A Day’s Excursion among the Churches of South-East Norfolk

It will be proposed that the common utilitarian or functional explanation for the deposition of currency bars is too simple and should be amended to allow greater emphasis on the social context of the acts of production and deposition. Research indicates that currency bars—both as single finds and as hoards—occur in a limited range of archaeological contexts. It would appear that the act of deposition occurred under strict control and that the majority of currency bars were deposited as part of acts of ritual. The archaeological contexts of the three major types of currency bar are considered. All three types of currency bar—spit-shaped, sword-shaped, and plough-share—occur in similar contexts. Two major types of context are identified and in turn these define at least two distinct regions in the distribution of the bars. One zone is characterized by the deposition of the bars in varying sized hoards, but almost always in close relationship to a hill-fort rampart or a settlement boundary ditch. This may relate to rituals which defined the boundary of the settlement area of the family or community group. The analysis raises questions concerning the social and ritual significance of the boundaries which surrounded iron age hill forts and settlements. In contrast, a second zone is characterized by the deposition of currency bars in a range of natural locations (including bogs, rivers, caves, and rocky outcrops) which constitute the more standard contexts of ritual deposition for the British Bronze Age and Iron Age. These contexts may relate to rituals that defined boundaries at a range of scales; from those between social groups to tribal boundaries and even the boundaries of Britain.     

Signposts: A collection of articles on the Russian intelligentsia

Jan Smuts was one of the key figures in the creation of the League of Nations, the first international organisation with truly global pretensions. However, Holism and Evolution, the most philosophical of his works, and one that illuminates his views on international organisation, has remained in a state of relative academic neglect. This paper turns to that work for a richer understanding of the background assumptions of those who contributed to the creation of the League. To do so, this paper lays bare the main ideas of Holism and Evolution, emphasising those elements most relevant to Smuts's proposals for international organisation, and situates his thought within broader currents of liberal imperialism. Such an examination of Holism and Evolution aids greatly in our understanding of some of the most contested issues in the debate over the nascent League of Nations: sovereignty, imperialism, self-determination, and the conception of politics in organic terms.     

Obituary: 1899

Work by historians, geographers and others has examined the role of memory and of commemoration in understanding social meaning and identity. Memory has been shown to be an active constituent of the ways in which meaning is invested in space and place. This paper examines the appeal to memory in Donald MacLeod's Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland, a text written to understand social and geographical change in the nineteenth‐century Scottish Highlands and, in revised form, to counter the alternative views expressed in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Sunny Memories. In discussing MacLeod's use of memory in Highland history and with reference to examples of memory's use in texts and other representations, the paper contributes to debates on how memory ‘works’ in geography and in history.     

Brindley, Erica Fox,Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics

In this bold and thought-provoking book Erica Fox Brindley examines an issue long assumed to be a primary point of difference between European cultures and their descendants and the intellectual milieu of early China:the role of the individual.In the past,comparative studies of the individual in China have often assumed a basic distinction on this point,or have taken up one definition of the individual and argued that it did not exist in a particular Chinese context.Brindley eschews the ready comparison and instead looks to see whether concepts of the individual did exist in early China.She demonstrates there was in fact considerable discussion of the individual in pre-imperial intellectual history,and the bulk of her book is an examination of its forms.