Reconstruction of the Late Glacial and Early Holocene landscape and human presence in Lubrza,Western Poland,on the basis of multidisciplinary analyses

This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary study that combines archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research to examine the relationship between environment and human activities in Western Poland during the Late Glacial and Early Holocene. The study area lying within the young moraine landscape produced several Late Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic sites, varied in terms of size and function. Analyses of pollen, plant macro-remains and molluscs accompanied by geomorphological investigations and supported by series of radiocarbon dates have enabled a detailed reconstruction of environment. It has shown that despite climatic fluctuations during the Allerød and Younger Dryas, the studied area provided favourable conditions for hunter-gatherer occupation. The presence of micro- and macroscopic charcoal, charred particles of herbaceous plants and charred mosses in peat deposits of former water bodies evidence various activities carried out by Federmesser and Swiderian groups, for example setting up camp-fires and deliberate burning of the local marsh vegetation. Usewear analyses of flint implements have revealed further traces of diversified human activities undertaken at examined sites. Most importantly, this article focuses on plant-based craft activities undertaken by hunter-gatherers, about which little has hitherto been known.     

A Feminist Network in an Artists’ Home: Mary and George Watts,George Meredith,and Josephine Butler

This interdisciplinary, historicist-feminist paper (combining literary and art historical perspectives as well as an awareness of historical context and an application of recent feminist theory) explores the feminist affiliations of the Victorian artists Mary and George Watts, focusing specifically on their close friendships with the writer and women’s suffrage supporter George Meredith and the women’s rights worker Josephine Butler. It introduces the Wattses’ own anti-patriarchal conjugal creative partnership before investigating their relationships with Meredith and Butler through a reading of Mary Watts’s unpublished and hitherto untranscribed diaries (which record their interactions) as well as a discussion of George Watts’s paintings (particularly his portraits of Meredith and Butler in his ‘Hall of Fame’). This paper thus offers an unprecedented insight into the Wattses’ personal and professional relationships as well as their progressive socio-political positions, reclaiming them as early feminists who were part of a wider emergent feminist community. This paper’s discussion of the Wattses, Meredith, and Butler provides new perspectives on the connections, works, and views of these public literary, artistic, and feminist figures as well as the ways in which they supported and promoted the women’s rights movement that escalated over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century. It thus offers a fuller understanding of these figures as well as of the rise of early feminism in the Victorian period.     

The occurrence and implications of post-mortem ‘pink teeth’ in forensic and archaeological cases

On sectioning six of eight externally well-preserved teeth taken from four skeletons from Medieval Chichester they displayed a superficial similarity to teeth described in the forensic literature as ‘pink teeth’. This article reviews the occurrence of ‘pink teeth’ in forensic specimens and describes the teeth from Chichester using a variety of analytical techniques. We conclude that, despite the similarities, the pink coloration in the archaeological specimens has a different cause from the forensic samples, and that in archaeological contexts the pinkness is probably related to post-mortem change brought about by saprophytic fungi. However, the exact cause of the coloration remains unexplained. We discuss briefly the implications of this observation for dental ageing techniques and other studies of archaeological teeth.     

Roman soil and Roman sound in Irish hagiography

ABSTRACT

Irish hagiography displays considerable interest in communication between Ireland and Rome, particularly as this featured saints, popes and relics. While people and objects travel between the two places, there is also concern to circumvent the distance involved. This article discusses an episode of miraculous communication in the Irish Life of St Colmán Élo. Here messages and messengers travel from Rome, but time and space are also telescoped through aural and material means: the sound of the bell marking the death of Pope Gregory the Great and a gift from him of Roman soil to be spread on Colmán Élo’s cemetery. The article considers how the two elements function within their hagiographical context to connect Rome and Ireland, and how these places shaped the account. The roles of bell and soil both draw on their associations in Ireland and relate to papal communication as this was experienced and imagined more widely.     

Reading Barthes

The Fédération des syndicats libres des travailleurs de la terre (FSLTT) was a trade union for farm workers established by the Christian confederation (CFTC) during the French Popular Front. Supported by two rural catholic action movements, the JAC and UCFA, it was a response to the wave of strikes in agriculture and viewed as a means to counter the perceived threat of communism in the countryside. Although the FSLTT remained small, its establishment and subsequent evolution is significant. Firstly, the union represented a break within social catholic thinking towards the rural world. Until the early 1930s, all wings of rural social catholicism supported the principle of syndicats mixtes—associations uniting workers, farmers and proprietors. The resulting clash between supporters of the FSLTT and the UNSA, the main association of agricultural syndicalism, whose leaders were also inspired by social catholic doctrine, left its mark on the future organisation of French agriculture under Vichy and during the Fourth Republic. Secondly, the FSLTT illustrates the contradictory nature of Christian trade unionism during the Popular Front period. During a decisive stage in its history, the CFTC's doctrinal and material link to social catholicism conflicted with the influence of pressures arising from the mass social movement. The article surveys the FSLTT from a national perspective, though much of the focus is on the Nord department, its strongest base.     

Correspondence

THE MYTH OF THE PENT CUCKOO. By JOHN EDWARD FIELD, M.A. Pp. vii+212. London: Elliot Stock. 1913. Reviewed by S. A. H. Burne.

RUSTIC SPEECH AND FOLK-LORE. By ELIZABETH MARY WRIGHT. Oxford: University Press. 1913. Pp. xx + 342. Reviewed by C. S. Burne.

THE ENGLISH FOLK-DANCE SOCIETY'S JOURNAL.

SPORT AND FOLKLORE IN THE HIMALAYA. By CAPTAIN H. L. HAUGHTON. Demy 8vo. Pp.ix+332. 12s.6d.net. London: E. Arnold. 1913. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

PEMBA, THE SPICE ISLAND OF ZANZIBAR. By CAPTAIN J. E. E. CRASTER, Demy 8vo. Pp. 358. 12s. 6d. London : T. Fisher Unwin. 1913.

RELIGIOUS CHASTITY. An Ethnological Study. By JOHN MAIN. New York, 1913. 8vo, pp. xxii+ 365. (No price.) Reviewed by W. R. HALLIDAY.

DER TRAUMSCHLÜSSEL DES JAGADDEVA. Ein Beitrag zur indischen Mantik. Von JULIUS VON NEGELEIN. [Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, xi. Band, 4 Heft]. Pp. xxiv + 428. 17 m. Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann. 1912. 8vo. Reviewed by W. R. Halliday.

DIE LEBENSALTER Ein Beitrag zur Antiken Ethnologie und zur Geschichte der Zahlen. Mit einem Anhang über die Schrift von der Siebenzahl. Von FRANZ BOLL. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1913. 8vo, pp. iv + 58. Two pl. 2 m. 40 pf. Reviewed by W. R. Halliday.

DIE VERLOBUNG IM VOLKS- UND RECHTSBRAUCH, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Schweiz vergleichend-historisch dargestellt. Von HANNS BÄCHTOLD. Basel: Verlag der Schweiz. Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, 1913. 8vo, pp. 219. Reviewed by W. R. HALLIDAY.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL REPORT ON THE IBO-SPEAKING PEOPLES OF NIGERIA: Part I., Law and Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighbourhood, S. Nigeria; Part II., English-Ibo and Ibo-English Dictionary; Part III., Proverbs, Narratives, Vocabularies and Grammar. By NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS. Demy 8vo. Pp. 161,391,199. London: Harrison &; Sons. 1913. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

PSYCHE'S TASK : A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF SUPERSTITION ON THE GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONS. By J. G. FRAZER. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 8vo. Pp. viii+186. London : Macrnillan &; Co. 1913. Price 5s. net. Reviewed by W. Crooke.