New models of North West European Holocene palaeogeography and inundation

This paper presents new 500 year interval palaeogeographic models for Britain, Ireland and the North West French coast from 11000 cal. BP to present. These models are used to calculate the varying rates of inundation for different geographical zones over the study period. This allows for consideration of the differential impact that Holocene sea-level rise had across space and time, and on past societies. In turn, consideration of the limitations of the models helps to foreground profitable areas for future research.     

The ‘Wicked Machinery of Government':1 Malta and the Problems of Continuity under the New Model Administration

This is a study focused on the early years of British rule in Malta (1800–13). It explores the application to the island of the ‘new model’ of colonial government, one based on direct rule from London mediated by the continuation of existing laws and institutions. Systemic deficiencies are identified. These tended to undermine the effectiveness of direct British rule. This study also reveals, in the context of legal and constitutional continuity, unresolved tensions between modernity and tradition. The political stability of the island was damaged and the possibility of continued British possession was threatened.     

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Building American National Identity Through Art

ABSTRACT

Even though agonistic democratic theory espouses and celebrates competition, it seemingly lacks a coherent ethic for decent winning and losing in everyday political life. This article is an effort to fill this void by suggesting a practice-based, non-perfectionist ethic drawn from sport. Focusing on Xenophon's On Hunting, we argue that sport, properly defined, offers an appropriate experience with ponos (toil, suffering) that teaches citizens perseverance, humility, generosity, empathy, and stewardship. This sporting ethic, we argue, provides a more suitable model for winning and losing in public life than the martial basis of agonistic democratic theory.     

Antiquity at the National Memorial Arboretum

The paper explores the use of ancient and historic material cultures and architectures within the recent resurgence in public commemoration in the UK. Using the case study of the National Memorial Arboretum (Staffordshire), the study focuses on how ancient designs (including prehistoric, classical and medieval styles and forms) interleave with the arboreal, geological and celestial themes of the memorial gardens. Together these designs serve to create a multitude of temporal poises by which auras of commemorative perpetuity and regeneration are projected and sustained. The paper proposes that archaeologists can bring their expertise to bear on the investigation of the complex, varied allusions to the past within contemporary landscapes of memory.     

Managing global heritage in the face of future climate change: the importance of understanding geological and geomorphological processes and hazards

It is now widely acknowledged that human adaptation of the planet is causing significant changes to the global climate, which are being felt currently and are likely to increase in the future. This is beginning to place exceptional strains on the historic environment, here defined as both above and below ground archaeological remains. Using examples from the cultural list of World Heritage Sites in mainland Britain, this paper explores how knowledge of past and contemporary geological and geomorphological processes can provide an understanding of natural hazards and risk assessment. This, in turn, can inform management strategies to allow the protection and stabilisation of sites, limit further degradation and ensure long-term sustainability. From the analysis of published documentation available from UNESCO, it appears that natural processes have not always received the attention they deserve, and in some cases appear to have been ignored. Given the complexity of future climate change and the role that natural processes will play in determining the vulnerability of individual heritage assets, it is essential that geoscientists, archaeologists and cultural heritage managers work together to develop appropriate strategies to mitigate the effects of change in the future, especially since many of the themes developed in this paper have generic applicability across a range of landscape environments.     

Fashioning Michael Field: Michael Field and Late-Victorian Dress Culture

This article explores how the late-Victorian poets Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who wrote under the collaborative pseudonym Michael Field, used fashionable dress to construct and advertise their unique poetic identity. Using evidence from their journal Works and Days, I contextualise Bradley and Cooper's clothing in terms of late-Victorian dress culture, and the major dress reform movements of the nineteenth century. I demonstrate that Bradley and Cooper used fashion as a distinctively feminine way of participating in aesthetic culture, marking significant life events, and to advertise their poetic identity. This self-fashioning also exposed them to aesthetic scrutiny from their peers Oscar Wilde and Bernard Berenson. Finally, I argue that fashion played a crucial role in Bradley and Cooper's desire for one another – and that this desire can be understood in terms of erotic reciprocity.