El episodio de los Horacios y Curiacios de Tito Livio en el Poema de Mio Cid

La declamación del Cid durante las Cortes de Toledo desemboca en el sangriento enfrentamiento entre una tríada de sus mejores soldados contra tres miembros del clan de Carrión. Este combate triple responde al nuevo sistema triádico que gobierna este tercer cantar. La crítica cidiana sostiene una influencia de la épica francesa para este episodio al igual que defiende la necesidad del autor del poema por mantener un patrón triple. Sin embargo, la peculiaridad del número de combatientes y el papel que el monarca Alfonso VI como juez desempeña durante la asamblea tienen una raíz literaria. Esta pugna entre ambas tríadas y el hecho de que el rey delegue la supervisión del pleito recuerda el episodio de los Horacios y Curiacios de Tito Livio en el libro primero de su Ab urbe condita. La influencia de la obra de Tito Livio durante la Edad Media, y en concreto el éxito de este episodio belicoso, posibilita argumentar una base literaria para la confección del episodio cidiano. Así, el cambio numérico de este último cantar y la postura del rey atesoran una matriz erudita que demuestra los intereses culturales del genio creador del Poema de Mio Cid.     

I Like You,I Like Your Pottery: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach to Ceramic Distribution and Acquisition in Northeastern Ghana

This article deals with the myriad determinants involved in pottery distribution in northeast Ghana, considered from a theoretical perspective that integrates the materiality of vessels and the social, political and historical context where both communities and pottery operate in their daily practice. Hence, we develop a comprehensive research strategy that combines emic and etic views covering the multiple dimensions of pottery life history. In this sense, production units, technical traditions and the characteristics of the redistributive centres, as well as the strategies for pottery acquisition, are studied. Special attention is paid to quite varied aspects such as the physical properties of vessels and their performance characteristics, the reputation of both vessels and potters according to the consumers and the mobility and connectivity patterns found in the study area. On the other hand, interpretations regarding the historical and sociopolitical context of the region are emphasised, as well as the interethnic relationships amongst groups inhabiting the area.     

Portuguese Blue‐on‐Blue 16th–17th Century Pottery

Blue‐on‐blue (‘berettino’) sherds have appeared in numerous production and consumption archaeological excavations in Lisbon and other archaeological sites in Portugal (dated from the mid‐16th century to the beginning of the 17th century). The abundance of this interesting faience led us to compare it with similar pottery from other well‐known production centres in Italy, namely Liguria (Savona and Albisola), Spain (the Triana kilns) and the Low Countries. Differences in the diffraction patterns of the sherds' pastes from the four countries were observed. In most samples, cobalt blue silicate (cobalt olivine) was identified in the dark blue or light blue glazes through the use of micro‐Raman spectroscopy and diffuse reflectance spectra. A remarkable difference in the calcite contents of the Lisbon and Seville pottery sherds was observed, in accordance with previous observations of high calcite contents of Seville ceramics. A comparison was also made for all of the blue‐on‐blue sherds studied here with many other 16th–17th century sherds from Lisbon using bivariate plots of K/Si versus Ca/Si. Lisbon and Seville pottery behave very differently, whereas sherds from Italy and the Low Countries occupy intermediate positions.     

Civil Religion Reconsidered: The Saliency of a Venerable Concept

This essay reexamines civil theology, a venerable concept in the field of political science and how it is symbolized in contemporary political practice. Civil theology provides the foundation of politics for a community and is reflected in its myths and how the community interpretes itself within the greater structure of reality. It is during periods of crises, however, when this myth structure and society's understanding of itself come into question that civil theology presents itself as a salient topic for theoretical analysis and speculation. This article considers a contemporary response to the crisis of our time, one associated with the breakdown of the “traditional” American civil theology and the impact this has had on political thought and policy debates. From an understanding of this response may come a broader knowledge of the problems confronting the policy process as well as potential resolutions.     

Micro-photogrammetric and morphometric differentiation of cut marks on bones using metal knives,quartzite, and flint flakes

In a previous article, we presented an innovative method to analyze cut marks produced with metal tools on animal bones from a metrical and tridimensional perspective (Maté-González et al. 2015). Such analysis developed a low-cost alternative technique to traditional microscopic methods for the tridimensional reconstruction of marks, using their measurements and sections. This article presents the results of an experimental study to test this photogrammetric and morphometric method for differentiating cut marks generated with metal, flint, and quartzite flakes. The results indicate statistically significant differences among cut marks produced by these three types of raw material. These results encourage the application of this method to archeological assemblages in order to establish a link between carcass processing and lithic reduction sequences on different raw materials and also to define the kind of tools used during butchery.     

Going Against the Grain: Why Do Canada and the United States Market Wheat So Differently?

At the turn of the twentieth century, private grain exchanges settled the daily prices for North American wheat. By the end of the Second World War, the Canadian and US governments had intervened significantly in these markets. The Canadian government required farmers in its western provinces to deliver their product to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a single-selling-desk agency that, by then, had supplanted private wheat marketing in western Canada. Meanwhile, the United States government subsidized farm incomes with domestic-use taxes and import tariffs, but otherwise preserved private wheat marketing. In this article, I demonstrate that these disparate agricultural policies were broadly defined by immutable economic realities imposed on each country by global wheat-trade patterns and triggered by unprecedentedly severe agricultural crises. That is, amidst the precipitous fall in wheat prices in the early 1930s, each government crafted farm-support policies that reflected its domestic-consumption share of wheat production and the importance of wheat to its overall economy.     

Designated Public Festivals of Interest to Tourists

Event tourism is part of the appeal of a destination and an important contributor to the well-being of communities. This paper examines the festivals classified of interest to tourists by the Spanish Tourist Board. The declaration of Festivals of Interest to Tourists (FITs) is granted to those festivals which demonstrate cultural values and popular traditions, with special consideration to their ethnological characteristics and to their particular importance as a tourist attraction. These festivals provide new opportunities to attract visitors to the places where they are held. Local and regional policies can take advantage of the FITs in order to increase the appeal of a tourist destination. This paper details an exploratory analysis of FITs in Spanish provinces. This study aims to group the provinces according to the characteristics of their FITs. To this end, a cluster analysis is performed and the validity is established using the unbiased estimator out-of-bag.     

Tourism Planning in Sub-regional Destinations: Heterogeneity of the Tourist Experience on the Andalusian Coastal Municipalities

The present paper analyses tourist experience, studying the existing differences among geographical zones within a broader tourist destination with provincial character. Planning and management of tourist destinations must pay special attention to the maintenance and conservation of natural and artificial resources in tourist supply, attempting to improve their competitive position. Hence, this study compares several Andalusian coastal municipalities through different components of tourist supply. Among other obtained results, findings indicate the existence of significant differences in urban environments among the municipalities of Almeria, in beach quality among the municipalities of Cadiz and in accommodation among the municipalities of Malaga.     

Small preys and plant exploitation by late pleistocene hunter–gatherers. A case study from the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula

The aim of this paper is to explain the subsistence strategies of late hunter–gatherers from the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula on the basis of zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical records. The study is based on the Molí del Salt archaeological site which has yielded an Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sequence. Each of the disciplines shows us a various type of assemblage to approach the same problem. Archaeobotanical materials, including charcoal and seeds provide data on the strategies related to firewood gathering and vegetal food supply, which was a basic subsistence resource for these groups. The archaeobotanical assemblage is mainly formed by conifers, but other species related to edible plants are also important. Bone assemblage, mainly formed by Oryctolagus cuniculus, show how hunting and meat processing is highly related. The environmental constraints as well as mobility are discussed in order to achieve an ampler knowledge on human activities.