Water and the Urban Fabric: a study of towns and waterscapes in the Roman period in Britain

This paper highlights the ways in which components of waterscapes—rivers, lakes, pools, wetlands and waterfronts—formed elements of the urban fabric in the Roman period. Urban archaeology has focused mainly on features relating to land, while nautical archaeology, studying rivers, ports and harbours, trade and seafaring, reminds us of the importance of watery contexts. By examining waterscapes in the urban setting we can start to break down some of the traditional dichotomies in archaeology between land and water. Water could form an integral part of the lived environment and acquire cultural meanings that can be studied archaeologically. © 2012 The Author     

Globalizing the local in Roman Britain: An anthropological approach to social change

This article considers the incorporation of part of Britain into the Roman empire in the context of globalization theory and world-systems history. Emphasis is placed on the local effects of the expansion of global systems and their impact on the social practices of eating and drinking at a range of settlements in the southeast of Britain in the Iron Age to Roman transition, c. 50 BC–AD 200. Through the analysis of consumption practices via quantitative pottery assemblage data, it is argued that globalization offers a more sophisticated framework to describe change than current archaeological approaches to Romanization and identity. The results show that while much of the populace was subject to a progressively homogenizing supply of food-related pottery vessels, the use of such technologies was negotiated within social practices drawing on the integration of both local and global cultural elements. Such findings highlight the potential of critical applications of globalization theory to conceptualize economic, social, and cultural changes in Roman provincial societies.     

Roman soil and Roman sound in Irish hagiography

ABSTRACT

Irish hagiography displays considerable interest in communication between Ireland and Rome, particularly as this featured saints, popes and relics. While people and objects travel between the two places, there is also concern to circumvent the distance involved. This article discusses an episode of miraculous communication in the Irish Life of St Colmán Élo. Here messages and messengers travel from Rome, but time and space are also telescoped through aural and material means: the sound of the bell marking the death of Pope Gregory the Great and a gift from him of Roman soil to be spread on Colmán Élo’s cemetery. The article considers how the two elements function within their hagiographical context to connect Rome and Ireland, and how these places shaped the account. The roles of bell and soil both draw on their associations in Ireland and relate to papal communication as this was experienced and imagined more widely.     

人民大会及其在古典罗马共和国政治生活中的作用

有关罗马共和国政治生活的性质,在学术界存在截然不同的认识.本文利用古典文献和当代学者的研究成果,对罗马人民大会的权力、人民大会权力的局限性以及人民大会和罗马政制中的民主因素问题进行探讨,认为人民大会在法律上是罗马共和国的最高权力机关,享有立法等多方面的重要权力,但在具体行使权力过程中,受到多重不民主因素的限制.尽管如此,在作为城邦的罗马,人民大会仍发挥了相当重要的作用.罗马政治的稳定和扩张的成功,也是人民大会发挥作用的结果.     

Ecomuseum Evaluation: Experiences in Piemonte and Liguria,Italy

The term ecomuseum has been applied to a wide range of projects that seek to conserve and interpret aspects of tangible and intangible heritage of a defined geographical territory. Ecomuseum theorists have assigned a number of characteristics to these organisations, including in situ conservation, fragmented site interpretation and a democratic, community‐based approach. However, there has been a tendency for the term to be applied casually—sometimes simply as a marketing device—with scant regard to ecomuseum philosophies. To date, little critical evaluation of ecomuseums has been carried out that compares practices at individual sites to the demands of ecomuseum theory. This research examines five ecomuseums in Piemonte and Liguria, northern Italy, to try to discover how far they achieve the tenets of ecomuseum philosophy. Although four of the five sites appear to meet most criteria, the results confirm that a wide variation in ecomuseum practices is inevitable due to local circumstances. Consequently, the ability of any ecomuseum to be a truly democratic organisation and meet all ecomuseum principles is compromised.     

贵州省庋藏本省历代方志述略

本文主要介绍了地方志的缘起、发展及作用,以及贵州省各公共藏书单位庋藏本省历代方志的收藏概况。     

从政治参与看古罗马后期的妇女地位

罗马共和早期,妇女在政治领域还完全处于依从地位。但从共和晚期以来,上层妇女大量参与到政治生活中去,在国家政治事务中发挥了重要的作用,政治地位有了很大提高。尽管这种提高是相对而言的,还不能被无限夸大,但其在女权发展史上仍然占据着极为重要的地位。     

Fish and Fishing in the Roman World

This article focuses on two aspects related to fish and fishing. It first discusses the social context for the consumption of preserved and fresh fish, showing that generally consumption of certain types of fresh fish conferred status, whereas consumption of preserved fish, being more affordable, was attested across social strata. The article then moves on to examine the organisation of the ‘fishing industry’, specifically the relationship between fish-salting establishments and the fishermen who provided the fish. Although we have many literary, documentary, and archaeological sources for fish preservation and fishing techniques in classical antiquity, the fishermen engaged in large-scale fishing remain rather elusive.     

Sex Identification in Some Putative Infanticide Victims from Roman Britain Using Ancient DNA

Previous study of infant burials has suggested that infanticide was routinely practised during the Roman period in Britain. This, together with the observation that there is an adult sex imbalance in favour of males at many Romano-British cemetery sites, has raised the question of female infanticide. We attempted to investigate this possibility by identifying sex in some infant skeletons from Romano-British contexts using ancient DNA (aDNA) techniques. Of 31 individuals sampled, sex identification was successful in 13, of which nine were males and four females. These results are discussed in the light of previous work on DNA-based seeking of infant burials.     

Ecomuseum Performance in Piemonte and Liguria,Italy: The Significance of Capital

Research carried out by the authors in northern Italy (see Corsane et al., ‘Ecomuseum Evaluation: Experiences in Piemonte and Liguria, Italy’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 13, no. 2 (2007): 101–16) was designed to assess how closely selected ecomuseums met the demands of ecomuseum theory. However, the discussions with ecomuseum personnel at five sites in Piemonte and Liguria also provided an opportunity to explore how these community‐based heritage projects measure their ‘success’. This research indicates that the methods of performance evaluation that are applied to most national or regional museums—criteria such as visitor numbers, the number of new collections that have been acquired, or number of educational activities delivered—have less meaning in an ecomuseum context. This work suggests that success could be measured more effectively in terms of the forms of capital that result from local people’s use of ecomuseological methods to engage with and conserve their heritage.     

Abandoned Women and Spaces of the Exception

I consider two cases of legal abandonment in Vancouver—of murdered sex workers and live‐in caregivers on temporary work visas—in light of Agamben's claim that the generalized suspension of the law has become a dominant paradigm of government. I bring to Agamben's theory a concern to specify both the gendering and racialisation of these processes, and the many geographies that are integral to legal abandonment and the reduction of categories of people to 'bare life'. The case studies also allow me to explore two limit‐concepts that Agamben offers as a means to re‐envision political community: the refugee who refuses assimilation in the nation‐state, and the human so degraded as to exist beyond conventional humanist ethics of respect, dignity and responsibility.