Rehydroxylation of Fired‐Clay Ceramics: Factors Affecting Early‐Stage Mass Gain in Dating Experiments

To obtain accurate results in the RHX dating of ceramics, it is essential that the RHX measurements are continued until the rate of mass gain is constant with (time)^1/4. In this paper, we discuss how the initial stages of mass gain are affected by the specific surface area (SSA) of the ceramic material. The paper provides guidance on experimental protocols to avoid dating results being distorted by relatively early‐time mass gain data.     

Re-assessing the Post-War Housing Achievement: the Impact of War-damage Repairs on the New Housing Programme in London

This article contrasts the well-documented difficulties of thepost-war housing drive in 1945–48 with the little-knownachievements of the programme of war-damage repairs. Focusingon London in the first three critical post-war years, it showshow the drive for new housing was slowed by the resources requiredfor repairs, a policy justified because repairs provided morehouses with less labour than the new housing programme. Thearticle concludes by asking why the 110,000 previously unoccupiedhouses that were repaired cannot be part of a more positiveassessment of the housing achievements of the immediate post-waryears. ^* noab100{at}cam.ac.uk     

提高公众，特别是年轻人的文化遗产保护意识

世界上的文化遗产属于我们所有人;它是脆弱的,它正在无时不刻地消失;专业保护人士和公众共同为了未来而保护它。 ICCROM是一个专门致力于文化财产保护的政府间组织,目前有109个国家是它的成员国。2000年,中国成为其中的一员。它的全称是国际文化财产保护和修复研究中心。1959年在罗马建立,是促进不可移动和可移动文物保护的唯一一个世界性的委托研究机构,所以它在文化遗产保护领域占有特殊的地位。它主要通过五种方式在全世界范围内促进文化遗产的保护：专业教育和培训,信息传播,研究,技术合作和提高文化遗产保护意识。考虑到在提高公众保护意识     

Showing the Poor a Good Time: Caring for Body and Spirit in Bologna's Civic Charities

As poor relief in Christian Europe was being reformed through the sixteenth century, tensions emerged between a traditional charitable culture that allowed for occasional festivity, and the newer charitable culture that emphasized discipline, restraint, and efficiency. An undated document relating to a dispute that broke out in the main civic welfare agency of Bologna (Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti) shows that gender and class were key dimensions of these two cultures, and underscores that the two should not be seen as sequential but as co-existing and competing. This study examines the dispute and proposes a dating for the document in the 1590s.     

Words and Deeds, Stasis and Change: New Directions in Florentine Devotion Around 1500

Members of Renaissance Italian confraternities spoke an official language that emphasized stability and permanence rather than change, a fact which can obscure the precise relationship between the culture of organized lay devotion and events in society as a whole. Examining four miraculous cults that achieved prominence in Florence around 1500, this essay argues that, far from their being static or conservative organizations, confraternities exemplify major changes transforming Florentine society at this time. The representations of class, wealth, gender, and age that emerge from the analysis help to problematize and complicate developments that otherwise appear as overly simplified, teleological trends.     

Vision and visualization

The art of visual communication is not restricted to the fine arts. Scientists also apply art in communicating their ideas graphically. Diagrams of anatomical structures, like the eye and visual pathways, and figures displaying specific visual phenomena have assisted in the communication of visual ideas for centuries. It is often the case that the development of a discipline can be traced through graphical representations and this is explored here in the context of concepts of visual science. As with any science, vision can be subdivided in a variety of ways. The classification adopted is in terms of optics, anatomy, and visual phenomena; each of these can in turn be further subdivided. Optics can be considered in terms of the nature of light and its transmission through the eye. Understanding of the gross anatomy of the eye and visual pathways was initially dependent upon the skills of the anatomist whereas microanatomy relied to a large extent on the instruments that could resolve cellular detail, allied to the observational skills of the microscopist. Visual phenomena could often be displayed on the printed page, although novel instruments expanded the scope of seeing, particularly in the nineteenth century.     

British Masculinities on Trial in the Queen Caroline Affair of 1820

This article uses the deluge of pamphlets, public addresses, newspaper articles and sermons addressing the Queen Caroline Affair to construct a case study of the opposing constructions of British masculinity vying for dominance in 1820. The literature surrounding the attempted royal divorce reveals a contest between the libertine example of manhood characterised by George IV and the more sober, chivalrous and respectable image of masculinity increasingly espoused as the British ideal. This episode, therefore, offers an unusually rich insight into contemporary constructions of masculinity and the way in which they were utilised within the public sphere. Moreover, this article argues that such gendered concerns were not only as crucial to motivating opposition to the king's actions as political issues, but that gender concerns and political issues were indivisible, as appropriate manly behaviour in both public and private increasingly came to be seen as a core component of a man's overall reputation and fitness to exercise authority.     

Christianity in the Gulf during the first centuries of Islam

This article re-examines the ceramics of SBY-9, a church and monastery site on the island of Sir Bani Yas, Abu Dhabi emirate, U.A.E. It then explores other archaeological evidence for Christianity in the Arabian Gulf and compares it to the textual data, resulting in a reconsideration of the history and activities of the Church of the East. The pottery of SBY-9 indicates that the monastery complex was occupied some time between the second half of the seventh century and the mid-eighth century AD and not, as previously believed, the sixth–seventh centuries AD. Other excavated churches and monasteries in the Gulf region should also be redated to the eighth and ninth centuries AD (al-Qusur, Kharg). These findings cast a new light on the history of Christianity in the Arabian Gulf after the Muslim conquest.