Depth records and ocean volumes: Ocean profiling by sounding technology, 1850-1930

Oceanographic research commencing in the mid-19th century could not rely on the direct observation of its object, but had to create its images of ocean depth through remote investigation. Depth became a matter of scientific definitions, systematic measurements, and graphic representations. In the course of a century, the opaque ocean of the 1850s was densely depicted in physical terms and transformed into a technically and scientifically sound oceanic volume. Tracing the history of deep-sea sounding technology from wire sounding around 1850 to acoustic sounding in the early 1920s, the paper investigates the relation and interplay between conceptual, pictorial, and technological depth performance. Addressing the conditions and limitations oceanographers encountered in producing single measurements and arranging them into profiles and contour line charts, the paper takes on a narrative approach to spatial representation: resembling a narrated or written story, the texture of depth depended on the richness and coherence of its plots.     

The long shadow of apartheid: a critical assessment of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years on

ABSTRACT

Based on insights gained from two decades of research on South African heritage and monuments, this paper critically reflects on the status quo of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years after the end of apartheid. It assesses new directions in national heritage policy and government strategy in relation to recent developments around post-apartheid heritage and the popular demand for a removal of ‘colonial statues’, which gained impetus from the #Rhodes Must Fall campaign. It is argued that the government’s approach to heritage transformation and most notably its treatment of white minority heritage, dominated by the ‘juxtaposition model’, has had limited success. The paper illustrates how heritage and the memory of the past are entangled with socio-political and economic realities in the present, which in turn is overshadowed by the long-term effects of apartheid and impacted by global or transnational considerations, such as foreign investment and tourism.     

‘ … por decir Dios Trino y Uno,dijo Dios tres y uno son cuatro’: the Christian Trinity and the multiplicity of Andean Deities: indigenous beliefs and the instruction of the Christian doctrine in Quechua

In this paper I examine how Christian priests in the early colonial period in the Andes tried to communicate the Christian concept of the Trinity to the indigenous population, mainly through textual but also through visual means. On the basis of these sources, I will address the following questions: how did the priests present the concept in Quechua, one of the general languages of the Andes, in morphological, lexico-semantic and argumentative terms; how was the Trinity represented in painting and, could the Indians relate these explanations to something they were familiar with in their own religion? Answering these questions will provide us with hypotheses as to how the indigenous population might have understood this Christian concept, which, in turn may enable us to better understand modern Andean belief forms with respect to the Trinitarian concept, which I shall briefly discuss in the final section. On the whole, the evidence suggests that, whilst the Christians may have thought that they could explain their Trinity to the Andean people better by using the Quechua language, the adoption of Andean concepts and language resources resulted in different reception strategies, such as the accommodation of Christian beliefs in the Andean religious system, but also the creation of new hybrid concepts based on Amerindian as well as Christian belief forms.     

The ‘Justinianic Plague’: the economic consequences of the pandemic in the eastern Roman empire and its cultural and religious effects

Taking as his starting point recent debates over the significance of the ‘Justinianic Plague’ to enquiries into the transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, the author aims to demonstrate that the widely supported relativizing position is untenable. The short‐term demographic and economic consequences of the epidemic must have been catastrophic; the plague, however, seems to have affected the population of the Roman empire in the east most of all in the cultural and religious sphere, in that it prompted or reinforced processes of reorientation that were of fundamental significance to the transformation of the eastern Roman into the Byzantine empire.     

Repertoires of national boundaries in France and Germany—within‐country cleavages and their political consequences

This article analyses how members of the majority population in France and Germany define membership in the nation and how they relate to the various civic, cultural, or ethnic visions of national belonging available in the cultural repertoires of historical models, institutional arrangements, and elite discourses. To scrutinize within‐country differences in the configurations of the symbolic boundaries of national belonging, this article applies cluster analysis techniques for each country separately using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Overall, the results suggest that people choose and arrange different criteria from cultural repertoires, resulting in various configurations of national boundaries. Furthermore, the number and types of symbolic boundaries used are decisive for explaining restrictive and hostile attitudes towards immigrants. Contrary to the civic and ethnic historical models, the national boundary configurations display very similar patterns across the two countries, especially attesting to the considerable process of liberalization of citizenship regulations in Germany.     

Carnem et circenses – consumption of animals and their products in Roman urban and military sites in two regions in the northwestern provinces

This paper investigates the consumption of animals and their products in the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire. A regional approach was used, comparing two research areas: the northern part of modern Switzerland and the central part of the modern Netherlands. These two regions have different histories, backgrounds and landscapes. Our aim was to find out whether these different histories and backgrounds led to different consumption patterns and to what extent they correspond to Roman-style nutrition. Furthermore, we looked for developments over time in consumption of meat and exploitation of livestock. A data set consisting of over 282,000 fragments of cattle, sheep/goat and pig from 188 samples from military sites, urban centres and vici was collected. Our study identified both differences and similarities in consumption and exploitation patterns. Differences can be explained by the regional character of each research area, while similarities suggest wider economic developments in the Empire and general supply strategies of the Roman army.     

Study of interactions between polyethylene glycol and archaeological wood components by C high-resolution solid-state CP-MAS NMR

While use of polyethylene glycols, PEG, polymers for archaeological wood conservation has been well established, there is almost no study of such composite materials with carbon thirteen high-resolution solid-sate NMR. We demonstrate that NMR is an useful analytical tool to characterize rapidly samples of conserved wooden objects. By choosing an appropriate value of the contact time (from 3 to 5 ms) for which the PEG component gives only a small residual NMR signal in the CP-MAS experiment, it is possible to edit selectively the spectra of the wood components. It allows one to visualize the degradation extent of the archaeological wood even when the conservation processes have been already applied. Moreover, by studying the kinetics of CP-MAS experiments, the time constants, T_1ρH and T_CH values for PEG moiety were computed. From these data, it is shown that either in the crude commercial product or in incorporated in archaeological woods, two components are present and they are the signatures of crystalline (or ordered) and amorphous (or disordered) molecular domains. Moreover, it was shown in the archaeological woods that almost 30% of PEG was in close molecular interactions with lignins. This study is the first evidence that the PEG in conserved wood can interact at a molecular level with wood components. It also demonstrates that the PEG diffuses inside the residual cell walls of archaeological wood. This data are important for scientists in charge of process development for the conservation of wooden artifacts.