The Subject of the King and a Mercantile Ideology in Early Modern Spain

This article proposes an interpretation of Lope de Vega's El Brasil Restituido (1625) that points to the political, military, and economic crises of Spain in Europe as the underlying themes of the representation of the retaking of the Brazilian colony of Bahía from the Dutch. The Spanish monarchy faced a major challenge to its European supremacy during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. Not only was its military power being frontally contested at different sites of Europe, but its political and economic influence was rapidly deteriorating as well. One of the goals of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the powerful prime minister of Phillip IV, was to regain European leadership by mobilizing the mercantile segments of Spain. The play illustrates the confluence of two ideological systems during the transformation of Spanish feudal society. On the one hand, the dominant ideology of blood purity legitimizes the seigniorial structure of lineage; on the other hand, the representation of a new merchant as a good servant of the king discloses the important role that a mercantile enterprise and ethos had acquired in the formation of a subject to the monarchy.     

Review Article: An Open Door on Early Modern Asia

DONALD F. LACH and EDWIN J. VAN KLEY. Asia in the Making of Europe: Volume III: A Century of Advance. Book One: Trade, Missions, Literature. Pp. lxxvi, 597. $85.00 (us); Book Two: South Asia. Pp. Ivii, 601-1,110. $75.00 (us); Book Three: Southeast Asia. Pp. liii, 1,111-1,561. $65.00 (us); Book Four: East Asia. Pp. cxii, 1,563-2,077. $85.00 (us). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. $300.00 (us), die set.     

Early agriculture and palaeoenvironmental history in the North of the Iberian Peninsula: a multi-proxy analysis of the Monte Areo mire (Asturias,Spain)

A multi-proxy study (pollen and NPPs, geochemical composition and radiocarbon dating), combined with principal components analysis, was applied to a core sampled in the Monte Areo mire (Asturias, N Spain), which covers the last 11,600 years cal BP. Both signals of Holocene climate change and transformations by human activities were recorded.     

The Gendered Identities of the ‘Lieutenant Nun’: Rethinking the Story of a Female Warrior in Early Modern Spain

This article analyses the story of Catalina de Erauso, a Spanish nun, who escaped from a convent at the beginning of the seventeenth century to begin a new life as a military warrior serving under the King of Spain in colonial Latin America. Her story reveals that notions of sex and gender at the time were surprisingly elastic and flexible, and often more associated with acts and behaviour than with physical bodies. By examining how the personage of the Lieutenant Nun has been treated in Spain and in Britain in the nineteenth century, this article also evaluates the extent to which certain pre‐modern ideas about sex and gender continued to survive two centuries later.     

Case Shot: An Interim Report on Experimental firing and Analysis to Interpret Early Modern Battlefield Assemblages

Abstract

This article reports on the first stage of a programme of ongoing experimental research to reproduce the firing of artillery case shot of the 17th century, to recover the distribution of the bullets fired, and to analyse their character, to assist in interpretation of case shot distributions from surveys of 17th century battlefields.     

The Early Neolithic in the Iberian Peninsula and the Western Mediterranean: A Review of the Evidence on Migration

The first use of domestic plants and animals in the Western Mediterranean has been a matter of debate, since there are no native ancestors for these elements. The current paradigmatic position favors an introduction by human migrants who reached southern France and the Iberian Peninsula through seafaring. The settlers would have introduced the whole economic and cultural Neolithic background. This paper reviews some of the available archaeological, paleobiological and chronological evidence for the Early Neolithic in the Western Mediterranean, and specifically the Iberian Peninsula, and its use by those who support migration.     

Perfectly absent: the emergence of the Modern Greek perfect in Early Modern Greek

Abstract

This paper traces the emergence of the Standard Modern Greek perfect ?χω + infinitive in the Early Modern Greek period. It shows that the construction appears in written sources towards the very end of the seventeenth century. Special attention is given to ‘phantom’ perfects, which can be found in editions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary and non-literary texts as well as in the bibliography and which distort the picture of its emergence.     

Preservation In Situ for Tourism: An Early Christian Monastic Complex on Sir Bani Yas Island,Western Abu Dhabi,UAE

Abstract

This paper reports on the conservation measures taken to protect and display the remains of a pre-Islamic Christian monastic complex on Sir Bani Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE, and the reasoning behind the decisions. The excavated areas of the site are now partly sheltered, and partly reburied. Observations are made on the effectiveness of the shelter building, and the reburial system used between 1996 and 2010, and on the measures currently being used to preserve plaster floors and faced standing walls in aggressive environmental conditions. Work has been carried out to ?nd ways to make the site as legible as possible while also conserving it. Methods of site monitoring are also discussed.