The Question of Authorship of the Coplas Attributed to Lucas Fernandez

In late eighteenth-century Spanish discourse, moralists and satirists attempted to redress what they deemed a grave social issue: the loss of a masculine, virtuous visibility in men, especially in young, well-heeled males. In moralist essays, the petimetre became the quintessential trope for the idle, effeminate, aristocratic Spanish man. He was created as a literary figure to stand in marked contrast to the manly hombre de bien, who represented martial valor and heteronormative privacy. Juan Antonio Mercadal, author of El Duende especulativo sobre la vida civil (1761), delved into the issue with, among other writings, his "Discurso IX." In this essay, he describes a type of man whom he refers to as "hermaphrodita." Like the petimetre, this is a queer male figure who transgresses the dimorphous gendered system. By using the term hermaphrodite, Mercadal conjures up images of an intersex person who retained a monstrous, almost mythical reputation during the eighteenth century. In effect, the satirist is employing a coded word to invent a new reality: an intergendered male who challenges what it means to be a man or a woman. The unintended result of Mercadal's essay is the creation of a new identity that brings together ser and aparecer, or reality and illusion. By creating the figure of the hermaphrodita, Mercadal engendered the very reality he wished to combat.     

Osteological applications of high-resolution computed tomography: a prehistoric arrow injury

In comparison to conventional computed tomography (CT) and radiography, high-resolution CT is a superior means of visualizing and quantifying fine structures in a wide range of materials. Here the shape and size of a chert arrowhead lodged in a 700-year-old tibia from Norris Farms #36, Illinois, are identified, as are the bony response and the arrow's probable trajectory through the bone. The use of high-resolution CT – in this instance, to identify structures down to the level of individual trabeculae – can be used in other archaeological applications when fine details are important and specimens cannot be damaged by invasive (i.e., destructive) procedures.     

Aftermath A.D. 696—Late 7th and Early 8th Century Special Deposits and Elite Main Plaza Burials at Buenavista del Cayo,Western Belize: A Study in Classic Maya “Historical Archaeology”

Between 1984 and 1989, a number of depositional contexts were excavated at the Classic Maya center/site of Buenavista del Cayo in the upper Belize Valley that appeared to be products of sudden cessations of activity or architectural “terminations” dating to sometime in the late 7th to mid-8th century. Ceramic furnishings also linked at least two elite status burials on the Central Plaza of the site to these deposits. Conjunctive analysis of the deposits, burials, and their contents together with applicable epigraphic history recorded at a nearby major city, Naranjo, suggests that they are the result of and directly reflect successful military action by Naranjo against Buenavista in a.d. 696. An examination of the contexts and epigraphic history concerned; the archaeological grounds for linking the two; and the rich, composite understanding of the deposits and their behavioral, cultural, and historical significance illustrate the rewards and advantages of 21st century Maya archaeology’s new paradigmatic status as true “historical archaeology.”     

Obsolete Muskets,Lethal Remingtons: Heterogeneity and Firepower in Weapons of The Frontier War,Argentina, 1869–1877

Abstract

This paper deals with firearms that were employed by the Argentine army in frontier warfare between 1869 and 1877. Documentary information and archaeological assemblages from two contemporary military facilities — Fort General Paz and Fortín Algarrobos — are combined to characterize the armament in service during those years. This was a crucial period, during which a process of modernisation and standardisation of the army’s armament started, centred on the incorporation of Remington single-shot breech-loading rifles and carbines. However, the archaeological record shows that this process was slow and that an astonishing variety of older firearms (flintlocks, percussion smoothbores and rifles) remained in service, causing logistic and operative problems, and reducing the army’s combat effectiveness. The paper then discusses the impact of the incorporation of the Remington guns on frontier warfare, critiquing commonly held determinist characterisations, and placing the Remington’s effect in a broader political and economic context.     

Fatherland Rhetoric and the “threat of absolutism”: Hesse-Cassel and the Reichskammergericht (1646–1655)

In 1646, Landgravine Amelie Elisabeth wanted to regain the principality of her late husband, on behalf of her son, the minor Wilhelm VI. A conflict (re)ignited as she took 4000 Malter of Corn without the nobility’s consent, consequently violating ancient privileges. Subsequently, the nobles assembled to discuss the affair. This meeting meant an attempt to undermine the government, at least, that was the interpretation of Amelie Elisabeth, and all meetings were consequently forbidden. Since friendly requests – such as the 1647 Remonstratio – did not work, the knights changed their strategy. In 1652 a Replicae was sent to the Reichskammergericht in Speyer, the first of a series of legal suits which eventually led to a Vergleich (Agreement, 2 October 1655). The nobility as well as the landgrave used fatherland rhetoric to stress the legality of their argument and their claims to protect Hesse-Cassel, their fatherland.     

Women's Participation in Prehistoric Warfare: A Central Illinois River Valley Case Study

Considerations of Native American warriorhood are likely to conjure images of male‐bodied, masculine individuals. While the majority of formally recognized warriors may have indeed fit this mould, it is also true that female‐bodied/feminine warriors have been historically documented in many places, including North America. Further, even in cases where women were not formally recognized as such, it seems likely that they played offensive and defensive roles on an ‘as needed’ basis, such as on subsistence outings or when their homes and families were under attack. In this paper, we seek to explore the intersection of womanhood and warfare‐related violence at Morton Village (11 F2) and the associated Norris Farms #36 cemetery. This late prehistoric community in the Central Illinois River Valley has been the subject of extensive bioarchaeological interest regarding high levels of skeletally indicated violent trauma. We review this osteological evidence in addition to incorporating mortuary and subsistence perspectives on the ideology and practice of warfare at this time and place. A tripartite approach considering osteological trauma patterns, mortuary commemoration, and new interpretations of community life leads us to suggest an alternate interpretation—one in which Morton Village women are, in at least some instances, considered as active defenders of their community and lifeways rather than passive victims of violence. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The limits of control: Technological agency,urban terrain,strategy and the state in the 2014 Gaza War

This article reassesses of the role of military technologies both in normative strategic thought and in the critical geopolitics literature by problematising their shared tendency towards representing the power of military technologies in a binary and sometimes hyperbolic way in relation to the complexity of terrain and the emergent intensity of war. In order to do so, it borrows theoretically from Object-Oriented-Ontology, using Harman's concept of “duomining” in dialogue with other understandings of material agency from assemblage theory and Actor-Network-Theory. This interstitial epistemology is applied to analyse the political implications for the State of Israel of its military's decisions on the use of weapons in urban warfare during the 2014 Gaza War. Through this framing, the paper argues that technological agency is ambivalent to the project of state stabilisation, and can act across spatial and temporal boundaries in ways unanticipated by political and strategic decisionmakers. It also demonstrates, counterintuitively, that technological objects can exercise agency as much by their absence as their presence in an event. These findings foreground the need for a more accurate accounting of what technological objects are, not just what they do, alongside a more nuanced consideration of the contingency of their power to shape politics in relation to the complex milieu of human and non-human factors that comprise geopolitical phenomena.     

援越抗美述略

援越抗美的军事行动 ,从 1 96 5年 6月开始到 1 973年 8月结束 ,共经历了两个阶段。中国先后派出了高炮、工程、铁道、扫雷、后勤等部队 ,总计 32万余人 ,最高年份达到 1 7万余人 ,执行了反空袭作战、筑路、构筑国防工程、扫雷及后勤保障等任务。援越抗美部队的将士们与越南军民一起 ,以劣势装备战胜了拥有世界上最先进武器装备的美国侵略者 ,使越南人民赢得了抗美救国战争的光辉胜利 ,谱写了中越两国人民友谊的新篇章。     

A possible massacre at Early Bronze Age Titriş Höyük,Anatolia

Trauma is among the most important sources of data providing information related to systematic violence, battles and massacres among ancient populations. In this study, a mass grave from Titriş Höyük in the Southeast Anatolia was examined in terms of cranial traumas. Skeletal remains of minimum 19 individuals were placed on a plaster basin as a secondary interment. The frequency of cranial trauma was 81.3% among 16 available adult crania. The fact that the perimortem traumas were observed on both sex groups and the presence of two children and an infant on the basin suggest the possibility of these individuals being subjected to an attack or a massacre. It has been determined that the frequency of traumas in the common burials increased more than twofold from Early‐Mid EBA (6.7%) to Late EBA (14.3%). While all of the injuries observed in Early‐Mid EBA were in the form of healed depressed trauma, penetrated traumas were also encountered in Late EBA. The increased frequency of cranial trauma with unusual interment on a plaster basin indicated that a social stress might have taken place in Titriş Höyük. It is concluded that the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, the deterioration of the trade‐based economy and resource stress might have been possible factors that played a role in the excessive violence, or a massacre in Titriş Höyük. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The assessment of Perkins’ patent metallic “tractors”: Abandonment of an 18th-century therapeutic fad following trials using sham instruments

ABSTRACT

From 1799 to 1801, with the instigation of John Haygarth, physicians in England evaluated the claims of Elisha and Benjamin Perkins that their patented “metallic tractors” could cure a wide variety of disorders. Previous therapies were typically judged based on experience and authority, whereas Perkinism was evaluated using a series of clinical trials of varying methodological sophistication, most employing sham instruments (all but those involving infants or horses), with a variety of trial designs, inconsistent use of contemporary controls, and different approaches to blinding subjects to the treatment administered. Haygarth and his colleagues collectively demonstrated that tractors and sham instruments produced equivalent effects in adults, and, by inference, that the tractors had no special therapeutic properties. Other trials using only genuine tractors demonstrated no effects in infants and horses, subjects who could not reasonably be influenced by suggestion and the imagination. These collective results provided strong support for the rival hypothesis that the observed effects were due to suggestion and the imagination of the subjects. Despite fallacy-laden counterattacks and counterarguments from Benjamin Perkins and his supporters, the trials eroded support for this therapy and led to abandonment of the “Metallic Practice” as a treatment in Britain and elsewhere.