Governing the passions: Sketches on Lodovico Antonio Muratori's moral philosophy

Muratori has often been portrayed as a moral philosopher who represented the traditional neo-Aristotelian mainstream of Italian intellectual life in the early part of the eighteenth century. His loyalty to Christianity as a basis from which societies ought to be reformed has determined his reputation as a ‘pre-enlightened’ thinker. Yet, it is argued here that not only was Muratori very much in touch with the state of the art of early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, but also that he was really a historian with political interests who came to develop a renewed Christian moral philosophy as a tool to respond to the political challenges of the time. Fallen man's preference for self-preservation to natural freedom prepared him for engaging in increasingly sociable contexts that required further self-disciplining and moral improvement. Thus, man cultivated his fallen condition into prudence and ultimately developed a capacity both for charity and for functioning in modern commercial societies.     

Pests in an ancient Egyptian harbor

Our investigations combine detailed identification and interpretation of plant remains and associated fauna and their mode of arrival in one of the rock-cut galleries, Cave 3, at the site of Mersa/Wadi Gawasis on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. The site served as a staging area and harbor from which Middle Kingdom pharaohs launched seafaring expeditions to the land of Punt in the early second millennium BC. Quantities of wood, including ship timbers, fastenings, debris related to ship dismantling and reworking, and charcoal were excavated and analyzed. Evidence of marine mollusk infestation (shipworm) was abundant in Cave 3, as were the remains of insect pests of stored foods. We also report on a unique find of a plaster “spill” that preserved the floor of Cave 3 as it was when people worked in the gallery ca. 3800 years ago. The plaster spill created a sealed deposit of plant and insect remains with a diagnostic ceramic fragment, allowing us to securely associate insect remains and “hollow” spikelets of emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) recovered from the gallery. An impression of the beetle Trachyderma hispida and its associated exoskeleton fragments provide new evidence of this species as a potential pest not yet reported from an archaeological grain storage site in Egypt. The finding of Tenebroides mauritanicus from the same deposit is the earliest known association of this pest with stored grains. These unique finds shed new light on the risks associated with preserving food supplies, combating pest infestation, and dealing with marine organisms on land and at sea in the pharaonic harbor.     

POST‐COLONIAL RUINS: Archaeologies of political violence and IS

The carefully staged and hyper‐mediated destructions at a number of world‐famous archaeological sites in the area controlled by the Islamic State across Syria and Iraq have often made the headlines in recent months; and these spectacles can be counted among IS' visual markers of identity. In the mainstream media, they have largely been interpreted either as ‘cultural cleansing’ or as an expression of IS' inhumanity, of its barbaric iconoclasm and its criminal fight against idolatry. In this paper, I propose to interpret them as overdetermined acts or rather spectacles of destruction that must be situated within a specific political genealogy. I highlight the long‐standing, deep entanglement between archaeology and (empire and) state building in the Levant.     

How an integrated diagnostic approach can help in a correct evaluation of the state of preservation of waterlogged archaeological wooden artefacts

Artefacts made of wood coming from archaeological excavations provide insights into human cultural behaviour of the past. They show how man utilised natural resources and how the development of woodworking techniques and artistic endeavour were developed. Within archaeological contexts, waterlogged anaerobic conditions generally preserve the appearance of artefacts, although wood is subject to severe decay processes. The said conditions can transform the original material into a new one, thus demonstrating specific differences from those of the “fresh” wood of the same species. In order to assess these new properties correctly, an integrated diagnostic approach is needed, one which includes a multidisciplinary (micromorphological, physical and chemical) evaluation of the state of preservation.     

Multi-technique investigation of historical Chinese dyestuffs used in Ningxia carpets

In this article, an extensive work is presented concerning the characterization with both chromatographic (high-performance liquid chromatography) and spectroscopic (surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and visible reflectance spectroscopy) techniques of historical Chinese dyestuffs in several carpets, mostly coming from the Ningxia region in Northern China and dating to the seventeenth–nineteenth centuries. Notably, the color of the background of these fine artifacts has been an object of debate since, while being depicted as bright red in the ancient iconography, nowadays it appears as orange/yellow. Therefore, in addition to the identification of all the colorants used in the carpets, the present study investigated the reasons of this apparent inconsistency, pointing out an explanation based on the joined use of the yellow dye obtained from the pagoda tree and a “fugitive” dye obtained from brazilwood.