Animal Electricity at the End of the Eighteenth Century: The Many Facets of a Great Scientific Controversy

In the 1790s, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta were the main protagonists of a lively debate on the role of electricity in animal organisms. Significant developments originated from this debate, leading to the foundation of two new disciplines, electrodynamics and electrophysiology, that were to play a crucial role in the scientific and technological progress of the last two centuries. The Galvani-Volta controversy has been repeatedly reconstructed, sometimes in an attempt to identify the merits and the errors of one or the other of the two protagonists, sometimes with the aim of demonstrating that the theories elaborated by the two Italian scholars were irreconcilable, reflecting completely different ways of looking at phenomena and conceiving of scientific research. In this article a different interpretation is offered, based on a discussion of the scientific issues that were central to Galvani's and Volta's research, and with reference to the context of science and society of the eighteenth century.     

A ‘new’ palaeolithic dog from central Europe

Kesslerloch Cave in Switzerland is one of the major Magdalenian sites in Central Europe. During a recent reanalysis of the faunal remains, we identified a cranial fragment and teeth of the domestic dog. The large maxillar fragment was directly dated to 12.225±45 bp (KIA‐33350) or c. 14.100‐14.600 BP. The finds are metrically well below the natural variability of wolves from both Palaeolithic and recent times and even show slight morphological differences to the wild wolves from the site. We argue that the maxilla fragment must now be considered the earliest indisputable directly dated evidence of a domestic dog. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Early Pig Management in the Zagros Flanks: Reanalysis of the Fauna from Neolithic Jarmo,Northern Iraq

In this paper, we present a reanalysis of pig (Sus scrofa) remains from the Neolithic site of Qalat Jarmo, originally excavated in the 1940s and 1950s. Employing modern zooarchaeological techniques, not available during the initial analyses, we explore the nature of swine exploitation strategies and demonstrate that pigs were most likely managed by the early 7th millennium (Pottery Neolithic) and perhaps earlier. Comparing biometric data with those from other sites in the region, we show that the Jarmo pigs exhibit evidence for size decrease associated with intensive management, but had not yet achieved the degree of dental or post‐cranial size reduction seen in later Neolithic domestic populations. Although samples from the earliest (Pre‐Pottery) occupation of the site are small, there is some evidence to suggest that domestic pigs were present at Jarmo as early as the late 8th millennium cal. bc . In either case, Jarmo likely represents the earliest appearance of pig husbandry along the Zagros flanks, and we discuss the mechanisms by which Neolithic technologies, including domesticated animals, spread to new regions. This project emphasises the value of curated faunal assemblages in shedding new light on the spread of Neolithic economies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

陕西西安侧坡南村唐墓（M1）发掘简报

为配合城市建设,西安市文物保护考古研究院在西安市长安区侧坡南村发掘了一座唐代墓葬,形制为斜坡墓道四天井砖砌前后室墓,地面残留有封土,葬具为庑殿顶石椁,出土有兽面纹塔式罐等高等级器物。墓葬规模大、等级高,推测墓主为唐皇室家族成员。值得一提的是,该墓墓室遭到了严重的人为破坏,可能与当时的政治派系斗争有关。     

灵井遗址动物群埋藏学研究方法与思路

灵井遗址是国内首次发掘的以泉水湖泊沉积为中心的旧石器时代遗址,从2005年至今一直进行野外发掘,出土有大量旧石器时代的动物化石和石制品,本文的内容是遗址动物群埋藏学研究的方法和思路,并通过本文模式的研究,以期待能够在静态的物质遗存中发现动态的人类行为的线索,从人与环境的相互关系中,认识人类进化和行为演化乃至技术进步的动因.     

明清时期西北农牧业生产的发展与演变

明清是西北地区农牧业生产结构又一次发生重大改变的时期,随着区域农业开发力度的不断加大,农业生产最终得以取代畜牧业生产,成为区域经济发展的主导产业。     

Aging animal bodies: horse retirement yards as relational spaces of liminality,dwelling and negotiation

This paper investigates how animal aging and ill-health are managed, spaced, interpreted, and experienced within a horse–human relationship. It does so by exploring the active construction of ‘retirement’ as a legitimate category within the life course of an animal. The analysis is concentrated around the emergent spaces of horse retirement yards. Conceptualising retirement yards as liminal spaces of transition and transformation, particular consideration is given to the role of the yard manager in creating a good retirement for the horse. This includes negotiating and narrating figurative and bodily processes of animal aging with the distant owner. The paper reviews the yard manager’s careful enactment of re-wilding in the shaping of aged and unsound equine bodies, but also their authentic inter-weaving of practices of domestication. Balancing re-wilding and domestication, in both figurative and bodily form, appears central to securing dwelling-in-retirement on a retirement yard and therefore, successful animal aging. In accordance with the non-uniformity of liminality, however, the relational care practices which permit dwelling-in-retirement require daily attention. They remain subject to multiple potential sources of disruption, including those which extend well beyond the aged or unsound state of the individual animal.     

Beyond ‘resistance’: rethinking nonhuman agency for a ‘more-than-human’ world

This article argues that rethinking historical agency to include nonhuman agents is one way to integrate better animals into historical narratives. Drawing on posthumanist theories from geography, anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and forming part of a growing interest in nonhuman, particularly animal, agency, it aims to clear some theoretical and historiographical ground to provide a basis for claims that nature has agency. It then argues that environmental and animal historians have too readily equated nonhuman agency with ‘resistance’, a concept that does not easily map onto animal behaviour and one which also fails to capture the diversity of nonhuman agencies. Using case studies of Police rescue dogs in early twentieth-century France and animals on the Western Front, it argues that exploring the diverse types of nonhuman agencies and their deep and multiple entanglements with human agents will extend studies of nonhumans beyond the resistance model.     

Therapeutic landscapes and non-human animals: the roles and contested positions of animals within care farming assemblages

The concept of therapeutic landscapes has been used as a way to critically understand how health and well-being are related to place. However, traditional discourses on therapeutic landscapes have been constructed from an anthropocentric perspective, completely ignoring and silencing the agency and experiences of non-humans. Building on the idea of therapeutic spaces as assemblages, I highlight the heterogeneity of elements that come together to produce therapeutic space. Mobilizing empirical research undertaken in spaces involved in the practice of ‘care farming’, I demonstrate how non-human presence actively creates and facilitates a therapeutic engagement with place. However, with this recognition of the non-human in therapeutic spaces, there is a need to discuss animals’ contested positions, and question the ways in which being part of these assemblages impacts animals; for whom are these landscapes therapeutic? Thus, this article advocates a critical understanding of the role of non-human animals as both co-constituents and co-participants of therapeutic spaces, moving from framing therapeutic spaces – and the animals within them – purely in relation to human needs and desires.     

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.