Crossed gazes over an old city: photography and the ‘Experientiation’ of a heritage place

Abstract

The paper analyses a group of photographs of the old city of Porto, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The photograph is used as a medium to elicit the ways different social agents experience and relate to Old Porto as a heritage place. The photographs were collected as part of a wider research project on the way sense of place of Porto’s old city was differentially constructed by local inhabitants, tourists and the City Council. Illustrated postcards were also analysed. The findings demonstrate the usefulness of this particular form of image-based ethnographic research in understanding the forms in relation to a heritage lived-in place.     

Evidence of contact between New and Old World: paleoparasitological and food remains study in the Tagus river population of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo,Portugal)

The period of European maritime expansion that started in the fifteenth century had a great impact on trading, on human migrations and consequently in the dispersion of infectious diseases. Portugal was at the core of this expansion; however, studies about parasitic infections, especially helminths, are lacking. This study aims to help reduce this gap presenting the results of microscopic analysis of soil sediments collected from the São Jorge churchyard of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo). Consecrated in the fourteenth century AD, it remained as a burial ground until the nineteenth century. Soil samples collected from the pelvic girdle of five adult individuals and samples taken as control were analysed under the microscope after current conventional methodological procedures were undertaken. Eggs from Ascaris lumbricoides were identified. Also eggs of trichostrongyle type species were identified in two individuals and may represent the first report in archaeological European samples. Food remains include potato and rice starches, muscle fibres, bivalves, pollen grains and fungi spores. The stratigraphy interpretation together with potato findings put the oldest skeletons to a chronology around the sixteenth century AD. These results are consistent with historical sources that documented the prominence of Tagus river nearby villages in maritime expansion.     

Rubh’ an Dùnain: a multi‐period maritime landscape on the Isle of Skye,Inner Hebrides,Scotland

A non‐intrusive survey of this headland on Scotland's western seaboard reveals evidence of maritime activity from prehistory until the recent past. The siting of an Iron Age dun appears to have exploited a natural creek to bring boats to a secure landing‐place. Access was enhanced by a cleared channel, and two docks with adjacent nousts constructed. A stone‐revetted canal was later driven to the loch beyond, and quays built on either side of the entry. A 12th‐century boat‐timber was found in the loch. Later the canal was widened, and finally blocked. The sequence of development, and associated dating, merits further research.     

How Pre-modern State Rulers Used Marriage to Reduce the Risk of Losing at War: A Comparison of Eight States

Approaching warfare in pre-modern states from the perspective of risk reduction, we see that royal marriage was one strategy rulers used to reduce the probability that they would lose a war. Judicious marriage exchanges intensified and prolonged patron-client relations between rulers or between rulers and societal elites. Clientelism could affect the size and composition of their armies. The more warriors and troops one could field, the greater the chance of not losing a war (Otterbein 2004; LeBlanc 2006). Examination of eight pre-modern states suggests that their rulers used the same patterns of wife exchange even though most states developed independently. Marriage secured long-term patron-client relationships, which they used to support their military efforts. When rulers married their kin or married them to rulers outside the system (“foreigners”), they did not gain military support. Analysis of these marriage-military patterns reveals several characteristics of pre-modern states. First, marriage alliances helped rulers form networks of support that helped them win wars. Therefore, marriage—and by extension, royal women—is a key component to the study of warfare and a critical mechanism of network formation, as Blanton et al. (1996) write. Second, alliances were based on a different organizing principle from Levi-Strauss’ tribal societies, for rulers selected main wives (for themselves or their kin) based on relative rank rather than particular kinship ties. Third, marriage alliance reveals an important difference between alliance and patron-client relationships, a distinction that is often blurred in the archaeological literature.     

Sequential Incisions on a Cave Bear Bone from the Middle Paleolithic of Pešturina Cave,Serbia

We present the detailed analysis of a cervical vertebra from a cave bear, found at Pe?turina cave, Serbia, in a Mousterian archaeological level dated by radiocarbon at 43.5–44.6 kyr cal BP, and by ESR to between 93.5 and 102.5 kyr BP. Identified as a portion of the cranial articular facet, the fragment displays ten subparallel grooves. The microscopic study of these grooves and other surface modification present on the bone fragment, conducted with multifocus optical and confocal microscopes and complemented by a taphonomic analysis of the associated faunal assemblage, supports the hypothesis that the incisions were made by humans. Results are used to critically examine ambiguities implicit in the analysis and interpretation of early engravings, a category of material culture that has been playing a key role in the identification of early instances of symbolically mediated behavior.     

Efficiency and Cost-Benefit Analysis of Seismic Strengthening Techniques for Old Residential Buildings in Lisbon

This paper presents a study on the techno-economic efficiency of seismic strengthening techniques for old residential buildings, with application to construction typologies in Lisbon (stone masonry and “Placa” buildings). A comprehensive review on strengthening techniques and implications for the seismic behavior is made. Different strengthening schemes are implicitly simulated within equivalent frame models of the representative buildings. Then, pushover analysis is applied in order to compare the seismic performance of the buildings, before and after strengthening. A cost-benefit analysis of the strengthening solutions is finally performed, comparing the economic benefit gained by reducing the seismic damage, against the intervention cost.