A Tile Pavement from the Queen's Chamber,Clarendon Palace,Dated 1250-2

This article undertakes an object-focused study of a single work of art of great material and visual complexity: the Wallace Collection pax. This object stimulates an important discussion on how the making, materials and form of a work of art are fundamental to unravelling the object’s function and meaning for a contemporary audience. In placing at the core of the object a rare example of a late medieval amber Vera icon, the Wallace Collection pax also opens up a wider discussion on the nature and popularity of amber as a material of artistic expression in the later Middle Ages. In basing this article on the physical and material history of the work of art, I hope to illustrate the importance of going back to first principles when undertaking object-based research, and I intend to highlight the complex interaction between material and form in late medieval art.     

An Angel on the Wind: How Heroic Policy Narratives Shape Policy Realities

Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a new and maturing theory of the policy process that takes a systematic, scientific approach to understanding the social construction of policy realities. As such, NPF serves as a bridge between postpositivists, who assert that public policymaking is contextualized through narratives and social construction, and positivists, who contend that legitimacy is grounded in falsifiable claims. The central questions of NPF are: What is the empirical role of policy narratives in the policy process and do policy narratives influence policy outcomes? First, the contributions of NPF scholarship at three levels of analysis—micro, meso, and macro—are examined. Next, necessary conditions of a policy narrative are specified, accompanied by detailed discussion of the narrative components: narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. Finally, an empirical illustration of NPF—a case study of Cape Wind's proposal to install wind turbines off Nantucket—is presented. Although intercoalitional differences have long been studied in the NPF scholarship, this is the first study to examine intracoalitional cohesion or the extent to which a coalition tells the same story across narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. NPF is a new approach to the study of the policy process that offers empirical pathways to better speculating the role of narrative in the policy process.     

Early Cretaceous chelids from Lightning Ridge,New South Wales

Fragments of plastron and vertebrae from the Griman Creek Formation (middle Albian) at Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, extend the Australian record for chelid pleurodires back in time by over 50 my. Contemporaneous with the oldest known occurrences of chelids in Patagonia, this record indicates that during globally warm intervals, pleurodire distribution included high palaeolatitude locations. Although referred to Chelidae, the material shows no characters to enable more detailed taxonomic assessment and it is unclear whether known genera are represented. The diverse and prolonged history of chelids in South America and Australia indicates that the basal eupleurodiran divergence occurred deep in the Jurassic.     

First record of fossil woods from the Mariño Formation (Miocene), Mendoza,Argentina and their palaeobiogeographical implications

The first Miocene records of silicified fossil woods from the Mariño Formation, Potrerillos area, Andes Precordillera, Mendoza province, Argentina are described. Rhaphithamnoxylon artabeae gen. et sp. nov. is described as the first fossil wood referable to Verbenaceae from Argentina. This new fossil species is related to extant Rhaphithamnus Miers, sharing the following anatomical features: diffuse porosity, distinct growth ring boundaries, numerous small to very small vessels, commonly in radial multiples, 1–3 seriate rays, and heterocellular and scarce paratracheal axial parenchyma. Rhaphithamnus contains only two extant species: R. spinosus (A.L. Juss.) Moldenke, which occurs in the Valdivian forests of Chile and Argentina, and R. venustus (Philippi) Robinson, which is endemic to the Juan Fernández Islands. Representatives of Verbenaceae are distributed predominantly in the Americas from Patagonia (Argentina) to Canada, and they are inferred to have originated in South America. The fossil wood described herein provides new age and geographical constraints on the raphithanoid lineage within Verbenaceae. Other fossil woods recorded from the Mariño level are retained under open nomenclature, as they possess a combination of mostly solitary broad vessels, and smaller vessels in radial multiples or in clusters, with numerous, vasicentric to confluent axial parenchyma, and heterocellular, high rays. Thus, they have features akin to dicotyledonous lianas or vine-like or small shrub species.     

‘Wanderer,kommst du nach Pforta …’: the tension between Classical tradition and the demands of a Nazi elite-school education at Schulpforta and Ilfeld, 1934–45

This paper explores the tensions which arose when Schulpforta, Germany's leading humanistic boarding school, was forcibly turned into a Nazi elite school (a Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt, or Napola). The time-honoured traditions of Christianity and enlightened humanism previously cultivated at the erstwhile Landesschule zur Pforta (alma mater of Fichte, Ranke and Nietzsche) were swiftly subordinated to the demands of National Socialist ideology. Schulpforta, a former monastic foundation, was radically dechristianised, and the school's Classical curriculum soon served only to emphasise those aspects of Greco-Roman Antiquity which could ‘help the Third Reich achieve its destiny’, portraying the Greeks and Romans as proto-National Socialists, pure Aryan ancestors of the modern German race. The Napola curriculum focused on sport and pre-military training over academic excellence, and contemporary documentary evidence, memoirs and newly obtained eyewitness testimony all suggest that the Napola administration wished to assimilate Pforta with any other Napola. This idea is borne out by comparing the case of Napola Ilfeld, a former Klosterschule (monastery school) with a similar history. By the mid-1940s, Ilfeld had lost almost all connection with its humanistic past. Ultimately, we can see the erosion and Nazification of these schools' Christian and humanistic traditions as exemplifying in microcosm tendencies which were prevalent throughout the Third Reich.     

Better a Broader Diagnosis Than a Misdiagnosis: The Study of a Neoplastic Condition in a Male Individual who Died in Early 20th Century (Coimbra,Portugal)

The paleopathological record of neoplastic conditions in the past is considered scarce. The detection of tumours in ancient populations is hindered by the quality and quantity of signs visible on the skeleton, the methodological approach, the preservation of remains, and by difficulties of differential diagnosis. The aims of this paper are to report the extensive and multiple osteolytic lesions observed in an adult male and to discuss the possible etiology of these lesions. The individual, a 71‐year‐old male who died in 1932, is part of the Coimbra Identified Skeletal Collection. Records indicate that he died of a ‘heart lesion’. The present study used macroscopic, radiological, and computerized tomography examinations to analyse the skeletal remains of the individual number 439. The type and pattern of the lesions detected, which were most prominent on the skull, were compared with both clinical and paleopathological diagnostic criteria for different nosologic groups. The differential diagnosis addresses problems expressed both in clinical and in paleopathological literature with regard to the difficulties in distinguishing metastatic tumours from multiple myeloma. The nature of the lesions represented by this individual precludes an exact diagnosis. Therefore, we employed a broader category, neoplastic condition, instead of choosing a more specific diagnosis that would likely have resulted in a misdiagnosis due to overlapping features on this individual's condition. Further investigations are necessary to establish more replicable indicators and to improve confidence in retrospective diagnosis of these types of conditions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.