Visible Charity: The Archaeology, Material Culture, and Landscape Design of New York City's Municipal Almshouse Complex, 1736–1797

How did New York City's eighteenth century almshouse (1736–1797) handle homelessness and poverty? Historians have been debating whether the conditions were familial and supportive, or mean-spirited and intolerable. An analysis of the archaeology, artifacts, architecture, landscape design, primary sources, and secondary sources associated with the New York City almshouse complex suggest some answers.     

Raw material economy in Salento (Apulia, Italy): new perspectives on Neanderthal mobility patterns

This paper presents a case study that questions the behavioral model of a “non-modern” provisioning of raw materials by Neanderthals. The Salento is a peninsula in south eastern Italy rich in Mousterian sites and Neanderthal remains. This region is particularly suitable for raw material economy studies, for its peninsular status and the scarceness of good raw materials. Surveys made in 2006 showed the pattern of utilization of different local raw materials (limestone, siliceous limestone) and the absence of good quality raw materials, that are present in archaeological record. A very long distance provisioning is supposed to be at the origin of their presence in Mousterian Salento sites.     

Trace element fingerprinting of ceramic building material from Carpow and York Roman fortresses manufactured by the VI Legion

Trace element compositions of raw clay, fired clay and Roman ceramic building material (CBM) from Carpow Roman fortress, Newburgh, Scotland and the city of York, England have been determined through the use of inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICPMS). It is confirmed that the firing of clay does not disturb any of the sample’s trace element composition and that trace element protolith identification is an applicable tool for fingerprinting the source of material used in CBM construction. It is also demonstrated through the particular proportions of LREE/HREE; Th/Co; La/Sc; La/Lu; Eu/Sm values on CBM from Carpow that these material were likely manufactured from clay used in the York Roman tile manufacturing industry, therefore suggesting importation. The transport of CBM from York to Carpow provides a useful addition to known examples of the long-distance shipping of CBM. It is postulated that similar analysis to that conducted here could be used to identify important trade networks within the Roman Empire.     

叶赫那拉氏家族史料研究述评

叶赫那拉氏家族史料散见于明清官方文献、一些私人著述及谱牒文献、国外文献之中,尤以北京中国第一历史档案馆藏明清档案最为权威。研究叶赫那拉氏家族的史料,不仅有助于揭示清前史的历史真相,探索清朝勃兴的秘密,而且对清史与满族史的研究也应有所较大的拓展。     

Bernard of Clairvaux,material and spiritual order,and the economy of salvation

ABSTRACT

This article explores themes connected to the spiritual and the material, especially in connection with order and economy, in the thought of the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090/1–1153). It argues that these themes are particularly useful to an analysis of Bernard’s articulation of the challenge of human existence in a fallen world, and the proper role of the Church, its leaders and members, in response to wider concerns for Christian salvation and the material circumstances of twelfth-century Europe. Three treatises provide case studies for this approach, contextualised with discussion of economy in the Christian tradition, and its implications more widely in Bernard’s writing.     

Material Culture and the Politics of Personality in Early Victorian England

This article uses the insights of material culture studies to explore the role of objects in the development of a politics of personality in the first half of the nineteenth century. Political objects were part of a broader material culture of fame and recognition in this period, encompassing a wide range of public figures such as royalty, military heroes and authors. These artefacts acquired agency, playing an important role in the construction of their subjects as recognizable public figures: an asset for popular politicians whose primary constituencies lay beyond the ranks of the enfranchised. By representing key moments in the public narrative of a politician's career, objects and other representations helped to cement the connection between individuals and the causes with which they were chiefly associated. Some objects, including jugs, teapots and other practical items, may have been used in the public performance of rituals of loyalty to a particular figure. Others, including the famous Staffordshire figurines, were designed for display in the home, becoming vehicles for the domestic re-enactment of public narratives and the performance or construction of personal loyalties and identities. The article concludes by considering the way in which objects associated with famous political figures, including autograph letters, signed prints or even more intimate objects such as locks of hair, could be used to forge real or imagined relationships between politicians and individual members of their wider public.     

The Jim Crow Craze in London's Press and Streets, 1836–39

This article examines clothing in public lunatic asylums in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. It considers the intentions of the authorities but also explores patient experience and agency, which have been notoriously difficult to access. Publicly funded (pauper) patients had to give up their own clothes and wear the asylum's standard apparel. Asylum authorities did not envision this as a uniform, either honorific or punitive, and claimed that imposed dress was intended to improve patients' behaviour and assist recovery. There was growing awareness that variety in dress could be beneficial and there were calls for some pauper patients to be allowed to wear their own clothes, but this was ultimately impractical within the economy of mass provision in the public asylum. Although clothing might have offered comfort to the impoverished, some patients were angered and humiliated by its imposition. Ill-fitting items and rough fabrics could be a daily, bodily, reminder to the wearers of the shame of their status as insane paupers. It did, however, offer some room for self-fashioning. Patients were able to make small but, in the circumstances, telling adjustments to the way they wore their clothes and their hair. If it was considered safe, they were allowed some minor possessions. Certain of these items, like spectacles and false teeth, were vital to basic agency and independence. Others, such as jewellery – and especially wedding rings – could help maintain a vital link with relationships in the outside world.     

Homemaking in New Zealand: thinking through the mutually constitutive relationship between domestic material objects,heterosexuality and home

This article explores the homemaking practices of heterosexual couples who live in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. Specifically, it examines the role of domestic material objects in the mutual production of heterosexuality and home. The article draws on data collected from joint and individual semi-structured interviews and self-directed photography with 14 heterosexual couples living in monogamous co-residential relationships. It offers an analysis of the ways in which heterosexual couples use ordinary household objects to constitute, consolidate and sometimes undermine their gendered and sexed subjectivities and interpersonal relationships. A focus on domestic material objects offers an opportunity for challenging normative assumptions about the relationship between heterosexuality and domestic space.     

华侨华人创业的模式及其影响因素分析——基于上海市的调查

本文以上海为实例,依据创业模式的相关理论,分析了华侨华人在大陆投资创业的主要模式划分、基本特点以及创业模式选择的影响因素。结果表明,华侨华人成功创业与其选择正确的创业模式密切相关,创业模式的选择与行业的关联程度较高,同时,创业模式的选择也与创业者对物质资本、技术资本及人力资本的拥有量密切相关。