Male Saints and Devotional Masculinity in Late Medieval England

This article considers the ways in which the lives of male monastic saints circulating in late medieval England (and the cults of male saints more widely) were underpinned by certain ideas and ideals of masculinity and the functions which these performed. It argues for the significance of male saints serving as devotional models for the lay audience of these texts (both men and women). The two main sources are William Caxton's Golden Legend (published in 1483) and his Vitas Patrum (published after his death by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495). It therefore seeks to make a contribution to our understanding of the ways in which piety was used to assess masculinity, but also the extent to which piety as a social identity (both public and private in nature) was informed by notions of manliness.     

U-series dating of soda straw stalactites from excavated deposits: method development and application to Blanche Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia

This study aimed to further test the method, reported by St Pierre et al. (2009), to develop robust chronologies of deposits in limestone caves through U/Th (Uranium/Thorium or U-Series) dating of soda straw stalactites. The chronology of fossil bearing deposits at Blanche Cave was further constrained with thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (TIMS) U/Th dating of 17 additional soda straw stalactite samples, and results were compared to recalibrated ¹⁴C ages of charcoal. The results support the assertion that soda straw stalactites can provide ages close to the time of sediment deposition and may be used as reliable chronological markers, particularly for periods reaching or beyond the radiocarbon dating limit. The application of an enhanced cleaning technique facilitated the reduction of detrital Th in samples, significantly increasing age accuracy and precision. Additionally U/Th age accuracy and precision was increased through the application of site-specific measured U/Th ratios to correct for the detrital ²³⁰Th component in samples.     

Discipline,compassion and monastic ideals of community,c.950–1250

相似文献   

"We have a little bit more finesse, as a nation": Constructing the Polish Worker in London's Building Sites

Abstract:  This paper examines how male Polish builders in London construct themselves relationally to English builders as they negotiate their place within the labour hierarchies of the building site and in the London labour market. This is based on semi-structured interviews and participant photographs taken by Polish migrants arriving in the aftermath of the European Union expansion in May 2004, and now working in building sites across London. These buildings sites are mundane elements of a global city which employ transnational labour, and where differences between Polish and English builders become significant discursive tools of survival in a competitive labour market. The paper illustrates how Polish workers mark themselves as "superior" to English builders through the versatility of their embodied skills, work ethic, artistic qualities, and finesse in their social interactions on the building site. This paper thus provides new ways of understanding the meanings of work and the complexity of identity politics within the spaces of low-paid manual work in a global city.     

Expanding the utility of Uranium-series dating of speleothems for archaeological and palaeontological applications

Uranium-series (U-series) dating of speleothems is frequently used for palaeoclimate studies but its archaeological and palaeontological applications are limited to stratigraphically significant speleothem formations, such as flowstones, to provide maximum and minimum temporal points. This study targeted soda straw stalactites for U-series dating. In contrast to other speleothem formations, soda straw stalactites are fragile, have typically short life spans (usually only years but rarely up to a few hundred years) and are frequently incorporated into cave deposits. Results of thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (TIMS) U-series dating of soda straw stalactites from palaeontological excavations at Blanche Cave, South Australia, show that small, dense, clean straws tend to yield ages closest to the time of stratigraphic deposition. A correlation between soda straw U-series ages and radiocarbon ages of charcoal from the site is shown. Multiple soda straw age determinations for a single stratigraphic unit are required in order to verify age concordance. In conjunction with other dating methods, U-series dating of soda straw stalactites may help to significantly constrain the age of stratigraphic units and associated archaeological and palaeontological deposits in order to provide more robust chronologies. Here we advocate the collection of soda straw stalactites at future excavations of limestone cave sites.     

Propaganda by the Book: Contextualizing and Reading the Zhejiang GMD’s 1929 Textbook Essentials for Propaganda Workers

The Nationalist Party (GMD) had been writing and issuing documents of many types for some years before Nanjing was established as the capital of the Republic of China in 1927/1928. From its earliest days, doctrines were advanced via cause-oriented newspapers and journals. Even more important, the Soviet-sponsored reorganization of the GMD in the early 1920s had yielded a far-reaching party propaganda operation tied to Sun Yat-sen’s notion of political tutelage. But how was propaganda to work in practice? And at whom was it to be aimed? This article seeks to address aspects of these questions by assessing a textbook for propaganda workers that was issued in the name of the GMD’s Zhejiang Provincial Executive Committee’s Propaganda Department in October 1929, half a year after the GMD’s foundational right-wing Third Party Congress. Although Essentials for Propaganda Workers does not fully operationalize Sun’s version of political tutelage, it can nonetheless be seen to reflect the central party’s efforts to implement tutelage and supervision, not only of the Chinese masses suggested by Sun’s program, but also of party propaganda workers in Zhejiang. In that regard, it reveals the astonishingly rapid ideological realignment of the GMD into an anti-Communist party, not only at the national level, which is well known, but also on the provincial and lower levels. Drawing on material from the GMD Archives in Taipei, this article addresses issues of party organization, control, mobilization, inner party dynamics, and message content in the GMD’s propaganda activities in Zhejiang province in the late 1920s. “Propaganda by the Book” adds to our knowledge of the organizational practices of both the central GMD in Nanjing and the Zhejiang provincial GMD as well as to the social history of Republican China’s official print culture.     

Folcwin of Rankweil: the world of a Carolingian local official

This article examines charters from the St Gall archive which are valuable for the light they throw on the secular society of the settlement of Rankweil in Rhaetia and the surrounding area. The centrepiece is the rare collection of early ninth-century grants and sales made to the centenarius Folcwin and the article uses these and other related documents to examine the workings of Carolingian local society, the activities of local officials, and the patterns of landholding and transfer amongst secular individuals of relatively modest standing.