The renaissance in Switzerland

The geographical position of Switzerland made contact with Renaissance manifestations in Italy and Germany easy even if the country was too small and poor for notable buildings or works of art. Participation in the wars in north Italy increased interest in military and governmental aspects of the Renaissance.Basel was an early centre for printing, and its presses, particularly when intelligently directed by the Amerbach family and by Froben, contributed largely to the availability of Greek and Latin texts.Erasmus lived for many years in Basel and attracted numerous scholars - Bär, Glarean, Capito, Beatus Rhenanus, Vadian, Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Myconius wrote near-classical Latin and all had some knowledge of Greek. Konrad Witz, Manuel, Urs Graf and Asper were painters of repute: Dürer and Holbein did some of their work in Basel.The Swiss cities, Basel, Zurich, St Gall, Glarus and Bern, encouraged scholarship and education: with Tschudi, Justinger, Schilling and Anshelm, a new approach to the writing of history was possible. Paracelsus and Gessner made contributions to medicine and natural science.     

Politics and faction at the court of Francis I: the Duchesse D'Etampes, Montmorency and the Dauphin Henri

There has been a growing interest in faction at the court ofFrance in the sixteenth century, alongside the continuing dissectionof clientelism. The later years of Francis I, until recentlyrelatively little understood, have been revealed as a periodof intensely unstable power relations at the centre of the court.This stemmed from the dominance of the Constable de Montmorencyin the years 1537–1540, his step-by-step removal frompower in 1540–1541 and the emergence of the king's mistress,the duchesse d'Etampes as the dominant political figure to whomall the contenders for authority: Admiral Chabot de Brion, Cardinalde Tournon and Admiral Claude d'Annebault had to adjust. Thisstudy examines these relationships, particularly in the lightof the despatches of imperial ambassadors, who sought both toobserve what they thought to be alarming developments in Franceand to encourage the dauphin, an increasingly important figure,to take a hand in the removal of the king's mistress and thesetting aside of his father.     

Perimortem mutilation of human remains in an early village in the American Southwest: A case for ethnic violence

Recent excavations at the Sacred Ridge Site, just south of the town of Durango, Colorado, have uncovered the single largest deposit (to date) of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest. This deposit dates to the very late eighth or very early ninth century A.D. and therefore represents an incidence of large-scale violence and perimortem mutilation dating to the Pueblo I period (A.D. 700–900), when initial village formation occurred in the northern San Juan Region of the Southwest. Expectations for various interpretations for the Sacred Ridge assemblage are generated based on previous research and cross-cultural data on cannibalism, warfare, and human bone processing. Based on a lack of fit with previous models developed to account for extreme processing (EP) events, including starvation cannibalism, warfare and social intimidation, and witch-craft accusations, it is proposed that the Sacred Ridge massacre was the result of ethnic conflict during the Pueblo I period.