L’ars Dictaminis Entre Enseignement et Pratique (XIIe–XIVe Siècle)

The medieval discipline of the ars dictaminis (or dictamen), which flourished during the 12(th)-14(th) centuries, can be considered as an adaptation of classical Latin rhetoric to the communicational needs of the medieval society. Yet, although the relation between the teaching of the ars and its practice is an important one, it has rarely been addressed because of the persistence of numerous misunderstandings about the various different levels at which the ars was taught. This article offers some suggestions to fill this gap.     

Death in three scenes of recitation

In the discourse of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, their own death is not presented merely as a necessary means towards a desired political end. Instead, it is often invested with an intense significance that exceeds its political function. This essay proposes that literary and poetic tropes borrowed from available languages of love, revolution, and religion played a central role in this imagining of death. It argues that we cannot comprehend the sphere of the political inhabited by Bhagat Singh, Ram Prasad Bismil, and their comrades without taking seriously this literary dimension. Political action, in this sphere, in large measure depended on “reciting”—that is to say, appropriating and performing—gestures, phrases, and stances learnt from an astonishingly varied repertoire of literary texts. The essay also critically examines contemporary recitations of the work of the revolutionaries, with special attention to the discourse of the right-wing Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena on the one hand, and that of the popular film Rang de Basanti (2006) on the other. It argues that such appropriations focus only on the revolutionaries’ fidelity to the nation, while neglecting or repressing the critique of the state evident in Bhagat Singh's work, and especially in his admiration of the anarchists.     

Differences in the location of urban museums and their impact on urban areas

Traditionally, museums spaces have tended to be located in the central areas of cities, thereby reinforcing existing dynamics and limiting their potential impact on more peripheral areas. The present study examines the locations chosen for museums that have been opened in three European cities: Barcelona, Paris and Turin, between the years 2000 and 2013. It shows how the locating of museums and galleries has not been homogeneous and how each potential location has its strengths and weaknesses. This is particularly evident when we consider such factors as the environmental impact of museums and how they influence the commercial offer, image and attractiveness of their host city. This paper identifies and examines the different types of impact that museum location strategies have on urban areas.     

Public vices,private remedies in nineteenth-century Italy: Giulia Falletti di Barolo Colbert and Le Forzate

In nineteenth-century Italy notions of femininity and, no less, masculinity influenced the ways in which crime was viewed. The result was that criminality was perceived, judged and explained differently according to the sex of the offender. At every stage in the penal process, cultural understandings of what women were like, and how they ought to behave, operated to define the appropriate response to their misconduct and to structure their punishment. These 'gendered' aspects of criminal justice have influenced the practices of prosecution and sentencing, and, most clearly of all, the special regimes and attitudes adopted in women's prisons: throughout the century male prison regimes emphasized discipline and deterrence, while female prisons developed individualized programmes of 'moral regeneration'. This article deals with the history of the first prison destined exclusively for women - which was opened in Turin in 1821 - with the circumstances which brought about its creation as well as with its organizational structure and its aims. Its promoter - both in money and in spirit - was a woman, named Giulia Falletti di Barolo Colbert. Giving special consideration to the ideals of its foundress, this article examines how nineteenth-century perceptions of the female criminal differentiated the nature and purpose of penal servitude for women.     

Ancient Maritime Fish-Traps of Brittany (France): A Reappraisal of the Relationship Between Human and Coastal Environment During the Holocene

The present-day maritime landscape of Western France forms the geographical framework for a recent research project dedicated to the archaeological study of ancient fish-traps, combining regional-scale and site-scale investigations. Based on the compilation and exploitation of a large unpublished dataset including more than 550 sites, a preliminary synthetic study allows us to present some examples of synchronic and thematic approaches, and propose a morphological classification of the weirs. These encouraging first results open up new perspectives on fish-trap chronology closely linked to wider studies on Holocene sea-level changes.     

Three-dimensional geometry, ore distribution and time-integrated mass transfer through the quartz–tourmaline–gold vein network of the Sigma deposit (Abitibi belt, Canada)

We present a reconstruction of the three‐dimensional (3D) geometry and gold grade distribution of shear zone‐hosted, Au‐mineralized, quartz–tourmaline veins of the Sigma deposit (Abitibi belt). Host shears and veins form a network of anastomosing, steeply dipping structures associated with smaller subhorizontal extensional veins. Our reconstruction has been carried out using the exceptionally large geological database of the mine. From this database, we extracted the geometric position, thickness and gold grades of geometrically best‐defined steep veins contained in a representative subvolume of the deposit. These data allowed the 3D representation of 53 veins, which have been constructed by fitting surfaces through the geometrical data and by contouring thickness and gold grade. The geometry of the network is mainly characterized by: (i) a few large segmented veins, with sinuous and helicoidal shape, and typical vertical dimension of >100 m; (ii) a large number of smaller vertical veins, some of which splay off the steep veins with high dip angles; (iii) subhorizontal extension veins (joints) located at, or close to, the tips of steep veins. The absolute thickness of the vertically short veins is the same as that of the large veins, suggesting that they formed simultaneously, but only a few of them interconnect to form vertically continuous bodies. Patchy, vertically elongated zones of high dilation are present in the large veins, and are poorly correlated with Au‐rich zones. They presumably represent former high‐permeability zones of the network. The highest gold grades occur at the interconnections between the large veins and small splays or subhorizontal joints. This indicates the important role of vein interconnection for fluid flow and gold precipitation within the network. Combining the calculation of the volume of the network with the estimation of tourmaline abundance in the veins, we calculate that 2.1 × 10⁶ m³ of tourmaline and 3.2 × 10⁶ m³ of quartz precipitated during Au deposition.     

CHEMICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF TIN‐LEAD GLAZED POTTERY FROM THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND THE CANARY ISLANDS: INITIAL STEPS TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF SPANISH COLONIAL POTTERY IN THE AMERICAS*

Majolica pottery was the most characteristic tableware produced in Europe during the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Because of the prestige and importance attributed to this ware, Spanish majolica was imported in vast quantities into the Americas during the Spanish Colonial period. A study of Spanish majolica was conducted on a set of 186 samples from the 10 primary majolica production centres on the Iberian Peninsula and 22 sherds from two early colonial archaeological sites on the Canary Islands. The samples were analysed by neutron activation analysis (NAA), and the resulting data were interpreted using an array of multivariate statistical approaches. Our results show a clear discrimination between different production centres, allowing a reliable provenance attribution of the sherds from the Canary Islands.     

KAUP 2014: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS & RESEARCH HISTORY

The article is a report on field activities of 2014 at a renowned location of Kaup forest near Wiskiauten/Viskiautai, nowadays Kaliningrad oblast of Russia, and a sentimental journey through the research history in a region at the crossroads of ancient communication webs, and more recently – of diverse political agendas. Field activities focused on the so‐called Barrow 1, the only known mound at Kaup dated to the Neolithic, otherwise dotted with burials of the Viking Age. It was an attempt to reconstruct barrow architecture, which has resulted in a deconstruction of previous views based on rather scarce excavation reports of the 19^th – early 20^th century. The Neolithic barrow of Kaup remains a unique testimony of the social complexity and spatial awareness of the early 3rd millennium BC when Europe was under the spell of the Corded Ware and other related cultural phenomena.