Stamped Signs on Manuscript Maps in the Renaissance

Abstract

The cordiform projection employed by Oronce Fine, Gerard Mercator and Abraham Ortelius may have had a hermetic meaning. The focus in this paper is on Ortelius, for recent studies have suggested connections between Ortelius, Christopher Plantin and a clandestine religious sect in Antwerp, called the Family of Love (Family of Charity), whose emblem was the heart, source of divine illumination and of Free Will. It is argued that Ortelius's contemporaries in the radical religious circles of northern Europe would have perceived the Theatrum orbis terrarum in such a light. As Guillaume Postel's evaluation of Ortelius's work demonstrates, the atlas was considered a talismanic book based on the power of the images.     

Palaeolithic archaeology and the evolution of mind

This paper reviews recent archaeological studies concerning the evolution of mind. It is structured around four themes: language, intelligence, symbolism, and social learning. It includes reference to recent work in other disciplines that is either having, or likely to have, considerable impact on archaeological thought. The evolution of mind is a highly contentious subject, plagued by problems of definition and lacking an explicit methodology. This paper argues that the two most positive trends of recent work have been greater attempts at interdisciplinary studies and the integration of the study of cognition with that of hominid lifestyles.     

Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language,Symbolism, and Music–An Alternative Multidisciplinary Perspective

In recent years, there has been a tendency to correlate the origin of modern culture and language with that of anatomically modern humans. Here we discuss this correlation in the light of results provided by our first hand analysis of ancient and recently discovered relevant archaeological and paleontological material from Africa and Europe. We focus in particular on the evolutionary significance of lithic and bone technology, the emergence of symbolism, Neandertal behavioral patterns, the identification of early mortuary practices, the anatomical evidence for the acquisition of language, the development of conscious symbolic storage, the emergence of musical traditions, and the archaeological evidence for the diversification of languages during the Upper Paleolithic. This critical reappraisal contradicts the hypothesis of a symbolic revolution coinciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago, but also highlights inconsistencies in the anatomically–culturally modern equation and the potential contribution of anatomically pre-modern human populations to the emergence of these abilities. No firm evidence of conscious symbolic storage and musical traditions are found before the Upper Paleolithic. However, the oldest known European objects that testify to these practices already show a high degree of complexity and geographic variability suggestive of possible earlier, and still unrecorded, phases of development.     

Shells below,stars above: four perspectives on shell beads

ABSTRACT

In the papers assembled here, five scholars focus on shell beads at site, watershed, and regional scales. Themes include manufacturing techniques such as bore size discussions, changes in bead preferences over time and geography, the appearance of beaded regalia, and shell bead meaning. Claassen’s paper addresses the beads at Late Archaic Indian Knoll; Connaway discusses shell beads in northwestern Mississippi; Pearson looks at beads from coastal Georgia; and Webster and King examine beads before and after European contact in the Potomac basin.     

“An Ægyptian darknesse”: pagan chronologies,historia sacra,and the hieroglyph in England, 1646-1690

ABSTRACT

In this article I consider the depiction of the Egyptian hieroglyph in several seventeenth-century English religio-historiographical works that engage with the problems posed by the Egyptian dynastic records – records that challenged the validity of biblical chronology. Critical tradition has been keen to view the hieroglyph in the context of esoteric European scholarship, while scholarship on the English Enlightenment has tended to overlook the importance of religious motivations in “secular” intellectual projects. I show here, however, that some of the first apparently “secular” approaches to the hieroglyphs in England were not in works that espoused proto-Enlightenment linguistics or other intellectual ideals, but in religiously-motivated projects that, seeking to buttress sacred history and the primacy of the Judaic tradition against the threat of pagan chronologies, aimed to discredit the hieroglyph as an icon of pagan learning.