Introduction

The settlement on Nor'nour, a small island in the eastern group of the Isles of Scilly, presents a most unusual complex of at least three structural phases, accompanied by a rich and varied assortment of artifacts in bronze, enamel and pottery. Roman jewellery was made on the site, which was excavated from 1962 to 1966.

The presence of a Bronze Age population was clearly indicated. A room built in the form of a Scillonian Passage Grave, with sherds similar to those of the primary urns at Knackyboy Carn, suggest a date of c. 1200 B.C. for this group. In the early Iron Age, c. 600 B.C., immigrants from western Europe, particularly perhaps from Brittany, reached the island. Room I was altered to the form of a wheelhouse, which still clearly shows the features of its type. At the same time a D-shaped room was added to the eastern side of the wheelhouse and seems to have been used as a kitchen. An extensive kitchen-midden lay east of this additional room and to the north-east a workshop was made containing three well-made pits and an enclosed hearth or furnace area.

The latest phase showed a complete change; the wheelhouse became the finishing-room in the manufacture of Roman jewellery and, probably, a store for the import and sale of objects from western Europe. Roman coins found here date from A.D. 74 to A.D. 383. There is also some evidence for the early and gradual subsidence of the Scillonian archipelago.     

Notices of Certain Bronze Relics,of a Peculiar Type Assigned to the Late Celtic Period

The excavation of four hundred complete and partial in situ burials from the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist, Cambridge, represented one of the largest medieval hospital osteoarchaeological assemblages from the British Isles. The significance of the group is enhanced by the detailed investigation of a carefully maintained network of pathways associated with the cemetery, the archaeological sequence that pre- and post-dated its use and a number of contemporary properties that were situated immediately outside its bounds. This evidence allows the cemetery to be placed within its urban context in a way that is rarely possible. The overwhelming majority of the burials were extended west-east aligned supine inhumations without grave-goods. Atypical burials included examples aligned east-west and south-north, a double burial, a prone burial and individuals buried with a jet crucifix and a brooch. Other significant finds included a nearby pit with four bodies in it, an anthropomorphic bone handle and a reused cruciform horse harness pendant. The proportion of males and females in the burial population is similar, whilst individuals who died under the age of sixteen are relatively uncommon and individuals aged under five are completely absent.     

5,000 years old Egyptian iron beads made from hammered meteoritic iron

The earliest known iron artefacts are nine small beads securely dated to circa 3200 BC, from two burials in Gerzeh, northern Egypt. We show that these beads were made from meteoritic iron, and shaped by careful hammering the metal into thin sheets before rolling them into tubes. The study demonstrates the ability of neutron and X-ray methods to determine the nature of the material even after complete corrosion of the iron metal. The iron beads were strung into a necklace together with other exotic minerals such as lapis lazuli, gold and carnelian, revealing the status of meteoritic iron as a special material on a par with precious metal and gem stones. The results confirm that already in the fourth millennium BC metalworkers had mastered the smithing of meteoritic iron, an iron–nickel alloy much harder and more brittle than the more commonly worked copper. This is of wider significance as it demonstrates that metalworkers had already nearly two millennia of experience to hot-work meteoritic iron when iron smelting was introduced. This knowledge was essential for the development of iron smelting, which produced metal in a solid state process and hence depended on this ability in order to replace copper and bronze as the main utilitarian metals.     

Fertility trends, marriage patterns, and savant typologies in Albanian context

In this article, the author focuses on the speculative literalism and typologism in current scholarship to construct a taken-for-granted view, taking issue especially with many points raised in the literature on the subject that have associated fertility rates in Albania more closely with the existence of patriarchal cultural traits. This leads the author to argue that the specific rationale for the myth of many children, high fertility rates, and complex family structures in Albanian context, as elsewhere in patrilineal societies, is an ideological elaboration of patriarchy. Methodologically, the analysis of the standard view of childbearing, based on standard ethnographic methods, traditional historical sources and aggregate demographic data, is aimed to illustrate the inadequacy of the historical-ethnographic paradigm against the available empirical evidence. In turn, understanding how ideological elements are emphasized in cultural activism should lead, against current scholarship claims, to an understanding of the way in which the urgent need for male children must have been to hide away other more troubling reasons.     

Les Théoriciens Italiens de la Raison D’État Carrières et Motivations

The article tries to shed light on the careers and the motivations of Italian authors who wrote on reason of State in the period of 1550 to 1650. Half of them were clergymen in very different positions, joined by lawyers, physicians and men of letters. Especially many clergymen were teaching at universities in the hope of getting a position at a court. Apart from this endeavour to become a secretary or councillor of a prince or a cardinal, the main motivations of writing the treatises were the refutation of the machiavellian ideas and the desire to open new areas of action for the prince, but also the defence of republican liberties. As the treatises and collections of maxims were to a great extent literary, the influence on rationalisation of the State is judged with scepticism.     

Microarchaeology of a collective burial: cova des Pas (Minorca)

FTIR and phytolith analyses have been used to understand the exceptional preservation of the organic remains at the burial cave of Cova des Pas (Minorca), and to obtain high-resolution data of the plant remains present in the sediments. The presence of sodium nitrate and gypsum suggests a relatively dry environment that has enabled the preservation of the organic material, and contributed to the natural mummification. The dry conditions also favored phytolith preservation. Grass inflorescence phytoliths are abundant all over the site suggesting that phytolith accumulations might have an anthropogenic origin and are related to the burial ritual.