Archaeology and the Irish rediscovery of the Celtic past

This article examines the place of archaeology in the second wave of Irish cultural nationalism, and how archaeological findings were appropriated by rival ethno‐religious communities in Ireland. In particular, it focuses on George Petrie, who was the founder of ‘scientific’ archaeology and was also one of the leading figures in the nineteenth‐century Celtic revival that sought a moral regeneration of the Irish nation In Ireland, as elsewhere, archaeology was important in reconstructing an early history of the nation where few written records existed and in making this visible through material artefacts. However, archaeology was only significant as part of a wider cultural revival that presented artefacts and sites as national symbols to an island undergoing rapid social change. This article will explore the relationship between archaeology and this national revival, and how the material objects recovered by archaeologists extended and transformed the existing repertoires of how the nation was imagined and felt. It will assess the different reception of these images in the rival Catholic and Protestant communities. Finally, it will comment on the capacity of a medieval ‘Celtic’ repertoire to provide the basis of a dynamic modern Irish national culture.     

Selling archaeology and anthropology: early medieval artefacts at the Expositions universelles and the Wiener Weltausstellung, 1867–1900

The archaeological and anthropological exhibits included in the four Expositions universelles held in Paris between 1867 and 1900 and the Wiener Weltausstellung in the Austro‐Hungarian capital in 1873, contributed to the commercialization of antiquarianism and granted international attention to the amateur practitioners of these emerging disciplines. Displays of archaeological artefacts and human remains from the migration period and the early Middle Ages, juxtaposed with more exotic ‘primitive’ art, permitted organizers to broaden the aesthetic sensibilities of fairgoers and promote the acquisition of native antiquities. Exhibiting private collections of early medieval objects likewise justified nineteenth‐century concepts of French and ‘pan‐Germanic’ identity by linking them to iconic artefacts and romanticizing the barbarity of this distant epoch.     

LEAD ISOTOPE AND TRACE ELEMENT ANALYSIS IN THE STUDY OF OVER A HUNDRED SOUTH INDIAN METAL ICONS*

Technical investigations were made on 130 South Indian statuary images and a few miscellaneous artefacts mostly sampled from the Government Museum, Madras, India, and from the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, UK. Lead isotope investigations were attempted on 60 of these, and compositional analysis for 18 elements on 115, using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy; thus, for 40 objects both lead isotope and trace element analysis was done. From the isotopic and elemental framework, insights are obtained into some art-historical problems of images and artefacts of the Pre-Pallava, Pallava, Chola (i.e., Vijayalaya Chola), Later Chola (i.e., Chalukya-Chola and Later Pandya), Vijayanagara (and Early Nayaka) and Later Nayaka (and Maratha) dynasties, spanning the Early Christian era to the nineteenth century, along with a few other regional styles. Inferences are also made regarding provenance of the lead and the early use of zinc and brass in the early historic period (c. fourth century BC—fourth century AD).     

Not all were Spears and Facones: Firearms from Otamendi Fortlet (1858–1869), Buenos Aires Province,Argentina

Abstract

Otamendi fortlet is located in Buenos Aires province (Argentina) and was occupied from 1858 to 1869. Previous archaeological research has yielded large quantities of artefacts from the site; the present study focuses on firearms and related material. The aim of this project is to identify and characterize the firearms to establish their function, place of origin and chronology. They are compared to the archaeological record of Minaña fortlet to understand the diversity of armament technology in border military settlements of the South Frontier against indigenous people during the second half of the nineteenth century in Argentina.     

The Strange Birth of Anglican Synods in Australia and the 1850 Bishops' Conference

The emergence of synods in Australian Anglicanism and their shape flowed in large measure from the social democratic forces at the time and these were for the most part expressed by Anglican lay people. While the Bishops' conference in 1850 identified the issue of church governance and lay involvement the precise recommendations of the conference were nowhere followed. The popular memory of this process which gives determining influence in shaping the form of church constitution to the theological opinions of the local bishop owes its origins to some key interpretations at the beginning of the twentieth century which were part of the political debate about a national church constitution, a debate which was being argued with theologically shaped rhetoric. The reality in the middle of the nineteenth century was quite different but nonetheless implied a theological perspective which validated the use of contemporary social and political ideas in shaping church structures. In order to secure a model which incorporated the whole church community the synods used the mid nineteenth century parliamentary model. Whether that remains the best model for synods is a question.     

A Delightful Odor to the Breath: Toothpaste in Nineteenth-Century Toronto

The Bishop’s Block site in downtown Toronto contained the foundations of four townhouses constructed between the 1830s and 1860s, which were occupied as private residences into the early twentieth century. From this site came a ceramic container of “Atkinson’s Celebrated Parisian Toothpaste,” a commercially prepared product developed in the late 1850s to appeal to people worried about having a bright smile, sweet breath, and impeccable hygiene. Cleanliness and social acceptability became ever more intertwined during the Victorian era, while epidemics remained a grim reality. In this context we see toothpaste transform from a product used by a narrow segment of the population at the beginning of the nineteenth century into a more widely adopted badge of cleanliness at the close of the nineteenth century.     

Non-invasive characterization through X-ray fluorescence and neutron radiography of an ancient Japanese lacquer

Oriental lacquer artefacts represent very interesting objects of investigation, involving a huge variety of materials and manufacturing techniques. Lacquers are very attractive not only for their stylistic features but also for understanding the variety of production processes, time evolution, use and artistic applications involved in their manufacturing. Till recently, the research activity on these materials has been mainly based on standard, more or less invasive, analytical methods. With the aim to characterise a nineteenth century Japanese lacquer in a totally non-invasive and non-destructive way, in situ X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and neutron radiography (NR) have been employed. While XRF suggested an identification of the pigments embedded into superficial layers, NR allowed revealing, in a single measurement, the average bulk properties of the sample.     

Early Socialism in Canada: International and Regional Impulses

International and regional impulses have shaped Canadian socialism from the movement’s origins in the nineteenth century to the present. Many of Canada’s early socialists arrived as ready-made socialists from abroad. From the British Isles, continental Europe, and the United States, these idealists and dissidents imported radical political ideals, which they subsequently adapted to meet the emerging conditions of an industrializing, urbanizing Canada. Directed at a broad cross-section of society, the early Canadian socialist rainbow featured many colours: Chartists, Christian socialists, cooperators, and, by the nineteenth century’s end—communists, anarchists, and other adherents of European radical movements. This process of importation, adaptation, and change took different forms in the distinctive regional contexts of Canada’s multi-ethnic federal state. Building on an interdisciplinary literature, the authors illuminate the ways in which international and regional impulses shaped Canada’s socialist tradition, helping to explain persistent tensions and forces within contemporary Canadian politics.     

The social magic of correspondence: conceptions of the mails in early nineteenth century Ireland

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the post in Ireland underwent fundamental changes in terms of its methods of operation, the scope of its delivery and the actual usage of the postal service. The volume of mail sent, the changing pattern of delivery routes and the time and expense of sending a letter all changed over the course of the century. The conceptions of the post were changing from that of being a purely functional instrument of limited appeal to that of being an acknowledged tool in the growth and development of industry and trade, in the operation of the structures of government and a vital link for individuals to people and places outside their immediate social circle. This paper draws upon various sources, both those of the state and of private individuals, and uses Bourdieu's theoretical perspectives, to build a framework for analysing the differing conceptions of the mails. These changing conceptions reveal how different groups positioned themselves in order to take advantage of and shape new forms of cultural capital in the early nineteenth century.     

Loyalist,patriot, or colonizer? The three faces of Zheng Chenggong in Meiji Japan and late Qing China

ABSTRACT

This article examines the transformation of Zheng Chenggong’s image in Meiji Japan and late Qing China. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Zheng Chenggong was often depicted as a Ming dynasty loyalist in Chinese narratives and as a Japanese hero adventuring in a foreign land in Japanese narratives. The two groups of narratives converged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transforming Zheng Chenggong into a patriot, an anti-imperialist hero, and a conqueror and developer of Taiwan. Underlying the convergence of Chinese and Japanese narratives of Zheng Chenggong was surging nationalist sentiment in response to different forms of imperialism. This study aims to show how different nationalist agendas activated efforts to recreate Zheng Chenggong’s image in China and Japan at the turn of the nineteenth century.     

Medical education reform efforts and failures of U.S. medical schools, 1870-1930

The dramatic decline in the number of US medical schools in the early twentieth century has been traced to a medical education reform movement that gained momentum after the Civil War. The major parties to reform-the universities themselves, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), state licensing boards, the American Medical Association (AMA), and Flexner-had different interests and strategies, however, and scholars have continued to debate the impact each had on the decline. To isolate the independent effects that the temporally intertwined forces for reform had on medical school failures, this study applies statistical survival analysis to an extensive and unique data set on medical schools operating in the United States between 1870 and 1930. Contrary to the views of some scholars, the results indicate that schools closed in response to critical evaluations published by the Illinois State Board of Health in the nineteenth century and the AMA and Flexner in the twentieth century. Additionally, the results indicate that schools were less likely to have failed if they adopted certain reforms implemented at leading schools or joined the AAMC, and were more likely to have failed if their state's licensing regulations mandated lengthier premedical and medical training.     

Imperial Expansion, Ethnic Change, and Ceramic Traditions in The Southern Chad Basin: A Terminal Nineteenth-Century Pottery Assemblage from Dikwa, Borno State, Nigeria

In the course of an archaeological project in the southern Chad Basin of Nigeria, excavations were conducted at several deeply stratified mound sites that date from the Late Neolithic to the Late Iron Age. As a way to complement the ceramic sequence obtained so far and to link it with today's pottery tradition, a small excavation was conducted at a site that dates to the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century A.D. A pottery assemblage was discovered that shows obvious links to today's tradition but notable breaks with those of the nineteenth century and earlier. This break in decoration style and technique is interpreted as an archaeologically visible expression of changing ethnic identity. This ethnic change and the associated spread of the ceramic tradition can be linked with the expansion of the sphere of power of the Kanem-Borno Empire into the area south of Lake Chad after the sixteenth century A.D.     

A Short History of the Notion of Neurodegenerative Disease

The notion of heredity of degenerative constitutions of human beings contributed in the nineteenth century to the fear for deterioration of the human race and in the twentieth century to attempts by several Western Countries, particularly Germany, to improve the inborn qualities of their populations by eugenic measures. In the years following World War II, the term eugenics was eradicated from medicine. The qualification degenerative disappeared from genetics and psychiatry but remained in use to denote decay of tissues and cells. The adjective neurodegenerative came in vogue in neurology and was mostly applied to brain diseases. Definitions in the literature indicate that neurodegenerative diseases are considered as to be age related, incurable, and largely untreatable chronic progressive diseases of the central nervous system. Scrutiny of available data shows that the notion concerns an ill-defined group of genetic and idiopathic disorders. Genetic central nervous system diseases may become manifest at all ages and are accessible for symptomatic treatment. Investigations of animal models suggest that not all neurodegenerative diseases are inherently incurable. Alternatives for the terms neurodegenerative and degenerative are available.     

Neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe: an overview

To date, neo-Latin studies have been hardly concerned with the nineteenth century, let alone the twentieth century. It would seem that literature written in Latin (called ‘neo-Latin literature’ from the Renaissance onwards) had completely lost its significance. However, recent research has shown that Latin verses were still quantitatively and qualitatively important, even if they no longer enjoyed the same popularity as in previous centuries. This article is a synthesis of what we know about neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe. The first section discusses the question of its quantitative and qualitative significance. Section 2 deals with the specific features of the neo-Latin literature in the nineteenth century. Section 3 presents the situation in Germany in order to give a more precise idea of the phenomenon. The aim of this article is to provide an impetus for further investigation in the field and to cast light on a facet of the nineteenth century that has long been forgotten.     

The Cure of Elf-Shooting in the North-West of Ireland

In this article the study of literary and oral versions of ‘The Tree Demon’ (ATU 1168B) relates to the broader issue of the oral versus written transmission of folktales, which was raised in the late nineteenth century and is still relevant today. It examines three literary versions in compilations from the Middle Ages: a Hebrew version from the tenth century and two Muslim versions from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in Persian and Arabic. These are compared with three oral variants from Burma and Cambodia. The development of the ‘Tree Demon’ tale type as a test case is demonstrated through an analysis of the versions' different religious, cultural, and social functions, which reflect their different channels of transmission and historical settings.     

Late Islamic water collection systems on Failaka Island: Preliminary results of the Kuwait–Georgian Archaeological Mission in 2018–2019

Archaeological investigations on Failaka Island, conducted by the Kuwait–Georgian Archeological Mission, have recorded a variety of sites dating from different time periods, from the Bronze Age to the late Islamic/modern period. The largest proportion of recorded sites consist of late Islamic seasonal settlement structures found in the north-eastern part of the island. It is possible that they were connected to fishing and associated activities such as stock-farming and agriculture, which is confirmed by the results of palynological analysis. These sites are divided into two chronological phases: one from the seventeenth to eighteenth century and the second from the nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century. In 2018, excavations at the water collection systems within these settlements began. The results gathered so far indicate that there were two kinds of well structures. The first are interpreted as shallow filtration well pits; the second are deep wells used for collecting water from deep underground. Both systems were used to collect rainwater, which was then filtered and stored. Marine and freshwater forms of algae were found in the basal sediments of the pits, which offers evidence for the accumulation and filtration of water.     

The effect of ethnicity and economy upon intergenerational coresidence: northern Norway during the last part of the nineteenth century

During the last part of the nineteenth century, Finnmark province and the northern part of Troms experienced a decline in intergenerational coresidence. This article discusses what impact ethnic affiliation and economic activity had on the living arrangements of the elderly, and what contributed to the change. Logistic regression shows that ethnicity played a role but its effect disappears after controlling for economic activity. Intergenerational coresidence was positively associated with being a married Sámi male with an occupation in farming or combined fishing and farming. As such a person grew older, he was increasingly likely to live separately from an own adult child. This pattern changed toward the end of nineteenth century. By the close of the century, ethnic differences had disappeared, and headship position, irrespective of marital status, was strongly related to coresidence.     

Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

This article sheds light on the period of revolutionary turbulence by demonstrating how the concept of revolution was introduced in the Finnish print culture through foreign news reports during the early nineteenth century. The examination draws on the use of multilingual digital newspaper collections provided by the National Library of Finland. By combining key word searches to a close reading of newspaper texts, the article explores the ways in which different revolutionary movements were present in the Finnish newspapers during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The article proposes that the role of foreign news flow was crucial in the process of shaping the understanding of revolution in Finland.     

Liverpool’s Cotton Importers c. 1700 to 1914

Liverpool’s first cotton importers dealt in a range of commodities and this pattern continued until the late eighteenth century. As the British cotton industry grew and new sources of raw cotton – particularly the United States – emerged, some merchants specialized increasingly in cotton in the early decades of the nineteenth century. By the end of the century, the largest importers of cotton dealt in little besides cotton. The growing prosperity of Liverpool’s cotton trade drew companies from elsewhere in the United Kingdom to Liverpool to participate in this trade. By the mid nineteenth century, several key cotton importing houses had originated in the United States; by the end of the nineteenth century the largest importers there. The manner of importing cotton changed. At first, importers had to send a ship out with a captain or supercargo with broad instructions about what to freight the ship with. As communications improved, importers were able to control their purchases of cotton more closely. In the nineteenth century, a significant amount of cotton was imported through Liverpool by merchants acting on a commission basis but this form of importing declined in the later decades of the century.     

Conflict and State Development in Ancient Tonga: The Lapaha Earth Fort

Warfare is often considered as a key factor in the formation complex societies, but in the Pacific archaeological evidence for inter-group conflict during political centralization is rare. Most earthwork forts in Tonga are assumed to have been built in the nineteenth century when the traditional system of rulership collapsed, yet few forts on Tongatapu have been excavated or 14C dated. A fort in the chiefly center of the ancient Tongan state was mapped with theodolite and LiDAR, and excavated. Radiocarbon and traditional history indicate the fort known as the Lapaha Kolotau was made in the fourteenth century AD at the same time that chiefly architecture was being built at an unprecedented scale at the new elite center. The construction of an earthwork fort provides the first evidence that political centralization in Tonga was likely to have been contested.