On Dilwyn Church

Abstract

The stone castle was probably begun in the first quarter of the 13th century by Alan, the king's steward, or his son, Walter. Bute had only recently been wrested from the kingdom of Man and the Isles, whose overlord, King Håkon IV of Norway, sent two expeditions to retake it in 1230 and 1263. When Bute returned to Scottish control in 1266, the castle was strengthened by the addition of four rounded projecting towers and a gatehouse facing the sea. Rothesay played little part in the Wars if Independence from 1290 onwards. The marriage of Walter III Stewart with King Robert the Bruce's daughter, Marjorie, however, eventually resulted in the Stewarts obtaining the throne in 1371 through Marjorie's son, Robert.

Both King Robert II (1371–90) and his son Robert III (1390–1406) spent time at Rothesay Castle and carried out minor building works. James IV (1488–1513) also took a personal interest in it, and in August 1498 appointed his kinsman, Ninian Stewart, as captain and keeper. He also began construction of the large residential gatehouse, called le dungeon, that was added on to the earlier gatehouse; this work was finished under James V in 1540–42.

In 1685 the castle was burnt by the duke if Argyll, and the keeper's family abandoned it as a residence. In 1816–18, the second marquess of Bute had the courtyard cleared of vegetation and rubble; and in 1871–9, the third marquess cleared the moat and engaged the architect William Burges to carry out restoration of the masonry. The gatehouse hall was also rebuilt in 1900.     

Defining Citizenship for a New Nation

A key part of any process of decolonisation is the need for the emerging nation to determine the rules for citizenship. In Papua New Guinea, what it meant to be a citizen was the first topic that the Constitutional Planning Committee considered when it set about its task to develop a ‘home grown’ constitution in late 1972. The process by which it first comprehended this matter and then involved thousands of Papua New Guineans in their villages, missions and schools in a territory-wide exercise in consultation forms the subject of this paper. The records of the discussions that took place between February and April of 1973 reveal much of how the criteria for membership of the national enterprise came to be established. This case study of defining citizenship in PNG demonstrates the intensive consultation of the local peoples on key issues in nation-building and reveals the high degree of Indigenous agency in the decolonisation process.     

Ichnofacies of the Stairway Sandstone fish-fossil beds (Middle Ordovician,Northern Territory,Australia)

The Stairway Sandstone is a 30–560 m thick succession of Middle Ordovician siliciclastic sedimentary rocks within the Amadeus Basin of central Australia, deposited in the epeiric Larapintine Sea of northern peri-Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone is significant as one of only two known Gondwanan successions to yield articulated arandaspid (pteraspidomorph agnathan) fish. Herein we use the ichnology of the Stairway Sandstone to reveal insights into the shallow marine habitat of these early vertebrates, and compare it with that of other known pteraspidomorph-bearing localities from across Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone contains a diverse Ordovician ichnofauna including 22 ichnotaxa of Arenicolites, Arthrophycus, Asterosoma, Cruziana, Didymaulichnus, Diplichnites, Diplocraterion, ?Gordia, Lockeia, Monocraterion, Monomorphichnus, Phycodes, Planolites, Rusophycus, Skolithos and Uchirites. These ichnofauna provide a well-preserved example of a typical Ordovician epeiric sea assemblage, recording the diverse ethologies of tracemakers in a very shallow marine environment of flashy sediment accumulation and regularly shifting sandy substrates. New conodont data refine the age of the Stairway Sandstone to the early Darriwilian, with ichnostratigraphic implications for the Cruziana rugosa group and Arthrophycus alleghaniensis.