Alexander Ross’s Pansebeia (1653), religious compendia and the seventeenth-century study of religious diversity

Recently, our scholarly understanding of how religion was studied during the seventeenth century has changed. Contributions made by historians of scholarship have provided a more detailed picture through studies of the emerging genre of the history of idolatry. This article, however, looks at another new but overlooked genre in the seventeenth century: the religious catalogue. It does so through an examination of the most popular compendium of the age: the Scottish-born, England-based Alexander Ross’s Pansebeia: Or, A View of All the Religions (1653). Ross’s work contains the first attempt to comprehend and understand religious diversity on an exhaustive scale. Using Pansebeia, we can tell a story of how religious compendia gave the embattled, anxious Christian the information necessary to defend themselves against the threat of religious diversity in the seventeenth century, and which unintentionally contributed to the emergence of the modern concept of “religion” as a distinct sets of theological beliefs and rituals.     

Who were the first urban settlers of Oslo? A discussion of early medieval urbanization based on isotopic analyses of human remains

This paper investigates the process of early urbanization in Oslo, Norway, during the initial period of early 11th–late 12th Century using a bioarchaeological approach. Through the use of isotope analyses performed on teeth and bone from 20 humans buried in Oslo during the first phases of urban settlement, individual dietary change and mobility are reconstructed. Oslo is traditionally perceived as one of many urban settlements initiated by royal power, and this paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the origin of the first settlers, and also how the early urban process affected their way of living. Results suggest that most individuals in the study were of local origin, and had a constant diet throughout life from childhood to its last phase. The absence of individual dietary change sharply contrasts the dynamic dietary patterns observed in people from the Viking age. Dietary variation between individuals does suggest, however, social differences among the early urban population of Oslo.     

Geochemical sourcing of basalt artifacts from Kaua‘i,Hawaiian Islands

We report on energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) sourcing of 807 basalt artifacts and 34 basalt ecofacts recovered from stratified midden at Nu‘alolo Kai, Kaua‘i. These data are compared with EDXRF analyses of 473 alluvial pebbles from Waimea Canyon, 34 adzes from the Kaua‘i Museum, and published geochemical data for Kaua‘i basalts. Formal tools, such as adzes, chisels, and mirrors were predominantly manufactured from sources not available at Nu‘alolo Kai. Most adzes and chisels are consistent with sources available elsewhere on Kaua‘i, but two basalt mirrors are outside the expected geochemical range of Kaua‘i basalts. In contrast, almost all expedient tools were manufactured from basalts available at Nu‘alolo Kai. These findings support the existence of an island-wide distribution system for adze material on Kaua‘i, and challenges extant models of pre-contact Hawaiian economics to consider the mechanisms through which specialized commodities were produced and distributed.     

A chronological guide to embossed Lipton Tea tins

Embossed Lipton Tea tin cans are a ubiquitous form of material culture found on archaeological sites internationally wherever Lipton Tea was sold (the present author is based in Alaska). Many of the tins dating from the first half of the 20th century once exhibited paper labels, which almost never survive archaeologically. I instead purchased tins with paper labels, which provide chronological information, on the internet. These, along with dated magazine and newspaper advertisements spanning from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, allowed for the development of a scheme to date different embossed Lipton Tea tins through time.