New Interpretations Concerning the Shape of Queen Eleanor Plantagenet’s Headdress from her Tomb in Las Huelgas Abbey (1214)

This article focuses on the headdress with which Queen Eleanor Plantagenet was buried in Las Huelgas Abbey in 1214. Headdresses have not received much attention from scholars, perhaps because few remains survive. Fortunately, new research has made it possible to re-attribute to Queen Eleanor some of the textiles that once composed her headdress. Originally from Las Huelgas mausoleum and now housed in the Royal Palace in Madrid, all the grave goods were first studied when the mausoleum was opened in the 1940s. This paper also deals with issues arising from the preservation and interpretation of the headdress and problems related to the loss of data from the studies conducted in the 1940s. Studying the textiles, including technical analyses on their weaves and comparisons with visual sources and unpublished materials from the 1940s, has allowed for a new understanding of the appearance of the Queen’s headdress, an aspect never previously described in detail.     

Textiles and Farewells: Revisiting the Grave Goods of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and Queen Eleanor Plantagenet

This paper commemorates the eighth centenary of the deaths of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his Queen, Eleanor Plantagenet (d. 1214) who founded the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas (Burgos) and were buried there. It examines how their grave goods were categorised and aims to address recent misconceptions related to the original locations and functions of these textiles and the techniques with which they were made. The outcome of this analysis of original sources and the textiles themselves is a major reassessment of where these grave goods were located in the thirteenth century: seven textile items, including clothing, have been allocated to the King instead of only one, and thirty-eight have been allocated to the Queen instead of fourteen, while three have been removed from this category.     

Many Chains to Break: The Multi‐dimensional Concept of Slave Labour in Brazil

This article examines the concept of slave labour through two case studies from Brazil. One involves internal migrant workers and the other cross‐border migrant workers. There have been accusations of slave labour in both cases. I argue that slave labour is a multi‐dimensional concept and that cognate notions (eg forced and unfree labour) could also be reconceived as multi‐dimensional. Recent works have proposed that a continuum viewing labour relations as more or less free should replace dichotomies such as free vs unfree. I argue for taking this further to recognise, first, that workers may be more or less free in different ways, and second, that the resulting conditions of employment can be characterised as more or less degrading, also in different ways. This multi‐dimensional approach allows for a better understanding of the heterogeneity of apparently unfree labour relations and for greater recognition of the agency of workers labelled as slaves.     

Information control: The past and present career of scientific thinking in the European and colonized world

Woods, Robert D. "Teach Them Good Customs”: Colonial Indian Education and Acculturation in the Andes. Culver City, California: Labyrinthos, 1986. v +134 pp. including chapter references and bibliography. $15.00 paper.

Reingold, Nathan and Marc Rothenberg, eds. Scientific Colonialism: A Cross‐Cultural Comparison. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1987. vii + 398 pp. including chapter notes and index. $29.95 paper.

Hill, Carole E., ed. Current Health Policy Issues and Alternatives: An Applied Social Science Perspective. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1986. 1 + 212 pp. including chapter notes and references. $20.00 cloth, $10.00 paper.