The Marriage Well at Teltown: holy well ritual at royal cult sites and the rite of temporary marriage

This article discusses Lag an Aonaigh, the ‘Marriage Well’ of Teltown, and the unusual temporary marriage ritual that once took place there during the annual Lughnasa festival. The relationship of Lag an Aonaigh to the modern and ancient fairs (aonach and óenach), and to the broader cult of holy wells is considered, which it is suggested largely represents the local adoption of the Mediterranean healing-spring cult. The article investigates the possibility that this marriage rite was informed by lore of a divine wedding at Teltown, and by the inaugurations carried out at many royal centres that entailed the matrimonial symbolism of the king marrying the Goddess of the land. The relationship of this site to the broader landscape of Teltown, especially to the nearby Knockans linear earthwork is explored. This relationship is then used to analyse the landscapes of the other main ‘royal’ sites, where linear earthworks similar to the Knockans that terminate near springs or ponds are also found. It is considered that all of these earthworks may have been used in ritual processions involving the springs, or even as devices to segregate young men and women at these assemblies, and lead them to the spring to start their own ‘Teltown weddings’.     

One Landscape, Many Experiences: Differing Perspectives of the Temple Districts of Vijayanagara

Landscapes have multiple meanings depending on the perspectives of those who experience them. Uncovering those perspectives for past landscapes depends on multiple lines of evidence, both archaeological and historical. The landscape of the fourteenth- to sixteenth-century south Indian capital of Vijayanagara was the setting for important mythological events, interplays of power between the elite, ritual and pilgrimage for devotees, and ordinary daily activities for residents. This paper explores these different views of the urban landscape through examination of oral traditions and historical data, assessment of architecture and access and routing, and archaeological analysis of grinding stones and ceramics.     

Restoring Berlin's Unter den Linden: ideology,world view,place and space

Berlin's Unter den Linden, a primary thoroughfare and ensemble of historic architecture and nationally significant cultural institutions, lay in ruins at the close of the Second World War. The buildings, public spaces, and public art forming this street bore testimony to diverse facets of German history, presenting a range of semantic issues to those interested in their future. Differences in key groups' world view resulted in different interpretations of these spaces, thus different approaches to policy development with regard to their future. Initially, the German cultural elite was determined to restore significant architecture, asserting architectural value while avoiding mention of ‘Prussian’ or ‘German’ identity. However, the German communist leadership viewed these same structures as testimony to ‘Prussian–German militarism’ and sought their effacement. The Soviet Military Administration remained largely indifferent to all but spatial value until 1947, when they began to use architecture to represent the Soviet Union. Finally, with the founding of the German Democratic Republic and import of Soviet ‘socialist-realist’ urban theory, architecture considered progressive was restored as national cultural heritage, although sites with considerable ‘militaristic’ content prompted more debate over their future.     

The apparitions of the Virgin Mary of Medjugorje: the convergence of Croatian nationalism and her apparitions

Abstract. This article concerns the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in one of the most popular, ‘active’ apparitional sites in the world: Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The connection between nationalist discourse and apparitions has often been observed and noted in the literature on nationalism; however, the examples of this connection are scattered in the literature and the question why the apparitional phenomenon so easily lends itself to co‐option into nationalist discourse has never been addressed. This article explores this question by showing that what binds the two phenomena together is the idea of ‘chosenness’ and ‘specialness’, which in turn can be theoretically linked to discussions about national election in the literature on nationalism. This article illustrates the convergence of nationalist and apparitional discourses by drawing on a selected number of examples of how the apparitions in Medjugorje have been appropriated by Croatian nationalist discourse.     

Risk and the Sacred: Environment,Media and Public Opinion in Bali

This exploration of controversies over environmental regulation in the Indonesian province of Bali traces the relationship between the media, environmental attitudes and Balinese identity, focusing on the religious dimension of that identity and the ways in which this has become bound up with conceptions of environmental imbalance and a popular critique of capitalist development on the island. The fusion of cultural and environmental metaphors of ‘erosion’ and ‘preservation’ in public discourse is striking in the Balinese case, since sites of great spiritual significance are also attractive to investors for their aesthetic appeal and heritage value (Verschuuren et al. 2010). From the earliest emergence of environmental conflict on the island, the emotive power of cultural identity became intimately connected with environmental politics. This article traces several of the pervasive and interconnected dichotomies ‐ sacred and profane, cultural value and economic interest, environmental preservation and use (exploitation), certainty and uncertainty (risk) ‐ that characterise debates surrounding environmental regulation and development on the island.     

Missing the point: globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world

This article provides a critique of a dominant strand of the literature on globalization – that which suggests it can be understood as deterritorialization. It argues that suggestions that we have moved away from territorial understandings of politics fail to conceptually elaborate the notion of territory itself. Drawing parallels between mathematics and politics in the seventeenth century, the paper claims that the notion of territory is dependent on a particular way of grasping space as calculable. This way of understanding space makes bounded territories possible, but also underlies new global configurations. In other words globalization is a reconfiguration of existing understandings rather than the radical break some suggest. The article concludes by making some comments on this reconfiguration, and suggesting that further historical and conceptual work on territory is necessary before it can be thought to be superseded.     

Abbots and Aristocrats: Patronage,Art and Architecture at Hailes Abbey in the Late Middle Ages

This article focuses on the art and architecture of the Cistercian abbey of Hailes, home of a famous relic of the Holy Blood, in the two centuries before the Suppression. It is intended to be a contribution to evolving literature on late medieval monasticism, showing the enduring spiritual vitality and relevance of Hailes between the 14th and early 16th centuries. The article discusses the planning and architecture of the late medieval monastery, the extent of and motives for the internal and external patronage and the relationship of the monastery with its sister Cistercian houses, especially those in northern England.     

Sacred space and the art of its representation in the ethnic culture of Northern Asia: artifacts of Sakhalin

The article discusses the sacredness of art which refl ects the natural, vital needs of the indigenous people of Sakhalin Island. The article examines material artifacts including the Rukutama staff made of deer antler found in the Uilta air burial in the Rukutama River area (Poronai Region, Sakhalin Province), pottery dated to the 8th–13th centuries AD discovered in the Poronai and Korsakov Regions, as well as “verbal artifacts” preserved in language and myth. Ethnological data, collected by the author over 20 years of expeditions conducted in the Sakhalin Province is compared with artifacts from the museums of the Sakhalin Province, St. Petersburg, Osaka, and Hokkaido. The Tungus-Manchu dictionaries are widely used as an auxiliary source. A detailed analysis of the main themes of the Uilta sacred world including a ritual relationship to the fi re, dog, bear, and Kori bird is provided. The perception of space transmitted through the visual arts reveals the multifaceted nature of the perception and relationship to space among the ethnic culture of the Uilta people of Sakhalin Island and other Tungus-Manchu communities of the mainland: the Nanai, Ulchi, Negidals, and Orochi. Numerous similarities in the worldview of the Uilta people and the Evenki suggest their common origin.     

自然环境变迁与十六国政权割据局面的出现

中国古代历史发展的自然环境及自然环境变迁对历史进程的影响,起一个具有重大理论和现实意义的问题。东汉末年以来自然环境变迁是西晋灭亡和十六国割据局面形成的重要原因。由于全球性寒冷干燥期的出现,我国北方沙漠面积不断扩展,各游牧民族原有的生存环境不断恶化,于是纷纷南迁,起着西晋统治集团内乱之际,夺取了政权。     

Encouraging play in the natural environment: a child-focused case study of Forest School

There is concern that children are becoming disengaged from the natural environment and are not being afforded the opportunities to play in such environments. To examine children's perceptions, knowledge and experiences of play in the natural environment, 17 children from one school participated in small focus groups before and after a 12-week Forest School that took place within a school woodland area. Using two qualitative approaches, we found that Forest School had a positive influence on children's natural play and their knowledge of the natural world around them.     

The field, the museum and the lecture hall: the spaces of natural history in Victorian Cornwall

This paper contributes to our understandings of the geographies of science through an analysis of nineteenth–century natural history and, in particular, of the provincial natural history society. Focusing on nineteenth–century Cornwall and one of the main natural history societies operating in the county at that time – the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society – it is argued that a set of key spaces were integral to the operations and outputs of such societies. The paper details the significance of the Penzance Society's museum, field sites and lecture hall as sites for communal work of local natural historians. They were also important, it is argued, in their construction of West Cornwall as a site of national natural scientific importance. Lastly, these spaces defined an agenda for regional scientific study. In particular, they promoted a taxonomic method that would transform local people into rigorous scientists and the local region into a 'book of nature'.     

Light railways and the rural–urban continuum: technology, space and society in late nineteenth-century Belgium

Combining the literature on ‘city systems’ and its intermediary spatial categories with the discourse on ‘socio-technical’ hybrids, this article examines whether the early rural–urban condition in Belgium was the planned spatial outcome of infrastructure policy. More specifically, it analyzes the dialectic between the conception of light railways and the geographies of power, tracing its impact on the spatial organization of the territory. In 1911 the British sociologist Seebohm Rowntree stated that Belgium had gone further than any country in supplying its working class with gardens. The dense Belgian railway network encouraged workers to commute between land and labour, travelling from their homes in the healthy countryside to work in urban factories and mines. Despite the agricultural crisis and accelerating industrialization in nineteenth-century Belgium, infrastructure policy had resulted in a peculiar territorial balance between city and countryside by transforming agricultural labourers and farmers into industrial workers without forcing them to leave their ancestral villages. Rather than nostalgically clinging to a disappearing countryside, the government harnessed the modern technology par excellence, combining rails, steam and state management, to safeguard the country as well as to facilitate modern dynamic. Countryside preservation and accelerating industrialization were reconciled in a reshaped configuration that rendered the countryside and its inhabitants simultaneously rural and urban, traditional and modern. As most literature situates the genesis of rural–urban landscapes after the First and Second World War, this article on late-nineteenth-century Belgium adds a further facet to the recently growing international research on hybrid territories within the fields of urbanism and geography.     

Conceptions of place: approaching space,children and physical activity

In this paper, we argue that place mapping is useful for approaching children's conception of place and that this is of relevance when designing physical activity interventions. We contend that socio-material factors influence children's perception and use of places, and are crucial to understand in relation to their use of local neighbourhoods for physical activity. A place mapping of children's understandings and everyday use of their local neighbourhood in suburban Copenhagen was conducted with a fifth grade elementary school class. The mapping and subsequent analysis resulted in three categories of relevance to children's conceptions of place; located social experiences, experiences of the unknown, and children's contested spaces. We argue that such knowledge can provide useful information in the development and evaluation of activities that promote physical activity in urban spaces.     

Jumping Fish: Engendering Contestation and Development on the Waterways of the Aramia River in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Set in the Aramia River basin, this article explores the intimate and interactive relationship between communities in Western Province, Papua New Guinea, and the water that dominates the environment in which they live. Located amongst tidal rivers, creeks and lagoons, Gogodala villages sit high on ‘islands’ of land. In this environment, water is the site of seasonal change and the space of movement. The Aramia River is synonymous with an ancestral figure called Sawiya who travelled in her canoe, naming, creating and populating the water and land of the area. As the ‘mother of all fish’, Sawiya controls the movement and abundance of fish and other aquatic resources. Water is embodied in Sawiya, whose capacities to both nourish and punish are the basis of seasonal variations in fish, and in the colour and clarity of water in the local lagoons and rivers. Set against the backdrop of the Ok Tedi Mine and recent logging operations on the Aramia, the article explores some of the ways in which water and its resources are defined and experienced in this rural community and the impact this may have on the exploitation and development of natural resources in PNG.     

The beach at the end of the world: Eilat in Israeli popular culture

Located on the southernmost tip of Israel, at the meeting point of the Negev desert and the Red Sea, Eilat was occupied in March 1949 in the last military operation of Israel's War of Independence. Notwithstanding official notions of Eilat as a strategic asset and efforts to sustain Israeli presence there in the form of a permanent settlement, in Israeli popular culture Eilat, which later evolved into a thriving tourist resort, has had from the outset the reputation of being ‘different, special, distinct’. This article explores the unique position of Eilat in Israeli popular culture. The underlying argument is that this unique position of Eilat both evinced and reflected a dynamic interplay of liminal conditions and phenomena that rendered Eilat an exceptional experience. Furthermore, being situated at the southernmost tip of Israel, the location of Eilat at the geographical margin of Israel was productive of its image as an extraordinary place and sustained its prominence in popular imagination. The article charts and analyses a variety of liminal phenomena in their social and cultural contexts in different periods of Eilat's history.     

Dusting Down Second Hand Rose: Gendered identities and the world of second-hand goods in the space of the car boot sale

This is concerned with the connections between second-hand exchange and consumption, and gendered identities, and draws on research conducted within car boot sales in Britain. The article demonstrates the highly gendered nature of patterns of exchange and consumption within the space of the car boot sale; connects this to the various gender identities found within conventional retail environments, notably the department store; and examines in depth the intricacies of what happens when both women and men buy from and sell to one another in the space of the car boot sale. For women, the world of the car boot sale is shown to require the negotiation of the multiple and frequently contradictory feminine subject positions embedded in exchange and consumption, notably woman as object of masculine heterosexual desire, woman as mother and woman as homemaker. For men, by contrast, the construct of masculinity to be negotiated is apparently homogeneous, utilitarian and instrumentalist-man the builder of domestic space. The article reflects on these differences and on the highly gendered pattern of exchange and consumption found within car boot sales, arguing that both are intricately connected to the expert gendered knowledges inscribed in particular commodities, knowledges which are argued to be at a premium in spaces of second-hand exchange and consumption.     

The power of space: The biopolitics of custody and care at the Lloyd Hotel,Amsterdam

This paper examines the relationship between space and violence through a biopolitical enquiry of custody and care at Amsterdam's Lloyd Hotel. The Lloyd Hotel began as a corporate established transhipment hotel serving transatlantic voyages. It was subsequently transformed into an emergency refugee camp and an improvised prison and juvenile detention centre. An iconic building which had functioned in both specific and broader networks of violence, the building is today a sophisticated heritage accommodation. We trace and analyse the ways in which the spatial arrangements of the historic hotel have facilitated, often concurrently, conditions of custody and care, and protection and control in its key historical moments. We address questions regarding the putative ‘agency’ of specific spatial designs and architectures in ‘retaining’ the socio-spatial elements of violence perpetrated in the past. Specifically, we suggest that the original and adapted spatialities of the hotel were often the source of unintended violence, abuse and transgression, signalling the ‘power of space’ in terms of agency over the subjected ‘guests’. In analysing a single micro-site and its broader spatialities, we seek to contribute to a relational conceptualization of violence sensitive and attuned to the complex histories and geographical scales that have bound and still bind this unique Amsterdam place of hospitality and custody.