New Architectural Models and Building Tradition: A Dialogue in Early Modern Sardinia – The Jesuit Church in Sassari

Architecture in early modern Sardinia is characterized by a strong continuity with previous practices. In the second half of the 16th century, new models join the Gothic building tradition, linked in particular to trends in military engineering and Classicism of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Jesuit church in Sassari offers an interesting example of the intertwining of these architectural modes, which originated with a sudden change of leadership at the site. Giovan Maria Bernardoni, an Italian Jesuit architect, initially modeled the church after the Gesù in Rome, and it was partially built under his direction. After his departure from Sardinia, local master builders finished the construction, following the Gothic tradition and possibly some external influences. This article analyzes the church, particularly focusing on the challenges presented by its articulated vaulting system completed between 1587 and 1609.     

“A Twist in the Tale” of a Surgeon and his Patient: An Australian First in Seizure Localization

In 1894 at St. Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, George Adlington Syme removed a meningioma from a patient with symptomatic focal epilepsy. The operation stands as the first surgery based on seizure localization in Australia. It is also the country's first documented successful resection of an intracranial meningioma. It followed William Macewen's landmark cerebral localization case on the boy John McKinley by 18 years and Victor Horsley's first epilepsy case on Hughlings Jackson's patient James B. by a mere 8 years. Syme's patient, Constable John G., survived the operation by some 23 years, dying from a gunshot wound to the head in 1917. Newly discovered inquest papers reveal that the coroner's judgment that the death was accidental completely fails to address the more credible scenario of suicide. The story makes for a fascinating epilogue to an important landmark in Australia's neurosurgical history.     

Clarendon,Cavour, and the Intervention of Sardinia in the Crimean War, 1853–1855

The notorious arms trader Sir Basil Zaharoff is remembered as the archetypal ‘merchant of death’. During the First World War, he is alleged to have exercised a malign influence over statesmen in London and Paris. Recently released Foreign Office files now allow us to document Zaharoff's wartime activities on behalf of the British government as an agent of influence in the Levant. The new sources reveal that Sir Vincent H.P. Caillard, the financial director of the arms-maker Vickers, played a key role in making Zaharoff's services available to prime ministers Asquith and Lloyd George. While Zaharoff has often been portrayed as a sinister force, manipulating statesmen into pursuing his financial and political interests, the reality was the reverse. Zaharoff was a convenient tool of two prime ministers rather than a powerful political manipulator in his own right.     

The Oxus Temple: Localization of the Avestan Vahvi Dāityā

The article describes an attempt to determine the localization of the Avestan river Vahvi Dāityā using archaeological materials from the Oxus Temple (southern Tajikistan). A comparative analysis of archaeological materials and written sources makes it possible to identify the Amu Darya River with the Avestan Vahvi Dāityā.     

Localization and William Macewen’s Early Brain Surgery Part II: The Cases

This paper contains Part II of an evaluation of the claims made for the priority of Macewen’s pre-1884 brain surgery over that of Bennett and Godlee. Although the primary sources – Macewen’s Private Journals and the Ward Records of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary – confirm that the operations were carried out when Macewen said they were, problems with the sources make it difficult to evaluate the extent to which he actually used knowledge of localization in all seven operations. What remains of the case material on the operations is examined, the accounts in unpublished sources and published versions compared, and Macewen’s use of knowledge of localization bearing on the claim for his priority evaluated. Part II concludes with citations from archival correspondence and the contemporary and near contemporary medical press confirming Macewen’s priority.     

Heritage in trust: Sustainable stewardship in transition?

Abstract

Frequently identified with ‘establishment’ values the National Trust has as often been a focus of critique as of celebration. This essay examines the Trust's changing relation to contested values of heritage as manifest in its acquisitions and management policies, in its engagement with environmental and social issues and an emerging politicisation which transcends a narrow, purely property‐based interpretation of its statutory purpose. Recent acquisitions challenge conventional perceptions of ‘natural beauty’ and ‘historic interest’. Organisational greening has precipitated a review of the implications of stewardship ‘in perpetuity’. Recognition of the needs of local communities and awareness of equal opportunities issues have prompted a reinterpretation of its founders’ concerns with access and enjoyment ‘for the nation’. These developments manifest an inchoate shift in the Trust's emphasis from the preservation of the status quo to engagement with change, both within the context of its own properties and in its relations to the wider society and environment. The Trust is unlikely ever to lead changes in public perceptions of heritage but neither is its role necessarily or irredeemably a wholly reactionary one. Inertial and cautious, the Trust reflects and articulates the shifting resolution of contested cultural values.     

Brussels: division in unity or unity in division?

Even though Brussels is not a city divided into clearly demarcated ethnolinguistic zones, internal territorial issues help to define the city’s cultural and political geography. On the one hand, the tendency to associate different parts of the city with one group or the other helps to sustain the idea of the city as a culturally divided place. On the other hand, the formal status of the city as a single political-territorial unit within the larger Belgian polity promotes a sense of unity in the face of division. An examination of the functional and perceptual attributes of territory in Brussels shows the socio-political significance of territorial arrangements and understanding even when groups are not separated into discrete spatial units.     

“Ein Berliner” in America: Directing Approaches in Context

The Berlin director Heinz-Uwe Haus has been staging productions in the United States for nearly three decades, beginning with a production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at Villanova University in 1980. This article focuses on two Brechtian principles that Haus has employed in his University of Delaware and Villanova productions: first, what he characterizes as “physicalized” acting and, second, a sense of theatre as a community event. Physicalization permits the actors to “get in touch with” their bodies and use them differently and more fully in performance. In Haus's Oedipus Rex at Villanova, the chorus, a diverse group of actors ranging in age from 18 to 70, became the central character. Through the use of a chorus in several of his Delaware productions and other alienation techniques (an African American Grusha, a woman playing Ui), Haus has consistently moved his audiences to see the relevance of theatre to the contemporary world.     

Beyond the grave: variability in Neolithic diets in Southern Germany?

Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses were undertaken on human and faunal remains from two Neolithic sites in Southern Germany; the LBK settlement at Herxheim and the middle Neolithic cemetery at Trebur. Stable isotope data were used to reconstruct the diets of individuals buried at these sites and to look at dietary variation between groups classified by their sex, age, grave goods and cultural affiliation. Overall there was surprisingly little variation in the diet between the groups, as described by the stable isotope analysis, despite significant differences in the composition of grave goods. Also surprising, considering the archaeological evidence for extensive grain cultivation in this region during the Neolithic, was that the majority of individuals had δ¹⁵N values consistent with the consumption of significant amounts of animal protein.     

William the Conqueror's Campaign in Cheshire in 1069–70: Ravaging and Resistance in the North-West

Abstract

'Catholics, Conformity and the Community in the Elizabethan Diocese of Durham'. This article explores the development of Elizabethan Catholicism, challenging historical divisions between 'missionary' and 'traditional' Catholicism. By examining contrasting patterns of conformity among Durham Catholics, the article highlights divisions within the Catholic community about the implications of recusancy, showing that religious nonconformity reflected political, as well as pious, considerations. Challenging the traditional emphasis on the role of missionary priests in shaping English Catholicism, this article argues that the evolution of Catholicism — including patterns of worship and relationships with the State — was driven by the social, political and economic legacies of the local societies from which Elizabethan Catholic communities emerged.     

‘China-ware in the skies’: overlapping identities in the ornamental use of plates in Uruguay

Abstract

This is the study of a church where tableware manufactured in Great Britain was used to decorate the façade in the early 19th century. An argument is made that this one surviving case points to a larger regional tradition, now lost, whose greatest exponent was Montevideo Cathedral, Uruguay. The hypothesis presented here is that the use of British plates in religious façades shortly before the South American Wars of Independence was part of a search for identity in a region trying to break away from Spain, and in the process of becoming a small republic between the two larger countries of Argentina and Brazil.     

Bayvil in Cemais: An Early Medieval Assembly Site in South-West Wales?

Abstract

WELSH EARLY MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPES of authority and assembly have received less attention than they should as a result of a restricted archaeological and written record. Analysis of the location of a 14th-century Pembrokeshire fair charter, however, suggests that the site may also be the location of a hitherto lost 12th-century feast of translation and a pre-Conquest assembly. If so, it presents one of the first examples of an early medieval assembly site in Wales, situated in a landscape setting that lends weight to indications elsewhere in Britain and Ireland of a shared understanding of the spatial expression of early medieval communal interaction and authority.     

Trapped in clichés: masculinity,films and tourism in Iceland

When the Icelandic television series ‘Trapped’ was aired it instantly garnered worldwide attention. The main character, a rugged Icelandic man, is presented as being one with the harsh cold landscape. This article demonstrates how visual materials, like ‘Trapped,’ have become extremely important in the presentation of Iceland to the outside world, as well as working to present Iceland as a tourism destination. Furthermore, we evidence how ‘Trapped’ identifies with the Nordic noir genre. Our analysis shows that the series ‘Trapped’ and recent Icelandic films rest on the strong and entrenched association of Icelandicness with maleness, while also reflecting on existing stereotypes about Iceland and the Icelandic people as being exotic, both of which have become reanimated through the tourism industry. Thus, visual material such as ‘Trapped’ constitutes a part of, and becomes in and of itself symbolic of recurrent masculinity in Iceland. Our analysis emphasizes the importance of framing the ‘official’ production of locations as tourism destinations by both state and commercial industries in relation to other cultural productions that often also engage with mobile historical stereotyping and commercial attempts at nation branding.     

“Family building in inner quarters”: Conjugal relationship in Tang families

Conjugal relationship has a predominant role in ancient Chinese familial life. Yet most researches on conjugal relationship have tended to focus on the arrangement of marriage, disregarding marital life after wedding. It is the general impression that matrimonial relation follows the ethics of Confucian doctrine of “the husband as principle of the wife,” or relevant code of laws like “Seven Outs,” edited according to these principles. There are three factors that contribute to marital relationship in the Tang Dynasty: ideology, ethics, and written laws. Although written laws are influenced by Confucian ideology, and hence following Confucian system of manners, on the practical level, ordinance still appears as the most reliable source to analyze familial relationships. People in the Tang Dynasty stress family status when they marry wives, yet when marrying concubines, versatility is of interest. Whereas records in official history documents and epitaphs are not entirely accountable, the complicated relationships between husband and wife, husband and concubine, and that between wife and concubine need to be further illustrated.