PIECING TOGETHER THE STORY OF A PAIR OF MAKRON’S FRAGMENTED CUPS

In 2022, an Athenian red-figured cup attributed to Makron was returned to Italy by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cup had been acquired in fragments, through purchase and gift, from multiple sources over several years, starting with two fragments from the restorer Fritz Bürki in 1978. A second cup, also attributed to Makron, was acquired in a parallel way. The sources for the fragments from both cups point to galleries collectors and donors – Summa Galleries, Frieda Tchachos, Elizabeth Hecht, and Dietrich von Bothmer – who have been associated with other material that has been repatriated to Italy in recent years. It is suggested that some of the incised ‘signatures’ by Hieron that are found on cups attributed to Makron may have been applied since antiquity.     

Remapping Tutira: contours in the environmental history of New Zealand

Although members of the first generation of professional geographers in New Zealand identified the ousting of the indigenous plant cover and the partial establishment of an exotic (mainly European) vegetation in its place as an essential theme in the history of that country, and Alfred Crosby made a brief case study of the islands in hisEcological Imperialism, scale problems have made it difficult to develop a microgeographical perspective on the often intricate and incremental processes of environmental transformation. To this end, this paper explores a detailed account of the natural history of a single North Island sheep station written by its owner, W. H. Guthrie Smith, in 1921. By readingTutira, an idiosyncratic but fascinating work, with a geographical eye, the local dimensions of the floral and faunal invasion of New Zealand are revealed. “A record of minute alterations noted on one patch of land” illuminates the biogeographical processes by which New Zealand was transformed and offers insight into an important distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘environmental’ history.     

James Matthews excavation A second interim report

Les fouilles de James Matthews. Second rapport prelimhaire P. BAKER AND G. HENDERSON Les auteurs décrivent dans ce rapport les méthodes utiliées et les résultats obtenus en 1975–77, sur une épave coulée par faible fond sur la côte ouest d'Australie. Ils présentent, en détail, l'utilisation d'un carroyage rigide, facilement manoeuvrable et servant en même temps de plate-forme pour une tourelle - photo pyramidale. Les avantages et les limites de la photogrammétrie, pour les relevés subaquatiques, sont aussi exposés.     

Pioneers,politicians and the conservation of forests in early New Zealand

In pioneering societies there is usually little interest in resource conservation, and scant concern for the consequences of environmental disturbance. Yet legislation to conserve the extensive forests of New Zealand was introduced soon after settlement began, and despite a general desire for material improvement. Ultimately, this paradox is attributable to George Perkins Marsh's demonstration of the ecological consequences of man's impact on his environment in Man and nature. The arguments of this work published in 1864 were soon heard in New Zealand. But a mere handful of New Zealanders recognized the importance of Marsh's ideas. For the most part, they were immigrants from the middle and upper ranks of British society, drawn to the colony by the prospects it offered, and removed from the general struggle to tame the land. Their concern was essential in promoting interest in the questions of environmental disturbance and conservation in the 1870s. The immediate reason for the introduction of the New Zealand Forests Bill in 1874, however, was Prime Minister Julius Vogel's recognition of the applicability of the conservationists' arguments to the New Zealand scene. Thus character and circumstance combined to heighten the impact of Marsh's writing and to temper the ethic of exploitative land use in the pioneering environment of New Zealand.     

‘Handle with care’: literature,archaeology, slavery

This article examines the relationship between literary and bioarchaeological approaches to slavery, and investigates how the methods and priorities of each discipline might inform each other in understanding what it was like to be enslaved. Both bioarchaeologists and creative writers have attempted to access the inner lives of enslaved people, yet there has been little interaction between them. This paper offers an account of a research project which brought together a literary scholar, two archaeological scientists and seven creative writers to explore how writing might not only communicate a history understood through archaeological evidence, but could itself inform approaches to that evidence. We discuss two key themes which emerged from the project: Conversation and Caring. These themes were crucial to the interdisciplinary process, as it was only through attention to our relationships with each other that we could begin to reassess the nature of material in each of our disciplines.