beads < - >shells< - > stones

beads<  -  >shells< - > stones

Gifford states that such small pieces of calcite or aragonite could not definitely be classed as "money stone." They may actually be shell, he says, as the formation of calcite and aragonite occur in both inorganic and organic forms.

Mmbul, Gaw, Fe' or Rai, Yar, and Reng

Two Chiefs of Yap Island Western Caroline Islands
with three perforated stones

Rai, or stone money, are large, circular stone disks carved out of limestone formed from aragonite and calcite crystals. Rai stones were mined in Palau and transported for use to the island of Yap. They have been used in trade by the locals and are described by some observers as a form of currency.
There are five major types of rai stone monies:Mmbul, Gaw, Fe' or Rai, Yar, and Reng.
The considered value of a specific stone is based on its size and craftsmanship and also on the history of the stone. If many people—or no one at all—died when the specific stone was transported, or a famous sailor brought it in, the value of the rai stone increases. Rai stones were and still are used in rare, important social transactions such as marriage, inheritance, political deals, sign of an alliance, ransom of the battle dead or, rarely, in exchange for food. Many of them are placed in front of meeting houses or along pathways.
Ownership is transferred without physically relocating the stones.
- See more at: http://www.maritimeheritage.org/ports/gilbertIslands.html#sthash.vEhsXQWS.dpuf

Two Chiefs of Yap Island Western Caroline Islands 
with three perforated stones

Rai, or stone money, are large, circular stone disks carved out of limestone formed from aragonite and calcite crystals. Rai stones were mined in Palau and transported for use to the island of Yap. They have been used in trade by the locals and are described by some observers as a form of currency.
There are five major types of rai stone monies: Mmbul, Gaw, Fe' or Rai, Yar, and Reng.
The considered value of a specific stone is based on its size and craftsmanship and also on the history of the stone. If many people—or no one at all—died when the specific stone was transported, or a famous sailor brought it in, the value of the rai stone increases. Rai stones were and still are used in rare, important social transactions such as marriage, inheritance, political deals, sign of an alliance, ransom of the battle dead or, rarely, in exchange for food. Many of them are placed in front of meeting houses or along pathways.
Ownership is transferred without physically relocating the stones.

http://www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontributions/HistoryTechnology/pdf_hi/SSHT-0023.pdf

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Island Money, by Michael F. Bryan: 
Consider the case of the Irish American David O’Keefe from Savannah, Georgia, who, after being shipwrecked on Yap in the late nineteenth century, returned to the island with a sailing vessel and proceeded to import a large number of stones in return for a bounty of Yapese copra (coconut meat). The arrival of O’Keefe (and other Western traders) increased the number and size of the stones being brought back to the island, and by one accounting, Yap stones went from being “very rare” in 1840 to being plentiful—more than 13,000 were to be found on the island by 1929. No longer restricted by shell tools and canoes, the largest stones arriving grew from four feet in diameter to the colossal 12-foot stones that are now a part of monetary folklore. Yet the great infusion of stones did not inflate away their value. Since the stones of Captain O’Keefe were obviously more easily obtained, they traded on the island at an appropriately reduced value relative to the older stones gotten at much greater cost. In essence, O’Keefe and other Westerners were bringing in large numbers of “debased” stones that could easily be identified by the Yapese.

The following portion of the history of the stone money is agreed upon.

a. Urun and Tamangiro, from Af Village, in Tamil Munici- pality, went to the Palau Islands and obtained three pieces of stone money. They gave the larger piece to the people of Af Village. By agreement between them, Urun retained one of the smaller ones and Tamangiro the other smaller one. The piece in question in this action is the one retained by Urun in this division.

b. Urun's house burned down and the people of Af Village helped him rebuild it. In payment of this assistance, Urun gave the stone money now in question to the people of Af Village.

c. During a "tarn" celebration given by Af Village, the people of Dechumui Village put on a dance about people going on a trip and, in appreciation for this dance, the people of Af Village gave the stone money in question, among other things, to the people of Dechumur Village and the stone money was removed to Dechumur Village and remained there until about January 15, 1960.

d. Some people from Dechumur Village made a trip to Palau and brought more stone money of various sizes. The piece brought in on this trip by Tamag was the same size as that given by Af Village to Dechumur Village, and this piece brought in by Tamag was given to Af Village and the piece now in question given to Tamag in exchange for the one he brought in.

e. Tamag gave the piece now in question to his brother Fazagol when the latter was about to build a house. Fazagol gave this stone money to Puguu in payment for some tin roofing for the house.

f.    On or about January 15, 1960, the defendant Pong, with a group of men gathered by him, removed the stone money in question from Dechumur Village over the protests of the plaintiff Choo who was present during part of the removal, protested that the stone money belonged to him, and told them not to remove it. Later, on Pong's authorization, the stone money was shipped to the Money Museum of the National Bank of Detroit, Michigan, in accordance with the agreement of sale with Pong under which he received $125.00 for the stone money.

lulustein

 

Lulus Debüt bezieht sich auf eine Legende: Napoleon III. nahm seinen Sohn Lulu mit 14 Jahren auf den Feldzug mit, auf dass er das Kriegshandwerk von der Pike auf lerne. Er solle frühzeitig seinem großen Ahnen folgen, damit, wie der Vater hoffte, aus dem kleinen Napoleon einmal ein großer werde. In Saarbrücken, in Feindesland, angelangt, stießen die beiden zum ersten Mal auf Widerstand. Napoleon meinte zu seinem Sohn Lulu, dass es nun Zeit für die erste Lektion sei, das Abfeuern einer Kanone. Diese bestand Lulu dann auch sehr gut. Die Ausbildung konnte dann allerdings nicht weiter gehen, weil danach zurückgegangen wurde. Daher konnte Lulu die soldatische Ausbildung nicht abschließen, was dann auch als Grund angenommen werden dürfte, dass er eines so jähen Todes in Afrika sterben musste

strangely active fossils

It is as if the past surfaces in itself but in the shape of personalities which are independent, alienated, off-balance, in some sense embryonic, strangely active fossils, radioactive, inexplicable in the present where they surface, and all the more harmful and autonomous.   Deleuze 1989 /123

fossil/ foto / fetish

geological photograph / material quality of memory

There are a number of radioactive elements that occur in nature. In some cases, these can be deposited in fossil and subfossil specimens, causing the specimens to become radioactive. Naturally-occurring radioactive materials are generally not subject to regulation and these specimens do not emit enough radiation to have harmful effects on the timescales that are usually involved in the workplace. Nonetheless, it is important to be aware of the potential for radioactivity in fossils and take steps to avoid unnecessary exposure. Specimens of unknown origin should have their mineral components identified by scientific analytical methods; radioactive samples can also be identified using Geiger counter.   paleo portal

skara brae

forum / field

The Vatican Meteorite Collection:
Current research on these meteorites is centered on understanding their physical structure, including the nature and extent of the pore spaces, cracks and voids present in these rocks.

‘Forensic Architecture is grounded in both field-work and forum-work; fields are the sites of investigation and analysis and forums the political spaces in which analysis is presented and contested. Each of theses sites presents a host of architectural and political problems.
In fields, lets say starting with Territories, I attempted to engage a kind of “archeology” of present conditions as they could be read, or misread, in architecture. This archeology is not always undertaken by direct contact with the materiality under analysis, but with images of it. The spaces that we debate, analyze, or make claims on behalf of, are very often media products. Similarly, drawing a map includes synthesizing satellite and aerial images as well as images from the ground. Some images are created by optics and some by different sensors that register spectrums beyond the visible. One needs sensors to read sensors.
So this is a kind of archaeology of spaces as they are captured in these different forms of capture and registration. You read details, speckles, pixels and patterns, connect them to larger forces, or at least you understand the impossibility of doing so, often noting paradoxes and misrepresentations. We have done this very close reading of aerial images of colonies in the West Bank, we have read almost all elements from architectural through infrastructural archaeological to horticultural ones visible in these images as a set of tools in a battlefield.
Then there is the forum: a site of interpretation, verification, argumentation and decision. International courtrooms, tribunals, and human rights councils are of course the most obvious sites of contemporary forensics. But there are other political and professional forums.
Each forum is different. The third component of forensics, beyond the architectural and aesthetic, is what you need in order to stand between that “thing” and the forum: an “interpreter.” In ancient Rome it would be the orator; in our days it is perhaps the scientist, or the architect, or the geographer — the “expert witness” that translates from the language of space to the language of the forum. This definition of forensics might help expand the meaning of the term from the legal context to all sorts of others. Politics, as it is undertaken, around the problems of space and its interpretations, is a “forensic politics” as far I understand it.
Each of the multiple political and legal forums in use today — professional, scientific, parliamentary or legal — operates by a different set of protocols of representation and debate. They each have another frame of analysis. Each embodies dominant political forces and ideologies — that is to say that each instrumentalizes forensics as a part of a different ideological structure. In the turbulence of a changing world, there are also informal, subversive and ad-hoc and crisis forms of gathering: pop-up assemblies of protest and revolt in which the debate of financial, architectural (the housing or mortgage crisis), and geopolitical issues are often articulated.
Forensic architecture should thus be understood not only as dealing with the interpretation of past events as they register in spatial products, but about the construction of new forums. It is both an act of claim-making on the bases of spatial research and potentially an act of forum-building.’

http://www.forensic-architecture.org/ 

FORUM / what is out of doors
a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.
an Internet message board
a public square or marketplace used for judicial and other business. 
FORES [outside] door 

FIELD
Old English feld "plain, open land" (as opposed to woodland), also "a parcel of land marked off and used for pasture or tillage," probably related to Old English folde "earth, land," from Proto-Germanic *felthuz "flat land" (common West Germanic, cf. Old Saxon and Old Frisian feld "field," Old Saxon folda "earth," Middle Dutch velt, Dutch veld Old High German felt, German Feld "field," but not found outside it; Swedish fält, Danish felt are borrowed from German), from PIE *pel(e)-tu-, from root *pele- (2) "flat, to spread" (see plane (n.1)).  

"to go out to fight," 16c., from field (n.) in the specific sense of "battlefield" (Old English). The meaning "to stop and return the ball" is first recorded 1823, originally in cricket; figurative sense is from 1902. 

A physical phenomenon, such as force, potential, or fluid velocity, that pervades a region.

magnetic field

 

A region containing a particular mineral

A component of a database record in which a single unit of information is stored.

 A physical or virtual location for the input of information in the form of characters.

course of study or domain of knowledge

A realm of practical, direct, or natural operation,

The background of the shield. 

 

theme from phonokinetoscope

i'm the i they failed to dot
from the land that time forgot
i just lost my train of thought
i saw someone sitting on a rock