Archaeological culture

An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place, which may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between the artifacts is based on archaeologists' understanding and interpretation and does not necessarily relate to real groups of humans in the past. The concept of archaeological culture is fundamental to culture-historical archaeology.

Concept

Different cultural groups have material culture items which differ both functionally and aesthetically due to varying cultural and social practices. This notion is observably true on the broadest scales. For example, the equipment associated with the brewing of tea varies greatly across the world (see images). Social relations to material culture often include notions of identity and status.

Advocates of culture-historical archaeology use this notion to argue that sets of material culture can be used to trace ancient groups of people that were either self-identifying societies or ethnic groups. The classic definition of this idea comes from Gordon Childe:

4Culture

4Culture is a tax-exempt public development authority (PDA), with a fifteen member Board of Directors, who are nominated by the King County Executive and confirmed by the King County Council. A Public Development Authority is a public entity created by cities or counties to accomplish public purpose activities without assuming them into the regular functions of County government.

Background

4Culture evolved from the Office of Cultural Resources, a department of King County government, which housed King County's arts, heritage, preservation and public art office. In 2001, in reaction to the post-9/11 economic recession and subsequent elimination of its Current Expense (CX) funding, the Office of Cultural Resources staff proposed to the King County Executive and Council that they transition the office to a Public Development Authority (PDA). This structure would allow dedicated public funds to be stretched further through business innovations and allow access to other revenues, including grants and earned income through consulting services, that are traditionally beyond the reach of a government agency. The County Executive agreed and the County Council adopted an Ordinance approving the establishment of the Cultural Development Authority of King County in September 2002, effective January 1, 2003.

Culture 2000

Culture 2000 was a 7-year European Union (EU) programme, which had among its key objectives to preserve and enhance Europe's cultural heritage. Its duration was between 2000 and 2006, and it had a budget of €236.5 million.

Culture 2000 provided grants to cultural cooperation projects in all artistic and cultural fields (performing arts, plastic and visual arts, literature, heritage, cultural history, etc.).

The objective of Culture 2000 was to promote a common cultural area characterised by its cultural diversity and shared cultural heritage. Its stated aims were to encourage creativity and mobility of artists, public access to culture, the dissemination of art and culture, inter-cultural dialogue and knowledge of the history and cultural heritage of the peoples of Europe.

The program contributed to the financing of European Community co-operations in all artistic fields: performing arts, visual arts, literature, music, history and cultural heritage, etc. Equipped with €240 million over the period 2000-2006, this program aimed to develop the cultural diversity of the European Union, the creativity and the exchange between European cultural actors, whilst making culture more accessible to a larger public. Financial support was granted to projects which were selected on the basis of an annual Call for Proposals.

Artò

Artò is a frazione (and parish) of the municipality of Madonna del Sasso, in Piedmont, northern Italy.

Overview

It is a village located some km west from the Lake Orta.

History

Since 1928 Artò was a separate comune (municipality).

References

External links

Media related to Artò at Wikimedia Commons

Artà

Coordinates: 39°42′N 3°21′E / 39.700°N 3.350°E / 39.700; 3.350

Artà is one of the 53 independent municipalities on the Spanish Balearic island of Majorca. The small town of the same name is the administrative seat of this municipality in the region (Comarca) of Llevant.

Population

In 2008 the municipality of Artà had a population of 7,113 recorded residents within an area of 139.63 square kilometres (53.91 sq mi). This equates to 50.9 inhabitants per km². In 2006 the percentage of foreigners was 13.2% (890), of which Germans made up 3.9% (262). In 1991 there were still 136 illiterates in the municipality. 1,292 inhabitants had no education, 1,675 only a primary school certificate and 1,210 had secondary school leaving certificates. The official languages are Catalan and Spanish (Castilian). The Catalan dialect spoken on the island is known as Mallorquí.

Geography

Location

Artà lies in the northeast of the island of Majorca, around 60 km from the island's capital of Palma. The Massís d’Artà, the highest and most compact massif in the eastern mountain chain of the Serres de Llevant, occupies more than half the area of the municipality. The municipality is located on the western part of peninsula of Artà and is bordered in the west by the Bay of Alcúdia (Badia d’Alcúdia), and in the north by the Mediterranean sea where its coast lies opposite the neighbouring island of Minorca. The coast of Artà stretches for 25 kilometres and, so far, has escaped being developed. Particularly noteworthy are the beach and sand dune formations of sa Canova d’Artà, the flat coastal strip near the settlement of Colònia de Sant Pere, the high rocky coves of the Cap de Ferrutx and a large number of smaller bays that extend from s’Arenalet des Verger to Cala Torta.

ART image file format

ART is a proprietary image file format used mostly by the America Online (AOL) service and client software.

Technical details

The ART format (file extension ".art") holds a single still image that has been highly compressed. The format was designed to facilitate the quick downloading of images, among other things. Originally, the compression was developed by the Johnson-Grace Company, which was then acquired by AOL. When an image is converted to the ART format, the image is analyzed and the software decides what compression technique would be best. The ART format has similarities to the progressive JPEG format, and certain attributes of the ART format can lead to image quality being sacrificed for the sake of image compression (for instance, the image's color palette can be limited.)

Usage by AOL

The AOL service used the ART image format for most of the image presentation of the online service. In addition, the AOL client's web browser also automatically served such images in the ART format to achieve faster downloads on the slower dialup connections that were prevalent in those days. This conversion was done in the AOL proxy servers and could be optionally disabled by the user. This image conversion process effectively reduced the download time for image files. This technology was once branded as Turboweb and is now known as AOL TopSpeed.