New Ireland Malanggan Art: A Quest for Meaning

ABSTRACT Sustained scholarly interest in the malanggan carvings of New Ireland has achieved consensus regarding the social, political, and economic functions of the ceremonies in which they are used but inconclusive interpretations of the iconography of the art objects themselves continue. This paper finds an interpretation of recurring motifs in a reexamination of early reports, published and unpublished, of former burial customs. The perspective presented here supports but cannot confirm informants' insistence that the carvings are not religious but just pictures. No conclusions are reached regarding pre‐ or post‐Christian beliefs in general, but doubt is cast on their role in malanggan art. Some theoretical implications and further research directions are suggested.     

Style in New Ireland Art and Culture: Grasping the Native's Point of View

A review of definitions of style and studies of particular people suggest that while many studies of art discuss iconography, social relationships, structure, identity, form, function, and so on, few discuss style; and fewer discuss style as world view, ethos, values, or gestalt. In this paper, I report some findings of field work in the arts and cultures of New Ireland and New Hanover in support of research in cultural anthropology on style in this larger sense. I will provide some documentation for ‘the Native's point of view’ on this subject, which affirms its importance in any study of culture.     

The Achill Yawl: vernacular boats in historical context on Achill Island,Ireland

Achill yawls, originally introduced to Ireland as ships' boats aboard Norwegian merchantmen, developed into distinct working vessels along Achill Island's shores during the 19th century. These boats were subsequently modified for recreational racing in the mid‐20th century. Despite changes to their design, they are often nostalgically viewed as traditional symbols of an Achill islander identity, though their popularity may have been prompted by late‐19th‐century British legislation. The authors take an ethnographic approach in interpreting Achill yawls over time, contextualizing their social functions through an exploration of primary historical and photographic archives, extant vessels, and interviews with Achill islanders. © 2010 The Authors     

新中国成立后历史考证学的新境界

在1949年以前业已取得很大成就的20世纪中国历史考证学,进入新中国以后,由于一批原先熟悉严密考证方法的史学家接受了唯物史观的指导,他们做到既发扬广搜史料、互相参证的优良传统,又能把握历史演进的大势,由表及里,探求历史事件之间的联系和发展演变的趋势,达到对历史本质的认识,因而使历史考证学达到了新的境界。他们的卓越成就为20世纪中国史学谱写了出色的篇章,留给我们许多重要的启示。     

Turning Stone into Bread: The Millstone Quarries of Medieval and Post-medieval Ireland

This article has two components; a discussion of an Ireland-wide inventory of millstone quarries and a detailed regional case study in order to study the development of the millstone industry at both micro and macro levels. The first component highlights the use of certain stone types used in Ireland and also uniformity in methods to extract each specific type of bedrock. Factors determining the commercialisation of millstones are also addressed. This is followed by intensive field-based investigation focusing on millstone quarries in Waterford Harbour in the south-east of the country. Research questions concerning geology, transport, typology, what techniques were used to transform a ‘rough-out’ piece, and the role individual quarries and local people played in the overall industrialisation of millstone production are addressed.     

审时度势,铸就辉煌——新中国外交战略演变的历史回顾

新中国外交走过了60年辉煌的道路。在这个波澜壮阔的过程中,外交战略的演变占有重要的地位。从新中国成立初期的"一边倒",到20世纪60年代的"两面出击",再到70年代的"一条线、一大片",直至80年代的"全方位",演变过程大体经历了四个阶段。在这一外交战略演变过程中,毛泽东、周恩来、邓小平等新中国领导人运用马克思主义理论,科学分析国际国内形势,审时度势,运筹帷幄,在制定和调整中国外交战略的过程中,牢牢把握大局,经受了国际风云变幻的严峻考验,取得了辉煌的成就。     

Masshouses and Meetinghouses: The Archaeology of the Penal Laws in Early Modern Ireland

Archaeology has demonstrated that it can provide added insight into the study of early modern Ireland, although there has been a notable tendency for research to concentrate on secular aspects of society. Investigations into the period, however, would benefit from a greater awareness of contemporary religion, since this was a factor that played a major role in political, social, and economic life. An example of this is the introduction of Penal legislation by the Protestant-dominated Irish parliament in the early eighteenth century, directed at those whose religious outlook did not correspond to that of the Established Church.     

The contested interpretation of heritage landscapes in northern Ireland

Abstract

Because the nature of society is both negotiated and contested, cultural artefacts, including heritage landscapes, will be invested with differing and conflicting meanings by various social groups. This is but one aspect of what might be termed the dissonance of heritage. The present discussion is framed within the context of the argument that relics of the past are a resource to be selectively exploited in accordance with contemporary political and cultural demands. The paper uses the example of Ulster's Folk and Transport Museum to examine these issues. It concludes that while consumers do appreciate the cultural complexity of the Museum's role as one medium of communication of identity in a contested society, the institution's effectiveness in this regard is undermined by the middle‐class bias of those consumers.     

Cromwell,Parliament, Ireland and a Commonwealth in Crisis: 1652 Revisited*

This article investigates an episode in 1652 which is usually ignored and has never been explained. On 19 May 1652 the Rump Parliament, without forewarning, voted not to renew the office of lord lieutenant and thereby stripped the lord general, Oliver Cromwell of one of his highest and most significant offices. The article seeks to penetrate the wall of silence in the press and in the parliamentary records to see what lay behind this decision, which split the Commons down the middle. It seeks to relate the decision to two very different visions of the settlement to be imposed on Ireland following the rebellion of 1641 and the ‘Cromwellian conquest’ and it suggests that it is likely that the subsequent act of the Rump, which sought the execution of tens of thousands of Irish royalists, the exiling of many tens of thousands more and the herding of almost all of the rest of the catholic population into four counties in the west of England – known to history as the ‘Cromwellian settlement’– was precisely a settlement Cromwell did not want.     

The Partisan Impacts of Non-Partisan Redistricting: Northern Ireland 1993–95

Space is manipulated for political purposes in a great variety of ways, and its restructuring is frequently a focus of conflict. The nature of such conflict is explored here.¹ Legislation requires that all parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom are periodically reviewed by independent Boundary Commissions. The Fourth Periodic Review in Northern Ireland began in 1993 and coincided with a period of intense political activity, associated with what was commonly termed 'the peace process'. Political parties, anxious to ensure that the resulting boundaries favoured their partisan interests (and, in the case of Sinn Fein, keen to establish their democratic bona fides ), invested considerable effort in their attempts to influence the outcome. The Commissions' recommendations became the subject of claim and counter-claim regarding bias towards one or other of the province's two main communities – Nationalist and Unionist – and as a result of that conflict, they were revised with priority given to a different criterion. This paper evaluates those claims with a close inspection of the redistricting process, illustrating how an ostensibly non-partisan process is partisan in both its conduct and its outcome.     

Understanding Policy Change Using a Critical Junctures Theory in Comparative Context: The Cases of Ireland and Sweden

Utilizing a new theory for examining critical junctures, we seek to better understand the nature of industrial policy change in Ireland during the 1950s and macroeconomic policy change in Sweden in the 1980s. Did these policy changes constitute critical junctures, or something less, and if so why? The theory consists of three elements—economic crisis, ideational change, and the nature of the policy change—that must be identified for us to be able to declare with some certainty if a policy change constitutes a critical juncture. Herein, we will be examining the roles of a variety of change agents including the media, central banks, and politicians. Our findings will help explain why Irish industrial policy was transformed in the late 1950s, while Swedish macroeconomic policy underwent only minor change in the early 1980s.     

文化史学是什么?--兼论新旧文化史学的内在一致性

与以兰克为代表的政治史学相比较,文化史学主要围绕四个命题(或假设)而展开。第一,从研究对象看,文化史书写的不是攸关国家命运的重大事件和政治精英的历史,而是人民大众的历史。新文化史研究的课题虽趋于多样化,但对人民大众特别是下层民众和弱势群体的重视有增无减。第二,从历史观念看,文化史书写的不是一治一乱的历史,而是进步的历史。新文化史家并未远离进步,进步主义史观是其反思和批判的主要对象之一。第三,在目标和方法上,文化史学不以确立单个历史事实为至高无上的职责,而是要求揭示历史事实之间的复杂关系,并究明关系得以展开的背后因素。传统文化史重在探求历史背后的理性精神、科学法则、公理公例,新文化史聚焦文化的历史象征、意义和价值。第四,关于文化史学的功能和任务,无论新旧文化史均不满足于追求历史的真相,而是含有比较浓厚的致用色彩,重视在思想启蒙、教化民众以及文化认同等方面发挥作用。     

The historical significance of President Kennedy's visit to Ireland in June 1963

President John F. Kennedy's visit to Ireland in June 1963 was the first by a serving American President. Using materials from archives in London, Dublin, and Boston, this article re-assesses the motives behind Kennedy's decision to visit Ireland and concludes that it was largely a personal journey. However, the trip was not without wider historical and political significance and was surrounded by controversy. The visit was unpopular in the United States, proved a security nightmare, and provoked much discussion amongst the political leadership in Belfast, Dublin and London over Kennedy's attitude to partition. The visit marked a major development in the history of Irish-American relations as it eased tensions over Ireland's neutrality, marked a shift towards White House activism in Irish affairs, boosted Irish tourism, and fostered increased trading and cultural links between the two countries.     

论新中国文化发展的历史分期

在中国特色社会主义的奠基、开创和发展过程中,中国共产党也在探索社会主义文化的发展道路和发展规律。应该将新中国文化建设放在整体经济社会发展与演变的大背景中,确立划分60多年来文化发展分期的标准。根据经济基础与上层建筑的关系、文化与经济政治的关系以及文化自身发展的特殊规律,可以将新中国60多年文化发展的历史分为六个时期。其中的每个阶段都有其特征和中心内容,且前一个发展阶段成为后一个发展阶段的先导,后一个阶段继承前一个阶段的成果和经验。新中国60多年来,文化建设是在艰辛探索中螺旋式上升、曲折性前进的,反映了社会主义文化建设内涵的不断丰富和发展,也反映了中国共产党对文化建设规律的认识不断深化和完善。     

The I.H.S. Monogram as a Symbol of Catholic Resistance in Seventeenth-Century Ireland

It has been suggested that the presence of religious images and scenes in secular buildings of sixteenth-century date can be viewed as an expression of resistance by the native Irish to English colonial activity in the aftermath of the Munster Plantation (J. A. Delle, 1999, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3: 11–35). Such images, however, may merely represent a continuation into the early modern period of a Medieval tradition of adorning secular houses with devotional images. If a religious symbol of native Catholic resistance to English colonization and Protestantism in Munster is to be sought then perhaps a more appropriate image would be the I.H.S. monogram—a symbol associated with the Counter Reformation and the Jesuits. The paper presents an example of the monogram located within a tower house at Gortnetubbrid in County Limerick, Ireland.     

Wild Cattle: Red Deer in the Religious Texts,Iconography, and Archaeology of Early Medieval Ireland

Humans use animals as a means of creating and manipulating relationships with other human beings. This process occurs both through the use of animals for food or raw materials and through the use of animals as literary and artistic symbols. Cervus elaphus is Irelands only indigenous deer species. It is also unique in being the only native Irish, wild animal to appear frequently in medieval texts, iconography, and archaeological deposits. This paper brings together diversesources of information to illuminate how early medieval monasteries used reddeer to establish an identity for themselves and to conceptualize socioeconomic relationships with others.     

Making a Life: Getting Ahead,and Getting a Living in Aboriginal New South Wales

ABSTRACT This paper offers an ethnographically grounded examination of the intersections between work, employment and identity for Indigenous people living in a country town in far western New South Wales, Australia. It argues that work, employment and labour are locally deployed categories that meet mainstream discourse in a precarious fashion and, that this disjunction has clear material and ideological repercussions. For most Aboriginal people in Wilcannia, you are who you are, not by virtue of what you have ‘become’ in any economic, professional or educational sense. Who you are is not a becoming, it is established at birth. These genealogical forms of being through kinship see a construction of self which in many ways is at variance to the standard ‘autonomous self‐regulating individual’ (Sennett 1998:215). This sense of self, for most, is not determined by engagement in the capitalist division of labour; indeed, the greater the engagement in the capitalist economy, the more problematic and fraught a sense of self and of belonging can become.     

Archaeological applications of testate amoebae analyses: a case study from Derryville,Co. Tipperary,Ireland

The value of testate amoebae in the reconstruction of changes in surface wetness from ombrotrophic mires is well known, but the potential value of such records in specifically archaeological investigations has not yet been investigated. This note describes the analysis of testate amoebae for a sediment sequence from the multi-period wetland archaeological site of Derryville, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. The reconstructed watertable is presented and plotted against the range of dates from excavated archaeological features in the wetland area. The data demonstrate a clear association between periods of low watertable and increased anthropogenic activity as reflected by site construction. The value of testate amoebae in future integrated archaeological investigations of wetland systems is discussed.     

A Possible Case of Hydrocephalus in a Medieval Child from Doonbought Fort,Co. Antrim,Northern Ireland

Hydrocephalus is a condition that is rarely found in the palaeopathological record. It has been demonstrated in a modern study of untreated cases of hydrocephalus that 50 per cent of children suffering from the disease die within the first 18 months of life. It is probable that the situation was the same in archaeological populations and that the delicate nature of neonatal and infant crania accounts for the paucity of palaeopathological evidence. As far as the author is aware there are approximately 30 possible cases of hydrocephalus known in the archaeological record throughout the world and only two of these cases originated in the British Isles. The following report presents evidence of a case of possible hydrocephalus in a 6–7-year-old juvenile from Northern Ireland. The skeleton was recovered from a post-thirteenth century context during excavations at the secular medieval fort of Doonbought, Co. Antrim. The diagnosis of hydrocephalus has been made on the basis of the abnormal and enlarged morphology and increased cranial capacity of the cranium. The only other palaeopathological lesion present in the remains was cribra orbitalia.