's Basketball

Bunky Harkleroad
Bunky Harkleroad
Title: Head Coach
Phone: (916) 278-4479
Email: bunky.harkleroad@csus.edu
Year: Second
Previous College: Berea College, '93

After a historic first year at Sacramento State Bunky Harkleroad enters his second season leading the Hornet women's basketball program in 2014-15.

Harkleroad led the Hornets to a school record 11-1 start with a record nine-game winning streak, using his uptempo system to lead the team to wins over quality programs such as Oregon and Saint Mary's. Sacramento State qualified for the Big Sky Tournament for the third consecutive season and finished the year at 18-12, just one win shy of the program record.

During the 2014 season Harkleroad's squad broke the NCAA single-season record for three-pointers made and attempted while also breaking school records in points, scoring average, and fewest turnovers. The team led the nation in steals per game and 3-pointers per game while also ranking highly in points per game and turnover margin. Junior point guard Fantasia Hilliard earned honorable mention All-Big Sky Honors after breaking the program career and single-season assist records.

Harkleroad runs a high-tempo system that continues the playing style employed by Craighead. His non-traditional style produces fast-paced play aimed at overwhelming an opponent both physically and mentally while providing fans with an entertaining product. With an overall record of 276-135 over 14 seasons as a head coach, his style has proved to be extremely effective.

Glenville State, which is located in Glenville, W.Va., led NCAA Div. II in scoring in each of Harkleroad's four seasons and averaged 95.3 points per game in 2012-13. Glenville's record improved every season during Harkleroad's tenure while the squad broke virtually every offensive record at the college, compiling a 91-30 overall record with a 47-3 mark in home games. He was a finalist for NCAA Div. II Coach of the Year after his final season at Glenville State.

Glenville State made two NCAA Tournament appearances in Harkleroad's four seasons at the school while winning a West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC) tournament title and a regular season title. The Pioneers went 27-4 in 2012-13 while outscoring their opposition by an average of 18.1 points per game with 13 games scoring more than 100 points. The team also broke the Div. II NCAA Tournament record with 21 three-pointers made in a game vs. Shaw that season.

In addition to leading NCAA Div. II in scoring Glenville State also led in three-pointers made per game in three of Harkleroad's four seasons at the school and led Div. II in turnover margin in 2012. He was named the 2013 WVIAC Coach of the Year and the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) Region Coach of the Year before becoming a finalist for national Coach of the Year honors.

Harkleroad came to Glenville State after spending nine seasons as the head coach at Berea College, an NAIA Div. II school located in Berea, Ky. His overall record at Berea was 167-93 while he led the team to its first 20-win season in school history and totaled five 20-win seasons. Berea won three consecutive Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (KIAC) tournament titles and made three straight NAIA National Tournament appearances between 2005 and 2007.

Berea College also broke 33 NAIA records and 24 team records during Harkleroad's tenure. His players earned two NAIA honorable mention All-America honors and one WBCA/Kodak honorable mention All-America award.

Harkleroad attended Berea College where he played for NAIA Hall of Fame coach Roland Wierwille and graduated in 1993 with a bachelor of arts degree in history. He earned a teaching certificate and taught public school in Berea for 12 years before earning a master's degree in sports administration from the United States Sports Academy in 2004.

Harkleroad and his wife Shan have three children, Tory (20), Tahni (19), and Ty (16).

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Joe Flacco Joe Flacco

If only the power went out after the game.

Flacco and teammate Marshal Yanda appeared to be in disbelief after the win, with Yanda audibly saying to Flacco: "Holy s---, huh?"

Lights out! Power goes down at the Super Bowl

Flacco's response, caught by CBS microphones? "F------ awesome!"

Neither appeared to be aware that they were on live TV at the time.

The Parents Television Council is already calling on the Federal Communications Commission to take action against CBS for airing the obscenity.

"Despite empty assurance after empty assurance from the broadcast networks that they would never air indecent material, especially during the Super Bowl, it has happened again," PTC President Tim Winter said in a statement. "No one should be surprised that a jubilant quarterback might use profane language while celebrating a career-defining win, but that is precisely the reason why CBS should have taken precautions. ... The broadcast networks continue to have 'malfunctions' during the most-watched television event of the year, and enough is enough."

CBS had no comment on the incident; however, a source tells the network does not delay live sporting events and the exchange occurred right before it switched over to its post-game broadcast mode, which does feature a delay.

Hey, at least it wasn't a wardrobe malfunction.

Watch the exchange below. (Warning: Contains profane language, obviously.)


Career Pathways and Technical Education Task Force

Committee Recommendations

Career Guidance

Recommendation 1: Enhance the current World’s Best Workforce legislation about student plans to require enhanced comprehensive individualized life plans and strengthen the process for review and revision of those plans.

Recommendation 2: All students should have regular and frequent access to multiple individuals within the school community who have reliable and accurate information/resources about postsecondary education and training options; including career and technical education and training options, to enhance the learning process and the development of their individual life plan.

Recommendation 3: All Minnesota families, including families of youth with disabilities, families experiencing socio-economic challenges, those with first-generation college bound students, and multicultural families, will have the opportunity to engage in students’ planning activities and will have access to training and resources so they may help their youth make appropriate career planning and education choices.

Recommendation 4: School and community partnerships are a key component in in the success of implementing individualized life plans and thus schools are encouraged to develop an infrastructure for fully engaging with employers, chambers of commerce, labor groups, postsecondary institutions, workforce development related agencies and other community based organizations

Experiential Learning

Student Transitions

System Flexibility

Recommendation 1: Maintain high standards for education professionals and allow for flexibility in Minnesota teacher licensure structure that promote opportunities to explore new roles in supporting student’s career development.

Recommendation 2: Provide flexible governance structures that ensure that schools (districts) have the capacity and opportunity to modify/alter current practices to meet the needs of all learners.

Recommendation 3: Promote broad levels of collaboration with public and private entities to improve the alignment and increase the availability of resources and services that students’ can benefit from as they prepare for and access college and career opportunities.

Recommendation 4: Fully utilize technology in creating system-wide approaches in supporting students career awareness, knowledge and skills regarding future postsecondary education participation and career options, etc.).

Recommendation 5: Establish flexible strategies and procedures for working with business/employers in increasing opportunities for students to gain knowledge and experience in relation to career fields.


What do you think guys think about this kid? He is listed at 6'4 and 239lbs who primarily rotated at the RDE and LDE positions on the line but his frame suggests that he would fit better as a future NFL linebacker. Most will probably just write him off as a 3-4 pass rusher but I think he could be a real playmaker as a 4-3 outside linebacker with his fluid movements in the open field. 245-250 might be the perfect weight for him and he would still have the athleticism (but would need the coaching) to cover TEs in the NFL. He has a real shot to offer a 4-3 team the potential of a 3 down LBer who can be a threat to rush the passer at any time, cover TEs and RBs out of the backfield, and move sideline to sideline to make plays. He is projected to be a 3rd to 4th round pick currently.