New archaeozoological evidence for the introduction of the guinea pig to Europe

The remains are described of a guinea pig dated to the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th c. AD. The animal was discovered at a site in Mons, Belgium, and is the first European archaeozoological find dated with certainty on the basis of both the archaeological context and a radiocarbon dating of its bone. This find confirms that the guinea pig was introduced to Europe soon after the conquest of South America. The morphological and metrical analyses performed on the skeletal remains are in agreement with the iconographic and literary sources indicating the domestic status of the animals imported to Europe. While a previous discovery in England suggested that the guinea pig was a prestigious animal, the present study argues that it was accessible to several classes of the population which may be related to the rapid spread of this prolific animal after its introduction in Europe.     

Maps,Mapping, Modernity: Art and Cartography in the Twentieth Century

While the history of cartography has freed itself from debilitating debates over the scientific and artistic status of maps, considerations of the relationship between art and cartography have continued to focus largely on pre‐modern maps, avoiding critical examination of twentieth‐century art and science in cartography and leaving intact the impression that these followed distinct paths in the modern period. In this paper, however, I have drawn on theoretical work in Science Studies and taken account of modern art's separation from aesthetics to suggest that an examination of art and cartography in the twentieth century should focus on mapping practices rather than on maps as such. A summary overview of modern‐art movements and selected works indicates a continued, if critical, engagement of avant‐garde artists with cartography, and the examination of more popular newspaper artwork produced in the context of the intensely modern visual culture of mid‐twentieth century Los Angeles indicates a similarly close connection between modernity, art and cartography.     

A Fully Graphical Approach for Limit State Analysis of Existing Structures: Application to Plane Elastic-Plastic Bended Structures and to Plane Masonry Arches

ABSTRACT

When classical elastic analysis fails to model correctly the structural behavior of historical masonry structures because of the brittle, rigid, anisotropic, and inhomogeneous characteristics of their building material, equilibrium-based limit state analysis constitutes an efficient alternative for their structural assessment. The lack of knowledge about the history of loading makes the actual state of stresses impossible to determine for these statically indeterminate structures. However, Plastic Theory provides a powerful theoretical framework that defines in a rather simple way the structural safety level. The lower-bound theorem of plasticity can be applied using graphic statics because it ensures that equilibrium and yield conditions are respected when applying specific constraints to the nodes of the reciprocal diagrams.

This article focuses on limit stat analysis of statically indeterminate structures by means of geometrical considerations using graphic statics reciprocal diagrams. For linear-bended structures, we show that: (1) the conditions of stability can be defined graphically by constructing safety domains; (2) collapse modes can be identified and related to specific reciprocal polygons; and (3) the exact value of the collapse load factor can be deduced graphically from the diagrams. Finally, we extend these results to plane masonry arches in relation with the classical thrust line approach.     

Persian Studies and the Military in Late Imperial Russia (1863–1917): State Power in the Service of Knowledge?

This article pursues the goal of going beyond Saidian notions of Orientalism and Said's assumption of the “complicity of knowledge with power” to reach back to Foucault's initial postulations on the role of institutions and the intellectual in the interplay of power/knowledge relations. The article concentrates on the role of Russian military Oriental studies institutions and Orientologists in the context of discourses (the promotion of Russkoe Delo, the juxtaposition of Russia with the West and the Orient, etc.) that existed in late Imperial Russia and influenced the accumulation and development of scholarly knowledge on the Orient. Therefore, the significant contribution of the military domain to Russian Oriental studies on both the institutional and individual levels are examined from the angle of intra-Russian discourses in the period from the establishment of the Asiatic Section of the General Staff in 1863 up to 1917.     

Reviews

Richard J. Goy, The House of Gold: Building a Palace in Medieval Venice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xxiv + 304pp., 13 col., 100 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–521–40513–0. £60.

Paul Mattick Jr. (ed.), Eighteenth‐Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. viii + 256 pp. ISBN 0–521–43106–9. £30.

Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education, Cambridge Mass. & London: MIT Press, 1994. xxx + 350 pp., 197 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–19342–6. £24.95.

Barry Cunliffe, Wessex to AD 1000, London & New York: Longman, 1993. 388 pp., 128 plates and figures. ISBN 0–582–49279. £16.99.

J. M. Fladmark (ed.), Cultural Tourism, London: Donhead, 1994. 413 pp. 86 b. & w. illns. ISBN 1–873394–15–2. £37.00.

John Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, Cambridge, Mass., and London: The MIT Press, [1992], 1994. xviii + 388 pp., 127 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–08211‐X. £17.95. Venetia Murray, Castle Howard The Life and Times of a Stately Home, London: Viking, 1994. xx + 236 pp., 33 b. & w. illus. and 20 figs. ISBN 0–670–83379–7. £18.00.

Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xv + 334 pp., 21 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0 521 40586 6. £14.95.

Alan R. H. Baker and Gideon Biger (eds.), Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 356 pp., 93 figs. ISBN 0–521–41032–0. £40.00.

Timothy Ambrose and Crispin Paine, Museum Basics, London and New York: Routledge, 1993. 319 pp., 6 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–415–05770–1. £19.99.

Martin Warnke, The Court Artist: On the Ancestry of the Modern Artist, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xx + 299 pp. ISBN 0–521–36375–6. £35.

David Dean, Museum Exhibition Theory and Practice, London and New York: Routledge, 1994. xii + 177 pp., 56 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–415–08016–9. £22.50.

Hanno‐Walter Kraft, A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present, London: Zwemmer and New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994. 706 pp., 207 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–302–00622–2. £25.00

James Strike, Architecture in Conservation: Managing Development at Historic Sites, London and New York: Routledge, 1994. x + 163 pp., 86 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–415–08130–0. £40.00.

Peter Walker & Melanie Simo, Invisible Gardens. The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape, Cambridge, Mass, and London: The MIT Press, 1994. xvi + 365 pp., 12 col. and 144 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–23177–8. £44.95.

John Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1988] 1990. xvi + 351 pp., 204 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–521–39848–7. £22.95.

G. J. Ashworth & P. J. Larkham, (eds.), Building a New Heritage: Tourism, Culture and Identity in the New Europe, London: Routledge, 1994. xiii + 278 pp., 39 figs. ISBN 0–415–07931–4, £40.00.

W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and Power, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994. vii + 248 pp., 72 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–226–53207–0. £ 11.25.