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ABSTRACT This study explores over 150 inscriptions and graffiti left by Minaean traders in Ḥimā, a key stopover on the trans‐Arabian caravan route. The inscriptions provide valuable data on Minaean onomastics, revealing the use of individual names and lineage indicators. They also suggest varying levels of literacy and linguistic adaptation among the authors, who used writing closely mirroring their spoken language, distinct from formal urban inscriptions. The study addresses the authors' literacy and social status, indicating the presence of notable individuals with higher ranks or specific roles within the trading caravans. It situates the inscriptions within the broader context of ancient trade routes and cultural interactions in the Arabian Peninsula, emphasizing the integration of Minaean families across different regions and the significant role of trade in their social organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graffiti presents serious urban concerns, often signaling urban decay. This study uses open spatial data to analyze and model graffiti occurrences in terms of street network centrality measures. In particular, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, and degree centrality are evaluated using San Francisco, California, as the case study area, with data from OpenStreetMap and reported graffiti from 2008 to 2023 from the San Francisco nonemergency municipal service (denoted as 311) as the data sets. The spatial error model was found to outperform both ordinary least squares tests and the spatial lag model. The model could further explain graffiti spatiality. Graffiti writers were observed to favor street segments that are close to the downtown and well-connected to other streets, often having high accessibility, visibility, and accommodating street furniture. The results indicate that bridges and highway segments that are difficult to stop and tag were typically avoided. In addition, for a given street, the model error in adjacent streets significantly (p < 0.001) affected the observed value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Tunisia and Egypt, in times of unrest, walls become screens for transient political display of resistance. Ephemeral performances are often rapid responses to urgent concerns. This article examines the work of artists and spectators interpolated into a sense of urgency and temporality, which characterises graffiti performances. It looks at the significances of martyrdom made visible in graffiti representations of the body of the martyrs. By analysing the art of the martyrs in contemporary North Africa, this article argues that street art can be more fully understood through the graffiti performance in Tunisia and Egypt, and the way that the public reads such imagery with faithful and political eyes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn the throes of the Indonesian National Revolution Dutch intelligence services were not backward in their attempts to decode anti-colonial messaging. The writings of national-communist Tan Malaka received special attention, alongside a range of ad hoc guerrilla organisations, many only loosely affiliated with the Republican regime. To this end, they assiduously collected pamphlets, graffiti, and documents and anything that could throw light on their adversaries. These materials survive in the Dutch archives. This article gives particular prominence to one of Tan Malaka’s little-studied prison writings, Gerpolek, his self-described handbook for political and military struggle, which is couched in highly populist language. The balance of the article discusses a range of guerrilla posters falling into Dutch hands, some mimicking the Tan Malakaist line and others of Islamic inspiration. As this article reveals, by lampooning the Japanese, Dutch, and British, these were powerful statements of a counter-narrative fast in the making, and with defence of independence and speedy defeat of the attacking Dutch forces the bottom line. While some of the material is also suggestive of “social revolution,” as the article concludes, it is a latent theme and largely outside of Marxist rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Archaeologiai Értesítő is the property of Akademiai Kiado and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present article studies aspects of the artistic production at New Kingdom Saqqara, a necropolis of the ancient Egyptian royal residence city Memphis. Following a brief review of the functions of ancient Egyptian tombs, this article will first set out to scrutinize the tomb-making section of society (e.g., size, membership). Second, the corpus of tombs will be reviewed to uncover the diverse nature of the tomb owners and to investigate access to resources required for tomb making. Third, the article will proceed to place the tombs in spatial and temporal context and reflect on the artistic production in a necropolis in motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automation in the construction has seen progress in using modern techniques, which has opened new perspectives for the verification of construction structures using point clouds. This paper discusses wall structure geometry verification, using point cloud data with geometry information extracted from building information modeling models as reference data. The research is focusing on automating the verification of wall structures using a software solution developed in Python. It involves processing and extracting geometric data from models in industry foundation classes' format, comparing the data and visualization of deviation. Results, conclusion, and future workplans are given for achieving better understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Torture is an important element in the state sanctioned violence of the Roman imperium. Although Romans enjoyed portraying various aspects of daily life with graffiti including gladiatorial combat, they were apparently reluctant to depict the tools used by the torturer. In Roman authors, however, one finds many hints about the nature of the objects that were employed to extract evidence. Although surveys of various implements used in Roman torture have appeared in the scholarly literature, it is worthwhile to gather into one investigation what is currently known and include images of objects that have survived antiquity that are from the panoply of the carnifex. To better envision the suffering of the victims of torture, a new analysis of those tools is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents ten Greek inscriptions that were recently discovered in the Jordanian ḥarrah. The discoveries were made during the 2018 and 2023 seasons of the Badia Epigraphic Survey (BES). This paper adds to an ever-growing corpus of Greek inscriptions that attest to the use of and experimentation with Greek, seemingly by nomadic communities. A second set of inscriptions demonstrates the penetration of Christianity into the Syro-Arabian desert at a later date, with the use of Christian formulae, onomastics, and crosses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the nature of graffiti semiotics in the public space of Kosovo's capital Pristina. By adopting a perspective on graffiti as a historically situated and semiotic practice, we identify distinct ethno-political voices, each relying on highly multimodal-linguistic resources to convey their respective political messages to a wider audience. The corpus was gathered during a specific period in Kosovo's history (2013-2014) and as such allows us to capture the idiosyncratic nature of the encountered graffiti as a phenomenon which emerges as a non-transgressively emplaced and dynamically constructed medium allowing conflicting views on the political future of Kosovo to enter in dialogue with one another for everyone to see in the public heart of the capital. Moreover, the dynamic nature of graffiti inscriptions in the Kosovo capital makes it a conversationally layered, inherently heteroglossic speech act with several dissenting authors at work. Our fieldwork and analysis contribute not only to insights in the nature of graffiti as a political medium but also to our understanding of the phenomenology of ethno-political graffiti in Kosovo, the complexities of which can only be appreciated against the history of both the country as a contested geographical entity, and the Balkan region at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

References to Thoth in New Kingdom epigraphy in the Middle Kingdom precinct of Senwosret III at Dahshur include two case studies: a literary dipinto and a depiction of an ibis. The fragmentary text might have contained a hymn to the god of writing, or a text resembling eulogy of the scribal profession. Alongside Kemyt, it attests to an emphasis on literacy and specialist knowledge. An image of Thoth articulated the allegiance to the patron of scribes. The New Kingdom writing and visual practices contribute to an understanding of the New Kingdom community involved in the use and destruction of the Middle Kingdom pyramid complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries, the remote site of Bāyir, far to the east in southeast Jordan, in an arid environment, was frequented by nomads watering their herds, thanks to its huge wells. Four Latin graffiti from Bāyir area are published or revised and republished here. They provide new evidence of the visits paid to the place by troops from the Roman army. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Badia Epigraphic Survey (BES) Project was launched in 2015 by Ali Al‐Manaser and Michael C. A. Macdonald and, with two gaps, has been conducting annual surveys in the ḥarra of north‐eastern Jordan ever since. The 2023 survey, like that of 2018, set out to rediscover the cairns at the border between the ḥarra and the ḥamād at which, in the late 1950s, Professor Fred V. Winnett and Gerald Lankester Harding (WH) discovered over 4000 inscriptions. The purpose was to identify the WH cairns by the inscriptions on them, to give them exact locations using Global Positioning System and to photograph all the inscriptions, most of which WH had had to record in hand copies. In the process, numerous inscriptions at other cairns were also recorded, as well as large numbers of modern Arabic inscriptions carved in the 65 years since the WH expedition. This article describes some of the finds made, gives the exact locations of the WH cairns rediscovered and discusses some of the interesting ancient and modern inscriptions and drawings which were found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of KULT online is the property of Justus Liebig University Giessen and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Djoussour El-maarefa is the property of Association of Arab Universities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With this work I intend to reflect on the ambivalence that contemporary cities experience in relation to the practices of graffiti and street art: if, on the one hand, we see more works being validated and even promoted by the regulatory agents of urban space, in a strategy of valuing creativity as an intangible asset, there is at the same time a set of strategies to eliminate or prevent the emergence of graffiti or unauthorized street art. This ambivalence stems from the ability these practices have to create new images of the city and new discourses about the public space. I will start from the urban communication studies framework, move towards the discussion that arises from laws and rules that regulate the production of graffiti and street art and then observe the legal framing around these practices in Lisbon and Bologna.

The visual space of a modern city and any other populated area is very diverse and rich, both with useful elements: signs, road signs, posters, street names, etc., and with the elements which change the appearance of streets in a negative way, namely the graphic damage to urban space or unauthorized graffiti, which is in the focus of this paper. The relevance of the present study is determined by the significance of studying various types of everyday written and speech activities within the city space. The specificity of graffiti as an object of linguistic research is noteworthy. Being an ambiguous part of urban space, graphic damage is often not fully studied, but nevertheless has significant pragmatic potential that can influence the opinion of citizens. Thus, the purpose of the study is to describe graphic damage, considering the entire range of extralinguistic and linguistic components of the genre. The work is based on a descriptive research method, and the basis for the methodology for describing the genre is the model of a complex communicative-typological description of the natural written Russian speech, proposed by N. B. Lebedeva and adapted to the objectives of this study. Thus, the article presents a description of aspects of the genre under consideration through a number of characteristics: 1) author, 2) purpose, 3) addressee, 4) content, 5) communicative time, 6) linguistic embodiment, 7) social assessment 8) cognitive dominant of the genre.

This study aims to identify the predominant cognitive mechanisms underlying graffiti. The analysis is based on photographs of over 2000 instances of urban graphic defacement (i.e., graffiti) documented in major cities across Russia, including Yekaterinburg, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod. Utilizing content analysis and expert evaluation methods, the research delineates three key cognitive mechanisms that contribute to the semantic unity of graffiti. The first mechanism, compression, manifests in graphic defacements through linguistic play or the transmission of discursive texts. The second mechanism, defocusing, is linguistically actualized through the technique of absurdity (everyday anchors of illogicality) and the activation of the emotion of surprise. It is noted that surprise elicits various reactions from the audience — such as loss of control, bewilderment, and uncertainty — which subsequently leads to prolonged retention in memory of the meanings embedded in the respective graffiti against a backdrop of vivid and atypical psycho-emotional states. The third mechanism, focusing, is linguistically embodied in philosophical texts.

Saqanefars are structures from the Qajar period that are derived from the indigenous and ritual architecture of Mazandaran. In contrast to comparable structures, Saqanfar Kijatekiyeh in Babol is characterized by a plethora of pictorial themes that are specifically focused on women. This research aims to explore the themes and significance of women's roles in these murals. The research questions are as follows: -What is the reason for the increased prevalence of women's motifs in Saqanfar Kijatekiyeh Babol in comparison to other Saqanefars? -What are the reasons for the prominence of women in these murals? - Which themes are illustrated in the murals of Saqanfar Kijatekiyeh, Babol? The research employs a descriptive-analytical method, which involves the non-random selection of specific images from epic, otherworldly, symbolic, and quotidian activity motifs and their description using an iconological approach. Significant developments and changes in women's status were reflected in the Qajar era, which saw a zenith in the redefining of women's roles in society, family, and art. The northern regions of Iran underwent a change in gender concepts as a result of their geographical and livelihood conditions. The development of women's roles is significantly influenced by historical, social, political, and cultural factors. The Tekiyeh building's simultaneity with the Qajar period, the fundamental changes in social relations, clothing styles, political positions, and aesthetic concepts of women, as well as the abundance of women's images, suggest a direct connection between these motifs and the political and social developments of the era. This is indicative of the impact of indigenous artists on the representation of political and social conditions within a particular historical context.

In 2002, Israel started the construction of a 708-kilometer wall to control the Palestinian territories. The Wall offered a massive canvas, which the Palestinians used to develop graffiti and murals. The artwork and graffiti are location-specific, ephemeral, transitory, and unstable. This paper aims to document, archive, and analyze discourse and themes emerging from the artwork that developed on the Wall between 2018 and 2022. The analysis of these images has revealed that, while the purpose of building the Wall was to curb and stifle their resistance, Palestinians turned it into a platform where they were able to express their commitment to national resistance, freedom, justice, love, poetry, business, and even personalization of their own stories. The Wall has also attracted international solidarity and sparked a new protest movement called "struggle tourism", focusing on the Palestinian presence in the region's physical, moral, and political landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rock ‘n’ roll generation has retired, and this raises questions about whether their educational needs differ from the generations before them. This paper presents a study of a course called ‘Graffiti for Seniors.’ The course had nine participants, all women, which constituted two groups: (A) people who are artists or artisans and (B) people who are curious about graffiti as an expression and culture in general. The methods used was participant observation and interviews. When the data had been gathered, Howard McClusky’s theory of educational needs guided the analysis, as this theory offers a diversity of alternative needs compared to later theories. The material was reviewed to find expressions related to the theory’s five dimensions. We conclude that the most prominent needs are coping needs and expressive needs. Coping needs address dealing with society’s ideas about aging, but also about gender, and challenging these norms. Expressive needs demonstrate the importance of engaging in activities that are performed for their own sake and allowing individuals to express themselves. A limitation of this study is that it is performed in a single context, and therefore, future studies in other contexts using the same theory for analysis would contribute to a fuller understanding of how different courses meet various educational needs among older adult learners. A practical implication of the study is the insight that older adults can benefit from educational arenas where they enjoy the freedom of expression and where they can challenge and explore norms connected to gender and age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graffiti is widely used in social movements globally, yet media and communication research disproportionately focus on the role of social and new media technologies in protest movements. In this paper I ask why university students – a tech-savvy generation – resorted to graffiti and why campus graffiti were not widely circulated on social media during the Hong Kong anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) protests. I argue that graffiti enables dispersed resistance and is one way to mobilize, voice dissent, and preserve memory in an increasingly surveilled and evolving repressive media environment. I pursue this argument by analyzing graffiti photographed on university campuses during the anti-ELAB protests. Situating graffiti within protest culture in Hong Kong, I conclude that graffiti are not always circulated on digital/social media to reach a broader audience. In times of crises, not reaching a wider audience is a manifestation of dispersed resistance in a hybrid media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrical distribution cabinets are a regular feature on the streets of Helsinki. The surfaces of these boxes are often decorated with stickers, graffiti, event posters and art works which compete for attention and offer clues to a plurality of discourses that signify much about the contemporary life of the city. This article discusses the significance of these cabinets in relation to a series of paintings made for the research project 'Urban Atlas Helsinki' during the author's Fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2022–23). The importance of painting as a research method is emphasized due to the visual nature of the subject matter. Through a close reading of a particular cabinet, insights are offered as to the nature of the discourses contained, and what they signify about Helsinki as a contemporary urban culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Iluminuras is the property of Revista Iluminuras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Iluminuras is the property of Revista Iluminuras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This report is dedicated to an ancient Georgian graffito from Nessana in the Negev, an important pilgrimage hub of the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods. The graffito was discovered and documented by the inspector of the British Mandatory Department of Antiquities, P.L.O. Guy and was later lost. The only documentation for this graffito was found in the archival materials of the Department and was never published. The inscription is palaeographically dated to a relatively late period, the ninth–tenth centuries CE, and together with other recently discovered epigraphic finds from the region, testifies to the continuation of the Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Sinai well into the early Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various factors such as natural disasters, vandalism, weather, and environmental conditions can affect the physical state of traffic signs. The proposed model aims to improve detection of traffic signs affected by partial occlusion as a result of overgrown vegetation, displaced signs (those knocked down, bent), perforated signs (those damaged with holes), faded signs (color degradation), rusted signs (corroded surface), and de-faced signs (placing graffiti, etc., by vandals). This research aims to improve the detection of bad traffic signs using three approaches. In the first approach, Spiral Pooling Pyramid-Fast (SPPF) and C3TR modules are introduced to the architecture of Yolov5 models. SPPF helps provide a multi-scale representation of the input feature map by pooling at different scales, which is useful in improving the quality of feature maps and detecting bad traffic signs of various sizes and perspectives. The C3TR module uses convolutional layers to enhance local feature extraction and transformers to boost understanding of the global context. Secondly, we use predictions of Yolov5 as base models to implement a mean ensemble to improve performance. Thirdly, test time augmentation (TTA) is applied at test time by using scaling and flipping to improve accuracy. Some signs are generated using stable diffusion techniques to augment certain classes. We test the proposed models on the CCTSDB2021, TT100K, GTSDB, and GTSRD datasets to ensure generalization and use k-fold cross-validation to further evaluate the performance of the models. The proposed models outperform other state-of-the-art models in comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graffiti, by their very nature, are ephemeral, sometimes even vanishing before creators finish them. This transience is part of graffiti's allure yet signifies the continuous loss of this often disputed form of cultural heritage. To counteract this, graffiti documentation efforts have steadily increased over the past decade. One of the primary challenges in any documentation endeavour is identifying and recording new creations. Image‐based change detection can greatly help in this process, effectuating more comprehensive documentation, less biased digital safeguarding and improved understanding of graffiti. This paper introduces a novel and largely automated image‐based graffiti change detection method. The methodology uses an incremental structure‐from‐motion approach and synthetic cameras to generate co‐registered graffiti images from different areas. These synthetic images are fed into a hybrid change detection pipeline combining a new pixel‐based change detection method with a feature‐based one. The approach was tested on a large and publicly available reference dataset captured along the Donaukanal (Eng. Danube Canal), one of Vienna's graffiti hotspots. With a precision of 87% and a recall of 77%, the results reveal that the proposed change detection workflow can indicate newly added graffiti in a monitored graffiti‐scape, thus supporting a more comprehensive graffiti documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a series of social isolation measures that reduced the movement of people in public spaces. This condition created a natural experiment to test the theory of routine activities and its applicability in the study of graffiti. Continuing the monitoring carried out in the hypercenter of Belo Horizonte since 2011, this study assesses the impacts of restrictions on the movement of people on the amount of graffiti found in that location. It starts from the hypothesis that the social restriction measures reduced the number of capable guardians (surveillance), expanding the opportunities for the practice of graffiti tagging and, consequently, favoring its expansion. A survey of existing graffiti in the hypercenter was carried out in 2022, and its results were compared with previous surveys conducted in the study area in 2011, 2015, 2017, and 2019, allowing the hypothesis to be tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the rich cosmopolitan history of Dakar, Senegal, highlighting its role in the Black Atlantic and ongoing cultural exchanges through mediums like media, music, and sports. It also discusses the visual portrayal of Sufi saints, especially Amadu Bamba, the significance of Pape Diop's graffiti in Dakar's urban landscape, and the role of baraka in shaping the city's social and spiritual life.

The article explores the perspective of Bolivian feminist activist María Galindo on the recent military incursion in Bolivia and her critique of the country's political system. Galindo emphasizes the need to challenge oppressive structures and rethink the concept of the nation-state. The article also discusses the creation of a Feminist Constitution in Bolivia, led by marginalized groups such as Indigenous women, lesbian women, and the urban working class. The Feminist Constitution aimed to center the voices of these groups and propose innovative ideas for social transformation. However, challenges remain in achieving true gender equality and self-recognition for marginalized groups in Bolivia. [Extracted from the article]

Graffiti relies on social instrumentation for its creation on spatial structures. It is questioned whether different mechanisms exist to transfer social and spatial hierarchies under a new model for better engagement, management, and governance. This research aims to replace physical graffiti using augmented reality (AR) in smartphones. Contact-free AR graffiti starts with the creation of 3D graffiti; this is followed by an AR cloud platform upload, quick response (QR) code access, and site deployment, leading to the secondary reconstruction of a field scene using smartphone screenshots. The working structure was created based on the first 3D reconstruction of graffiti details as AR models and second 3D reconstruction of field graffiti on different backgrounds using a photogrammetry method. The 3D graffiti can be geotagged as a personal map and 3D printed for collections. This culture-engaged AR creates a two-way method of interacting with spatial structures where the result is collected as a self-governed form of social media. The reinterpreted context is represented by a virtual 3D sticker or symbolized name card shared on the cloud. The hidden or social hierarchy was reinterpreted by a sense of ritual without altering any space. The application of digital stickers in AR redefines the spatial order, typology, and governance of graffiti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]