Clerical "concubines" in northern Italy during the fourteenth century

This essay reconstructs the lives of a neglected group of women in the Christian church during the later Middle Ages. So-called clerical “concubines” were well-known in their communities, but their lived experience has been largely ignored by modern historians. Yet studying clerical concubines sheds light not only on the women themselves, but also on the social organization of the medieval Christian church. Drawing on information gathered from notarial acts across the northern Italian peninsula, I argue that concubines were not a unitary group. Their experiences varied instead according to their status and the regions they inhabited. For instance, while laywomen who became priests’ concubines moved into their lovers’ homes, nuns retained cells in their religious houses during these relationships. Furthermore, concubines in cities such as Treviso could openly live with their lovers and share their property, while in other places, such as Bergamo, severe legal restrictions on concubines made them a particularly vulnerable group.     

Destroying Nahr el-Bared: Sovereignty and urbicide in the space of exception

During the summer of 2007, Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon was the scene of a fierce battle between the Lebanese Armed Forces and a militant Islamist group called Fateh al-Islam. When Palestinian evacuees returned after the conflict, they found Nahr el-Bared utterly destroyed, houses smashed first by shells and bombs, then by vandalism and arson, possessions stolen and broken, offensive graffiti daubed on walls. I argue in this paper that the battle of Nahr el-Bared, and particularly the month of looting and arson that followed the battle, was a case of urbicide in a space of exception. The seemingly unrestricted destruction of homes, the theft of possessions and arson, went beyond any possible military necessity and became the deliberate and systematic erasure of the camp. This urbicide was made more possible by the very nature of the political spaces of the camp, which are in Lebanon but not of Lebanon, in which Lebanese sovereignty and law are not fully enforced, in which a whole range of non-Lebanese actors exercise political power outside the control of the Lebanese state. In these spaces of exception in which the rule of law is suspended, the looting, arson and vandalism took place without sanction. Palestinian homes and lives had become sacred in the sense that they could be destroyed without sanction, without recourse to legal redress, because there was no law.     

唐宋时期寡妇的家产权益与生存处境

By investigating the Tang-Song examples of widows remaining chastity or inviting a jiejiaofu (second husband) into the deceased husbands’ families, this article analyzes widows’ lives and their right to inherit their deceased husbands’ family properties. The conclusion is that widows had only “rights of management,” but not the “possessive right,” over their deceased husbands’ properties. Moreover, the qualities of widows’ lives in their in-law’s families depended on their relationships with the deceased husbands’ brothers. When being treated unfairly, widows often resorted to “the power of the maternal uncle” in order to defend their benefits. Translated into English by Yang Kai-chien     

Engendering New Netherland: Implications for Interpreting Early Colonial Societies

Here, we study the Algonquian and Iroquoian women who lived in settlements surrounding the Dutch colony of New Netherland, in today’s northeastern United States. We begin by examining their roles in the colony and find that their lives did not fall into the pattern of servitude, concubinage, culture-brokering, and intermarriage that many have seen as the fate of Native or African women in other colonial societies. Instead, these women were, by and large, independent agents and followed their own indigenous customs as they interacted with Europeans. We then go on to explore how this new revisionist view of their actions affects archaeological interpretations of their households and the households of the Europeans as well. We further point out how the role of Native women in New Netherland was influenced in part by the presence and absence of other groups of women—both European and African—there.     

FUNNELS AS INDICATORS OF STORAGE ACTIVITIES IN THE IRON II SOUTHERN LEVANT

Although literally hundreds of houses have been excavated in the southern Levant, it is not easy to use them to study past spatial activities. While modern excavations allow high‐resolution reconstructions, due to the costs involved only a limited number of houses are excavated nowadays in their entirety; the recording of the hundreds of houses excavated until the 1960s was partial and much of the material (e.g. botanical remains, bones, charred material, etc.) was not even collected. Some of the older reports recorded the distribution of macro‐artefacts, mainly pottery, and a concentration of storage vessels, for example, may indicate that a room was used for storage. The products stored, however, cannot usually be determined. This article suggests that the volumes and forms of funnels may indicate whether they funnelled dry products, liquids or precious fluids, and can therefore be used to identify specialized activities even from reports of older excavations, when other lines of evidence are lacking.     

Use of repeat house sales to measure changes since the early‐ or mid‐1980s in two inner‐city neighbourhoods in Windsor,Ontario

Changes in the prices of homes and the reasons for those changes may be more accurately predicted from repeat sales of the same homes after controlling for their changed attributes and differences in time between their sales and resales. This paper analyzes 346 of 583 sold houses in the Glengarry neighbourhood in Windsor, Ontario, that were sold more than once between 1981 and mid‐2017, and a corresponding 414 of 737 sold houses in the city's Wellington‐Crawford neighbourhood, sold more than once between 1986 and mid‐2017. After comparing types of resold homes with once‐sold ones, a repeat sales model predicts a first period of increasing annual percentage changes in resale prices compared to sale prices during the 1980s, followed by a second period of stagnation and possible decreases until 2011, and then increases during a third period after that. In addition, changes in resold homes’ attributes of the dwelling unit and neighbourhood are a second type of neighbourhood change in two inner‐city neighbourhoods during the past 30 or more years.     

Urbanity, Sociability, and Commercial Exchange in the Barbados Sugar Trade: A Comparative Colonial Archaeological Perspective on Bridgetown, Barbados in the Seventeenth Century

In one of the most notable studies on the political economy of the modern Atlantic world, Sidney W. Mintz (Mintz, Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history. Penguin, London, 1985) explored the rise of sugar production in the Caribbean and emphasized Barbados’ role in shaping the trajectory of the sugar industry in the seventeenth century. Yet, while sugar was certainly the defining commodity of the Barbadian economy, not all of the island’s citizens were directly involved in the sugar production process. Residents of the island’s main urban center, Bridgetown, lived at the interface between producers of sugar on rural estates in Barbados and consumers of sugar in metropolitan Europe. They were the glue that held the emerging Atlantic sugar business together and their efforts to develop a functioning urban infrastructure in Barbados helped fuel the trade in this valuable commodity.     

Household and Community Archaeology at the Chumash Village of Niaqla,Santa Rosa Island,California

Abstract

Several studies on the North American Pacific Coast have demonstrated the importance of household and community archaeology for documenting hunter-gatherer sociocultural dynamics. Household archaeology in coastal southern California is limited, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of a fundamental aspect of ancient human social life on the Pacific Coast. The Chumash village of Niaqla (CA-SRI-2), located on Santa Rosa Island, California, is one of the few island sites where several houses have been excavated. Cemeteries and parts of at least 10 houses were excavated in the 1940s–1960s, but only limited details have been published. Analysis of field notes, artifacts, photographs, and maps from these excavations, supplemented by additional testing, mapping, and radiocarbon dating at the site, demonstrate that Niaqla was a vibrant community, with over 20 houses, occupied for more than 2000 years. Unlike houses along the northwest coast of North America, Island Chumash houses required substantially less labor and planning, but were important locations of craft production, subsistence practices, and other activities, illustrating variability in the structure and function of houses and communities among complex hunter-gatherers.     

The Fraternal Bond between Ethnic Tibetans and the Victims of the Wenchuan Earthquake

At 2:28 pm on May 12~(th),2008,Wenchuan County of Sichuan Province suffered an earthquake of mag-nitude of 8.0.The local death toll had reached 69,016 by noon of June 1~(st),along with a total of 368,545 in-jured and 18,830 people still missing.The tragedy included the collapse of an enormous number of houses...over one hundred thousand families lost their homes.Tens of thou-sands of children were orphaned.However,faced with this devastation,all nationalities in China were not intimidated but rather work...     

Lithic Artefacts as a Source of Cultural,Social and Economic Information: the evidence from Aksum,Ethiopia

Extended research covering an area of approximately 300 sq km centered on the ancient metropolis of Aksum has revealed a coherent sequence of development in stone tool production and use spanning most of the last millennium BC and the first millennium AD. It has provided new evidence of the presence of multiple independent lithic traditions in the Pre-Aksumite period, and of Aksumite social and economic organization. This paper summarizes the results of the detailed study of a large corpus of excavated and surface-collected lithics, emphasizing their functional characteristics.

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Résumé  De vastes recherches couvrant sur une superficie d’environ 300 kilomètres carrés et concentrées sur l’ancienne métropole d’Aksoum ont mis à jour une série cohérente de développements dans la production et l’utilisation d’outils de pierre au cours du dernier millénaire avant J.C. et du premier millénaire après J.C. Ces recherches ont fourni de nouvelles informations sur la présence de multiples traditions lithiques indépendantes durant la période pré-aksoumite, et sur l’organisation sociale et économique des Aksoumites. Cet article présente les résultats d’une étude détailée portant sur un large répertoire de vestiges lithiques recueillis au cours de fouilles et collectes de surface, et met en exergue leurs caractéristiques fonctionnelles.

     

A Teapot, a House, or Both? The Material Possessions of Irish Women��s California Assemblages

Using a woman-centered approach, artifact assemblages and background documents are analyzed to discern gender behavior and ethnic variations in women’s work—cooking, dining, housecleaning—in more frivolous areas—flowers, pets, girls’ toys—and personal adornment. Issues of gender bias are discussed. The data show that negative evidence (absence vs. presence) is, at times, misleading and must be carefully considered. Detailed study of the artifacts connected with Irish women suggests their gender values that organized their lives differed from those of Anglo-American women who had a voice in small expressive purchases while men made final decisions on major household purchases. Irish women owned small items too. However, a crucial distinction was an element not covered by the archaeology: a house of their own and owner-occupied, a fact solely visible in documents.     

Creole Architecture: A Comparative Analysis of Upper and Lower Louisiana and Saint Domingue

What factors accounted for variations in architectural traditions in the French colonial settlements of the New World? This paper tests several of the propositions of culture theory against what is known of the process of tradition-formation in the French vernacular architecture of the Illinois Country, Lower Louisiana, and the Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue. It explores the extent to which generalized cultural processes such as preadaptation, founder’s effect, and cultural syncretism account for changes in the forms of typical settler’s houses.     

In the Palace of the Fallen king: The Royal Residential Complex at Aguateca,Guatemala

Abstract

The Aguateca Archaeological Project extensively excavated two structures (M7-22 andM7-32) in the Palace Group of the Late Classic Maya (A.C. 600–830) center of Aguateca, Guatemala. Multiple lines of evidence, including site layout, architectural features, soil chemistry, objects stored in a sealed room, and abandonment processes, suggest that these were the buildings where the ruler and his family lived and worked. The use of space in these structures shows some similarities to those of the rapidly abandoned elite residences at Aguateca and of palace-type buildings at other Maya centers. The occupants of this royal complex retained a certain level of visibility, indicating the importance of the ruler’s body as the focus of theatrical display. After the royal family evacuated the center, an invading enemy ritually destroyed these buildings, attesting the symbolic importance of the royal residences. The center was almost completely abandoned after this incursion.     

‘Filial son’, the family and identity formation among male migrant workers in urban China

This article is based on an ethnographic study of life histories of 28 rural–urban (internal) migrant men located within southern China. It explores their narratives with a particular focus on changing social relations within the family, from the perspective of migrant sons. It argues that traditional gender norms, such as those attached to being a ‘filial son’, are lived out, albeit reworked, among Chinese male migrant workers across generations. The men recount the role of traditional familial gender norms, which are central cultural resources in forging their ‘dislocated’ identities within specific temporal and spatial conditions. For example, being a ‘filial son’ has become an important reference point for these mobile male workers to actively negotiate their emerging masculine identities in the process of negotiating urban lives, while living away from their rural homes. The article also explores a more complex understanding of rural–urban migration in terms of critically engaging with the men's well-being as urban workers.     

The Governor and the Enslaved: An Archaeology of Colonial Modernity at Marshall’s Pen, Jamaica

The rise of modernity in Europe resulted in the redefinition of social relations between those in control of the apparatus of the state and economy on the one hand, and those who worked and lived within that apparatus on the other. This shift in the definition of the basic social unit from subject to individual citizen was fraught with tension, and resulted in vast changes in the lives of colonized people throughout the European sphere of control. The social and material manifestations of these historical processes were many; this article considers how phenomena associated with colonial modernity impacted the lives of people enslaved at Marshall’s Pen, a Jamaican coffee plantation, in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. To this end, this article examines the negotiation of the social and material realities of nineteenth-century colonialism through the spread of mass-produced goods mediated through the rise of consumerism visible through archaeologically recovered material culture, the imposition of age-grade, gendered, ethnic and racial categorizations as manifestations of a rationalized social order, the increased focus on the individual as a self-regulating member of a moralized social order, and shifting definitions of the relationships between space and social organization reflecting in changing settlement patterns of village life.     

The Interaction of Body, Things and the Others in Constituting Feminine Identity in Lower Socio-Economic Ranks of Bam, Iran

Identity is one of the most important matters in social theory, especially in recent decades. Identity is a fluid phenomenon which forms in the process of every day activities. Individuals get practical knowledge of society to do intentional practices. They operate actively in identitizing process. Gender identity is one of important dimensions of individual identities constituting in social relations to others. Different socio-economic classes experience different social relations and engage in different identity processes. This research studies the formation process of feminine identity in the process of marriage (in contrast with the concept of virginity) in lower socio-economic classes of Bam. Body as site of identity and focus of close contact between agency and structure becomes the object of various changes and with creating difference-especially within group differences-distinguishes individuals from one another. Cultural materials is used intentionally in this process. The research is based on finds of “Bam Contemporary Archaeology Project: Excavation in Disastrous Layers”. Six collapsed houses ruined by 2003 earthquake have been excavated. Meshkani House which is represents low socio-economic class is the focus of research. The research take an archaeological approach (reconstructing behavioral patterns of individual and societies base on material culture) investigating gender structure and gender sociability processes in Bam, Iran. The sites being contemporary, has created an extended range of facts. In some cases for better understanding of the context, local people were interviewed .The information from “Disaster Ethno-archaeology Project of Bam” was also used in this study.     

Reburial and protective covering of ancient mosaic pavements: The experience of the conservation department of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Abstract

Four case studies are presented illustrating different attempts to protect excavated ancient mosaics by reburial or protective covering, with varying degrees of success, at three archaeological sites in Israel: Tel Itztaba, a site excavated between 1991 and 1994 where planning for reburial at the outset of the excavation could have prevented considerable losses; Khirbet Minya (Horvat Minim), a site excavated in the 1930s, reassessed after four years of reburial; the Promontory Palace at Caesarea Maritima, a site excavated in 1978, partially destroyed by the sea, reburied and regularly monitored since 1994; and an experimental test site at Caesarea Maritima. These examples demonstrate the importance of planning, monitoring and maintenance for successful reburial, and allow an assessment of which materials and methods performed better than others.     

LONGBRIDGE DEVERILL COW DOWN, WILTSHIRE, HOUSE 3: A MAJOR ROUND HOUSE OF THE EARLY IRON AGE

Summary. The settlement complex on Longbridge Deverill Cow Down in west Wiltshire comprises two major farmsteads, with their associated trackways and field systems, which were in use from the 8th to the 2nd century BC. The excavations, between 1956 and 1960, could only sample Enclosures II and III, whose ditches turned out to be relatively late features belonging to the larger and longer lived of the two farms. However, by good fortune, the interior areas excavated contained the very well-preserved post-holes of no less than four successive great round houses, the largest up to 60 feet (18.30 m.) in diameter, with masses of surviving structural evidence, pottery and other finds. This article describes and discusses the latest and best preserved of the great houses, House 3 of the end of the 6th century, and it attempts to throw new light not just on the construction and internal lay-out of these huge structures, but also the manner in which they may have been used, domestically and ceremonially, by their inhabitants at the end of the Late Bronze and beginning of the Iron Age in Wessex.     

Remembering Places Never Visited: Connections and Context in Imagined and Imaginary Landscapes

Despite the vast research on landscape and landscape archaeology conducted over the past decade little attention has been given to the role of memory and imagination in people’s engagement with their ancestral homelands, “country” or other meaningful landscape. An analysis of a range of case studies, both historical and contemporary reveal that people often feel great attachment to and desire to engage with lands that they may have never visited or have little empirical evidence for attachment. Further complicating this are those examples where a “heritage” landscape based on ancient homelands is constructed on the diasporic lands of their daily lives. Understanding these imaginary landscapes offers the opportunity to take a fresh look at the relationship between identity and landscape.     

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND SOCIAL DIFFERENCES IN NORTH-EASTERN IBERIA DURING THE IRON AGE (c.525–200 BC)

Summary.   This paper is concerned with the organization of societies in north-eastern Iberia (present-day Catalonia) during the Iron Age, using data provided by domestic architecture and settlement organization. I offer an analysis of the social differences detected in the dwellings based on a sample of houses excavated at different types of settlement. Although many Iberian houses had simple layouts and small surface areas, some larger dwellings at the main sites are distinguished by the shape of their ground plans, their surface areas, architectural features, and central locations; these houses are believed to be the residences of the Iberian elite. Such dwellings are not found at all sites and the data suggest that there was a relationship between the category of the settlement (or its function) and the types of dwelling in it.