Geophysical Methods for Wreck‐Site Monitoring: the Rapid Archaeological Site Surveying and Evaluation (RASSE) programme

Rapid advances in geophysical techniques over the past decade have provided the maritime archaeological community with significant opportunities for re‐defining the procedures for wreck‐site mapping, evaluation and monitoring. The techniques which offer most potential for high‐resolution survey are acoustic‐based and include sidescan sonar, swath‐bathymetry sonar and multibeam sonar. These techniques were tested on an artificial test‐site in Plymouth Sound and over the wreck of the Stirling Castle. Results demonstrate that the techniques can provide the maritime archaeologist with the opportunity to rapidly and cost‐effectively map and monitor small, centimetric changes on sites, with the potential for long‐term monitoring and management. © 2009 The Authors     

Natural encounters: climate,weather and the Italian Renaissance

This paper examines a key issue in the history of the climate in the pre-instrumental period, that is, how to use narrative sources which make frequent references to weather events, but which need contextualised interpretation. The paper follows an argument that climatological techniques for deriving temperature indices from chronicles, though they have become increasingly elaborate and refined, nevertheless leave out much that is of interest to the social historian. This paper explores the area of the what-is-left-behind when chronicle narratives are reduced to numerical indices. Investigating a broad range of Latin and Italian chronicles from fourteenth and fifteenth-century Italy, the paper draws three main conclusions: that sensitivity to weather events not only varied greatly among writers (as one might expect) but so too did their use of severe weather to serve the purposes of narrative (through sequencing, metaphor and analogy); that sensitivity to meteorological anomaly changed during the period, especially in the fifteenth century with the spread of prognosticating verses; and that the broadening of chroniclers' interests in weather, both ordinary and extraordinary, and in its effects on everyday, material life may allow a connection to and re-evaluation of the Burckhartian idea of the Renaissance ‘discovery of the world’.     

Charlotte Sophia Burne: Shropshire Folklorist,First Woman President of the Folklore Society,and First Woman Editor of Folklore . Part 2: Update and Preliminary Bibliography

THE EVIL EYE IN THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS. By R. C. MACLAGAN, M.D. pp. 232. London: David Nutt. 1902. Reviewed by John Abercromby.

WITCHCRAFT AND SECOND SIGHT IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND. By the late JOHN GREGORSON CAMFHELL. pp. 314. Glasgow : James MacLehose. 1902. Reviewed by John Abercromby.

OUTER ISLES. By A. GOODRICH-FREER. pp. 448. Westminster: A. Constable and Co. 1902. Reviewed by John Abercromby.

POPULAR RELIGION IN THE PANJAB. Report of the Census of the Panjab and North-West Frontier Province of 1901. By H. A. ROSE. Simla. 1902. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

LA VIE FUTURE D'APRÉS LE MAZDÉISME À LA LUMIÈRE DES CROVANCES PARALLÈLES DANS LES AUTRES RELIGIONS. ÉTUDE D'ARCHÉOLOGIE COMPARÉE. Par NATHAN SÖDERBLOM. Paris: Leroux. 1901. Reviewed by Alfred Nutt.

THE ORIGIN OF CIVILISATION AND THE PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MAN. By the RIGHT HON. LORD AVEBURY, P.C., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D. Sixth edition, with numerous additions. Longmans, Green, &; Co. 1902. 8vo. Price 18s. Reviewed by A. C. Haddon.

THE MABINOGION. Translated by Lady C. GUEST, and Edited by A. NUTT. D. NUTT. 2s. 1 vol. Reviewed by Margaret Eyre.

THE LITERATURE OF THE CELTS, ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE. By MAGNUS MACLEAN, M.A., D.Sc. 8vo. Blackie and Son. London. 1902. Reviewed by F. York Powell.     

Towards a Revaluation of the Legend of “Saint” William of Norwich and its Place in the Blood Libel Legend

The legend of William of Norwich is extremely well known and often quoted in discussions of defamatory folklore. However, since I started working on it three or four years ago I have found that there are surprisingly few folkloric analyses. Leaving aside those who have attempted to believe the story and to use it as anti-Jewish propaganda, most of the respectable work has been done by historians and has tended to concentrate either on debunking the legend or on attempting to reconstruct events in Norwich during Easter 1144. My aim in this paper is to redress this balance and tackle a couple of the more folkloric questions.     

Objects and interactivity: A conflict or a collaboration?

The rapid growth in the number of hands‐on centres has led to fears of museums being taken over by interactive exhibits. These are expensive to develop and maintain, causing a problem for traditional museums faced with ever‐expanding collections and diminishing resources. This article considers whether objects and interactive exhibits are inevitably in conflict or whether they can coexist in harmony. The implications for future developments at the Science Museum in London are considered in detail.

The authors conclude that, far from conflicting with traditional museum functions, interactive exhibits and new technologies will help to ensure that museums are able to compete in an increasingly complex marketplace. Their vision of the interactive gallery of the future incorporates exhibits which enhance understanding of artefacts. In short, the objective will be to ensure that visitors interacting with ‘hands‐on’ exhibits will take away ‘minds‐on’ understanding of the museum as a whole.     

Culture,structure and reciprocity: histoire croisée and its uses for the conceptualization of the rise and spread of national movements in Europe and the Atlantic World during the Age of Revolutions

This article seeks to continue the discussion carried on in previous editions of the journal concerning the concepts of transfer, crossed and entangled history and their employment in various fields of enquiry. Specifically, it attempts to clarify some of the principles associated with this growing body of scholarship and the manner in which they may aid in the conceptualisation and historiography of the rise of national movements over the period 1763–1848. Given the procedural dispositions described below, crossed or entangled histories on the rise of nationalism in Europe and the European colonial world would be expected to incline toward particular subject matter and questions, and even presuppose, to paraphrase another writer, a conception of the nation as ‘a relational (cultural) construct’. This largely cultural perspective on the rise and early history of national movements in Europe and the Atlantic World has a number of heuristic advantages, not least of which is its value in enabling productive linkages between older approaches to the subject.     

The ‘Dividual Androgyne’ and Me: a Personal Affair

In the 25 years since Marilyn Strathern published The Gender of the Gift (1988) its signature concepts of the ‘dividual androgyne’ and ‘sociality’ have received almost no criticism in the anthropological literature and are now widely accepted as true. The ‘dividual’ is considered to be ‘a new, non‐unitary model of embodiment and … one of the most important theoretical accomplishments to emerge from Melanesian ethnography in the latter part of the 20^th Century’ despite the fact that it erases affect, agency, identity and other essential features of human beings (Lipset 2008). The present critique of Strathern's concept of the androgynous ‘dividual’ challenges its legitimacy as a Melanesian or any other ‘premodern’ form of personhood and suggests that it expresses the wish of academic feminists in the 1970s and 1980s to locate an indigenous model for androgyny and to characterise patriarchy, misogyny and sexual segregation as peculiarly Western. The article explores aspects of Gimi myth, ritual and exchange which Strathern claims helped her to formulate the concept of the ‘dividual’ (especially those surrounding men's sacred bamboo flutes) and concludes that she mistook a virulently anti‐female ideology – including a fantasy in which men may subsume or incorporate certain aspects of female anatomy – for benign accommodation between the sexes. The ‘dividual’ does not correspond to social reality among the Gimi and paradoxically affirms Lévi‐Strauss' classic demonstration in the Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) that ‘the gender of the gift’ is invariably female.     

Medieval Britain in 1965

A study was undertaken to assess the potential of the integrated analysis of metalwork excavated from medieval (late 13th–16th-century) rural settlements in the midlands of England and inventories (dating from c 1370–c 1440) drawn from the royal escheators’ records for the same region. The study aimed to explore the value and meaning of objects to the non-elite members of rural communities and focussed on three classes of artefact: metal vessels, tools and dress accessories. The analysis investigates medieval value systems by exploring evidence for aspiration, recycling and differences between town and country.     

The ethnoarchaeology of pottery production

Reina, Ruben E. and Robert Hill. The Traditional Pottery of Guatemala. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1978. 323 pp. 419 figures, 10 maps, 3 tables, 10 color plates. $35.

Lackey, Louana M. The Pottery of Acatlán: A Changing Mexican Tradition. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. 164 pp. 18 color plates, 68 black and white photographs, 3 maps. $19.95.