Paratexts and Footnotes in Historical Narrative: Henry Biaudet and scholarly and nationalistic ambitions of historical research 1902–1915

This article explores how Henry Biaudet (1870–1915) and the Finnish historical expedition in Rome used different paratextual elements in their studies on the Nordic Counter-Reformation. The analysis of paratextual strategies of the expedition suggests that application of paratexts in historical narrative reflected the fundamental characteristics of 19th-century historiography: professionalization, development into a research based independent academic discipline and nationalism. Paratexts, such as titles, title pages, lists of previous research, prefaces and with certain restrictions also footnotes, were first of all important genre indicators, which helped to draw a line between popular and professional historical narrative. Second, paratexts served political aims by helping to create images of scholarship in cases when argumentation was politically biased. Despite the important role paratexts performed in the development of modern historical scholarship via shaping historical narrative, historians have paid surprisingly little attention to them. Hence, the analysis of the paratextual strategies of Biaudet and his expedition offers an interesting perspective to the daily practices, values and thinking of historians at the turn of the 20th century.     

Litigating Agency Change

A study of Forest Service-related litigation and administrative appeals was undertaken to examine their potential roles in effecting change within the Forest Service. The frequency of federal lawsuit decisions involving the Forest Service increased markedly between 1971 and 1993, indicating a dramatic increase in the use of litigation as a tool to force change within the agency, particularly in the Ninth Circuit. Administrative appeals followed a similar increasing trend. An examination of the instigators and purposes of lawsuits found that litigation is used most frequently by environmentalists and most often to block commodity production activities by the agency. Although the agency wins the majority of suits in which it is involved, litigants who initiated lawsuits to stop commodity production activities had higher success rates than litigants seeking to challenge additional environmental measures or to promote commodity production by the agency. A qualitative examination of five National Forest Management Act lawsuit case studies concluded that when litigants are successful in legal challenges against the agency, the court decision often results in substantive on-the-ground changes in management, thereby providing an incentive for additional use of litigation as a means to alter agency actions. These results indicate that the courts and administrative appeals process likely have been significant factors in catalyzing change within the Forest Service.     

Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from the Indian subcontinent show evidence of elevated Arab ancestry but not of a recent common patrilineal origin

Several cultural or religious groups claim descent from a common ancestor. The extent to which this claimed ancestry is real or socially constructed can be assessed by means of genetic studies. Syed is a common honorific title given to male Muslims belonging to certain families claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his grandsons Hassan and Hussein, who lived 1,400 years ago and were the sons of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. If all Syeds really are in direct descent from Hassan and Hussein, we would expect the Y chromosomes of Syeds to be less diverse than those of non-Syeds. Outside the Arab world, we would also expect to find that Syeds share Y chromosomes with Arab populations to a greater extent than they do with their non-Syed geographic neighbours. In this study, we found that the Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from India and Pakistan are no less diverse than those non-Syeds from the same regions, suggesting that there is no biological basis to the belief that self-identified Syeds in this part of the world share a recent common ancestry. In addition to Syeds, we also considered members of other hereditary Muslim lineages, which either claim descent from the tribe or family of Muhammad or from the residents of Medinah. Here, we found that these lineages showed greater affinity to geographically distant Arab populations, than to their neighbours from the Indian subcontinent, who do not belong to an Islamic honorific lineage.     

Oxygen and strontium isotopes as provenance indicators of fish at archaeological sites: the case study of Sagalassos,SW Turkey

In this paper, we investigate the potential use of oxygen and strontium isotope ratios (δ¹⁸O_p and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) measured in archaeological fish enamel as provenance indicators. δ¹⁸O_p and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr were measured in a suite of archaeological carp remains recovered from the Anatolian townsite of Sagalassos dated to the Early Byzantine period (AD 450–650) and compared to that of modern fish, river and lake waters from the Anatolian region. We used sequential leaches in weak acetic acid to remove diagenetic Sr from fossil tooth enamel, monitoring the effectiveness of this approach by measuring the Sr/Ca ratios of the leachates via an isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry method (ID-TIMS). δ¹⁸O_p values mostly excluded a riverine origin. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios of one fish overlapped with the ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signatures of two lakes in the Anatolian region, and at least one lake (Gölcük) could be removed as a candidate owing to a very distinctive ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signature not found in any of the fish remains. Most of the tooth samples analyzed could not be assigned a precise geographical origin since the ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios measured in enamel did not match that of any of the local lakes selected as potential origin. This result suggests that carp may have originated from lakes that have not yet been sampled, although this conclusion is not supported by other archaeological evidence. Alternatively, the lack of correspondence between lakes and fish Sr isotope ratios highlights several possible sources of uncertainties including spatial heterogeneity in ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio within a lake, the contribution of dietary strontium to the ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio of fish tooth enamel, and post-mortem alteration of the tooth Sr isotope signal during fossilization. In spite of the high precision of the strontium isotope analyses and the wide range of variation in the surface waters of the Anatolian lakes and rivers, this method may remain limited to distinguishing between lakes situated in regions of bedrock of very distinct age and geology until these sources of uncertainty are more fully investigated.