Early Concrete Structures: Patented Systems and Construction Features

ABSTRACT

Reinforced concrete structures came to Spain in the late-19th century, somewhat after the development of this new construction material elsewhere in Europe. Their introduction was pioneered in industrialized areas, especially Northern Spain, under systems first patented in other European countries. Local constructors built structures under patents with little or no explanations to account for calculation, design, and construction technique. Some of these buildings from the recent past are now listed buildings. This study centres on three construction projects under patented systems: Our Lady of “La Antigua”, Orduña (Monier system), “La Ceres” flour mill, Bilbao (Hennebique system), and Alhóndiga, Bilbao (Blanc system). Preliminary structural studies analyzed morphology, reinforcements, concrete strength and pathological processes in each structure. Their results are compared with information taken from the patent systems in use at the time. This useful information on the structures, which may be expanded in future research, clearly describes the relationship between patent specifications and reality.     

A Hybrid Masonry and Steel Mirror-Type Vault with Lunettes: Survey and Structural Analysis

ABSTRACT

The structural analysis of a mirror-type vault, consisting of a single- or double-curvature perimeter and a nearly flat part, is carried out. The vault is similar to a number of hybrid iron (or steel) and masonry vaults built between the late 19th century and the early 20th century to span large halls. The numerical analyses were preceded by an accurate geometrical survey and mechanical tests aimed at evaluating the properties of the materials. Thermography allowed the complex brick pattern of the vault to be detected. The influence of rib-walls (frenelli) and the material anisotropy on the stress and deformation of the vault is discussed. Eventually, attention is focused on one of the segmental vaults in the central part of the structure: it is found that the stress can be safely estimated by assuming its boundary to be fixed.     

Nuts in the Netherlands: Attalea and other nuts from archaeological contexts,dating from the 16th to 19th century AD

Abstract

This paper describes the use of palm nuts for the manufacture of artefacts in the Netherlands. From the 17th to 19th century buttons were made of nuts of the Brazilian palm tree Attalea cf. funifera. Finds from 17th century shipwrecks suggest that the palm nuts of this species were directly imported from Middle or South America. Coconuts were used for carving, for example for the manufacture of coconut beakers. In the 19th century buttons were also made of 'vegetable ivory' or tagua nut.     

Excavations at Rockley Smithies,a water-powered bloomery of the 16th and 17th Centuries

Abstract

Between about 1500 and 1640 iron was smelted by the direct, bloomery, process on the lands of the Rockley family at (N.G.R.) SE/340023, to the south-west of Barnsley, Yorkshire, using charcoal and ore from the well-wooded outcrops of the Tankersley ironstone, adjacent to the site. Evidence for operation early in the 16th century was limited to accumulations of hearth-cinder and of debris from ore-roasting, minor structures and traces of a dam. About 1600 a major rebuilding involved the construction of a bloom-hearth and probably two stringhearths, with bellows powered by waterwheels, and an unpowered hammer. Minor rebuilding took place early in the 17th century, and archaeological and documentary evidence combine to place abandonment at about 1640. Demolition and stone-robbing could well have provided material for the blast-furnace built a short distance away in 1652. The bloomery site was abandoned to pasture and perhaps a cottage, and at some time early in the 19th century was occupied by two houses and a workshop for an adjacent colliery tramway. It was covered by a road embankment in 1966.

Evidence was found of techniques at a comparatively advanced bloomery, in operation at a time when English ironmasters were, however, increasingly favouring the use of the blast furnace.     

Post-Medieval Archaeology in Periodical Literature, 1966

Abstract

This paper describes the marked clay pipes found in the Barbican area of Plymouth, and lists all the unmarked types found. The deposits are rich in pipes of Dutch manufacture, particularly of the early 17th century. New light is thrown on local pipemaking from the 17th to the 19th century. The influence of London and southern England is strong both in the styles of Plymouth-made pipes and in the imports to Plymouth. Few pipes from Bristol were found and none from Broseley or the North.     

Percival,Vickers & Co. Ltd: The Archaeology of a 19th-Century Manchester Flint Glass Works

Abstract

The Percival, Vickers & Co. Ltd glass works was amongst the largest glass manufactories in Manchester, and formed one of a regionally significant group of 19th-century glass works in the Ancoats district of the city. All of these works have since been demolished, and the paucity of surviving physical and documentary evidence is in stark contrast to the former importance of the city's glass-making industry. The Percival, Vickers site was recently subjected to a detailed archaeological investigation ahead of redevelopment, providing a unique opportunity to study the buried remains of a 19th-century glass works. In particular, variation in the design of the furnaces provided evidence for the technological development of the later 19th century, which has not otherwise been documented. Additionally, some 110kg of glass fragments recovered from the site furnished important evidence for the composition of 19th-century glass, although the results are beyond the scope of the present paper, which focuses on the documented history, structural, and technological elements of the site.     

Recently Discovered Remains of a Roman Bridge in the River Trent

Abstract

The early Donjon at Langeais is among the best-known early medieval buildings in Europe, but has not been systematically studied; this paper is based on a stone-by-stone record and archaeological analysis of the standing building, and presents an interpretation of its structural and functional history. Three major structural phases have been identified. Most of what remains is original (Phase I); the ruin can be reconstructed as a main block of two floors with two tower-like attachments to the east side, probably linked by a gallery. A date of c. 1000 is proposed, but does not allow definite attribution to Fulk Nerra. Considerations of comfort and convenience were more important to the original design than security, although the building had some defensive capacity, and could have been incorporated in a walled circuit; it may have been an entire residence of a type ancestral to the mature multi-storeyed residential donjon, or have been included in an assemblage of low-level buildings, representing an alternative form of domestic planning. In the later 11th or early 12th century (Phase II), the annexes were reduced and the building deprived of any defensive character by the insertion of ground-floor doorways. The 15th century saw the demolition of the west wall, followed by consolidation of the remains, and other modifications (Phases IIIa, IIIb and IIIc). A combination of archaeological observation, recording, remote sensing and historical research shows that the fortified area extended at least to c.200 m west of the donjon in the 11th century, and contained a collegiate chapel.     

Post-medieval archaeology in Portugal

Abstract

Portuguese post-medieval archaeology corresponds to the period between the early 16th century and the late 18th century, identified in the archaeological record through several distinct artefact categories, of which ceramics are the most abundant. New products such as thin-walled moulded coarsewares and faience are found together with imports from different European countries, China and other Eastern lands. Although sites and finds are mentioned in Portuguese archaeological and art-historical literature from the late 19th century, it only became a scientific discipline in the 1980s. This paper aims to provide a general view of investigations in post-medieval archaeology for more than a century, focusing on contexts and finds, but also looking towards the discipline’s future.     

The Misuse of Area in Mapping Census-Type Numbers

Abstract

Polish lands in 19th century are usually located in the economic peripheries of Europe. However there are no usable datasets of Polish GDP for this period to verify this hypothesis. The main problem is lack of reliable and comparable macroeconomic data from country divided between Russia, Austria and Prussia. The main goal of this research was to propose the method based on the urbanization data set to estimate the GDP of Polish territories and to verify the hypothesis on the peripheral development of Polish lands. In result the new estimates on GDP per capita were established, that allowed to confirm the hypothesis of semi-peripheral development of Polish territories in 19th century and slow process of catching-up with the core economies.     

Housing the Loom, 1790-1850: A study of industrial building and mechanisation in a transitional period

Abstract

The architecture of the textile mill changed radically during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Influences affecting mill design included the way in which production was organised and the degree to which processes were mechanised. This article examines how the industry developed new building types to accommodate looms. In the early period, handlooms were frequently concentrated in distinctive loomshops. The powerloom, introduced in the early 19th century, presented new problems, and in an experimental period different branches of the industry developed different means of housing the new machines. The single-storeyed shed was the dominant building type adopted for powered weaving, but there were in the silk and tape branches prominent examples of factories in which powerlooms were housed in purpose-built multi-storeyed mills.     

Nash Mills—The Endless Web Revisited

Abstract

A watermill is known to have existed on the river Gade since the 11th century on the site of Nash Mills, Hertfordshire, where a purpose-built paper mill was constructed in the late 18th century. In 1810 the mill was purchased by John Dickinson, one of the great innovators of the paper industry. The mill evolved significantly during the 19th and early 20th centuries as part of Dickinson's expanding business, which at one stage comprised five mills in the locality. Nash Mills remained in the ownership of John Dickinson and his successors until 1990, ceasing production in 2006, the last of Dickinson's mills to do so. Using documentary and building evidence, this article examines the development of the mill, emphasising the relationships between personalities, events, structures, processes, and changing business and technological influences.     

Agricultural Research Policy

Abstract

From Galileo's measurement of time by musical beats at about half-second intervals to modern atomic clocks, progressively more accurate instruments have been developed and are here reviewed. Both the mechanical and the pendulum clock were major advances and led to theories of a clocklike universe in the 17th century. Barrow, Newton and Leibniz treated time as mathematical concepts and in the 19th century time as a linear advancement became accepted as evolutionary biology extended the vision of time to millions of years. In modern physics, Einstein's special relativity introduced 'time dilation', an idea somewhat contrary to our common sense intuition but now supported by abundant empirical evidence.     

The Meeting-Places of Parliament in the Ancient Palace of Westminster

Abstract

The importation into England of church furnishings of most kinds has been going on since the early Middle Ages. The focus of this study is on wooden furnishings and the early 19th century, when a specific group of patrons scoured mainly France and the Low Countries for the furniture that had been prised from churches, as a direct and indirect result of the French Revolution. The taste for such material was fuelled by a Romantic enthusiasm, although ironically much of it was in the Baroque style. The historical setting for this nostalgic explosion in interest is briefly sketched, as well as an account of its development into the early 20th century.     

Excavations on the Site of the Tudor Manor House at Micheldever,Hampshire

Abstract

Trial excavations prior to building development on the site of Thomas Wriothesley’s important manor house built about 1537 suggest a continuous succession of large houses on the site from the 14th century to the 18th. The earliest structures may represent a country retreat for the Abbots of Hyde.     

The Changing Vernacular: archaeological excavations at Temple End,High Wycombe,Buckinghamshire

Abstract

Excavations beneath and around the late Georgian Glinester House at Temple End, in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, revealed the presence of at least three major phases of building. Dating from the 16th century these structures appear to be a succession of farmhouses lying at the centre of wider farm complexes. While these buildings are located within the former lands of Temple Manor, from which the area and farm name derives, no evidence of a medieval manor complex was located within the excavation area. Rather the pattern of development is more indicative of wider transformations in vernacular housing and domestic life between the 16th and 19th centuries.     

Excavations at Houndhill,near Barnsley,Yorkshire

Abstract

A ‘cottage’ weaving industry was established at Houndhill, family seat of the Elmhirsts in Worsbrough, near Barnsley, during the mid-16th century. It ceased early in the 17th century but excavation has shown it was revived under new ownership in the late 18th century. During the 19th century the mill became a general farm store and was totally demolished in the 1930s to permit a garden extension. The excavation was planned to retain any remaining features for conservation as part of the historical interest of the residence.¹     

Measurement and Proportion in Hindu Temple Architecture

Abstract

Proportion and measure interacted in the evolution and construction of the Hindu temple from the 5th through the 15th century AD, but, throughout this history, proportion dominated as the tool to give the monument both validity and form. This review analyzes the ritual force of proportion and its function in the planning of temples by architects. The diagrams that accompany the article are the result of field research and the analysis of built structures.     

Ideal Coconut Country: Commodified Coconuts and the Scientific Plantation in Pohnpei,Micronesia

ABSTRACT

Pohnpeians regard human beings, natural forces, and supernatural forces as equally important agents in the making of their island’s past. Pohnpei’s rapid transition from an island where families maintained only a small number of coconut plantings to one whose 20th century skyline was dominated by coconut palms should therefore draw our attention to the entanglement of human and nonhuman agents that facilitated the growth of the copra trade on Pohnpei at the end of the 19th century. This article focuses on the modern proliferation of coconut trees on Pohnpei, its link to a powerful scientific agricultural discourse, and the coconut’s attendant effects on Pohnpeian relationships and ecology. It argues that Pohnpeians and coconuts, commodified as copra, remade the land and one another as indigenous and foreign visions of the coconut collided.     

The Roles of Pit Houses and Gendered Spaces on Viking-Age Farmsteads in Iceland

Abstract

THE SMALL SEMI-SUBTERRANEAN buildings (jarðhús) with slab-built ovens that have been found on many Viking-Age farmsteads in Iceland (late 9th–11th century) have been subject to wide-ranging interpretations, from short-lived, expedient dwellings to saunas, women’s workrooms, the houses of Slavic settlers and in one case a cult building. This paper tests these hypotheses by making a thorough revaluation of pit-house dates, architectural forms, internal structural features and artefacts, and presents new geoarchaeological evidence from the pit house at Hofstaðir, NE Iceland. This lends strong support to the interpretation that they were women’s workrooms, primarily for the production of woollen textiles. Their abandonment in the later 10th and 11th centuries may be interpreted in the light of changing religious beliefs and social structures, the growing importance of homespun cloth as a valuable export commodity, and the rise in status of the women who made it.     

Three 19th-century house sites in rural Ireland

Abstract

This report describes archaeological research at three house sites in rural Ireland. The anthropologically-based research began in 1994 with the goal of attempting to understand the material conditions of daily life in the 19th-century Irish countryside. The excavation results presented here were obtained from individual households in counties Roscommon, Sligo and Donegal, at sites dating from the early to mid-19th century. Two of the sites are known to have been abandoned as a result of forced eviction. Particular attention is paid to the ceramics found.