The body speaks Italian: Giuseppe Liceti and the conflict of philosophy and medicine in the Renaissance

Giuseppe Liceti (d. 1599) has been entirely forgotten in the history of philosophy. This article seeks to demonstrate that Liceti’s two vernacular dialogues are crucial sources for understanding the Renaissance debate on the conflict between medicine and philosophy. Liceti’s main dialogue, La nobiltà (1590), stages a contest about the nobility of the main bodily organs, which I discuss by placing it in its medical and literary context. I then proceed to expounding Liceti’s interpretation of the conflict between Galenism and Aristotelianism, and trace the specific topic of the seat of rationality in the body. In the conclusion I claim that the outcome of the contest in La nobiltà is not as obvious as it might seem, and that Liceti implies an alternative conclusion to the “official” one. This opens up a different scenario with regard to the interpretation of human uniqueness from medical and philosophical points of view.     

ANIMAL HISTORY

This review reflects on animal history as a subfield of the discipline of history and presents its main arguments and future tasks. Its main goal is to identify the new research prospects and potentials proposed by the book edited by Susan Nance, The Historical Animal. These include such topics as the problem of “the animal's point of view,” animal agency (animals understood as “historical” agents and actors), the problem of identifying traces of animal actions in “anthropocentric” archives and searching for new historical sources (including animals’ testimonies). It also explores methodological difficulties, especially with the idea of the historicization of animals and the possible merger of the humanities and social sciences with the natural and life sciences. The review considers how studying animals forces scholars to rethink to its foundations history as a discipline. It claims that the most progressive proposals are coming from scholars (many of whom are historians) who advocate radical interdisciplinarity. The authors are not only interested in merging history with specific sciences (such as animal psychology, ecology, ethology, evolutionary biology, and zoology), but also question basic assumptions of the discipline: the epistemic authority claimed by historians for building knowledge of the past as well as the human epistemic authority for creating such knowledge. In this context several questions emerge: can we achieve “interspecies competence” (Erica Fudge's term) for creating a multispecies knowledge of the past? Can research on animals’ perception of change help us to develop nonhistorical approaches to the past? Can we imagine accounts of the past based on multispecies co‐authorship?     

The Use of Animal Bone as Fuel in the Third Millennium BC Walled Enclosure of Castanheiro do Vento (Northern Portugal)

Experiments on fire manipulation of bones as fuel demonstrated that animal bones are effective in the act of maintaining lasting combustion. These experiments are almost always applied to the studies in hunter–gather societies in prehistory, even though the use of bones as fuel is also known in historical times. Based on data and models resulting from these recent experiments, both in laboratory and in real hearths, I tested the hypothesis of the use of animal bone as fuel in the third/second millennium BC walled enclosure of Castanheiro do Vento, in northern Portugal. The faunal assemblage shows some specific characteristics such as a very low percentage of identifiable material and close to 90% of charred bones with a very high index of fragmentation I link the faunal analysis with the results of some experiments recently published. These experiments show the particularities of bone fuel combustion, specifically used in certain activities. Nevertheless, the interpretation of these activities in Castanheiro do Vento is difficult to achieve because of the preliminary state of the investigations. As an additional problem, the available interpretations in the literature concern mostly hunter–gather, and models do not take into account the complex societies of the third/second millennium BC. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

商代螺钿漆器浅说--从加拿大皇家安大略博物馆藏"蚌片兽面"谈起

李学勤先生在《洛阳林校车马坑的启示》一文中,谈到现收藏于加拿大皇家安大略博物馆的两件“蚌片兽面”,认为它们与洛阳林校车马坑出土的瓷瓮漆盖上的蚌片性质相同,“很可能也是类似的漆盖上的装饰”,“它们的年代也应该相差不远”①。就笔者所知,这类蚌片兽面在安阳殷墟和其他商代遗址以往的发掘中多有发现。而且,皇家安大略博物馆的这两件,也是出自殷墟。现根据所掌握的资料,草成此文,以作为李学勤先生文章的补充。一 李学勤先生提到的这两件蚌片兽面,发表于怀履光《骨的文化》一书。李先生的文章中已经对这本书作了简单介绍。…     

试论新砦陶器盖上的饕餮纹

一、有关饕餮纹的资料１９９９年１０月～１２月,在北京大学古代文明研究中心李伯谦先生的倡议下,北京大学考古文博院与郑州市文物考古研究所联合对河南新密市新砦遗址进行了试掘（请参阅本期简报①）,取得了较为重要的收获。其中尤为引人注目的是在Ｔ１Ｈ２４中发现了一件刻有饕餮纹的陶器盖（编号为９９ＨＸＸＴ１Ｈ２４∶１）,其虽然已残,但饕餮纹面部几乎可以复原。（图一,１、２）由于我们认为其在相关问题的探讨上具有非常重要的意义,所以不惜冒小题大作之嫌特将其结合相关材料,单独列文讨论,不妥之处,敬请方家指正。该陶器…     

宁波“小白礁I号”清代木质沉船中硫铁化合物脱除技术研究

近年来的分析与研究表明,海洋出水沉船的木材中普遍存在大量的以Fe S2和Fe S为代表的硫铁化合物难溶盐,它们在空气中和一定湿度条件下,会氧化生成硫酸,使木材纤维素发生快速降解,从而对木船造成毁灭性的破坏。目前,硫铁化合物的脱除仍然是世界性难题,很多国家发现的木质沉船都面临这方面的困扰。为此,本研究以宁波象山"小白礁I号"清代沉船遗址出水的船体木材构件为研究对象,研发了金属络合剂与氧化剂复配材料EDTAHO,开展了海洋出水木材中沉积的二硫化亚铁的去除技术初步研究,取得了良好的保护效果。本研究结果可为后续脱水定型和加固修复打下良好的基础,有利于海洋出水木质船体的长期保存。     

Application of tin to ancient pottery

It has earlier been assumed that the tin cover found on certain antique vases has been attached as a thin foil. In this paper it is shown that the metal may simply have been applied by an immersion technique. Before dipping into the tin melt the pottery must be treated with an adhesion promotor. Animal glue which was known as a binder in ancient times has been found to be useful for the surface treatment.     

A Bobcat Burial and Other Reported Intentional Animal Burials from Illinois Hopewell Mounds

Abstract

The Elizabeth site is a bluff-top mortuary mound group constructed and primarily used during Hopewellian (Middle Woodland) times. Recent reanalysis of nonhuman skeletal remains from the site reveals that an intentional burial previously identified as a dog (Canis familiaris) is actually an immature bobcat (Lynx rufus). As a result of this discovery, we reevaluated eight other purported animal burials from Illinois Middle Woodland mounds, including seven dogs and a roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja). The dogs all appear to be intrusive or unrelated burial events, but both the bobcat and the roseate spoonbill were definite Hopewellian mortuary interments. The roseate spoonbill was decapitated and placed beside a double human burial. But the bobcat was a separate, human-like interment wearing a necklace of shell beads and effigy bear canine teeth (Figures and ). To our knowledge, this is the only decorated wild cat burial in the archaeological record. It provides compelling evidence for a complex relationship between felids and humans in the prehistoric Americas, including possible taming.     

Retention of hunter–gatherer economies among maritime foragers from Caleta Vitor,northern Chile,during the late Holocene: evidence from stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis of skeletal remains

On the basis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of human remains, this paper provides evidence for the retention of hunter–gatherer economies among coastal inhabitants in northern Chile during the late Holocene – at the same time that inland populations were adopting agricultural economies. Coastal diets from the Caleta Vitor region of the Atacama Desert were dominated by marine-based foods, predominantly from upper trophic levels. The focus on reliable marine food resources is interpreted as a risk minimisation strategy in this marginal arid environment. Although these coastal hunter–gatherers adopted other goods and traditions from agricultural populations, their participation in this larger interregional exchange network did not affect their basic subsistence economies.