The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

Forms of lay association with the Order of the Temple

The present study investigates the development of three concepts of lay association with the Order of the Temple that have hitherto often been considered as distinctive from each other but that are, in fact, in many ways interconnected: the confrater, the donatus and the miles ad terminum. Examining the motivation of lay men and women to associate with the Temple, as well as the various implications of the forms of association they chose, the study argues that at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the constellation of the Order's confraternities underwent drastic changes and that these had been instigated by canon lawyers and formulated in the decrees of Lateran III and IV. As a response the donats, as a particular category of confratres, established themselves as the most prominent expression of lay association with the Temple. What is more, since the concept of the donat gained prominence when that of the Templar novice was in decline, it will also be argued that, for very different reasons, the concept of the Templar donat as well as that of the ‘temporary knight’ (miles ad terminum), which was as old as the Order itself, could eventually have been conceived and employed as two forms of novitiate in disguise, which helped attract the attention of laymen who would have otherwise been reluctant to profess fully into a military order.     

‘Stronger than men and braver than knights’: women and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome in the later middle ages

Women who participated in the long-distance pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries faced a variety of economic and social barriers. Based upon the pilgrimage narratives of Margery Kempe, Felix Fabri, and others, this article examines the strategies women used to overcome those barriers both before and during the journey. While resistance to women’s pilgrimages was strong, in part, because they did not fit their quotidian roles as caregivers, it was nevertheless to aspects of those same normative roles that women appealed in order to justify their pilgrimages and shield themselves from censure during their journeys.     

Market mechanisms and migrant settlement intentions in urban China

This study examines the settlement intentions of migrants based on original survey data collected from four large Chinese cities. Despite the long-lasting institutional effects of the hukou (household registration) system, market mechanisms are becoming increasingly important in affecting migrant settlement intentions. Although rural hukou holders are more likely to return to their places of origin, migrants who have received higher education, who are self-employed or who own homes are more willing to permanently settle in cities. The influences of market mechanisms are also reflected in recent policy reforms related to education, housing and the hukou system.     

Prehistoric Settlement,Mobility and Societal Structure in the Peak District National Park: New Evidence from Ceramic Compositional Analysis

Detailed compositional and technological analysis of a large assemblage of prehistoric ceramics from numerous sites situated within the Peak District National Park has been used to explore the settlement patterns, societal structure, mobility and interaction of the populations that inhabited this area during the Early Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. A surprising pattern emerges of the widespread dominance of a single, geographically restricted temper type, which appears to have been transported and mixed with locally procured clay and used to produce pottery at numerous different sites. The distribution of this and several other compositional groups are defined via thin‐section petrography and compared to raw material field samples. The resulting patterns are used to assess the validity of previous theories about prehistoric life in this region during the third to first millennia bc .     

Old World Traditions, New World Landscapes: Ethnicity and Archaeology of Swiss-Appenzellers in the Colonial South Carolina Backcountry

German-speaking Swiss immigrants from the Appenzell region of Switzerland settled in the South Carolina frontier township of New Windsor in 1737. After initially establishing an insular physical and social relationship with the dominant Anglophone population, the Swiss adopted strategies that increasingly integrated them into the greater regional society. Theory of ethnicity informs archaeological, testamentary, and landholding data concerning the symbolic action of the Swiss to assert and then transform their cultural identity. Evidence of competition, ethnocentrism, and differential power reflects the dynamic process of ethnogenesis that characterizes the South Carolina frontier.     

RE-ENVISIONING CURRENT DISCOURSE: ALTERNATIVE TERRITORIAL CONFIGURATIONS OF PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD

This paper explores seven scenarios of Palestinian state formation and attempts to propose a suitable peaceful territorial solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ features of each scenario are examined against the backdrop of recent geopolitical developments and the complex geographic and demographic realities of the region. Some of these scenarios suggest that a peaceful territorial arrangement should involve incorporating some Israeli territory, encompassing a broad segment of the Palestinian population and exploring the possibilities of sharing territory through condominium arrangements. Drawing anew upon the boundaries and partitioning principle of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, the author offers a proposal for the peaceful and permanent settlement of the conflict. According to this scenario, Palestine would be repartitioned and divided into four political entities: A Palestinian sovereign area on 30.3 percent of the territory, a Palestinian autonomous region on 4.5 percent, an Israeli sovereign area on 55.6 percent, and areas under a condominium arrangement on 9.6 percent of the land. Arguably, such territorial configuration of space proposes genuine options for dealing with the geographical problems of refugee settlement, demography, ethnic composition, and the retention of Israel's national identity (i.e., Jewishness), whilst also suggesting a concrete basis for peaceful coexistence rooted in the geographical imperatives and realities of the region. Cet article évalue sept configurations possibles de l'État palestinien et tente de proposer une solution pacifique au conflit entre Israel et la Palestine. A la lumiere des développements géopolitiques récents ainsi que des réalités ggographiques et démographiques de la rggion, l'auteur examine le pour et le contre de chacune des sept configurations. Certaines configurations font éat du fait que, pour en arriver a une rgsolution pacifique, (a) Ifftat palestinien devra comprendre des territoires actuellement sous le contrdle d'lsrael; (b) il devra regrou- per une forte majorite de la population palestinienne; et (c) le partage des territoires par l'entremise d'enten- tes genre ‘condominium’ mérite d'sêtre exploré. S'inspirant à nouveau du principe des ‘frontieres et du morcellement des terres’ dont fait l'objet le United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine de 1947, l'auteur propose une solution pacifique et perrnanente au conflit. Selon le scenario prefgrt?, la Palestine serait redivisge sur le plan territorial. Quatre entité politiques résulteraient de ce re-morcellement: un état Palestinien souverain sur 30,3 pour cent du territoire, une rggion d'autonomie palestinienne sur 4,5 pour cent du territoire, un état Israélite souverain sur 55,6 pour cent du territoire et une région (9,6 pour cent du territoire) gérge par l'entremise dententes genre ‘condominium’. En même temps qu'elle propose des methodes concrétes de composer avec les problemes ggographiques en ce qui concerne l'établissement des réfugiés, la demographie, la composition ethnique des états individuels et le maintien de l'identite nationale d'lsrael, cette solution propose aussi une base solide pour la coexistence des deux nationalitgs, base ancrtée dans les imperatifs et les réalités ggographiques de la region.