Partisan identity in the French civil war, 1405–1418: reconsidering the evidence on livery badges

This article examines the efficiency with which John the Fearless used his personal badges during his conflict with Louis of Orleans and the Armagnacs, and questions current thinking on the relationship between the emblems of both parties. As early as 1405, he began distributing emblems that corresponded directly to his ideology: first the carpenter's plane, and from 1410 onwards, his mason's level, two symbols that were representative of his platform for reform. In August 1411, his urban supporters in Paris and elsewhere began wearing crosses of St Andrew, his patron saint, as a means of identifying themselves as Burgundian partisans. This study argues that in making a conscious decision to link his symbols to his ideology, and in making them available to his vassals and urban supporters alike, John the Fearless forged a strong Burgundian community that transcended social barriers. In so doing, he also manufactured an Armagnac anti-community, a tangible entity against which his partisans' animosity was directed from 1411 onwards. As badges of allegiance, the symbols helped fuel a war that had, thus far, remained a private conflict between the princely houses of Burgundy and Orleans.     

A Roma Nation? Constructing Romani identity in the context of extreme displacement

The process of displacement has affected the articulation of collective identity among the Romani diaspora. The nation state persists as the main vehicle through which diasporic identities are formulated. A challenge to this is when a diaspora has lost its homeland as its territorial reference point. This article reflects on the way in which the Romanies – a 1,000‐year‐old diaspora – confront traditional understandings of diasporic identity as combining the ideas of a loss and longing for a homeland. It explores the limits and possibilities of building a collective Romani identity in the context of extreme displacement, with reference to narratives of identity and belonging articulated by the Romani diaspora in Britain.     

The potential of paleoethnobotanical evidence for the study of Teotihuacan foodways

Macro- and microscopic plant remains recovered from excavations at Teotihuacan over several decades contribute to an understanding of the subsistence resources available to the city’s inhabitants. However, associated contextual evidence may be inconclusive regarding the specific uses of the plants in question and, particularly, whether their presence or relative abundance indicates processing and consumption or the consequence of depositional processes. While the analysis of archeological plant remains is necessarily an interdisciplinary endeavor, involving aspects of botany, ecology, ethnography and history among other disciplines, contextual archeological evidence provides the matrix for interpretation. In this paper, we explore direct archeological evidence for plant use, considering the significance of appropriate contextual evidence (e.g., activity areas, associated ceramics, lithics, etc.) and the potential complementary role of analytical techniques such as residue analyses, and carbon isotope signatures in faunal and human osteological remains as well as stratigraphic sediments.     

Fiat Lux: Functional Analysis of Three Saxo-Norman Pottery Lamps from Berkeley,Gloucestershire

THIS PAPER COMPRISES analysis of three Saxo-Norman pottery lamps recovered during archaeological excavations in 2012 in the Edward Jenner Museum garden, Berkeley, Gloucestershire. While such vessels have been known to archaeologists since the earliest days of Saxon and medieval pottery studies, their specific function, other than general ‘lighting’, has never been considered. Similarly, the composition of the fuel in such lamps has not been scientifically verified. In the following paper, both of these areas are addressed through experimental archaeology and organic residue analysis. The conclusion reached is that the lamps were chosen for use in a late-Saxon industrial workshop as they were ideal for the setting, providing a consistent, stable and bright light source in comparison with other available lighting methods of the period.     

Embodiment,linguistics, space: American Sign Language meets geography

ABSTRACT

The relational turn in geography has led to an understanding of space and place as actively produced agents in people’s everyday lives. Geographers have also long recognized the importance of language in understanding the social and relational nature of space. The study of American Sign Language (ASL) presents a unique opportunity to examine how language use and language creation influence the production of linguistic space. For users of ASL, space is incredibly significant. Because of the visual and spatial nature of ASL, the space surrounding a signer’s body is important not only for the signer to communicate, but also for others involved in the conversation to participate. Environments created during conversations in ASL reflect the cultural and linguistic perception of the American Deaf community. By taking a critical perspective on the production of space, it will be shown that those who use ASL, through the medium of bodily performance, create linguistic, and communication spaces that are dynamic and visual. The embodied language of ASL and the Deaf community is a perspective geographers have yet to address.     

Meeting the demand for meat?

Renewed fears expressed by the United Nations about worldwide population growth have coincided with international concerns about the increased consumption of meat. This article, which draws upon long‐term fieldwork in the Guatemalan highlands and ongoing scientific research in the Netherlands, examines the ways in which global organizations are framing and responding to these concerns. Economists generally address the problem of increased meat consumption through the language of ‘demand’, while nutritionists adopt the rhetoric of nutritional ‘needs’. Not only do these approaches tend to present meat – which in practice takes many forms – as a single substance, but they also flatten the nuanced relationships that exist between the eater and the eaten, while overlooking the diverse contexts in which ‘meat’ eating takes place. This article addresses the question how anthropologists might approach the topic of increased meat consumption, suggesting that an analysis of the ways in which global actors approach this topic can help the discipline of anthropology to re‐engage with historic debates about the role of ‘the material’ and ‘the symbolic’ in relation to eating practices and to move these debates in new and productive directions.     

The Norman Conquest of the classical past: William of Poitiers,language and history

William of Poitiers' Gesta Guillelmi, written shortly after the Norman Conquest of England, remains surprisingly neglected, especially by historians. He is generally regarded primarily as a classical stylist who employed classical references to decorate his panegyric of William of Normandy. Poitiers' use of classical allusion was, however, far from superficial. In arguing for William’s legitimacy as king of England, Poitiers addresses a wider audience than is generally acknowledged, and appeals directly to the fears, expectations and values of his day. The article examines his three most sustained allusions to classical heroes of naval enterprises and conquest – Caesar, Aeneas and Theseus – as key components of the memory of the Norman Conquest, demonstrating that each allusion makes a specific moral and political point. Poitiers is a case study for medieval authorial ingenuity in applying classicism to the problems of the present.     

Assessing individual systemic stress through cortisol analysis of archaeological hair

As a product of physiological status and the social and physical environments, stress has significant impact on health and well-being in both ancient and contemporary societies. In bioarchaeological research, stress is characterized using an array of skeletal indicators that record stressful periods during childhood and adulthood. In modern clinical research, exposure to stress can be assessed using systemic cortisol levels that have been shown to fluctuate in response to experienced stress. Analysis of cortisol levels in archaeological hair should enable assessment of stress during a short, but critical, period of an individual's life. For this pilot study, we selected hair samples from ten individuals from five different archaeological sites in Peru, and analyzed them in segments to determine cortisol levels. These data demonstrate that it is possible to observe biogenic patterns of cortisol production, and that individual experiences of stress can be reconstructed for the period of time represented by each hair sample. Analysis of cortisol levels in hair has the potential to be a valuable short-term dynamic stress indicator that will complement paleopathological and biochemical studies of health and stress, and permit the reconstruction of increasingly detailed life histories.