On Some Remains of the Work of William of Wykham,at Windsor Castle

Scholarly opinion on the character and timing of the end of Roman Britain remains deeply divided. The evidence presented by those favouring a ‘long chronology’ is seriously flawed. ‘Continuity’ or ‘survival’ of Roman Britain is claimed because early medieval activity is attested on some former Roman sites and some early medieval artefacts are of Roman type. But Roman Britain was part of a ‘world system’ with a distinctive and rich archaeological assemblage, and once terms are properly defined and material analysed quantitatively, the argument for fifth-century continuity collapses. The archaeological evidence shows that after a long process of decline beginning in the third century, Roman Britain had ended by c. A.D. 400.     

Manoeuvring men: masculinity as spatially defined readability at the grandes manoeuvres of the Belgian army, 1882–1883

This article uses the case study of the Belgian grandes manoeuvres of 1882 and 1883 to explore the ways in which self-defined ‘all male’ spaces can contribute to the study and deconstruction of historical masculinities. Using the manoeuvres of the Belgian army at the end of the nineteenth century as a theatre of (military as well as civilian) corporeal and discursive practices, the simultaneous enactment of masculinity and nation is analysed. The material spaces in which these military exercises took place are understood as contingent creators instead of passive containers of masculinity: that is, rather than as a passive background to soldiers' movements, the champ de manoeuvres appears as an active stage, aiding the construction of a gendered military identity, but also challenging dichotomous understandings of gender. Likewise, the gaze upon both landscape and soldiers by different audiences plays an active part in the story of the construction of masculinity and nation: the act of recognition, performed by male and female civilians, during and after the manoeuvres was crucial for the continuous repetition of the discourse that created and upheld notions of ‘man’ and of ‘Belgium’.     

Points in Time: The Mesolithic–Neolithic Transition and the Chronology of Late Rod Microliths in Britain

This paper presents the results of the Bayesian statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates associated with diagnostic late Mesolithic rod microliths from England and Wales. These date estimates are compared with results for the earliest evidence for Neolithic material culture and practices in Britain (Whittle et al. 2011; Griffiths 2011; 2014; forthcoming). The chronology of some rod microlith sites indicates a potential overlap between the earliest Neolithic and latest Mesolithic material culture and practices, in the first three centuries of the fourth millennium cal BC across England and Wales. The locations of late Mesolithic sites suggest regional processes of ‘neolithization’ may have occurred. In the region where we have the best chronological evidence for late Mesolithic sites – in Yorkshire – the location of the very latest Mesolithic sites suggests these lifeways may have persisted in landscapes which had been foci of hunter‐gatherer activity for hundreds of years, and which might have been understood as ‘ancestral’ or ‘persistent’ places.     

Cultural policies for sustainable development: four strategic paths

Abstract

In the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the role of culture is limited. We argue that culture’s absence is rooted in the longue durée of interplay among theoretical and policy debates on culture in sustainable development and on cultural policy since the mid-twentieth century. In response to variations in concepts and frameworks used in advocacy, policy, and academia, we propose four roles cultural policy can play towards sustainable development: first, to safeguard and sustain cultural practices and rights; second, to ‘green’ the operations and impacts of cultural organizations and industries; third, to raise awareness and catalyse actions about sustainability and climate change; and fourth, to foster ‘ecological citizenship’. The challenge for cultural policy is to help forge and guide actions along these co-existing and overlapping strategic paths towards sustainable development.     

Changing philosophies of action? Argentine’s cultural policies in the 21st century

ABSTRACT

How can the many institutional and ideological changes of Argentine cultural policy at the beginning of the 21st century be explained? This paper analyses how representations of culture, programs and public actions are translated into different ‘philosophies of action’ depending on the political stripe of each government and the agents of cultural policy. If the predominant philosophy of action during the whole period is ‘culture as an economic resource’, it coexists with other philosophies: ‘culture as show’, ‘a communication tool’, ‘social inclusion’ and finally ‘a factor of citizenship’.     

‘I don't think it was such an issue back then’: changing experiences of pregnancy across two generations of women in south-east England

Based upon in-depth interviews with recent mothers and their own mothers in London, England, this article uses a cross-generational perspective to examine the changing experiences/perceptions of pregnancy over the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Pregnancy is a biological process, but exists within social, economic, political and cultural realms and is both spatially and temporally located. In this article we argue that advances in gender equality, maternity benefits, technological innovation and mass media have meant that pregnancy is now increasingly experienced in the ‘public’ sphere, whereas, in earlier twentieth century Britain at least, it was often relegated to the realm of private or domestic life. However with these changes have come new types of surveillance in the form of scientific ‘advice’, medical technologies and media dissemination of cultural ‘norms’ regarding appropriate dress, lifestyle and behaviour during pregnancy. Based upon the findings of our research we examine these changes from two different perspectives: firstly a Foucauldian notion of surveillance in relation to ‘medical’ advice on diet/lifestyle during pregnancy, and secondly new expectations regarding body image and clothing in the context of the emergence of ‘pregnancy chic’ and the figure of the ‘celebrity mum’.     

The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project

This article analyses French assimilation policy towards the four communes of the colony of Senegal, placing it in a new conceptual framework of ‘globalization’ and ‘post-colonial studies’. Between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, the four cities of Saint-Louis, Gorée, Rufisque and Dakar were granted municipal status, while their inhabitants acquired French citizenship. However, the acquisition of these political privileges went together with a refusal on the part of these ‘citizens’ to submit themselves to the French code civil. Their resistance manifested itself in particular in the forging of an urban culture that differed from both the metropolitan model and the Senegambian models of the independent kingdoms on the colony's fringes or the societies integrated as protectorates. This article argues that, at the very heart of this colonial project and despite its marked assimilationist and jacobin overtones, a strong project of cultural and political hybridization developed. The inhabitants of the quatre communes forged their own civilité which enabled them to participate in a global colonial culture on the basis of local idioms.     

INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA ATOMIC EMISSION SPECTROSCOPY ANALYSES OF ROMAN MILITARY COPPER-ALLOY ARTEFACTS FROM THE EXCAVATIONS AT MASADA,ISRAEL*

A selection of Roman military fittings and associated copper-alloy artefacts was analysed by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy. The method used was a variant on those previously published and gives very good precision and accuracy. The Roman metalwork analysed conforms extremely well to similar artefacts analysed from, contemporaneous European sites and suggests, despite the strongly ‘local’ nature of the Judaean legions, a considerable uniformity of alloying practice within the Roman army during the first century AD.     

The Gay Hussar: The Origins and Spread of Buserant in the Danube Region

This papers examines how the word Buserant ‘gay’ spread in the languages of the Danube region. Further, it hypothesises in what contact situations borrowing occurred. In this, it presents a case study illustrating lexical borrowing in the proposed Danubian Sprachbund. According to the study’s findings Italian road workers introduced Buserant in Viennese German from where it spread through army service and/or travellers in taverns of Austria Hungary. The borrowing appears to be restricted to the languages of Austria-Hungary and excludes Yiddish, which can be explained by the relative isolation of Yiddish-speaking communities by the mid-nineteenth century.     

Family stories,public silence: Irish identity construction amongst the second‐generation Irish in England

Formal narratives of history, especially that of colonial oppression, have been central to the construction of national identities in Ireland. But the Irish diasporic community in Britain has been cut off from the reproduction of these narratives, most notably by their absence from the curriculum of Catholic schools, as result of the unofficial ‘denationalisation’ pact agreed by the Church in the 19th century (Hickman, 1995). The reproduction of Irish identities is largely a private matter, carried out within the home through family accounts of local connections, often reinforced by extended visits to parent/s ‘home’ areas. Recapturing a public dimension has often become a personal quest in adulthood, ‘filling in the gaps’. This paper explores constructions of narratives of nation by a key diasporic population, those with one or two Irish‐born parents. It places particular emphasis on varying regional/national contexts within which such constructions take place, drawing on focus group discussions and interviews for the ESRC‐funded Irish 2 Project in five locations — London, Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry and Banbury.     

Abstracts of Articles

ANDREW BREEZE, ‘Arthur’s Battles and the Volcanic Winter of 536–37’. A mega-eruption of 535 in the Americas produced a volcanic winter in 536-37, with crop failure throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It thus reveals a Welsh annal for 537 on 'mortality in Britain and in Ireland’ as referring to famine, not plague. Mention in the same annal of Arthur’s final battle at Camlan, located at Castlesteads on Hadrian’s Wall, will further point to a campaign by starving North Britons under Arthur's leadership to seize food-supplies from their neighbours. The extreme weather phenomena of 536-37 also suggest that Gildas wrote his De Excidio in the summer of 536 (as implied by David Woods of Cork), because in chapter 93 of that work he alludes to a ‘thick mist and black night’ sitting ‘upon the whole island’ of Britain, but says nothing on the harvest failure which it led to. We may infer as well that the Britons defeated the Saxons at ‘Mount Badon’ in north Wiltshire in early 493, because Gildas declares that the battle was won at the time of his birth, forty-three years and a month before he was writing.’

DAVID M. YORATH, ‘Sir Christopher Moresby of Scaleby and Windemere, c. 1441–99’. To date, researchers have little cared for Sir Christopher Moresby of Scaleby and Windermere (c. 1441–99), Member of Parliament for Westmorland, conservator of the peace with Scotland, escheator of Cumberland and Westmorland and steward of Penrith. There exists no ODNB article or source-based examination of his career — only a brief, error-strewn note in J. B. Wedgwood’s ‘Biographies of the Members of the Commons House 1439-1509’. This is unfitting, for it is clear there was a mastery of technique about Moresby — something that not only ensured his survival during one of the most turbulent periods in English history, but also made him an indispensable political figure, regardless of regime. What follows is an examination of his hitherto unstudied career, with some remarks on wider developments pertinent to the history of the North West.

VICTORIA SPENCE, ‘Adapting to the Elizabethan Settlement: Religious Faith and the Drive towards Conformity in Craven, 1559 to 1579’. This article explores the reception in Craven to Elizabethan religious reform. Until the 1569 Rebellion the interpretation of the Elizabethan Settlement was broad, pragmatic and accommodating. Following Elizabeth’s excommunication and the stringent enforcement of conformity, Catholics, supported by Marian and seminary priests, resorted to recusancy and a separate Catholic identity. Archbishops Grindal and Sandys installed university-educated preaching clerics to establish and promote conformity in the northern diocese. Many were Puritan nonconformists who felt reform was incomplete, and opposed a hierarchical Church with surviving Catholic rituals. Increasingly confessional identities diverged, although eventually the majority of the Craven laity adapted and conformed.

IMOGEN PECK, ‘The Great Unknown: The Negotiation and Narration of Death by English War Widows, 1647–60’. The truism that death is life’s only certainty may have seemed far from obvious to the women of mid seventeenth-century England. For the conditions of the British Civil Wars, in addition to causing significant physical destruction, also brought much uncertainty to the lives of the civilian population, who could struggle to ascertain whether men serving in the wars were alive or dead. Drawing on the relief petitions of war widows and court depositions from the northern counties of England, this article explores the impact this uncertainty had on the wives of Civil War soldiers. In particular, it focuses on the strategies women used when navigating the problem of how they could know, or prove, that their husbands were dead, the ways they narrated and interpreted the loss of a spouse, and the predicaments faced by ‘phantom widows’: those women who believed their husbands to have been killed in the wars, only for them to return home alive sometime later. In doing so, it illuminates a little-studied dimension of female experience during the revolutionary period, while also contributing to our understanding of early modern mentalities more broadly, and, in particular, attitudes to death and civil war.

CONOR O’BRIEN, ‘Attitudes to St Cuthbert’s Body during the Nineteenth Century’.

St Cuthbert’s tomb in Durham Cathedral was opened in 1827, occasioning the start of a cycle of polemic and counter-polemic between Protestant and Roman Catholic writers throughout the rest of the century. The excavation of 1827 aimed to disprove the medieval legends about the incorruption of Cuthbert’s body, but it (and the many texts which debated its findings throughout the course of the nineteenth century) must be understood in the light of local religious controversy as much as of Victorian antiquarianism. The texts which addressed the issue of Cuthbert’s body in the years which followed were concerned with religious, as well as historical, truth and reveal shifting attitudes in both the Anglican and Catholic communities to the role of saints, miracles and relics within their own forms of Christianity. While this paper mainly concerns a comparatively small element of Victorian religious debate, one focused upon issues of local interest and identity, it problematises some of the traditional paradigms used to understand nineteenth-century scholarship. Not the increasing secularisation of historical practice and antiquarianism, but the continuing, albeit changing, importance of Durham’s patron saint, is the most striking feature of the dispute.

EDWARD M. SPIERS, ‘Yorkshire and the First Day of the Somme’. Given the prominence of the First Day on the Somme in the UK’s collective memory of the First World War, it is timely to reconsider the impact of that disastrous battle upon Yorkshire, a county that contributed more fighting units (c. 20 per cent), and suffered more casualties, than any other county in the United Kingdom. The fighting experiences of Yorkshire units ranged from utter disaster (not even reaching their own front line), and suffering the largest proportion of casualties of any unit in the British army, to making the largest gains of ground on the day. The spread of bereavement, however, was far from uniform, and so partly on account of the units engaged, and their recruiting whether pre-war (where regular) or wartime (in the case of Kitchener’s Service battalions), losses were concentrated within the West Riding. Moreover, despite the heavy losses within the “Pals” battalions, the legendary burden of bereavement within local communities did not apply uniformly because some units in 1916 were nothing like the “Pals” of 1914. The process of releasing details about deaths over days and weeks, with a huge ‘missing’ sub-group, robbed the First Day of anything like the significance it now holds. The dominant Press narrative, supported by letters from the front, remained overwhelmingly positive about the battle, the role of Yorkshire units and the prospects for the war itself. Political, military and religious elites reinforced this narrative at the two-year anniversary of the outbreak of the war, which coupled with the reception of the film, ‘Battle of the Somme’, assisted in sustaining the coping mechanisms within the country.     

The Queen’s Dolls’ House within the British Empire Exhibition: encapsulating the British imperial world

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, designed by Edwin Landseer Lutyens and unveiled to the public in 1924 at the British Empire Exhibition. The Dolls’ House epitomised the characteristics of Britain as a nation and an empire through its English exterior and British world objects within. Marginalised in academic discourses and regarded as a plaything, this article brings the Dolls’ House back to discourses of British material and visual culture as well as Lutyens scholarship. To this end, it analyses how the design and contents of the House encapsulated the British imperial world and materialised Britain’s position in the postwar world.     

The Parthenon Marbles as icons of nationalism in nineteenth‐century Britain

Theories of nationalism place native culture at the core of national self‐fashioning. What explains a state's adoption of foreign objects to sustain national identity? In this paper, I argue that the incorporation of the Parthenon Marbles into British public life is an early example of supranational nationalism. The nineteenth‐century ‘art race’ was a competitive field in which European nation‐states vied for prestige. Of the thousands of art trophies that were brought to Britain from Mediterranean and North African countries, the Parthenon Marbles were uniquely iconicised. Using data from period newspapers and official documents, I assert that this was because they were assiduously presented as prenational by British authorities. In this way, they belonged simultaneously to no nation, to every nation, and to Britain. The case demonstrates the emergence of a particular form of national distinctiveness that transcended the smallness of particularity and rose to the level of universal civilisation.     

MINERO‐PETROGRAPHIC AND GEOCHEMICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF ‘GRECO SCRITTO’ MARBLE FROM CAP DE GARDE,NEAR HIPPO REGIUS (ANNABA,ALGERIA)*

This work presents the results of the first mineralogical, petrographical and geochemical characterization of the marble quarried from the Cap de Garde headland, not far from Annaba (Algeria). This site is traditionally held by archaeologists to be the main source of supply of the so‐called ‘greco scritto’ marble, which was much used by the Romans for architectural and decorative–ornamental purposes, locally from the first century bc , and in Rome and central and southern Italy from the late Flavian period until the fourth century ad . The databank relating to the quarried material, created here for the first time, is used to establish the origin of ‘greco scritto’ found in six important Roman cities of North Africa: Hippo Regius and Cuicul (Djemila), in Algeria; Volubilis, in Morocco; Cyrene, in Libya; and Carthage and Utica in Tunisia. The results of this archaeometric study support the hypothesis (already put forward by authors) that the ‘greco scritto’used in the Roman Mediterranean originated from different sites, and suggest the existence of a number of North African quarries, also in the vicinity of Annaba.     

Waipi'o valley,a cultural kipuka in early 20th Century Hawaii

Abstract

How has it been possible for Hawaiians to persist and survive as a distinct and unique people while under direct rule by the United States of America during the 20th century? Here it is argued that just as kipuka, or oases of forest in otherwise barren lava fields, are the source for continual regeneration of the volcanic rainforest, isolated rural Hawaiian communities have served as ‘cultural kipuka’ for the regeneration of Hawaiian culture in the 20th century. To introduce this new framework of examining the history of the Hawaiian people, the history of change and continuity in the remote valley of Waipi'o is described.     

The Seventy Years War, 1744–1815, and Britain’s Fiscal-Naval State

Abstract

This article argues that we should view Britain as fighting a ‘Seventy Years War’ with France between the battles of Fontenoy in 1745 and Waterloo in 1815. Through years of hot and cold war, Britain struggled to build the military power needed to prevent it from falling under the domination of France. In hindsight, many view the British as inevitable imperialists, confidently building towards their global empire of the nineteenth century. In reality, eighteenth-century Britons frequently fretted about the threat of invasion, military weakness, possible financial collapse, and potential revolution. Historical developments only look inevitable in hindsight and with the aid of the social sciences. The struggle to defend itself in Europe during the Seventy Years War saw Britain develop a ‘fiscal-naval state’ that built a global empire.     

Barracks Islam and Command Christianity: Religion in Britain’s West African Colonial Army (c.1900–1960)

Religion was an important and dynamic aspect of Britain’s West African colonial army. The religious composition of the force changed from primarily Muslim in the late nineteenth century to primarily traditionalist and Muslim during the early twentieth century to overwhelmingly Christian during and immediately after the Second World War. These changes reflected not only military requirements but also broader social trends. While Muslim religious life in the military reflected a ‘barracks Islam’ accommodated by British officers, a top-down form of command Christianity emerged from the 1940s. Appointed during the Second World War, military chaplains and imams encouraged recruiting and strengthened morale but the presence of black religious officials challenged the existing racial hierarchy.     

Een‐Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial Britain

British imperialists in the late 19th century denigrated non‐western cultures in rationalising the partition of Africa, but they also had to assimilate African values and traditions to make the imperial system work. The partisans of empire also romanticised non‐western cultures to convince the British public to support the imperial enterprise. In doing so, they introduced significant African and Asian elements into British popular culture, thereby refuting the assumption that the empire had little influence on the historical development of metropolitan Britain. Robert Baden‐Powell conceived of the Boy Scout movement as a cure for the social instability and potential military weakness of Edwardian Britain. Influenced profoundly by his service as a colonial military officer, Africa loomed large in Baden‐Powell's imagination. He was particularly taken with the Zulu. King Cetshwayo's crushing defeat of the British army at Isandhlawana in 1879 fixed their reputation as a ‘martial tribe’ in the imagination of the British public. Baden‐Powell romanticised the Zulus' discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. Baden‐Powell's appropriation and reinterpretation of African culture illustrates the influence of subject peoples of the empire on metropolitan British politics and society. Scouting's romanticised trappings of African culture captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Edwardian boys and helped make Baden‐Powell's organisation the premier uniformed youth movement in Britain. Although confident that they were superior to their African subjects, British politicians, educators, and social reformers agreed with Baden‐Powell that ‘tribal’ Africans preserved many of the manly virtues that had been wiped by the industrial age.