‘Facing the future’: tourism and identity-building in post-socialist Romania

Tourism is an important component of the process of identity-building, representing one way in which a country can seek to project a particular self-image to the wider international community. As such, tourism has considerable ideological significance for the formerly socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe that are seeking to project and affirm distinctly post-socialist identities as part of the process of re-integration into the political and economic structures of Western Europe. This paper focuses on tourism and identity-building in post-socialist Romania. In particular, it focuses on one building — the so-called ‘House of the People’ — which is intimately linked with Romania’s totalitarian past and which is fast becoming Bucharest’s biggest tourist sight. The presentation of the building to tourists seeks to ‘reconfigure’ its past so that it accords better with Romania’s post-socialist identity, and particularly its aspirations to (re)establish itself as a country of ‘mainstream’ Europe.     

The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High-Medieval Miracle Narratives

This article explores the intersection of medicine, religion and gender within the context of miracle narratives compiled in England and France in the High Middle Ages. Women in miracle accounts have much to tell us about medieval ideas of gendered sickness and health, yet this is an area which has received little scholarly attention. Focusing on stories of female deformity and disfigurement, it is argued that sickness has a feminising effect on women's bodies in these sources, but proposed that symptoms of excess femininity were not always seen as the spiritual hindrance that might be expected.     

Comparative Study of Perimortem Weapon Trauma in Two Early Medieval Skeletal Populations (AD 400–1200) from Ireland

Violence was a reality of life in early medieval Ireland (AD 400–1200). Its omnipresence is indicated from numerous narratives of regicide, mortal conflicts, battles and warfare that survive in ancient myths, legends and annalistic accounts. The archaeological evidence of violence and conflict is mainly identified in the osteoarchaeological record, and approximately 13% of all skeletal populations from excavated early medieval cemeteries in Ireland have shown evidence of weapon trauma. This study considers the osteological representation of violent deaths in two contemporaneous Irish skeletal populations dating to this period: Mount Gamble in County Dublin and Owenbristy in County Galway. This analysis involves assessing the different anatomical regions of the body for evidence of lesions that can be attributed to weapon trauma. The results indicate that these populations are likely to have been exposed to violence under differing circumstances; the evidence suggests that the individuals from Mount Gamble may have been well equipped or skilled at interpersonal battle, in contrast to the majority of individuals from Owenbristy who may have been unprotected and unprepared. The presence of two adolescents and two adult females amongst the victims from the latter population gives insight into a wider social dimension of weapon trauma in early medieval Ireland. There is also evidence of postmortem mutilations and decapitations, which reflect ritualistic aspects of violence. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Queen – A Middle–Class Tragedy: The Writing of History and the Creation of Myths in Nineteenth–Century France and Germany

This article is an interpretation of historical narratives written by nineteenth–century German and French historians (among them Johann Gustav Droysen and Jules Michelet) about the French Revolution and the biographies of notable queens. Central to this historical narrative are Marie–Antoinette of France, Louise, queen of Prussia, and Elizabeth, empress of Austria. The text is concerned with the process of transforming the executed queen of ancien régime France into the image of the nineteenth–century bourgeois ideal of women and monarchy. Thus the essay is also about the creation of myths and about male bourgeois and middle–class fantasies.     

The Bruce dynasty,Becket and Scottish pilgrimage to Canterbury,c.1178-c.1404

In 1187 Alfonso VIII of Castile and his queen, Leonor of England, founded a Cistercian nunnery, Santa Maria Regalis de Las Huelgas, on the outskirts of Burgos. Despite the clear allegiance of the foundation to the Cistercians from the outset, the idea that the abbey was inspired by and even modelled on the nunnery of Fontevraud in Anjou is an encroaching commonplace in accounts of medieval Spanish history and art history around 1200. This study re-evaluates the arguments for that perception and puts forward a different reading of the early years of Las Huelgas, not as a foreign importation but as a peculiarly Iberian, even Castilian, institution.     

Leonor of England,Plantagenet queen of King Alfonso VIII of Castile,and her foundation of the Cistercian abbey of Las Huelgas. In imitation of Fontevraud?

In 1187 Alfonso VIII of Castile and his queen, Leonor of England, founded a Cistercian nunnery, Santa Maria Regalis de Las Huelgas, on the outskirts of Burgos. Despite the clear allegiance of the foundation to the Cistercians from the outset, the idea that the abbey was inspired by and even modelled on the nunnery of Fontevraud in Anjou is an encroaching commonplace in accounts of medieval Spanish history and art history around 1200. This study re-evaluates the arguments for that perception and puts forward a different reading of the early years of Las Huelgas, not as a foreign importation but as a peculiarly Iberian, even Castilian, institution.     

Singers without borders: a performer’s rotulus and the transmission of jeux partis

The jeu parti – a debate in song weighing questions of love, sex, wealth, ethical behaviour – enjoyed popular acclaim across social classes in thirteenth-century France. Despite the appeal of these texts as historical sources, suggestive of the mentalité of a medieval community through frank discussion of taboo subjects, jeux partis have received sporadic scholarly attention. A rare scroll, copied by an Anglo-Norman scribe (London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1681) supplies new evidence of the genre’s transmission outside the pages of a codex and outside northern France. The only known document of its kind to contain jeux partis, it has been overlooked by scholars for a century, yet it suggests that the transmission of music and culture could be achieved textually, borne along the performance circuits of medieval Europe. This study investigates how jeux partis were composed, transmitted and refashioned for new audiences with the aid of text and improvisation.     

Studying the process of enamel powder preparation for émail champlevé by colour measurements and μ‐X‐ray mappings

Colour measurements and non‐destructive μ‐X‐ray mappings have been used for the first time in a comprehensive study of medieval émail champlevé works from different production areas in France and Germany. This approach has given a new insight into the enamel powder preparation process of the glass material used for enamelling. Colour measurements demonstrated that all production centres used glass of very similar hues, but with large differences in colour saturation. The μ‐X‐ray mapping results of blue enamels are described by a semi‐qualitative approach. Significant variations in oxide contents of lead, cobalt, manganese and antimony oxides were found. The variations suggest that more than one glass material was used to prepare the powder for enamelling. The variations in antimony and cobalt show that glass had different degrees of opacity and colour depth. The manganese and lead contents, which do not correlate with the cobalt or antimony contents, indicate that probably glass of different base compositions was used to prepare the enamel powder for one champlevé field.     

Avorio d'ogni ragione: the supply of elephant ivory to northern Europe in the Gothic era

This article accounts for the hitherto unexplained increase in the availability of ivory in mid-thirteenth-century France through an alteration in the medieval trade routes that brought elephant tusks from Africa to northern Europe. A newly-opened passage through the Straits of Gibraltar allowed a small amount of luxury goods to be shipped together with bulk materials necessary to the flourishing textile industries of northern Europe.     

Early medieval landscapes in north‐west Spain: local powers and communities,fifth–tenth centuries

There has been in the last few years a rapid expansion in the archaeology of early medieval societies in the north‐west of the Iberian Peninsula. A large part of this evidence remains unpublished or has been published incompletely. This article considers the historical landscapes of the north‐western Iberian Peninsula in the early medieval period as social constructions, starting with the identification of the systemic relationships between different archaeological entities. The dynamics and articulation of early medieval societies in the Cantabrian area and in the Duero and Tagus basins will be outlined by means of deconstructing their landscapes. To achieve this, a set of variables will be analysed in comparative terms from three regions selected as case studies: Madrid, the Duero basin and the Basque Country. With the aim of explaining these systems diachronically a division between the fifth–eighth and eighth–tenth centuries will be taken into consideration.     

Space and social control in the administration of the Oglala Lakota ("Sioux"), 1871-1879

The "panoptic" logic of social control analyzed by Michel Foucault plays an important part in regulating "normal" citizens of the modern world as well as institutionalized populations. However, control of the unconfined presupposes certain conditions not paid adequate attention by Foucault, especially the requirement that people be individually identifiable in most activities, and that private property be located at fixed addresses. In order to explore the importance and the implications of these and other preconditions, this paper examines the strategies with which the U.S. government attempted to bring the Oglala Lakota under administrative control during the first decade of their settlement around the Red Cloud Agency on the northern Great Plains. Oglala society exhibited none of the hypothesized prerequisites for social control by the U.S. government at the beginning of the decade, but by 1879, the rudiments of a working system were in place. This story of the struggles surrounding its imposition robs modern social control of its seeming naturalness and immutability, brings into a critical light many of the spatial conditions we take for granted in today's world, and suggests the importance of a new, relatively unexplored dimension of the historical geography of American Indians and their dealings with White society.To the men of my time was appointed the task of taking the raw and bleeding material which made the hostile strength of the plains Indians, of bringing that material to the mills of the white man, and of transmuting it into a manufactured product that might be absorbed by the nation without interfering with the national digestion…In the language of the bounding West in which he made his habitat, it may be said that, in 1871, the Indian was "halter-broke but he had not yet been bitted".James McLaughlin,Former Agent to the Standing Rock Sioux     

Avorio d'ogni ragione: the supply of elephant ivory to northern Europe in the Gothic era

This article accounts for the hitherto unexplained increase in the availability of ivory in mid-thirteenth-century France through an alteration in the medieval trade routes that brought elephant tusks from Africa to northern Europe. A newly-opened passage through the Straits of Gibraltar allowed a small amount of luxury goods to be shipped together with bulk materials necessary to the flourishing textile industries of northern Europe.     

The Presentation of the Speaker of the Commons in Tudor Parliaments: Pageantry,Persuasion and Management*†

This article analyses the presentation of the Commons’ Speaker in the Tudor age. It traces the medieval origins of this ceremony, arguing that it served not only as an opportunity for flamboyant rhetoric, but also as a politically significant event designed to impress upon the Commons its inferiority in the parliamentary hierarchy. The article also suggests that Elizabethan Speakers used their orations as a means of presenting counsel to the queen herself.     

Settlement fortification in village and ‘tribal’ society: Evidence from contact-era New Guinea

Using ethnographic data from contact-era New Guinea, this paper seeks to advance an understanding of the logic of settlement fortifications—i.e., the principles governing their design and operational functioning. This issue has been largely neglected because the principles involved seem so obvious: fortifications function to improve the security of a position by impeding an attacker’s efforts to penetrate it. For village and tribal societies, though, this can be an oversimplification. In these communities, people are generally most dependent on their settlement fortifications at night, when they are home and asleep; yet the cover of night is precisely when settlement fortifications are at their most vulnerable to penetration. What the New Guinea evidence reveals is that settlement fortifications were designed not just to keep attackers out but, even more important, to keep them in once they had penetrated and launched their attack. Defenders could then rally and annihilate their assailants, creating a powerful deterrent against attack in the first place—the best defense of all. These findings are applied to an early Late Woodland site in Ohio to illustrate their potential for informing an archeology of war.