Principal Roads Research Articles

Hospederías rurales en la Siria bizantina

From the middle of the fourth century, we see Syrian Christians treveling for devotional reasons to the tombs of the martyrs, or setting out for places where celebrated ascetics lived in sanctity. With the pilgrims, also came traders and merchants seeking to sell their products. All were in need of lodging, which they found along the principal roads, but especially in centers of pilgrimage. We find monumental inns which had a certain hotel and sanitary organization. Most of all, we find more modest inns composed of a single, one storey building. At times, the inn is reduced to a single room adjoining the church. The Syrian Church is to be admired for the creation of its own network of inns. Thus, the pilgrim Egeria had reason to be satisfied at her welcome by Syrian monks, “saints and true men of God”.

Mulholland Highway and the Engineering Culture of Los Angeles in the 1920s

Mulholland Highway and the Engineering Culture of Los Angeles in the 1920s Matthew W. Roth (bio) Mulholland Highway, a twisting 22-mile roadway along the ridgetops of the Hollywood Hills (fig. 1), meant different things to the real estate investors who first promoted it, to the engineers who designed it and supervised its construction, and to the property owners who encountered the environmental effects of its completion. 1 “The property in the district is owned by a small group of capitalists who expect to be rewarded for their enterprise by the subdivision of the frontage on the highway into building sites,” wrote the trade journal for the region’s construction industry. 2 But Mulholland Highway did not raise property values and development opportunities in the hills and the adjacent San Fernando Valley until a generation later than anticipated, when its original advocates were no longer in a position to benefit. The reasons are apparent in retrospect: the highway created a cul-de-sac rather than a connection with the principal roads of the growing city, and the threat of fire and landslide in the chaparral environment of the hills discouraged development and settlement. Despite the known fire threat and the city’s established practice of integrating the construction of highways and underground utilities, the roadbuilding project did not incorporate [End Page 545] provision for water mains. The fire hazard only surfaced in the proceedings when the city engineering staff sought a pretext for accelerated administrative procedures, and it still did not cause modification of the design or construction. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. For the motorcade celebrating the opening of Mulholland Highway, the participants traveled from the western terminus to Laurel Canyon. The highway extended further east from there, but because it dead-ended at a cliff the celebrants were diverted to Laurel Canyon. (Automobile Club of Southern California Archives.) The disjunction between the expectations of its promoters and what the engineers produced was so extreme that the promoters petitioned to close the road barely five years after raising a million dollars to complete it. 3 This disparity cannot be explained away as unanticipated consequences because, for one thing, the engineers knew the consequences even as they conducted the work. For another, they pursued the project with uncommon fervor, even making successful requests for dispensation from standard administrative practices. What did the engineers want? If they were not simply compliant technicians leashed to the aims of business and political elites, how did they decide what to build? During the approval process and the construction itself, the city engineers left a record of their aspirations in testimony to the city council, in departmental reports, and in naming the highway after William Mulholland, the principal figure in the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the founder of municipal engineering practice in the city. As John A. Griffin, head of the city’s engineering department, wrote: “It is named as a tribute and to be built as a monument to a great engineer, ‘Our Bill,’ Bill Mulholland, the builder of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the one man among all others who put our beloved City of Los Angeles on the map.” 4 They also left the record of the road itself, an expressive if not articulated statement by engineers who, for the most part, spoke with their shovels. To the city engineering department, Mulholland Highway was a massive reordering of the natural environment that followed in several ways the pattern of the engineers’ greatest triumph, the Los Angeles (or Owens Valley) Aqueduct, which opened in 1913 and carried water 233 miles to the city from the eastern Sierras. The highway accorded with the engineers’ sense of beauty in the landscape, an aspect of engineering that historian David Nye has described as the “technological sublime.” 5 Its construction engineer, Dewitt Reaburn, described one aspect of this aesthetic when he extolled the vantage points that the road would afford: “In driving over the completed portion of the highway, one is charmed and amazed at the wonderful view of the surrounding country, which is continually changing as the vision sweeps from one side of the summit to the other. The...

A School "On Fire": One Principal's Road to Success

This principal has been a success in leading her school to excellence. The following criteria may not work in every setting, but any school would benefit by incorporating at least one of them.

On the Principal Roads Between the Capital and the County-offices in the ancient Mimasaka Province

In “Engishiki” there is no record of the stage towns of the ancient Mimasaka Province. According to researches made by some scholars, however, Gunga (county-offices in ancient times) played a role of Honjin (officially appointed inns) in the Middle Ages. In this thesis the writer assumed the existence of the Kokufu (ancient capital) and the Guke (ancient county-offices) in the Mimasaka Province, and the roads connecting these with each other.Mimasaka Kokufu The location of Mimasaka Kokufu is supposed by preceding scholars to have been somewhere in or around Soja, Tsuyama City. The office-building of Mimasaka Kokufu may have been on the terrace where Soja now stands, “Minamikobatake” (a place name) which is on the northern end of the terrace and at which the monument of the ruins of Kokufu stands. The area the office building occupied is topographically supposed to have been six cho (about fourteen square acres).Tomahigashi Guke and Tomanishi Guke In the fifth year of “Jogan” (863 A.D.) Tomada County was divided in two, respectively named Tomahigashi County and Tomahishi County. It is very probable that Tomahigashi Guke was to the southeast of Kokufu, where there still remains a place named “Tsubaki-koge” and a site of the ruins of the temple of Tsubaki-koge. There is nothing left to give us a clue by which to locate Tomanishi Guke. The Guke may have beed located in the vicinity of Kokufu.Aita Guke From the excavation of ancient slates, earthen ware with “Kori” written in ink, the writer would like to show that the location of the Gunga was on the terrace along the Yoshino River with such places as “Saimyogaichi” and “Sangenyashimo” in Kawakita, Sakuto Town, as its center.Katta Guke In 1970 some pieces of earthen ware with the stamp of “Kori” on them were discovered in the field of “Odo 10” at Taira, Shoo Town. Some time later, at the site of the office building, “Sueki” and some pieces of iron dust were also found. Three years later, at “Kawanishi” near the Katta Shrine, about four cho south of this field, the old ditches, the foundation stones of the old buildings, and slates were excavated. The former, that is Taira, is assumed to have been the site of the Gunga, because of the discovery of ancient earthen ware, but the writer does not want to accept this as the site of the Gunga, particularly due to the shape of the area and its size. Instead, the writer proposes that the two areas of the terrace on the right band of the Taki River should be accepted as the Gunga site.Kume Guke On the terrace two hundred meters east of the ruins of the Kume Temple in Miyao, Kume Town, the remains of more than twenty buildings and their ditches were found, and so this is assumed as the old site of the Gunga. The Gunga was constructed over four periods, but the first construction was taken as the example for the rest.Oba Guuke On the terrace of Gotan, Kuse Town, are the ruins of Shirainomiyake and the Oba Temple. It is said that the remains of Jori are seen even today in the districts where Miyake was established. In Oba Province the remains of Jori are most remarkable in the area along the Meki River, which is very close to Gotan Terrace. It may be thought that the Guke was situated in the neighbourhood of the ruins of Shirainomiyake. When the fact is taken into account that the location of the monument of Shirainomiyake is that of the ruins of Oba, however, the Gunga should be supposed to have been on the terrace in the western neighbourhood of the site of the temple.

The Ancient Roads of Eastern Lucania

The area under study comprises primarily the eastern section of Lucania south of the stretch of the Via Appia from Gravina to Venosa (Fig. 1); the purpose is to examine the network of principal ancient roads (Fig. 3). The terrain imposes limits on the siting of these roads, but, as will be seen, changes in the distribution of population shifted the importance of various routes at different times. The literary sources, ancient and medieval, offer some assistance in ascertaining the location of some of the routes, but the main tools are air photography and autopsy.II. The Written SourcesThese are somewhat sparse and have produced several problems that themselves require elucidation. They are:1. The Itinerarium Antonini. This describes three routes through the area under study:(a) In lines 104.1–104.4, part of a long route from Mediolanum to Regio, we read Venusium civitas, Opino 15, ad fluvium Bradanum 28, Potentia 24.(b) In lines 113.1–5, part of a route from Equum Tuticum to Regio, we read Venusia, ad Pinum 12, Ipnum 12, Caelianum 40, Heraclia 28. None of the figures is secure.

THE CENTRAL PLACE AND LOCAL PRINCIPAL ROADS OF THE ANCIENT HYUGA PROVINCE, KYUSHU

This paper is intended to be a summary of the results obtained from the historico-geographical survey of ancient cities and traffic roads in South Kyushu, on which we have not seen any reports as yet. The earliest historical record of principal roads in ancient Japan dates back to 646 A. D. in the “Taika Reformation” documents. It still remains unclarified, however, to what regions in the ancient Japanese islands the roads were extended, on what scale each station was established, and what practical functions it had. The names of the stations which were set up over the country in those days can be obtained from the historical document “Engishiki, ” edited c. 927 A. D. The record shows that the roads used to run from Nara or Kyoto, both being the ancient capitals of Japan, to all provinces, just in the same way as the principal roads of the ancient Roman Empire radiated to its provinces from the capital Rome. It is also apparent from “Engishiki” that stations of those days were distributed at intervals of 16-20km. along the road. The present writer has made a historico-geographical research on the 16 sites of stations in the ancient Hyuga province of Kyushu Island. The method adopted in this research was to investigate the names of old local places, “Koaza, ” on cadastral maps and then to observe the topography of the sites of stations. There have been evidences clear enough to indicate the following three points: First, it seems that the original forms of the two national roads in Kyushu today, Road No. 10 running along the coast of the Hyuga Sea and No. 268 crossing the Kyushu mountains from east to west, can be traced back to ancient times. Secondly, present Nobeoka, Miyazaki, and Kobayashi in Miyazaki Prefecture are supposed to have originated from sites of ancient stations. Lastly, it has become evident that the central place of the day was situated at Saito City of present day, where there used to be a political center in the age of “Kofun” culture around the 3rd and 4th centuries, and where an ancient provincial capital called “Kokufu” is known to have been built in the 7th century.

On the Fief System of the Hikone Daimiate

The daimiate (feudal manor of a daimio) was the most important regional unit of the Edo Era. Studying the daimiate, therefore, is essential to throw light on the regional stucture of Japan's historical past.Many problems, such as comparison of economic policies of various daimiates, or the relations of a daimiate and its castle town, will come into question. This report tries to pursue the problem of the fief system of the daimiate.In the early feudal age, vassals of a daimio (feudal lord) were generally provided with actual land as fief, while later, in the Edo Era, annual stipend in the form of rice gradually replaced the older method. In the North-Eastern and the South-Western Japan, however, where the clans of the early feudal age still preserved theis rule over the same district, the older fief method remained for a long period. In the case of the Kinki District (central Japan), only the Hikone and the Kii Daimiates retained it.In the Hikone Daimiate, the samurai (upper-class vassal) was given land receiving uniformly forty per cent of its annual product as fief. As the amount of rice received by each samurai differs depending on the quality of soil at his estate, allotment of land was renewed at the start of the system. Important localities such as principal roads and the villages along the shore of the Lake Bina, were put under direct control of the daimio. Localities in danger of flood or drought were carefully excepted from those prepared for vassals. Also, the estate of a vassal was scattered over several places to avoid concentration. Thus, when a disaster occurred, damages were shared equally by all vassals. Besides, it had an effect of preventing a vassal to become overpowerful in his estate.

The Variation in the Road and the Valley Mouth Settlements of the Southern Nara Valley

The Nara valley all sides of which are surrounded by the mountains has two characteristics; one is the passing and circulating character of an exotic culture which runs into this basin through the valley erosing this mountainous region, the other is the stagnant and exclusive character caused by the special characteristic of a basin. In the ancient and middle ages when our primitive state was established in this basin, the latter characteristic was dominant. The former one, however, has been a little more remarkable, since Osaka became the economic centre after recent times. But the modern culture which indicated the industrialization, did not permeate into this inland basin from the sea-board. And in the province of Yamato which has many noted places and historic remains, the road displays the function as the pilgrim-roads. This provides the circulating and passing character of the basin, On the other hand, the roads which lead to the low-area of the central basin from the mountainous areas of the surroundings, have been used as the commercial-roads between highlands and plains.In this thesis, I limitted the district in question to the southern area of the Nara Valley, and examined historically the significance of the five main-roads which developed and ran from south to north between this district and the Yoshino Valley and the two principal roads running from east to west through the southern area of the basin together with the function of the settlements which developed in the Valley Mouth along the roads. In case that I consider the character of the Valley Mouth Settlements, I examined the scope, within which the marriages were prevalent, on the basis of the census registration in 1870 which had been preserved in the public offices.

MINUTE STRUCTURE OF THE RETINA IN MONKEYS AND IN APES

The anatomy of the eye in general, and the fine structure of the photoreceptive membrane, the retina, in particular, was the object of keen interest from the very beginning of modern histologic investigation. It was rightly judged that the knowledge of this is one of the principal roads leading to the understanding of the all-important function of vision. This interest was even more enhanced after it was found that the retina was a derivative of the central nervous system. By studying it there was hope to lift the veil behind which the secrets of the minute organization of the nervous system hid. It is not astonishing, therefore, if among early and later students of the retina one finds such names as Ehrenberg, Treviranus, Remak, Valentin, Bidder, Hannover, Brucke, Corti, Bowman, Kolliker, H. Muller, M. Schultze, Merkel, Schwalbe, Bird and Schafer. However, not before Tartuferi applied the method of

Old Road Maps

THE reference in NATURE of September 16, p. 90, to John Cary's old road map prompts me to send particulars of an old and rare book, “A Pocket-Guide to the English Traveller: Being a Compleat Survey and Admeasurement of all the principal Roads and most considerable cross Roads in England and Wales” by Thomas Gardner, 1719. There are one hundred copper-plate engravings showing the roads, with the bridges, woods, inns, churches, beacons, gallows, etc., passed en route. The scale is, for the actual roads, about one inch to the mile, and every mile is numbered. This book has been in my possession for more than forty years, and I have never met anyone who has seen another copy. It is dedicated to “His Most Serene Majesty George, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, etc.”

II.—On the Site of Cambodunum. By the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.S.A.

The object of the present communication is to lay before the Society of Antiquaries of London, first, a concise history of the extraordinary variations of opinion among the antiquaries who have devoted themselves to the study of the Roman antiquities of Britain, respecting the site of a station the name of which is preserved by Antonine, Cambodunum or Camulodunum, the copies of the Itinerary varying; and secondly, a piece of evidence which I have lately discovered which seems to me to go very far towards determining this long doubtful and unsettled question. I may add that if the evidence which will be produced is thought sufficient to establish the point, the opinion respecting the site of Cambodunum which has now for more than half a century had possession of the public mind will be shewn to be untenable, and a course of one of the principal roads made, or at least used, by the Romans, be shewn to be drawn with more of the wisdom which is justly attributed to that wise and noble people.