The rituals and significance of ducal civic entries in late medieval Brittany

Although not so richly documented as some other French principalities, enough evidence survives to describe various rituals connected with ducal civic entries in late medieval Brittany, which have been largely ignored in recent general literature. This article synthesises this material, highlighting in particular the political and ideological as well as ceremonial imperatives which governed evolving Breton practice between the fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries as the duchy passed from independent rule under the Montfort dynasty into the hands of the kings of France.     

Gustav Metzger: iconoclasm and interdisciplinarity

ABSTRACT

Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) has been described as ‘the conscience of the art world’ for the consistently political content of his art and his commitment to political activism on the subject of nuclear weapons, capitalism and environmentalism. Metzger’s artistic output from the late 1950s onwards reflects a theory of art as both aesthetic form and social action and identifies him as a key precursor of activist art. This article considers the inherent interdisciplinarity of Metzger’s practice as it evolved during this early period between the late 1950s and early 1970s in relation to his agenda of social engagement.     

‘Birds,bogs and forestry’ revisited: The significance of the flow country controversy

This paper evaluates the significance of the battle between forest and conservation interests in the Flow Country of northern Scotland during the late 1980s. It summarises the key arguments for and against afforestation as they were presented at the time, and reviews their validity in the light of subsequent developments. Commercial afforestation was claimed to be an economically valuable land use in a region with few alternatives, whereas conservationists presented the Flow Country as a wetland habitat of international significance. The controversy had far‐reaching consequences both for forest practice and nature conservation in Scotland and the UK. The break‐up of the Nature Conservancy Council and the remit given to Scottish Natural Heritage, the negative public perception of commercial forestry, the adoption of multiple objective forest management, Indicative Forest Strategies, and the participatory philosophy in conservation, can all be wholly or partly traced to the controversy. Ultimately, the controversy is shown to have had positive outcomes both for conservation and forest practice.     

A Study on the Whetstone-as-Funerary-Object Practice at the Jinsha Site,Chengdu

Whetstone-as-funerary-object was a common practice seen in tombs at the Jinsha site. Commonly found in the tombs at the Jinsha site, whetstones could have been a signifier of professional soldiers or violence groups in the ancient Shu culture, thus a product of the stratified ancient Shu society. Whetstones have been largely discovered in boat-coffin burials. The practice took form no later than the early Western Zhou dynasty, went on the decline in the late Spring and Autumn period, and came to an end in the Warring States period. The burial custom in question reflects the rise and fall of Jinsha as the central settlement area, and is a likely result of the two major transitions the ancient Shu society underwent over the period from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn period. The ancient Shu society experienced regime changes and went under the reign of reshuffling rulers in the late Spring and Autumn period; as a result, the emerging ruling elite abandoned the old whetstone-as-funerary-object practice, and embraced the new world.     

城镇劳动就业与中国改革的发轫

劳动就业不仅是现代社会必须解决的基本问题之一,也是社会改革的推动力。20世纪70年代末的中国城镇劳动就业就是如此。中国政府通过改革的方式顺利解决了当时严峻的就业问题,为社会的发展和进一步改革创造了稳定的环境。这一实践增进了人们对社会经济发展规律的认识,加深了人们对生产关系与生产力相互关系的理解,为中国经济体制的改革奠定了一方面的基础。     

Fishing Gear from a 7th-Century Shipwreck off Dor, Israel

The ancient anchorage of Dor, Israel, contains wreck-sites from several periods. Underwater exploration of one Byzantine wreck discovered the remains of a medium-size boat constructed with iron nails. Coin-finds dated it to c .665 AD, after the Muslim conquest. The wreck was probably caused by natural agents, but an event in the Byzantine-Muslim conflict can not be discounted. The artefacts include a group of objects testifying to the practice of light-fishing. Literary sources indicate a prevalence of light-fishing, but archaeological finds are very rare. This discovery clearly indicates light-fishing in late antiquity. A sounding-lead and steelyard can be seen as auxiliary to the fishing.
© 2007 The Authors     

Genealogies of Practice in and of the Environment in Banda,Ghana

Despite recent emphases on both environmental archaeology and practice theory in archaeology, the two are rarely combined. In this paper, we illustrate a genealogies of environmental practice approach that seeks to understand how human actions grounded in familiar repertoires make sense of environmental and political economic change. Employing archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data, we first examine taxon-specific genealogies of practice and then compare them to one another as well as to broader climatic, political, and economic contexts of the last millennium in Banda, west central Ghana. In focusing on the interactivities between different kinds of data, we coax out the strategies used by Banda’s inhabitants to cope with fluctuating environmental and political conditions. We argue that during a several centuries long drought in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries ad, Banda villagers took advantage of a diverse set of economic activities to cope with turbulence, but by the late nineteenth century, these opportunities had dwindled, diminishing the villagers’ practical options.     

Changing ideologies of Medieval state formation: the growing exploitation of land in Gwynedd c. 1100–c. 1400

This paper focuses on one of the major ideological shifts associated with the territorialization of power experienced within Medieval European society, namely the growing exploitation of land. Using empirical evidence from the kingdom of Gwynedd in Wales, it explores the difficulties faced by Medieval societal rulers in translating their new ideologies of state rule into administrative practice. Their inability to create a consistent administrative structure to match their ideological ambitions meant that there was often a geography inherent in the territorialization of power in the Middle Ages, ranging from a close relationship between ideology and practice near the political core of the state to one of increasing discontinuity between the two near its periphery. The author suggests that the English conquest of Gwynedd in the late thirteenth century—one which was characterized by a far greater infrastructural co-ordination—led, to a large extent, to the dissolution of the spatial variations in the administrative realities of the Gwynedd state.     

Constructing clandestine communities: oaths of collective secrecy and conceptual boundaries in the late antique Mediterranean

This article explores fourth- to seventh-century narratives about oaths of collective secrecy, which our sources typically frame negatively. By examining the terminology used in reference to these promises, the dynamics inherent in the practice and its relationship to oath-taking customs in other contexts, and the influence of Christianity on the discourses around such pledges, we can see that late antique authors routinely frame the swearing of these pacts as a transition to a liminal state of existence. Through this rhetoric, church and state authorities constructed conceptual boundaries between those who agreed and disagreed with their definitions of acceptable behaviours.     

SEASONAL FEASTS IN ROMAN BRITAIN

Summary: Epigraphic sources for the celebration of festivals in Roman Britain mainly come from military sites. Archaeological evidence indicates that a calendar of festivals similar to that of Rome was also observed by civilians within the province. the temene of the larger temples, and theatres connected with such shrines, were obvious places for large-scale, popular gatherings but there was also an intimate family cult represented by the care of ancestral tombs and the midwinter Saturnalia festivities.
Finds of sacred objects such as a cernus for first-fruits (offered to Ceres) and a castration-clamp (used in the worship of Cybele) as well as works of art, including gems and terracottas, also throw light on Roman religion. There were close resemblances with Celtic practice, and fusion between imported cults and native ones must have occurred very frequently.
In late Roman times, the Christian calendar came into use in Britain; the celebrations of Easter and the veneration of the Saints are both attested in Dark-age written sources.     

Geo-strategy and the persistence of antiquity: surveying mythical hydrographies in the eastern Mediterranean, 1784–1869

This paper explores late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century mappings of three strategic sites in the Eastern Mediterranean, each with a notable ancient history: the Straits of the Dardanelles, and the isthmuses of Suez and Mount Athos. Considering mapping as a culturally and historically situated cognitive practice, the paper focuses on the rhetorical use of Classical antiquity (the Persian Wars) in the geopolitical discourse of that period and in the legitimization of great hydraulic projects, like the Suez Canal. At the same time, it also seeks to re-evaluate Mediterranean straits and isthmuses in their geographical specificity, as physical and imaginative ‘gateways’ to the Orient, as ‘connecting points’ and boundaries between the Self and the Other.     

The Practice of Identity and an Irish Sense of Place

Following in the wake of Benedict Anderson's work in particular, cultural geographers and cultural studies scholars have analyzed the nation and nationalism as primarily 'imagined' or abstract entities. Coincidentally, the greatest analytic attention has been given to nationalist representations of place, rather than to the everyday discursive practices constitutive of the nation as lived. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory, in this paper I develop the beginnings of a corporeal approach to the nation. Here the relationship between the practice of identity (the embodiment of gendered and sexualized subjectivities via discursive practice within culturally defined spaces) and an Irish nationalist sense of place is explored. In this approach, analytic considerations of identity and space are collapsed within the shared material and metaphoric medium of the body. Irish nationalism and the nation are analyzed as corporeal materialities via an ethnohistorical focus on late nineteenth-century changes in the political economy of 'peasant' and nationalist bodies. The analysis suggests that a particular matrix of constructions of femininity and masculinity was extended paradigmatically throughout the society in the latter half of the nineteenth century. These paradigmatic changes are characterized as a 'heterosexing' of bodies and places linked to economic change and the rise of the confessional state.     

Nursing mothers and feeding bottles: reconstructing breastfeeding and weaning patterns in Greek Byzantine populations (6th–15th centuries AD) using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios

Traditionally, documentary evidence (mainly medical works and the vitae and miracles of saints) served as the primary source of information for perinatal nutrition in the Byzantine era. In the last decade, however, stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratio analysis has also been applied for the reconstruction of Byzantine breastfeeding and weaning practices. This paper reviews the documentary evidence for Byzantine weaning and compares it to isotopic data for eight Greek Byzantine skeletal samples from the sites of Eleutherna, Kastella, Messene, Sourtara, Stylos, Nemea, Petras and Servia (6th–15th centuries AD). The documentary evidence suggests that Byzantine children were weaned at a relatively late age. The age patterning of the stable isotope data is not as clear as normally seen at single sites. However, the presence of a higher proportion of elevated values in juveniles aged three years or less suggests that weaning was completed by the fourth year—a pattern consistent with the written sources. The data available from this study allow us to make some tentative suggestions about cultural and temporal differences in weaning, and to recommend directions for further research. A comparison of the Byzantine data presented here to data published for Roman-era sites from the Mediterranean and Western Europe suggests that the Byzantines maintained a Roman-era practice of relatively late weaning. In contrast, medieval data for Western Europe and the few measurements made on post-Byzantine Greek material suggest more variation, with some groups weaning late and others weaning earlier, by two years of age.     

Spinoza,Bayle, and the Enlightenment Politics of Philosophical Certainty

This article explores the complex and contested intellectual relationship between two of the key thinkers of the Early Enlightenment: Spinoza and Bayle. The key issue of contention between them is not, it is argued, the question of the existence and nature of God, but their profoundly contrasting visions of the nature of philosophy as a politically emancipatory practice. The article analyzes Bayle's rejection of Spinoza's systemic certainty, and the significance of this rejection in relation to Bayle's own anti-systemic philosophy of openness and incompletion. This contrast between Bayle and Spinoza is deployed to clarify the interpretation of Bayle's theory of toleration and of his late writings.     

Women's Devotional Bequests of Textiles in the Late Medieval English Parish Church,c. 1350–1550

This article examines evidence of self‐determination and independent action in the practice, among a significant group of late medieval English women, of donating their own clothing and household linens to parish churches for use in sacred ritual.
The argument is presented that clothworking in a domestic environment was a highly valorised activity closely connected with women, for which the spindle and distaff acted as an index, and that against this background women used textiles as a site for expressing their personal, social and religious concerns.     

晚清中国商业行会对洋商的“停交”抵制活动——基于经济和法律的视角

晚清时期,在中西商贸领域,频频出现由华商商业行会倡导的对洋商的"停交"抵制活动.该种抵制活动,通常源于洋商破坏商事惯例及交易则例、赖欠货款、欺行霸市等损坏华商利益的行为,有时也因华洋商人分割市场、侵夺商利的市场竞争而起.它其实是一种扩大化的华洋商事纠纷形态,在特定历史背景下也成为华洋商事纠纷的一种独特解决路径.而其在中西商务交往过程中的实践和运作,从经济层面来看,是当时中国被强行融入资本主义世界经济体系过程中华洋市场仇恨的一种表征;从法律层面来看,则是中国商人藉本土商事习惯法与洋商进行斗争的一种自救行为.     

‘Liable to Very Gross Abuse’: Murder,Moral Panic and Cultural Fears over Infant Life Insurance, 1875–1914

The belief that infant life insurance policies provided working-class parents with a direct incentive for the deliberate starvation and neglect of their children was widespread in late nineteenth-century Britain. Newspapers, medical periodicals and the newly formed National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) regularly claimed that, though almost impossible to prove, cases of lethal child abuse were endemic across the United Kingdom. These anxieties appear to have reached their zenith in the 1880s and 1890s, yet despite the regular (albeit not unchallenged) repetition of this claim in the press and before Parliament, actual cases of child homicide where it was alleged that infant life insurance had been the motivation for the crime seem to have been few and far between. Nor did critics of the practice ever succeed in banning it outright. By 1908 politicians felt able to assert that this idea was utterly without foundation, and the once persistently repeated rhetoric of malevolent working-class parents seems to have disappeared altogether by the First World War. Tracing the debates over this subject in the press and Parliament alongside the small number of child homicide trials which invoked life insurance as a factor, this article charts the shift in these ideas from a widely supported public concern to its final refutation as a fear which ‘has not been found in practice.     

The promotion of phrenology in New South Wales, 1830–1850, at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts

ABSTRACT

Sydney, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, began as a penal colony in 1788. British phrenologists would later show an intense interest in this new settlement, aroused by questions raised by convict transportation and indigenous assimilation into European culture. A more sinister engagement involved the scientific trafficking of Aboriginal skulls. This practice was seen, however, not as body snatching but as a meaningful contribution to the progress of science. In 1833, a group of educated, influential men formed the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts (SMSA). This organization was successful where previously learned societies had failed. These men aimed to see the diffusion of scientific and useful knowledge throughout the colony and to enhance the lot of the working man (mechanics). They planned to achieve this aim with lectures, demonstration classes, and the development of a library and museum. Phrenology fitted perfectly into their curriculum. From 1838 to the late 1840s, many of Sydney Town’s prominent medical practitioners and other professionals delivered lectures promoting this “science.” However, interest in the study of phrenology at the SMSA waned from the 1850s, when itinerant phrenologists turned the practice into a popular entertainment.     

Bringing the feudal law back home: social practice and the law of fiefs in Italy and Provence (1100–1250)

ABSTRACT

The Libri feudorum is a composite law book containing the customary laws of fiefs held in Lombardy which were codified in 1100–1250. Its function in shaping a late medieval ‘feudal vocabulary’ and, ultimately, modern models of feudalism was highlighted by Susan Reynolds and lies at the core of her anti-feudalism paradigm. This paper questions the disjuncture between social practice and learned law that underlies the paradigm, by analysing the context and making of the Libri feudorum and of legal writings associated with it – by Pillius de Medicina, Iacobus de Ardizone and Jean Blanc. By showing how practice could shape legal tools used by learned lawyers to frame fiefs and by reassessing the influence of the Libri feudorum on practice, the paper challenges the idea that fiefs were the outcome of professional or academic law and unveils aspects of the practical nature and intellectual dimension of lawyerly writing.