The condition of ‘Cosmo-housewives’: leisure shopping,the mainstream and its ambiguities

‘Leisure shopping’ is a particular kind of shopping activity that is devoted mainly to fashion clothes and accessories. Women are commonly represented as the main leisure shoppers, and consequently, they tend to be at the centre of shopping centres' mainstream discourses. This article argues that interpretations of representations of ‘leisure shopping’ and the corresponding practice have too often ignored the daily and seemingly ‘banal’ experiences of the social actors involved. The primary purpose of this article is to show how gender roles are performed and reified in high-end factory outlet villages in Italy. It adopts a cross-sectional approach to ‘leisure shopping’ that includes an analysis of the ‘languages’ of two Italian high-end factory outlet villages, the ‘social space’ represented by the same sites and the ‘stories’ about a few ideal-typical female shopping experiences. These aspects are situated in the Italian cultural and political context at the time the research was conducted. Very different demands – such as sensuality, efficiency and motherly care – are put on women in Italy, as well as in the majority of Western societies. The analysis reveals that through their practice of browsing in a high-end factory outlet village, women often reproduce stereotypes while simultaneously trying – though ambiguously – to challenge them.     

New trials in the consolidation of waterlogged archaeological wood with different acetone-carried products

Some acetone-carried consolidants for waterlogged archaeological wood were tested in order to evaluate treatments able to save time and energy. In details, colophony (rosin), two esterified colophonies (Rosin 100^® and Rosin 459^®), a mixture of colophony with PEG 3400 and a vinyl acetate - vinyl versate copolymer (Vinavil 8020S^®) were tested. The treatments were carried out at temperatures of 20 and 35 °C on waterlogged maritime pine, elm, oak and beech. The materials came from the archaeological site of the ancient ships of Pisa (Tuscany, Italy) and were dated back to VII cent. BC – II cent. AD. To evaluate the processes, equilibrium moisture content and dimensional stability of treated wood samples at different relative humidity, and retention of impregnating products were measured; moreover macroscopic and microscopic examination were also run to respectively assess the shape and appearance of treated wood and the way of deposition of consolidants. The results highlighted that natural and modified colophony treatments gave the most satisfactory results both in the maintenance of shape and dimensions of samples and in the stabilization with respect to RH variations. Moreover, the equilibrium moisture contents of samples treated with R100 and R459 were much reduced in comparison to the other consolidants and to untreated archaeological wood. This fact was related to the high retention values of those products that occluded most of the porosity including the microporosity of cell walls. Therefore, in terms of higroscopicity treated wood was more similar to impregnating substances rather than to decayed wood. This fact was considered helpful in contrasting the moisture-related negative effects in cases of eventual faults in the climate control during e.g. exhibition and in protecting treated wood from the risks of new fungal attacks.     

The Terramare and the surrounding hydraulic structures: a geophysical survey of the Santa Rosa site at Poviglio (Bronze Age,northern Italy)

The Terramara Santa Rosa is a Middle and Late Bronze Age archaeological site located in the Po alluvial plain, northern Italy. It is constituted of two moated villages delimited by earthen ramparts. The peripheral structures of the site are sealed by fine-textured flood plain deposits and they have not been fully explored through excavation due to their large extent. Because the shape of the villages and their relation to moats and the fluvial network are of paramount importance to understanding the landscape management and the use of water resources in the Terramare civilisation, a geophysical survey was planned to extend the results of the existing archaeological excavations to the site scale. A frequency-domain electro-magnetic sounding (FDEM) and electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) covered an area of approximately 26 ha; ERI was conducted for a total length >9000 m. Despite the predominance of electrically conductive fine-textured sediments, electrical resistivity anomalies were observed and they were attributed to subtle lithological differences in the sedimentary context of the alluvial plain. The geophysical interpretation, after the calibration with the excavation data, revealed the structures of the Terramara and of the surrounding hydraulic network, which are not visible at the surface due to flood plain deposits. The Santa Rosa site was founded in a favourable geomorphological position, on the top of a crevasse splay lobe of the adjoining Po palaeo-channel, rising above the surrounding alluvial plain. The Terramara and their surroundings were delineated through an artificial modification of this pre-existing crevasse splay lobe and a well-targeted urban design, with the objective of diverting water, most likely from a palaeo-channel of the Po River, through the digging of peripheral moats used to collect water around the site and to distribute it to the surrounding fields for irrigation. The water management documented by this study in the Terramara Santa Rosa can be considered as paradigmatic for the whole Terramare civilisation, which is therefore responsible of the introduction of the irrigated agriculture into western Europe for the first time.     

A Picturesque Modernity in 1920s Peru and Argentina: Ruins,Cuzco and Americanism in the Photographic Reportages of Variedades and Plus Ultra

This essay focuses on a series of pictorial reportages on the city of Cuzco and the surrounding region published in the Peruvian illustrated magazine Variedades in 1924 and 1925. Looking at the interplay of the aesthetic and documentary value of photographs, I analyse how the reportages on Cuzco’s architecture and ruins contributed to the indigenista proposal of regional and national identity and how, in so doing, they articulated an idea of modernity which opposed the main narrative of Western modernization produced by the magazine. I argue that Variedades became the discursive place of an interplay between opposite ideas of modernity since it afforded its readers-viewers a dual, almost conflictive, experience. Moreover, I posit that the magazine ‘mediated’ the regional discourse for the Limeño readers through the discourses of tourism and the picturesque familiarizing them with those ‘unknown’ regions. By comparing the reportages with similar documents published in the same decade by the Argentine magazine Plus Ultra, I also show that this was not something exclusive to Peru, but rather part of a broader Americanist trend that was shaping the relationship between native tradition and modernization as well as giving form to a proposal for a ‘pan-American’ identity in the 1920s.     

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.     

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.