Theophilos Kairis: the creator and initiator of Theosebism in Greece1

The views of the Enlightenment in European countries are in general well known, while the attempts to introduce the Enlightenment to countries in the periphery of Europe, like Greece, are not known in the same degree. How did the scientific revolution migrate to the Greek‐speaking regions occupied by the Ottoman Empire? How did the Greeks accept the truly revolutionary ideas of the French Revolution and liberalism? What were the reactions of the conservative Greek Orthodox Church and who sacrificed their lives in the cause of their ideas? Theophilos Kairis (1784–1853), a scholar, philosopher, and priest, was the tragic victim of clerical bigotry. The creator of Theosebism in Greece, Kairis suffered the tragic end reserved by fate for those who, being pioneers, tried to introduce to Greece the liberal ideas of Western Europe and the Enlightenment.     

Bastard Spice or Champagne of Cinnamon? Conflicting Value Creations along Cinnamon Commodity Chains in Northern Vietnam

In upland northern Vietnam ethnic minority farmers are cultivating what some global retailers refer to as the ‘champagne of cinnamon’. However, a closer examination reveals that this spice is not ‘true cinnamon’ but cassia, with the exact species remaining uncertain. Drawing on commodity chain literature and debates over the creation of value and quality, the aims of this article are twofold. First, it investigates the making of ‘Vietnamese cinnamon’ as it moves from the hills of northern Vietnam to supermarket shelves in the global North, and the actors and livelihoods involved. Second, it explores how different actors define ‘Vietnamese cinnamon’ and infuse it with often-contradictory values. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork over a four-year period, the study finds that the state and cooperating non-government organizations tend to ignore ongoing taxonomic confusion while creating a geographical indicator to highlight the uniqueness of this commodity. Yet, concurrently, exporters and retailers in the global North focus on other distinctions as key marketing tools including remoteness, ethnicity, taste and health benefits. The article thus calls for an expanded analytical focus on competing value creation for agro-food products and on the impacts for commodity producers, in this case ethnic minority farmers in the global South.     

Potter’s Wheel in the Iron Age in Central Europe: Process or Product Innovation?

The use of a rotational device for forming ceramic objects represents a fundamental innovation in pottery technology. This work addresses aspects of the transmission of this technological innovation on the basis of technological and provenance analysis of Iron Age pottery in a selected region of Eastern Bohemia. The possible trajectories of the innovative process are approximated specifically through the polarities between product and process innovation and transmission of cultural traits in open and closed learning networks. Apart from standard methods of petrographic and geochemical analysis, this analysis employs innovative methodology for identification of pottery-forming techniques. The results indicate the effects of various mechanisms of cultural transmission which shaped the evolution of techniques in the Iron Age society. The technological changes can be explained by shifting accents on product and process performance characteristics in changing selective environments.     

The Composition and Microstructural Variation of the Bronze Age Metal Ornaments from Lower Silesia (South‐West Poland): Chemical Analytical and Archaeological Aspects

Metal ornaments from Únětice (Mierczyce, Tomice, Jordanów and Opatowice) and Urnfield culture (Szprotawa, ?arek and Wroc?aw ?erniki) sites in south‐west Poland are made of bronze of varying composition, with the exception of the early Bronze Age Przec?awice site, where the copper items are found in graves from stages III/IV. The combined XRF and electron microprobe study of 37 ornaments (mostly pins) shows that those excavated from Únětice culture graves usually consist of cored dendrites, plus a Sb‐rich phase in some. The copper objects from Przec?awice correspond in composition to the East Alpine Copper or to the Ösenring copper and were produced from fahlore. Those from the Urnfield culture sites consist of homogeneous bronze. The Únětice culture ornaments were produced with little control of the effect of varying bronze composition on its microstructure. The results of XRF analyses of heterogeneous metal artefacts vary depending on the proportion of phases in the analysed site, and should be combined with micrometre‐scale analytical data and microstructural information yielded by electron microprobe methods. The same refers to deeply weathered or corroded objects made of homogeneous metal, which contain irregularly dispersed decomposition products.