Portuguese coarsewares in early modern England: reflections on an exceptional pottery assemblage from Southampton

Abstract

The study of a large hoard of Merida-type ware from Portugal found during excavation in Southampton prompts an examination of Portuguese pottery in 16th- and 17th-century England, its trade, uses and context.     

Red deer antler technology and early modern humans in Southeast Europe: an experimental study

In technological approaches to prehistoric industries, there is currently a renewed interest in the transformation of osseous materials. This approach requires the construction of a technical reference base of manufacturing stigmata, as well as of the procedures and methods used to produce tool blanks.One of the better known processes for the production of blanks in the Upper Palaeolithic is extraction by a double longitudinal groove, observed only in the Gravettian. Aurignacian artefacts indicate that during this period blanks were obtained through a procedure of longitudinal fracturing (splitting) or diffuse percussion fracturing. The manner of implementing these procedures is, however, still poorly known.In order to better characterise this stage in the manufacturing of blanks for antler points, we conducted an experimental study. Based on a thorough analysis of the Spanish archaeological materials, we tested the procedure of fracturing by indirect percussion on deer antler. The results provide new criteria for the identification of blanks and their manufacturing processes. They also emphasize the possibility of predetermining the size of the blank and, consequently, the size of future projectile point.     

Neostoicism and the early modern state

Jacob Talmon and Michael Oakeshott represent two opposite tendencies in the anti-totalitarian world view. Both thinkers share many central features of this broad intellectual trend, such as the equation between the Soviet and Nazi regimes, Anglophilia and the rejection of the utopian quest. Yet this basic agreement should not distract us from significant differences in attitude and temperament. Talmon, like most other critics of totalitarianism, was strongly affected by the atmosphere of a profound intellectual and political crisis in Europe, and he regarded the danger of totalitarianism to be an inherent aspect of modernity itself. His liberalism was that of ‘fear’. By contrast, for Oakeshott, who believed in the strength of liberal, and specifically British, civilisation, totalitarianism was merely a child of resentment, a parasitic force with no positive message of its own. He thus displayed a greater measure of confidence in the fortunes of liberal modernity.     

Fairies and the Devil in early modern England

This article considers the fate of fairies in late-Elizabethan and seventeenth-century England. Specifically, it asks whether these “doubtful spirits” were demonised in the period. Drawing on a wide selection of devotional, literary, and demonological texts, the article argues that English Protestants associated fairies with Satan, but this did not necessarily imply that fairies were reclassified as demons. Rather, they were embedded in a complex of beliefs that connected them with falsehood, Catholicism, and the invisible wiles of the Devil. The operation of these beliefs is examined in the context of cases of witchcraft, as well as the representation of fairies in cheap print.     

Projectors and learned projects in early modern England

Commenting in 1692 on the “Projecting Humour that now reigns” in England, Daniel Defoe nicknamed the period the “Projecting Age.” He dated its start to c. 1680, even as he conceded that “it had indeed something of life in the time of the late Civil War” as well. Defoe was wrong. Decades earlier both Elizabethan and Jacobean commentators had inveighed against the rampant passion for schemes, a perception increasingly documented by scholars. For the most part, however, the appraisal of early modern projects has been confined to the domain of economic and social history. Monopolies, inventions, plans to ameliorate the condition of the poor and infirm, and schemes guaranteeing the enrichment of the nation, have drawn the attention of historians; only sporadic attention has been paid to the numerous scholarly projects that also proliferated during the same period. My intention here is not to be exhaustive, but to offer a snapshot of the large number of proposals that sought to establish new institutions of higher learning, usually through substantial outlays of public capital.     

Gone to smelt iron in Courland: technology transfer in the development of an early modern industry

SUMMARY: In the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, corresponding to the southern and western parts of present-day Latvia, an iron industry based on blast-furnace technology, mainly using local bog iron ore, existed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Transfer of knowledge and skill through the recruitment of specialists from other countries of Europe was crucial to the development of this industry; technology was also re-exported to Russia and elsewhere. Recent archaeological and archaeometallurgical investigations supplement the written evidence, highlighting the specific local conditions that influenced the development of ferrous metalworking here in the early modern period.