Modern roads as UNESCO World Heritage sites: framework and proposals

There has been noticeable development in the protection of linear infrastructure by UNESCO, whether on its cultural, technological or historical merits. However, with the exception of other means of transport incorporated within the field of industrial archaeology or recognised by the CIIC under the category of cultural routes, little or no consideration has been given to roads built from the mid-eighteenth century to the early part of the twentieth century. In view of this situation, this paper has the following aims. Firstly, to define the concept of ‘modern road’ and provide a brief analysis of the historical development and current situation of the same. Secondly, to assess the main contributions made to date regarding the heritage dimension of modern roads. Thirdly, to reconstruct the process of defining linear cultural landscapes, historic transportation corridors, cultural routes and heritage canals, railways and roads, in accordance with the considerations raised by ICOMOS and UNESCO. Finally, to contribute to the debate on the definition, characterisation and assessment of modern roads as world heritage assets, both intrinsically and in relation to established heritage categories.     

Writing on the edge: the poet,the printer,and the colonial frontier in Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569–1590)

It took Alonso de Ercilla (1533–1594) thirty years to finish La Araucana, a first-person narrative epic poem about the brutal war of Arauco, in southern Chile, and one of the most canonical texts of colonial Latin America. By focusing on a crucial episode of Ercilla's eyewitness account, this essay revisits a number of scholarly discussions that have been central for our understanding of the text. First, it takes into consideration previous scholarship overlooked by specialists, as well as hitherto unstudied copies of the poem, in order to offer a thorough reevaluation of the textual and editorial history of the poem. Moreover, it explores the frontier as a chronotope and as a locus of enunciation for colonial epic, a space that is also crucial for Ercilla's carefully crafted authorial persona. Finally, it interrogates the ways in which the discursive representations of colonial frontier spaces were mediated by the material practices of early modern book production, arguing for a more fruitful relation between ecdotics and poetics, between material bibliography and theories of authorship and textuality in our approaches to colonial texts.     

Revuelta plebeya,conciencia criolla y reivindicación jesuita: política y gobernanza en la Historia del Reino de Quito,de Juan de Velasco

Este artículo propone una lectura de la Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional (1789), de Juan de Velasco, a partir de las ideas políticas y jurídicas de su autor. Sugiere abordar el tomo tercero de la Historia no solamente como un relato del declive social y económico que aqueja a la Audiencia de Quito, sino como un comentario a la crisis de gobernanza que, según Velasco, inicia con el ascenso de los Borbones al trono. La incapacidad jurídica de controlar la mestización de la sociedad y las desacertadas políticas de las autoridades peninsulares, resultan en la Rebelión de los Barrios de Quito, episodio que representa el clímax de las penurias que atraviesa el Reino y que le permite a Velasco cuestionar el modelo de gobierno establecido por los reformistas ilustrados, abogar por la necesidad de un gobierno criollo y restaurar la desgastada imagen de la Compañía de Jesús.     

The voices of female pilgrims in medieval wills. The Jacobean devotion in Apulia (Italy)

The main topic of this study is to contribute to the study of female sacred mobility in the Middle Ages by proposing a new approach for the analysis of historical sources (wills and bequests), combining quantitative and qualitative methodology. We have set three aims: (1) Reinforcing the female presence within historical documents through their empirical analysis; (2) Reflecting upon female participation in the public sphere; (3) Investigating women’s agency in religious terms. Concerning the geographical context of the research, the historical sources have been retrieved from the Historical Archives of the Italian Region of Apulia (Italy); where we have studied the above mentioned topics in relation to the devotion to St. James (Spain). The first part of the article introduces female mobility to the city of Santiago de Compostela; then, it moves to the forms of devotion to the Apostle St. James the Greater and female pilgrims in Apulia. The present empirical study has the differential to propose a transversal interpretation of the selected historical texts according to the following criteria: (1) Devotion to the Apostle St. James the Greater (2) Female devotion. As well as reinforcing the use of these historical documents to investigate female social behaviour, the research contributes to the study of the female role within the geography of pilgrimage in the following terms: sacred mobility; territorial history and experiential and devotional value.     

Las estrategias del juego áulico en las comedias mitológicas de Calderón de la Barca

This article studies the particular case of the mythological plays of Calderón that form a cohesive and recognizable set of works in certain circumstances. This kind of comedy is modulated by specific issues of reception, under the dominant global principle of playfulness, through the mechanisms of admiratio, and different strategies of courtly game that can be summarized in four basic areas: conventional comicity, the writing of a theater full of sensorismo, the importance of the intellect games, and finally, the strategies to point identity marks of a particular social group.     

Topoiesis del espacio textual

ABSTRACT

The concept of topoiesis of textual space addresses an analysis of the spatial elements that tend to provide a meaning to the literary text. Based on textual semiotics where there is an organized relational system of meanings, in this article we propose that it is possible to determine the function of space as a meaning issue from three different literary text instances (event or motive; character; and object). This distinction will permit a deeper interpretation of the sense of space in the literary text.     

Trade and Power in Ancient Egypt: Middle Egypt in the Late Third/Early Second Millennium BC

Middle Egypt provides a unique insight into the organization of power, politics, economy, and culture at the turn of the third millennium BC. The apparently easy integration of this region into the reunified monarchy of king Mentuhotep II (2055–2004 BC) was possible because the interests and the local lineages of potentates were preserved. Trade and access and/or control of international exchange networks were important sources of wealth and power then. And Middle Egypt appears as a crossroads of diverse populations, as a hub of political and economic power, as a crucial node of exchanges through the Nile Valley, and as a power center whose rulers provided support to the monarchy in exchange of local autonomy and considerable political influence at the Court. In the new conditions of early second millennium, potentates from Middle Egypt succeeded in occupying a unique advantageous position, not matched elsewhere in Egypt, because of the concentration of wealth, trade routes, new technologies, political power, and autonomy in the territories they ruled.     

Using lithic assemblage formation to approach Middle Palaeolithic settlement dynamics: El Salt Stratigraphic Unit X (Alicante,Spain)

The superposition of anthropogenic remains usually results in archaeological palimpsests, hindering an accurate characterization of the behavior underlying such remains. Aimed at facing this methodological constraint in the study of Palaeolithic contexts, we present a contextual approach to Neanderthal settlement dynamics based on an understanding of lithic assemblage formation processes. We focused on a set of lithic artifacts from the Middle Palaeolithic site of El Salt. With the goal of isolating temporally constrained units of behavioral analysis, we analyzed the spatial distribution of lithic, faunal and combustion remains. Then, the lithic records from each of the resulting units were analyzed from a genetic and technical perspective. This goal was achieved by identifying lithic Raw Material Units (RMU) through observations on reduction processes, refits and their spatial distribution. Our results suggest that El Salt SU X lithic remains represent several diachronic human occupation episodes and different site functions. This study illustrates the benefit of investigating lithic assemblage formation processes to alleviate the palimpsest problem in Palaeolithic contexts.     

Religious Transformations in the Middle Ages: Towards a New Archaeological Agenda

UNDERSTANDING RELIGIOUS CHANGE between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Reformation forms one of the cornerstones of medieval archaeology, but has been riven by period, denominational, and geographical divisions. This paper lays the groundwork for a fundamental rethink of archaeological approaches to medieval religions, by adopting an holistic framework that places Christian, pagan, Islamic and Jewish case studies of religious transformation in a long-term, cross-cultural perspective. Focused around the analytical themes of ‘hybridity and resilience’ and ‘tempo and trajectories’, our approach shifts attention away from the singularities of national narratives of religious conversion, towards a deeper understanding of how religious beliefs, practices and identity were renegotiated by medieval people in their daily lives.     

Bayle’s political doctrine: a proposal to articulate tolerance and sovereignty

ABSTRACT

For most interpreters of the philosopher from Rotterdam, his political doctrine is solely a consequence of his religious and moral doctrines, and so an image of Bayle as a political philosopher is not usually presented. To my mind, however, only by analyzing his political doctrine can the extent of his religious proposal be understood. In this article, I intend to show that both the Baylean criticism of popular sovereignty and his rejection of the right of resistance are analyses that are indissociable from the Baylean doctrine of tolerance. The protection of individual freedom of conscience and the defense of a multi-confessional state model, tolerant regarding religious minorities, can only be articulated as historical reality if they rest on the political doctrine of indivisible sovereignty and on the strictest separation between political obedience and religious membership.