Ordre des décrets divins,hiérarchie des droits humains

Until the xvi^th century, the use of public force in the service of religious unity seems to be a consequence of a zeal for the salvation of others. In order to reach civil peace, in the nations where different creeds confronted each other, it was necessary to find a theological foundation for the legal recognition of a freedom of conscience and of religion. The Protestant theologians of the Academy of Saumur, founded by Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, a negotiator of the Edict of Nantes, sought this foundation in a theology of creation. God created man to live peacefully in the company of his fellow-men and the drama of original sin, although it led for its reparation to a revelation from God, protected by the Church, did not destroy this primary order. «We are men, writes Amyraut, before being Christians.»     

Detecting Late Holocene cultural landscape modifications using LiDAR imagery in the Boreal Forest,Susitna Valley,Southcentral Alaska

The subarctic boreal forest, or taiga, is the largest biome in the world but has received minimal archaeological research because of its remoteness and difficult working conditions. In Southcentral Alaska the most common archaeological sites are surface manifestations of proto-historic semi-subterranean caches once used for food storage and living structures. However, in dense summer vegetation, these small-scale features are difficult to locate without high intensity pedestrian survey. To test the usefulness of LiDAR data for archaeological prospection in the taiga, we compare LiDAR imagery to the known distribution of small-scale semi-subterranean cultural features. The use of LiDAR, when complemented with Sky-View Factor, has proven valuable in identifying relatively small semi-subterranean features though it does not replace on-the-ground investigation. Nevertheless, the application of LiDAR to locate low density and small-scale cultural features is widely applicable across the subarctic in densely vegetated contexts and may assist in significantly expanding our current knowledge of land-use patterns and site distributions in logistically challenging places.     

Dacura: A new solution to data harvesting and knowledge extraction for the historical sciences

New advances in computer science address problems historical scientists face in gathering and evaluating the now vast data sources available through the Internet. As an example we introduce Dacura, a dataset curation platform designed to assist historical researchers in harvesting, evaluating, and curating high-quality information sets from the Internet and other sources. Dacura uses semantic knowledge graph technology to represent data as complex, inter-related knowledge allowing rapid search and retrieval of highly specific data without the need of a lookup table. Dacura automates the generation of tools to help non-experts curate high quality knowledge bases over time and to integrate data from multiple sources into its curated knowledge model. Together these features allow rapid harvesting and automated evaluation of Internet resources. We provide an example of Dacura in practice as the software employed to populate and manage the Seshat databank.     

Task-Specific Sites and Paleoindian Landscape Use in the Shaw Creek Flats,Alaska

The Shaw Creek Flats and nearby middle Tanana river, in central Alaska, constitute one of the areas in the Americas with the densest known distribution of Late Glacial (about 14,500–11,700 cal. B.P.) archaeological sites. Local high rates of sediment deposition and low post-depositional disturbance allow for the interpretation of the function of archaeological occupations within larger economic and mobility strategies. Residential sites used over the long term seem to be located near critical but immovable resources such as clear water and vegetation. The spatial association of artifacts and faunal remains at other sites in the Flats suggest that they were specialized, short-lived locations dedicated to a single or few activities. For instance, the site of Swan Point Cultural Zone 4b is interpreted as a workshop related to the production of composite tools, particularly on mammoth ivory, and the site of Keystone Dune is interpreted as a camp related to wapiti (Cervus elaphus) hunting. These task-specific sites and others were probably used as part of a predominantly logistical mobility and economy strategy, which maximized efficiency in harvesting and processing resources that were distributed heterogeneously on the landscape.