The Atlas of the Languages of Iran (ALI): A Research Overview

There have been a number of important efforts to map out the languages of Iran, but until now no language atlas, or even a comprehensive and detailed country-level language map, has been produced. One of the recent initiatives which aims to fill this gap is the online Atlas of the Languages of Iran (ALI) (http://iranatlas.net). This article delineates objectives of the ALI research programme, atlas architecture, research methodology, and preliminary results that have been generated. Specific topics of interest are the structure and content of the linguistic data questionnaire; the handling of contrasting perspectives about the status of “languages” and “dialects” through a flexible multi-dimensional classification web; and the role of ongoing comparisons between language distribution assessments and hard linguistic data.     

An Interview with Leland Ferguson

Historical Archaeology -     

Genesis,age and archaeological significance of a pedosediment in the depression around Tell Mozan,Syria

A pedosedimentological profile from the ditch surrounding the lower town of the Bronze Age site of Mozan is investigated for its soil and sedimentological characteristics and has been dated in order to gain information on the use of the ditch and on the landscape development surrounding the settlement. The depression did not contain large amounts of water (flowing or stagnant) and probably was used for agricultural purposes. Accumulation – that in part includes anthropogenically-derived, redeposited, and bioturbated debris – started at around 2800 cal. BC or later, and was especially intensive at some time between 2800 and 1000 cal. BC. Deposition may have been caused by intensive agricultural use of the landscape during the urban explosion of the Early Bronze Age or in the early Middle Bronze Age.     

Making the house a home in later medieval York

ABSTRACT

The loss of all original furnishings or decoration and the relentless refashioning of interiors have eroded our ability to appreciate how extant houses functioned as living spaces in the later Middle Ages. This paper uses a variety of documentary sources, notably York’s rich collection of probate inventories, to provide evidence on the division and furnishing of buildings. Depositions from cases within the ecclesiastical court of York ask questions about the way that particular artisanal and mercantile houses functioned both as residences and as places of work. Taking the author’s 2008 study in Medieval Domesticity a step further, the paper will consider in more depth the notion that a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity, which was projected through material culture, grew up in the later medieval city. It will, moreover, ask how far later medieval artisanal or mercantile houses constituted homes.