Embargoing ‘heretics' in fifteenth-century Central Europe: the case of Hussite Bohemia

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the embargo imposed by the papacy and the Catholic lay powers on all trade and commerce with the Czech Hussites. It posits that this anti-Hussite embargo was simultaneously a means of economic warfare and an expression of the longer tradition of the papal embargo. Based on this twofold understanding, a set of sources is interrogated both from the perspectives of economic and cultural history. To this end a research methodology is employed that differentiates between the instrumental and symbolic dimensions of agency. This allows for a new, holistic view of the anti-Hussite embargo, both as an instrumental means of warfare and as a communicative process. The article thus contributes to political, economic and cultural history as much as to the history of everyday life in fifteenth-century Central Europe. Above all, however, it offers a transferable research methodology for the study of medieval embargoes in general.     

First chronometric dates (TL and OSL) for the Aurignacian open-air site of Româneşti-Dumbrăviţa I,Romania

Currently, absolute dates for the emergence of the Early Upper Paleolithic and the timing of the earliest dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMH) into Europe are sparse. This is especially true for regions adjoining the Eastern Mediterranean and Central Europe with its dense clusters of sites along the Austrian and German Danube Valley. This article makes a first step toward filling this gap and, for the first time, presents absolute ages for the open-air site of Române?ti-Dumbr?vi?a I (Banat, SW Romania) located close to the Oase Cave where some of the oldest AMH fossils were found. A set of heated artefacts recently excavated from the Aurignacian layer GH3 was dated by thermoluminescence (TL) and gives early chronometric dates for this technocomplex in Romania.     

Studying Public Policy through Immigration Policy: Advances in Theory and Measurement

This essay provides a critical review of the field of immigration policy studies from the perspective of measurement and modeling. It serves to contextualize and broaden the views presented in the special issue. As such, we combine insights from American and comparative politics, pinpoint key limitations and challenges in the field, and identify areas of strength within each subfield which could inform theory and measurement development for the other. Ultimately, the concerns about conceptualization, definition, and measurement that we identify and discuss herein, do not apply only to immigration policy studies but to policy studies writ large.     

Rethinking Canaanite Palaces? The Palatial Economy of Tel Kabri during the Middle Bronze Age

Here we explore aspects of Canaanite palatial economy through an analysis of finds from the Middle Bronze Age palace at Tel Kabri, a 34 ha site located in the western Galilee of modern day Israel. The palace was founded in the middle part of the MBA I period, and continued without interruption until an advanced part of the MBA II period. Despite the fact that the Kabri palace was vast (perhaps up to 6000?sq?m), functioned as the center of a polity, and could commission wall and floor paintings in an Aegean style, there are no signs of literate administration, or even administrative use of sealings. Patterns of animal husbandry, textile production, pottery manufacture and consumption, and storage within the palace all provide evidence that the palace behaved economically much more like an estate than a redistributive center. Our hypothesis is that the palace had aspects of an Oikos economy, i.e., that it functioned as a large household—richer and more populous than other households of the period, but with minimal involvement in the economy of the private sector. This contrasts with the contemporary polities in Syria, such as Alalakh and Ebla, as well as possibly its neighbor to the east, Tel Hazor, which had literate administrations and redistributive economies during this same period.     

“Don’t call me a Cajun!”: race and representation in Louisiana’s Acadiana region

In southwestern Louisiana, the public sphere is dominated by the image of the Cajuns, presented as a hardy, likable people who have overcome significant obstacles since their arrival as Acadians in the late eighteenth century. Across the cultural region designated “Acadiana,” which comprises 22 counties, nearly 30% of the population is black (or Creole, mixed-race peoples generally identifying as black). Contributions of non-whites to the region’s history are usually not incorporated into the public historical narrative, and the erasure of these groups’ influences on the state’s cultural “gumbo” has profound symbolic and material consequences. Black/Creole residents note that much of their culture – primarily music and foodways – has been repackaged as Cajun or subsumed under the Cajun label and that they are unable to take advantage of the benefits that Creole-oriented tourism could bring to a region in which half of the counties are designated “black high poverty parishes.” Using mixed methods, including interviews, archival analysis, and census data, this paper explores the social, political, and economic consequences of the domination of Cajuns in the south Louisiana memorial and representational landscape and argues that commemorative silences in what Alderman et al. have called the “memorial arena” perpetuate a hegemonic social order.