Identification of urate crystals in gouty individuals

In paleopathology cases of gout have traditionally been identified using the character of erosive bony lesions, but in clinical medicine identification of monosodium urate crystals in joint fluid plays a central role in diagnosis. Work undertaken on three skeletal individuals who had been buried, demonstrates that crystals can be identified using polarising microscopy. The crystals were identified as monosodium urate. Results from this study appear to demonstrate that identification of monosodium urate crystals could be used to assist in the diagnosis of gout in paleopathology. Further work is required to establish the full range of spatial and temporal contexts from which such crystals might be found.     

Home and beyond in Aotearoa: the affective dimensions of migration for South African migrants

The integration of immigrants into local labour markets is a key focus of contemporary migration scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand. While acknowledging the importance of these economic aspects of migrant settlement, in this article we examine instead how new arrivals from South Africa actively reconstitute a feeling of home and belonging post-migration. Drawing on the concept of affect, we illustrate the ways in which the experience of migration and settlement is embodied, situated and relational. We do this by examining the affective dimensions of home-making, both within and beyond the physical boundaries of a chosen dwelling and its location. Memory bridges all these experiences of transition, suffusing migrants' lives as they understand, frame and negotiate their affective present within the context of their affective past. Our focus renders visible important aspects of the migrant experience, and contributes to a more holistic understanding of why migrants come, how they settle and what encourages them to remain.     

Margaret Beaufort,Royal Tapestries,and Confinement at the Tudor Court

The English royal household ordinances document the important role tapestries played in Tudor court ceremony. This paper re-examines one specific aspect of the 1493 ordinances: whether or not Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, dictated the textile practices surrounding royal childbirth. Once widely believed to have done so, scholars have abandoned the idea for lack of evidence. The issue is more complicated than it seems, in part because of longstanding bibliographic error and also because texts associated with two events involving Margaret — the birth of Princess Margaret and the publication of William Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine — suggest that she was highly attuned to the importance of royal spectacle as mandated by the household ordinances.     

The (un)lettered frontier: power and literacy in the eastern Andes of Charcas,seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

In colonial Latin America, notaries played a critical role in the generation of written, objective truth in an uncertain world. But were notaries indispensable? By the mid-seventeenth century, Spanish communities in the eastern Andean borderlands of the Audiencia of Charcas had not only begun to do without notaries, but even actively and sometimes violently kept them out of their jurisdictions. Borderland communities became spheres of legal activity where the ability to create law without notaries implied not only the transfer of writerly resources to new agents, but also a shift in the modalities of power and authority within the frontier. The impact of such a legal regime was not merely local. At times, frontier officials used their ability to create un-notarized documents as a tool to resist the spatial hierarchies of center and periphery, sometimes neutralizing the claims of officials in the Audiencia of Charcas to jurisdiction over local matters, while actively promoting local ties to the king.     

Book reviews

The United States and Iran: The Patterns of Influence. By R. K. Ramazani. New York: Praeger, 1982. 179 pp.

Iran, A Revolution in Turmoil. Edited by Haleh Afshar. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1985. xvi + 253 pp. + index.

War, Revolution & British Imperialism in Central Asia. By Frederick Stanwood. London: Ithaca Press, 1983. vi + 261 pp. £12.50.

The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi: A Literary Odyssey. By Donne Raffat. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985. xi + 246 pp.; no index or bibliography.

From Iran East & West: Studies in Babi and Baha'i History. Edited by Juan R. Cole and Moojan Momen. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1984. xiii + 205 pp.

Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society. By Roy P. Mottahedeh. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. xi + 209 pp.

The Women's Rights Movement in Iran; Mutiny, Appeasement and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini. By Eliz Sanasarian. New York: Praeger, 1982. 172 pp. + i‐xiii, including index and bibliography.     

Literature in the German science of the soul: Johann Gottlob Krüger’s Dreams

The early history of anthropology in eighteenth-century Germany wove together contributions from medicine, metaphysics, and a host of other disciplines in an attempt to develop a holistic ‘science of man.’ This paper examines a literary text written by prominent figure in that movement, Johann Gottlob Krüger’s Dreams (Träume) (1754). The collection of parables staged as dreams in this book presents specifically literary cases against the sufficiency of either philosophy or physiology for the study of human life as a whole. Through close readings of a number of these dreams and related texts, this paper shows how Krüger’s Dreams advocates an approach to anthropology that recognizes the importance of literature for an interdisciplinary study of human life. More than simply recognising literary writing as another means of studying human life, the vision of a new anthropology implied in this book draws on literary devices to counter the overconfidence and partisanship of existing philosophical and medical theories of human nature.