Forty-Third Annual Congress,Darlington and Bishop Auckland, 1886

Abstract

Although the wall-paintings in the three first floor bedrooms and the connecting passage at Ellys Manor House, Great Ponton (SK 927 304), have been known to exist for a considerable time and are amongst the most extensive and important of their period in the country, very little has been written about them and no attempt has been made to co-ordinate the information that is available.     

Imagining Palestinian Archaeologies: A Sampler

As three of the articles in this collection demonstrate, one central axis of the Zionist archaeological project is the absolute necessity of diminishing, and ultimately erasing, the importance and existence of aspects of “the archaeological record” that pertain to non-Jewish presences in Palestine, particularly and especially Islamic civilizations and the long-term presence of an indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian population. In this introduction, I focus, however, upon Zionist archaeology’s rearticulation of Jewish identity in nationalist form, an operation that has entailed the elaboration of a consistently simplified, unidimensional, or narrowly channeled interpretive version of Jewish history and Jewish identity in Palestine over time. Through several pointed queries, I suggest alternative interpretations of one element of the Zionist archaeological narrative that in turn could lead to other ways of thinking about the long-term presence of Jewish people in Palestine.     

Starch granules,dental calculus and new perspectives on ancient diet

Recent work in various parts of the world has suggested the possibility of ancient starch granules surviving and adhering to archaeological artefacts. Often this information is used to infer aspects of diet. One additional source for recovery of archaeological starch granules is dental calculus. The presence of plant food debris in dental calculus is well known but has not been not widely investigated using archaeological material. The extraction of starch granules from dental calculus represents a direct link to the consumption of starchy food by humans or animals. Using dental calculus also sidesteps many other questions still inherent in using starch granules to reconstruct aspects of ancient diet, such as the effects of diagenesis on their morphology; as the starches are trapped inside a concreted matrix they are less likely to alter over time. We used amylase digestion by a starch-specific enzyme to confirm the material as starch.     

Book reviews

Psychological Dimensions of Near Eastern Studies. Edited by L. Carl Brown and Norman Itzkowitz. Princeton, N.J.: The Darwin Press, 1977. 382 pp. $16.95.

The Little Black Fish and Other Modern Persian Stories. By Samad Behrangi. Translated by Mary and Eric Hooglund, with a Biographical‐Historical Essay by Thomas Ricks. Washington, D.C.: Three Continent Press, 1976. 133 pp. $14.00.

Artists for the Shah: Late Sixteenth‐Century Painting at the Imperial Court of Iran. By Anthony Welch. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976. xvi + 233 pp.

Edebiyat, a Journal of Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 1. Edited by William L. Hanaway, Jr. Philadelphia: Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania, 1976.

An Introduction to Ottoman Poetry. By Walter G. Andrews, Jr. Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976. x + 195 pp.

Development of the Iranian Oil Industry: International and Domestic Aspects. By Fereidun Fesharaki. New York: Praeger; London: Martin Robertson, 1976. 315 pp. $19.50.

Islamic History, a New Interpretation: I. A.D. 600–750 (A.H. 132). By M. A. Shaban. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971 (paperbound edition, 1976). viii + 197 pp.     

Hope’s Work

This article, given as the Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture on 28 August 2019, argues that hope can be found through training an attentiveness to the social world in troubled times. Hope then is an empirical question and a matter of documenting hopeful possibilities that often otherwise remain unremarked upon. In this sense “worldly hope” draws possibilities that are manifested in the social world and stands in contrast to cruel forms of optimism or an unrealistic faith in future progress. An argument for such an approach to hope and trouble is developed through two examples drawn from contemporary London life, namely, the silent walks at Grenfell Tower in West London and a community arts project in Bellingham, South East London.     

Inaugural Address at Durham

Abstract

The documented gift of Kilpeck church to St Peter's Abbey (now the Cathedral), Gloucester, is taken as the starting-point for the examination of sculptural and architectural links between Gloucester and Gloucestershire churches, on the one hand, and Kilpeck and Herefordshire churches, on the other. Technical aspects of the so-called Dymock School of Sculpture emphasise its importance in the formation of the Herefordshire School. Aspects of Roman and Anglo-Saxon heritage are also considered.