The Wreck of the Warship Northumberland on the Goodwin Sands,England, 1703: an interim report

The Northumberland, a third‐rate man‐of‐war was lost with all hands during the Great Storm of 26–27 November 1703 on the Goodwin Sands—famously known as ‘the ship swallower’. It was rediscovered in 1980 by local divers following the location of a sister ship, the Stirling Castle. Since, the primary concern has been to record exposed structural remains, ordnance and artefacts, and interpret the wreck formation of the site. This paper describes the results of this work, and discusses in particular the size of the keel, the use of chocks, and standardization of ordnance in the Restoration Navy through reference to comparable ship‐finds and historical records.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: The Skuldelev Ships I: Topography, Archaeology, History, Conservation and Display (Ships and Boats of the North: 4.1), OLE CRUMLIN‐PEDERSEN, OLAF OLSEN (Eds) III‐starred Captains—Flinders and Baudin, ANTHONY J. BROWN Facing the Ocean. The Atlantic and its Peoples, 8000 BC‐AD 1500, BARRY CUNLIFFE Archaeology and Seafaring: the Indian Ocean in the Ancient Period (ICHR Monograph 1), HAMINSHU PRABHA RAY The Sea in Antiquity (BAR International Series 899), G. J. OLIVER, R. BROCK, T. J. CORNELL, S. HODKINSON (Eds) Lost Warships: an archaeological tour of war at sea, JAMES P. DELGADO ‘A ship cast away about Alderney’—Investigation of an Elizabethan shipwreck, JASON MONAGHAN and, MENSUN BOUND (Eds) Archeologisch onderzoek in het tracé van Willemsspoortunnel te Rotterdam. Sluizen en schepen in de dam van de Rotte (BOO Rbalans 4, 2 vols), M. van TRIERUM, A. CARMIGGELT, A. J. GUIRAN (Eds) Schutz des Kulturerbes unter Wasser (IKUWA conference 1999 proceedings), CHRISTOPHER BÖRKER et al. (Eds) Construzione navale antica, PIER0 DELL'AMICO The Voyages of the Discovery: the illustrated history of Scott's ship, ANN SAVOURS Chicago Maritime: An Illustrated History, DAVID M. YOUNG Deux siècles de constructions et chantiers navals (milieu XVIIe‐milieu XIXe) Proceedings of 124th Congrès des societés historiques et scientifiques, Nantes 1999), CHRISTIANE VILLAIN‐GANDOSSI (Ed.) Submarine Researches by C. A. Deane (1836), MICHAEL FARDELL & NIGEL PHILLIPS (Eds.), JOHN BEVAN Naval Guns: 500 years of Ship and Coastal Artillery, HANS MEHL Lords of the East—the East India Company and its ships 1600–1874, JEAN SUTTON CSS Alabama: Anatomy of a Confederate raider, ANDREW BOWCOCK The extraordinary voyage of Pytheas the Greek, BARRY CUNLIFFE Trincomalee— the last of Nelson's frigates, ANDREW LAMBERT Galleons and Galleys (Cassel's History of Warfare Series), JOHN F. GUIIMARTIN Jr.     

Grief as method: topographies of grief,care, and fieldwork from Northwest Arkansas to New York and the Marshall Islands

Abstract

When we grieve during fieldwork, our grief forms new geographies of knowledge production and emotion. In this article, I use autoethnography to theorize my grief during fieldwork following the death of my sister. I examine grief’s methodological implications using the concept of ‘grief as method,’ an emotionally-inflected practice that accounts for the vulnerability produced by grief. By centering vulnerability, ‘grief as method’ also urges researchers to consider the practices and politics of ‘caring with’ our research subjects and caring for ourselves, raising larger questions about the role of care in research. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how grief’s geographical features—its mobility, its emergence in new sites and landscapes, and its manifestation as both proximity and distance—shape ‘grief as method’ profoundly. I examine grief’s spatial implications by building on Katz’s ‘topography’ to theorize a ‘topography of grief’ that stitches together the emotional geographies of researchers, blurring both spatial divisions (‘the field’ vs. ‘the not-field’) and methodological ones (the ‘researcher-self’ vs. the ‘personal-self’). If we see grief as having a topography, then the relationships between places darkened by grief come into focus. Moreover, by approaching grief methodologically, we can better understand how field encounters—relationships between people—are forged through grief. ‘Grief as method,’ in offering a spatial analysis of grief’s impact on fieldwork, envisions a broader definition of what engaged research looks like and where it takes place.     

Atavistic Novelty: Questioning Hannah Arendt’s Understanding of Totalitarianism

ABSTRACT

This article offers a critique of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of totalitarianism as formulated in her magnum opus—The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). It argues that, to comprehend totalitarianism, Arendt forged a heterodox method of historical analysis. Employing that method, she conceived totalitarianism as a form of transcendence of historical context. In doing so, however, she ignored crucial historical contexts that were in fact related to the history of totalitarianism. Subverting her interpretation of totalitarianism as transcendence, these elided contexts erupted inadvertently and repeatedly into her analysis—revealing that totalitarianism was solidly embedded in them. The Origins of Totalitarianism thus exhibits a conceptual contradiction that confuses its attempt to understand totalitarianism.     

Between crime and colony: interrogating (im)mobilities aboard the convict ship

Recent literature in carceral geography has attended to the importance of mobilities in interrogating the experience and control of spaces of imprisonment, detention and confinement. Scholars have explored the paradoxical nature of incarcerated experience as individuals oscillate between moments of fixity and motion as they are transported to/from carceral environments. This paper draws upon the convict ship – an example yet to gain attention within these emerging discussions – which is both an exemplar of this paradox and a lens through which to complicate understandings of carceral (im)mobilities. The ship is a space of macro-movement from point A to B, whilst simultaneously a site of apparent confinement for those aboard who are unable to move beyond its physical parameters. Yet, we contend that all manner of mobilities permeate the internal space of the ship. Accordingly, we challenge the binary thinking that separates moments of fixity from motion and explore the constituent parts that shape movement. In paying attention to movements in motion on the ship, we argue that studies of carceral mobility must attend to both methods of moving in the space between points A and B; as micro, embodied and intimate (im)mobilities are also played out within large-scale regimes of movement.     

What More Is There to Say? Revisiting Agamben's Depiction of Homo Sacer

This article argues that Agamben's “paradigmatic method” leads to particular choices in his depiction of the figure of the homo sacer. Reviewing this project also suggests that there's more to history—the example given is the story of homo sacer—than Agamben's method would ever leave us to say. In other words, there are still resources in the tradition for something new, and thus there is much more left to say about its legacies.     

SIMS‐SS,A NEW OBSIDIAN HYDRATION DATING METHOD: ANALYSIS AND THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES*

The water diffusion mechanism in obsidian has been revisited with the advent of a new dating approach employing secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The water diffusion SIMS(+) profile and the concept of a surface saturation (SS) layer in obsidians both provide a sound basis for the new diffusion age equation (SIMS‐SS) and are supported by dated world examples ( Liritzis et al. 2004 ). Here, we present the basic physical–chemical analysis of the mass transport phenomenon on which the new dating method is based. The crucial age parameter of the SIMS‐SS dating approach for archaeological obsidians—that is, the surface saturation (SS) layer—is supported by both theoretical and experimental data.     

REVIEWS

Dialectic in Practical Religion. Edited by E. R. Leach. The Charter of the Land: Custom and Colonization in Fiji. By Peter France. Aboriginal Advancement to Integration—Conditions and Plans for Western Australia. H. P. Schapper. Aboriginal Settlements—A Survey of Institutional Communities in Eastern Australia. J. P. M. Long. Social Change and the Individual. By Norman Long. Ekagi—Dutch—English—Indonesian Dictionary. By J. Steltenpool. A Subgrouping of Nine Philippine Languages. By Teodoro A. Llamzon     

Sewn‐Plank Reconstructions of Oman: construction and documentation

This paper discusses three medieval sewn‐plank reconstructions undertaken in the Sultanate of Oman in the past 40 years: the Sohar, Jewel of Muscat, and al‐Hariri Boat. It describes the specific methods of sewn‐plank construction for each vessel and examines the different methods of documentation applied during the three projects. It concludes with a comparison of the data derived from single‐wadding (al‐Hariri Boat) and double‐wadding (Jewel of Muscat) sewing techniques to highlight the differences between the two methods and emphasize the importance of documenting such reconstructions.     

Dithyrambs and Ploughshares: The Cycle of Creation and Criticism in Nietzsche's Aesthetics

Pairing Thus Spoke Zarathustra with On the Genealogy of Morality foregrounds tensions between artistic creation and critical interpretation in Nietzsche's work. From The Birth of Tragedy to his genesis of the concept, Will to Power, Nietzsche describes the real, or “what is,” in terms of a creative, form-giving force. We might therefore read Zarathustra—a linguistically experimental, richly allegorical, self-reflexive, modernist prose poem—as the pre-eminent, artistic mode of philosophical expression, at least for Nietzsche. But Zarathustra is followed by a sober Abhandlung (treatise), which professes a scientific goal of “getting to the bottom of things” by uncovering the contingency, origin, and fabricated nature of supposedly eternal, “given” values. These instantiations of Nietzsche-the-artist and Nietzsche-the-critic suggest art's “double” or contradictory nature—a nature that accents its kinship with philosophy. Zarathustra and the Genealogy, read together, hint that the destruction of idols—or de-constructive, critical interpretation more generally—is not just supplemental to, but a necessary moment within the aesthetic itself.     

REVIEW ESSAY: THE FRAGILITY OF CHILDHOOD: GABRIELLE ROY'S CES ENFANTS DE MA VIE

Both Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence have named L.M. Montgomery’s work— particularly her books about Emily—as childhood readings that are central to their development as writers. This essay explores how Montgomery’s three books about Emily—Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest—provide a persisting imaginary that The Diviners by Laurence and Who Do You Think You Are? by Munro reflect.     

Machiavelli's scientific method: a common understanding of his novelty in the sixteenth century

This paper argues that Machiavelli's method, his inductive and comparative use of history and experience for political analysis, and his fashioning of historical-political analysis as ‘science’, played an important and still unrecognised role in his reception in the sixteenth century. It makes the case that Machiavelli's inductive reasoning and stress on historia and experientia offered a model for scientific method that open-minded sixteenth-century scholars, eager to understand, organise and augment human knowledge (scientia), could fit to their own epistemology. By focusing on the question of method—a crucial issue for sixteenth-century contemporaries—the paper offers more than a key to the understanding of Machiavelli's positive reception. It also helps in apprehending the crucial importance of Lucretius to Machiavelli's scholarship; the role of the late Renaissance fascination with historia in his reception; and the breadth of appropriation of his method exactly in the decades when anti-Machiavellianism became official politics all over Europe. These claims are sustained through the cases of Machiavelli's early translators and promulgators; the French legal humanists and historiographers; the Swiss, Italian and French scholars engaging with medicine, Paracelsism and astronomy; the authors of political maxims from all over Europe; and finally Francis Bacon.     

The Norman's Bay Shipwreck,East Sussex,UK: a possible 17th‐century Dutch ship from the Battle of Beachy Head

This report explores a hypothesis that the Norman's Bay shipwreck is the Wapen van Utrecht, a 64‐gun Dutch ship lost during the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690. The shipwreck, found off the Sussex coast, was designated by the Protection of Wrecks Act (1973) in 2006, when it was speculated that the wreck was the English 70‐gun ship Resolution, lost in the Great Storm of 1703. Dendrochronology dates the vessel after the middle of the 17th century AD, however, with timbers from Germany or the Low Countries. Initiatives by the Nautical Archaeology Society to bring the protected wreck to a wide public are also discussed.     

Global Markets, Local Practice: Ottoman-period Clay Pipes and Smoking Paraphernalia from the Red Sea Shipwreck at Sadana Island, Egypt

Shipwreck archaeology provides unique evidence for trade, commercial relationships, and the day-to-day existence of occupational communities defined by residence and employment within the industrial space aboard a ship. These concerns are addressed particularly well by finds of utilitarian items such as a small assemblage of 21 clay pipes and three other smoking-related artifacts recently excavated from the ca. 1765 Sadana Island ship which sank at anchor while loaded with coffee, porcelain, qulal, and other goods. Analysis of the assemblage specifically contributes to questions of chronology and typology and presents new evidence for regionalism, style, and the impact of far-reaching trade routes on markets with a global perspective.     

Commuter lives: a review symposium on David Bissell's Transit Life

This article presents a series of commentaries on Transit Life: How Commuting is Transforming Our Cities, published by MIT Press in 2018. Centring on an in—depth case study of Sydney, the book argues the need to attend carefully to the fine—grained detail of the commuting experience. In all sorts of ways, Transit Life presents a way of thinking about urban transportation radically different from that used by mainstream transport planners and geographers. Geographical Research asked six researchers—Tim Edensor, Michele Lobo, Debbie Hopkins, Helen Fitt, Juliana Mansvelt, and Donald McNeill—to reflect on what kind of research vistas might be opened up bring the tools of cultural geography and mobility research to the world of commuting. Here are their responses, rounded out by a reply by David Bissell, Transit Life's author.     

Simone Weil's Political Theology

This article suggests that Simone Weil's political theology is characterized by the idea of labor and the event of laboring. I begin by arguing that her thinking is shaped by a materialist reading of Christianity that employs Marx's concepts — labor, capital and alienation — to examine the political implications of three theological ideas, fall, slavery and sin. Next, I suggest that although laboring should be understood as a creative endeavor, Weil argues that it is always conditioned and constrained by a force she terms social matter. This constraint produces what Marx called alienation and Weil will refer to as enslavement (and even sin). Finally, I contend that Weil's idea of labor — and its call for a minimization of constraint — provides a counter-force to social matter. I conclude by suggesting that Weil's labor provides a different way of conceptualizing not just the political subject, but political theology itself.     

Practical Hagiography: James of Voragine’s Sermones and Vita on St Margaret of Antioch

Abstract

In addition to his exceedingly popular Legenda Aurea, James of Voragine wrote in another hagiographical genre: sermons on the saints. The Sermones de sanctis likewise became immediately popular, as his Dominican brothers used James’s model sermons to learn to preach about the saints in a format that would provide the laity with intelligible and practical theological instruction. James’s corpus gives us a rather unusual opportunity to compare the ways in which a single author manipulates multiple hagiographical genres, and his writings on St Margaret of Antioch allow us to explore how a medieval preacher used a historically disputed saint — a dragon-fighter — to provide a practical model of sanctity to his lay audience. I compare the representations of Margaret in James’s sermones and vita, arguing that James adapted certain features of Margaret’s saintly example in the vita to instruct the audience of his sermons about proper Christian virtues and actions. As a point of comparison, I explore a sermon by Évrard of Val des Écoliers in which the Augustinian teaches his audience a practical skill — how to pray — through Margaret’s example.     

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE AMPHORAE,STONE BALLAST AND STOWAGE MATERIALS OF THE SHIPS FROM THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF PISA–SAN ROSSORE,ITALY: INFERENCES ON THEIR PROVENANCE AND POSSIBLE TRADING ROUTES*

In December 1998, during excavation for the construction of a new building near San Rossore railway station in Pisa, the remains of ancient ships were discovered. These findings have been dated (radiocarbon) to between the end of the 10th century bc and the fifth century ad ( Belluomini et al. 2002 ). Several transport amphorae belonging to the Hellenistic ship, samples of rocks (stone ballast) belonging to ships B, D and the Hellenistic ship, and stowage materials belonging only to ship B have been analysed. The mineralogical and petrographic data of the investigated samples provided information on the possible provenance of the raw materials utilized in the manufacture of the ceramic amphorae, as well as on the provenance of the rock materials found in the ships as ballast and stowage. The compositional data (obtained through XRD, XRF, OM and EPMA) and their statistical analyses suggest that the provenance of the Dressel amphorae belonging to the Hellenistic ship was the Middle Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, and more precisely the area between Tarquinia and Naples, according to the numerous kilns and wine production sites found in this area. The provenance of the volcanic rocks was from southern Tuscany, northern Latium and possibly the Pontine Islands, whereas the intrusive rock possibly comes from the Calabrian–Tyrrhenian coast and/or the Peloritani area. The impure limestones and the dolostone come from southern Tuscany and the Latium coast; the semi‐metamorphic rocks could come from the coast of southern Tuscany, the Tuscan Archipelago or possibly also from the Ligurian coast; only the sample of mylonitized granitoid possibly comes from either the Calabria–Peloritani arc or the Tuscan Archipelago. The stowage materials, consisting of lapilli and scoria of a pyroclastic nature, are sourced from the Neapolitan area. These data might shed some light on the centres of production of the amphorae and of the trading routes followed by the ships, according to the ports of call.     

The Use of Copper and Lead Sheathing in VOC Shipbuilding

Much has been written on the use of lead and copper sheathing in post mediaeval shipbuilding, yet evidence for such hull protection by Dutch shipwrights in the 17th and 18th centuries has received little attention. A discussion of the archaeological and historical evidence pertaining to the application of copper and lead sheathing by the Dutch long‐distance trading companies outlines the argument for the innovative character, experimental use—on ships’ hulls—and standardization—on sternposts—as early as 1602. Archaeological evidence presented mainly comes from the Dutch East Indiamen Nassau (1606), Mauritius (1609), Batavia (1629), Vergulde Draak (1656), and Buitenzorg (1760).     

Political Phenomenology: Radical Democracy and Truth

Abstract

In light of the "theological turn" in recent phenomenology, a question arises for contemporary thought of how the relationships among philosophy, religion, and democratic politics might be recontextualized and understood from a specifically phenomenological perspective. Essential in addressing this question is a critical examination of the method of reduction, or epoche instituted by Edmund Husserl as the original, core practice of phenomenology. Reinterpreting the epoche in terms of its social, historical, and political dimensions, later phenomenologists Enzo Paci and Jan Patocka demonstrate how phenomenology's conception of truth is necessarily coordinated with a commitment to collective democratic praxis. In Paci, the practice of epoche initiates critical resistance to ideological and idolatrous social and political forms through contrast with the infinite openness of truth's real universality. In Patocka, phenomenological method as applied to historically-embedded religious and philosophical traditions helps to clarify what in particular distinguishes democratic from autocratic forms of life. By drawing the insights of Paci and Patocka into conjunction, a new conception emerges of the unique religio— the collective, existential commitment— of phenomenology as such: to express the experience(s) of truth through democratic praxis in collaboration with other analogous philosophical, religious and scientific traditions.