A Late 13th and Early 14th-Century Tile Factory at Danbury,Essex

THE EXCAVATION of a practically complete medieval tile factory, in operation between c. 1275/85 and 1325/35, is described. The establishment comprised three buildings, interpreted as workmen's accommodation (A), a workshop (B), and a drying shed (C), together with two kilns, within a ditched roadside enclosure. The kilns were of the normal type, with two parallel flues; one had a walled stokepit reached by a tile staircase. The methods of tile manufacture and firing are discussed, the conclusions being partially supported by experimental evidence. The patterns of the decorated tiles are seen as derivatives of the Chertsey-Westminster School, mostly via the 13th-century ‘Central Essex Group’; a relationship with Penn is also suggested. Distribution of Danbury products is largely confined to the Chelmer valley, but a waterborne distribution is suggested by a group of floor tiles from Virginia Water, Surrey.     

Swedish limestone paving in 17th-and 18th-century English buildings

Documents concerning buildings by Christopher Wren record the use of Swedish and Danish marble as a paving material. In order to establish the origin of these marbles, original pavings are examined at St Paul's Cathedral and elsewhere. Through analyses of samples and by means of other evidence both marbles are identified as Orthoceras Limestone from the Swedish island of Öland. The stone industry of Öland is described and the import of Swedish stone into England in the 17th and 18th centuries is traced through Scandinavian and English customs accounts.     

Evaluating inputs to models of hominin raw material selection: map resolution and path choices

Selection of an appropriate scale is an important decision in study design in many branches of science, since perceived patterns often change with the scales of spatial extent or resolution of an analysis. In previously published work, we created a resource selection model to determine the importance of several independent variables for the selection of lithic materials by hominins at a Middle Palaeolithic site in southern France. Two of these independent variables (calories exerted and difficulty of the terrain covered in travel from source to site) were calculated using elevation data extracted from maps. In the present paper, we examine the differences in model performance when the variables ‘Calories’ and ‘Difficulty’ are calculated using 1) three base maps for elevation that differed in map resolution (from finest to coarsest: a 1:25,000 topographic base map, SPOT DEM, and SRTM DEM), and 2) two different methods for determining the route from source to site (straight-line route and least-cost route; both methods exclude areas with slopes >60% from travel). Our best model was the one that used data calculated using the topographic base map; however, the SRTM DEM-based data produced models of essentially equal quality. Regardless of map scale, models that used data calculated using a straight-line route always outperformed models that used data calculated using a least-cost route. This supports our previous finding that a straight-line route is a more appropriate measure for the path from lithic source to site than a least-cost route. We conclude that the map resolution of each of the base maps used here is appropriate for analyses involving spatial data pertaining to Neandertal activity because this type of data is essentially always coarse-grained.     

The life and times of Thomas Willis and his impact on contemporary medicine

Thomas Willis made numerous contributions to the neurosciences that were broad in scope. In an age of scientific breakthroughs and intellectual revolutions, Willis bestowed upon medical research the clinical rigor that set the stage for subsequent medical breakthroughs. In Cerebri Anatome, Willis introduced a measure of empiricism hitherto unknown in medieval times. By coupling the delineation of brain and neural anatomy with functional studies, Willis brought the science of clinical neurology into fruition. Psychiatry, too, benefited from Willis' elucidation of mental illness and intellectual disability, and modern behavioral psychologists claim Willis as one their early, most ardent champions.     

Chicago goes global: redevelopment,culture, and fear

Chicago's remarkably flexible growth machine, like their brethren across Rust Belt America, continues to aggressively press forward to build an internationally competitive city. This paper deepens our understanding of Chicago's recently changed growth machine. It focuses on its current redevelopment narrative as it is used on the South Side and chronicles two new features about it: its revamped use of fear and its re-fashioned notion of culture. I flesh out these two elements as they circulate through a now dominant redevelopment program: historic preservation. I chronicle three points in this paper. First, programs like historic preservation, like so many current city programs, have now fully shifted to being a neoliberal economic development tool to promote the “go-global Chicago” project. Second, two dominant fears recently nuanced anchor the narrative: fear of a city-destroying globalization and fear of city-subverting poor African-Americans. Third, a revamped notion of culture is used that helps provide resonance and dark appeal to the two offered fears. The culture notion is put into play as two dominant things, as the idealized and timeless glue that unifies Chicago's mainstream and as problematic values and meanings carried by black bodies which renders them civic tainting “ocular trash”.     

Photo Essay: The Rio Grande Borderland

The Rio Grande border of the United States and Mexico is over 1,000 miles long. This presentation of that border is by means of a photo essay interpreting the physical, economic, political, and cultural complex that has evolved. These photos were all taken in 1990 on a reconnaissance that followed both sides of the border for the entire distance from Ciudad Juarez and El Paso on the west to the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Numerous crossings of the border were made at official and non-official points. Informal field interviews were conducted on both sides of the border with government officials, agricultural workers, tourists, farmers, industrial managers, factory laborers, retirees, undocumented migrants, beachcombers, shoe-shiners in the plaza, sportsmen, clergymen, children, and loafers. The photos with an accompanying text are presented in an order that is conducive to a comprehension of the salient aspects of the physical and human geography and the complex social issues found in the borderland. The final photos and text are on the maquiladoras and the international interplay of history, markets, labor, and technology resulting in striking structural change.     

Playful heritage: excavating Ancient Greece in New York City

This article examines how concepts of ‘play’ can be used within studies of cultural heritage to build an alternative to the dominant use of consumer-orientated models within current scholarship. Using the example of how the traditions, motifs and history of Ancient Greece have been reused within New York, from the nineteenth century to the present day this work demonstrates that this is a heritage that has been ‘played with’ by successive generations as a means of establishing identity within the metropolis. Whilst the ideals of Athenian democracy and classical learning inspired the formation of the early American republic, these associations were brought into wider usage in New York with the arrival of significant Greek immigration into the city during the twentieth century. This provided a new opportunity of a playful use of Ancient Greek heritage as this émigré community built new identities and became established in the metropolis. The Greek American enclave of Astoria, located in the borough of Queens, will be the focus of this study as the site where this playful use of heritage has taken place, undertaken both by members of the Greek American community and also by individuals and groups responding to their presence.