‘The Weary Titan Staggers under the Too Vast Orb of its Fate’. Post-Federation Australia and the Problem of Imperial Defence

This article investigates an under-studied aspect of the British/Australian defence relationship in the immediate post-Boer War period. The essential nature of the Australian Imperial Force was not an accident of 1914. Rather, as this article will show, the form, style and structure of the force that fought at Gallipoli was set in stone more than a decade before that famous name entered the popular Australian lexicon.     

Ireland and the Grail

Betty Potter's Dip, an unmarked roadside location at Boxted in Essex, is named after Elizabeth Potter, an eighteenth-century suicide who was buried there. Folklore has since assumed that she was a witch. This paper examines the events surrounding Elizabeth Potter's death and burial in relation to the practice of burying suicides by the roadside, and discusses why some roadside burials may have been associated with witches.     

On the Battlefront: Canadian Soldiers,an Imperial War,and America's National Pastime

“The moment our men get out of the trenches they begin to play baseball… .” ¹ 1. Coningsby Dawson, Living Bayonets: A Record of the Last Push (New York: John Lane Co., 1919), 129.

—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson, an officer in the Canadian

Expeditionary Force during the First World War

The Great War is credited by some historians for giving direction to Canadian nationalism. Success on the battlefields provided many citizens with patriotic pride, as well as a sense of brotherhood as Canadian troops fought alongside the British in an imperial struggle. Despite an environment that favoured nationalism and imperialism, Canadian soldiers embraced America's national pastime. For many of the rank and file, baseball was an important part of their war experience. The commanding officers' support for sport, however, was essential to baseball's existence in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. Despite the enjoyment baseball brought soldiers, a handful of officers in the military's high command were apprehensive about sport's rising status. By 1917, after years of uncertainty about how to incorporate baseball into the soldiers' training regimen, the military could no longer ignore the need and role for sport in military life. Perhaps spurred by American entry into the conflict, the CEF issued a report that officially authorized baseball and like games.     

Food and social complexity at Çayönü Tepesi,southeastern Anatolia: Stable isotope evidence of differentiation in diet according to burial practice and sex in the early Neolithic

The identification of early social complexity and differentiation in early village societies has been approached in the past most notably through the evaluation of rituals and architectural layouts. Such studies could be complemented by an approach that provides data about everyday behaviours of individuals. We took 540 human and animal bone samples for stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis from the Neolithic site of Çayönü Tepesi in southeastern Anatolia. The inhabitants at this site chose to bury their dead in two different ways at different times during its occupation: beneath the floors of their houses, but also inside a public mortuary building known as the Skull Building. This variation provides an opportunity using isotope methods to test whether there was evidence for structuring of daily activities (diet in this case) that might serve to reinforce this change in burial practice. We show that when the inhabitants of Çayönü Tepesi changed their architecture and operated different burial practices in conjunction, this coincided with other aspects of behaviour including socially-constituted food consumption practices, which served to reinforce social identities.     

Offspring sex preference in frontier America

Analysis of the fertility histories of women born between 1850 and 1900, as given in the Utah Population Database (UPDB), reveals the effect of the number, as well as the sex composition, of previous children on birth-stopping and birth-spacing decisions. Specifically, agricultural and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) households—two sub-populations that might have placed different values on male and female children for economic, social, and/or cultural reasons—showed a distinct preference for male children, as expressed by birth stopping after the birth of a male child and shorter birth intervals in higher-parity births when most previous children were female. Remarkably, women in both the early "natural fertility" and the later contraceptive eras used spacing behavior to achieve a desired sex mix. Although the LDS population had relatively high fertility rates, it had the same preferences for male children as the non-LDS population did. Farmers, who presumably had a need for family labor, were more interested in the quantity than in the sex mix of their children.     

Carbon and nitrogen isotope signals in eel bone collagen from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe

Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis was undertaken on collagen extracted from eel bone from six Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe. The results were compared with data obtained on other archaeological fish remains and modern eel caught in fresh and brackish water and from the sea. The possibility of discriminating between freshwater, brackish and marine signals in archaeological eel bone is evaluated and the implications for archaeology discussed. Our data suggest that eel found at coastal Mesolithic and Neolithic sites have carbon isotope signals consistent with a marine origin with no evidence of freshwater residency. The sample of eel bone from one inland site is small but indicates carbon isotope values more consistent with freshwater residency or at least values intermediate between freshwater and marine carbon pools.     

Hermann Oppenheim's observations about music in aphasia

Hermann Oppenheim was influential in many areas of neurology, but his ideas about music are relatively unknown. In 1888, he published a paper that outlined how the assessment of music skills in patients with aphasia could lead to a better understanding of aphasia and language. Oppenheim conducted the first comprehensive music assessment as part of a neurologic examination and presented the first case series of music in aphasia. His paper was widely cited and had significant influence over the next 30 years. Although largely unrecognized as such, Oppenheim was an important historical figure in the study of music and neurology.     

The Diagnosis and Context of a Facial Deformity from an Anglo‐Saxon Cemetery at Spofforth,North Yorkshire

An individual aged between 6 and 7 years at death from a 7th to 9th century cemetery at Village Farm, Spofforth, North Yorkshire, presented significant pathological swelling to the left facial bones. The ectocranial surface was bulbous and uneven, and the expanded diploë was densely packed with a mass of thick trabeculae. Radiographic and histological analysis, in combination with the macroscopically observed pathological changes, supported the differential diagnosis of fibrous dysplasia. The skeletal changes to the left face and jaw would have resulted in a significant facial deformity. Examples of individuals with physical impairments or disfigurements from Anglo‐Saxon cemeteries are rare. Nevertheless, it seems that a significant proportion are afforded unusual burial practices more often associated with deviancy, for example, at the edge of cemeteries or on a reversed orientation, seemingly indicating that their diminished physical capabilities or altered physical appearance had a detrimental effect on their social status. The child from Spofforth was, however, buried in a normative manner, extended, supine and in a plain earth‐cut grave, with no indication that their facial deformity had prompted unusual funerary provision. This example of facial disfigurement contributes to a growing corpus of potentially disabled individuals from early medieval England. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.