Archaeological Assessment of Second World War Anti‐Torpedo Close Protection Pontoons in Scapa Flow,Orkney

This paper presents the outcomes of sidescan sonar and archaeological diving surveys in 2015 of two wrecked vessels located off Flotta Island, Orkney, North Scotland. Archival research indicates these are the remains of Anti‐Torpedo Close Protection Pontoons (ATCPP), an experimental protection device used for close protection of naval vessels at anchor in Scapa Flow from attack by aircraft‐launch torpedoes. The pontoons were only in operation in Scapa Flow for 13 months (March 1941–April 1942) and few were brought into service. As such they represent a rare heritage resource, for which very little is known about their operation.     

Old Oslo

DURING an excavation outside the NW. corner of the defences of Winchester, Hants., an object was discovered which careful conservation proved to be an early medieval burse-reliquary. It has a wooden core, to which are tacked thin, gilt copper-alloy metal sheets, with embossed decoration. The context of the reliquary suggests its loss in the late 9th or early 10th century, and its art-historical associations indicate that it had been made at some time in the previous hundred years. It is the first early medieval reliquary of this type to have been found in England.     

Italianità and internationalism: Production,design and mediation at Alessi, 1976-96

This article considers the Italian household product design company Alessi as quintessentially Italian and international. The interplay of mass-production and craft techniques at Alessi, an extended design process and the presentation of the family in company publicity exemplify the ambiguities identified within Italian design. The extent to which Alessi typifies Italian post-war design is questioned with reference to the company's international design team and the marketing of its products to foreign consumers as manifestations of italianità. The findings are based on primary research in Milan and the Alessi factory, including a series of interviews with designers, retailers, curators and media workers, combined with secondary material centred upon design history.     

Covert and Overt Activism: Christianity in 1950s Coastal China

The phenomenal growth of Catholic and Protestant churches-both officially-registered Three-Self patriotic churches and unofficial house churches-in China has drawn attention to the underlying dynamics of Chinese Christianity.This article draws on archival research and ethnographic findings to investigate the interactions between the officials and Christians in the coastal regions of Shantou (Guangdong province) and Wenzhou (Zhejiang province) during the 1950s and 1960s.The Chaozhou-speaking Catholics,Baptists and Presbyterians in Shantou succeeded in transcending sectarian boundaries and helped each other to cope with political pressure.The Seventh-day Adventists in Wenzhou did likewise by organizing clandestine house gatherings with other Protestants.They held onto their faith,continued their worship activities on Saturday,and maintained a distinct,though not independent,identity under the broad spectrum of Protestantism.These local stories show that as a collective force,Chinese Christians not only employed a variety of tactics to help each other but also reinvented congregational,kinship and cross-regional networks as conduits for pursuing religious goals.Their covert and overt activism highlight the need to combine archival research and fieldwork to assess the revival of Christianity in present-day China.     

Family and familiars. The concentric household in late medieval penitentiary petitions

Few studies to date have examined the relational aspects of life within a non-nuclear medieval household. This article aims to show that the affective bonds that were prescribed for members of the nuclear family in the late middle ages were also prescribed for members of the larger household, though to a lesser degree. ‘Familiars’ were expected to develop bonds of loyalty that cut across distinctions of social estate. A series of petitions to the papal penitentiary from German-speaking areas during the fifteenth century shows that both elite and non-elite individuals exhibited such affective bonds of support in violent situations as well as in a wide variety of other circumstances. This indicates that the household formed a major building block of medieval society in relational as well as in logistical terms.     

Wak’a/shrine making and pilgrimage tourism in Copacabana,Bolivia

Abstract

The cultural landscape of the town of Copacabana and nearby ancient sites on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, have functioned as magnetic places of pilgrimage from Inka times to the present. They are analyzed as landscape constructions through the eyes of political and religious authorities as well as through those of the common pilgrims in a bottom-up perspective from Inka to Colonial times and to the present. Methodologies used are study of pertaining archaeological data and Colonial documents complemented by ethnographic interviews and participant observation. The data demonstrate how the past is redefined in the present as local heritage in a landscape perceived as Andean as well as Christian. Throughout Andean history, Copacabana has been the land terminal for pilgrims to set over to the Islands of the Sun and Moon to visit empowered shrines (wak’as) viewed as places of emergence of the Sun and the first humans. This pilgrimage was fabricated into state ideology by the Inka from ca. A.D.1450–1550. After the Spanish invasion, Copacabana became the seat of a widely revered Virgin who attracts pilgrims from all over Bolivia and southern Peru. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in early August 2015 and 2017 during one of the pilgrimages. Most visitors identify as pilgrim-tourists and many walk to five spatially distinct but thematically related wak’ as at which the past coalesces with the present and the secular with the divine in passionate and colorful performances for family wellbeing. Discussions center on the limited spatial control of the Catholic Church and on the growing practice of making new wak’as in Andean terms to the Virgin at selected landscape features outside of town as a form of popular heritage. Findings demonstrate that local Aymara people are not passive Colonial victims but selectively adopt from their conquerors what they hope may help alleviate poverty.     

An investigation of the fractal properties of flint microwear images

This paper reports on an investigation into the fractal dimensions of flint microwear images which has been carried out in an attempt to resolve the existing controversy over the possibility of identifying microwear types from visual inspection of high magnification images, and describes a new method for flint microwear image analysis based on fractal geometry. Fractal dimensions of surface images, which are known to relate well to human visual perception of roughness, have been computed for various types of microwear. No significant correlations have been found between the fractal properties of the digital flint images and the contacted materials.