Sanitized Modernity: Rural Public Health in Mid-Twentieth Century Khuzestan

Existing histories of public health in Iran often center on elite or urban narratives. This paper shifts the focus to Iran’s villages by examining the twentieth century public health history of rural northern Khuzestan. It argues that Khuzestani villagers desired, rather than resisted, modern medical services. However, vertical decision-making and the prioritization given by public health planners to economic concerns over social well-being led to the uneven distribution of services and failure to fulfill the expectations of Khuzestan’s villagers. This paper uses memoirs, official reports, correspondence, and other records from the Development & Resources Corporation, along with reports from Iran’s Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health, to bring a richer picture of Iranian villagers’ twentieth century history into focus.     

Protection from the British Empire? Central Africa and the Church of Scotland

This article demonstrates that the Church of Scotland did not seek to undermine the Central African Federation from the moment of its foundation in 1953. This misconception derives from many of the church's missionaries in the region who demonstrated open disdain for the Federation throughout its existence. They were upset that it had been imposed by the white settlers of Central Africa and the British government over the objections of the indigenous Africans. The church, however, did not follow its missionaries. Instead, it sought to make the federal scheme work for all concerned. The Reverend George MacLeod, perhaps the most visible church leader of the twentieth century, played an important role in trying to make the Federation function between 1953 and early 1959. It was not until after the declaration of the Nyasaland Emergency in March 1959 that the church passed a deliverance demanding an autonomous, African-run Nyasaland, at the behest of MacLeod's Committee Anent Central Africa. Deliverances are resolutions presented to the commissioners of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The commissioners listen to the deliverances and then choose to accept, reject, add to, or amend each of them. Deliverances accepted, or passed, by the General Assembly become law. These laws determine how the Church of Scotland operates. This divergence between the Church of Scotland and its missionaries before the Emergency resulted from the Church's sense of historical obligation to protect the indigenous peoples of Nyasaland from the possibly deleterious consequences of rapid decolonisation. Afterwards, the church focused on protecting the Africans from the federal government by setting them free from the British Empire.     

From Scale to Practice: A New Agenda for the Study of Early Metallurgy on the Eurasian Steppe

This paper evaluates conventional scholarship surrounding early metallurgy in the Eurasian steppe zone, with a particular focus on prehistoric developments in a region including northern Kazakhstan and the Southern Ural Mountains of the Russian Federation. Traditionally, the emergence of metallurgy in this region has been viewed either as peripheral to core developments in Mesopotamia, Europe and the Near East, or as part of a much larger zone of interaction and trade in metals and metal production technologies. Such views have deflected scholarship from pursuing questions concerning metallurgical production, consumption, trade and value, and their connection to local diachronic socio-economic change. This paper examines these key issues through recent research programs in the steppe region, and in so doing offers an important comparative case study for early metallurgy. It is suggested that in order to develop a better understanding of early mining, metallurgy and socio-economic change in the central steppe region, new theoretical and methodological approaches are needed that highlight the unique characteristics of early mining communities and their relationships to micro-regional resources and concomitant local, in addition to long-distance, trade dynamics. These issues are discussed in light of current field research by the authors and their Russian colleagues on the Middle Bronze Age Sintashta development (2,100–1,700 BC) in the Southern Ural Mountains.     

Do Women Need the Renaissance?

Joan Kelly's path‐breaking article, ‘Did Women have a Renaissance?’, first published in 1977, led historians of women in many fields to question the applicability of chronological categories derived from male experience. Thirty years later, the questioning continues, augmented by doubts about whether all systems of periodisation over‐simplify the diversity of gender. This paper examines what might be lost if feminist historians, in their sensitivity to difference, refuse to apply structures of periodisation. It looks at challenges to both ‘Renaissance’ and ‘early modern’ as conceptual categories and suggests ways in which gender is and must remain central to understandings of these eras.     

Taphonomic and Methodological Perspectives of Leporid Hunting During the Upper Paleolithic of the Western Mediterranean Basin

Leporid (rabbit and hare) bones have been shown to yield important information about subsistence practices, mobility patterns, and demographic trends during the Paleolithic of the western and eastern Mediterranean regions. Studies of Spanish Paleolithic caves rich in rabbit bones suggest that residential mobility patterns influence the degree of leporid hunting through time. Studies of Paleolithic sites in the eastern Mediterranean suggest that leporids were hunted in large numbers only after population sizes and densities reached certain thresholds. This paper reviews and critiques these studies based on current taphonomic and ecologic information about leporids. Leporid hunting during the Upper Paleolithic of central Portugal is then discussed and compared to these existing models. These latter data suggest that rabbit hunting in central Portugal does not conform to any existing model, suggesting that local factors of leporid density and environmental conditions likely influenced the nature and timing of small game acquisition during the Upper Paleolithic.