Duncan F. Gregory and Robert Leslie Ellis: second-generation reformers of British mathematics

The paper discusses some of the contributions of Duncan Farquharson Gregory and Robert Leslie Ellis to symbolical algebra and their views on the philosophy of mathematics with the aim of revisiting the accepted characterisation of the second generation of reformers of British mathematics found in Crosbie Smith and Norton Wise’s seminal Energy and Empire. It is argued that at least some of the features brought to the fore in their treatment of the work of Gregory and Ellis – namely “geometrical methods” in mathematics and “anti-metaphysical”, “non-hypothetical” and “practical” knowledge – cannot be straightforwardly upheld. On the one hand, Gregory’s generalisation of George Peacock’s symbolical algebra was connected to several natural philosophical considerations underlying the Scottish Newtonians’ “abstractionism” and “geometrical fluxional analysis”. On the other hand, Ellis’s idealist philosophy of mathematics and science insisted that the a priori necessary truths of mathematics could inform the “hypothetical part of scientific induction”. A more nuanced understanding of the place of the second generation of reformers within the analytical revolution in Victorian Britain should thus take into account the eclectic foundational position that arises from the work of Gregory and Ellis.     

“I do not know if Mum knew what was going on”: Social reproduction in boarding schools in Soviet Lapland

ABSTRACT

This inquiry into the history of boarding schools for indigenous and quasi-indigenous, tundra-connected children in the Soviet part of Lapland tries to answer why children were sent to a boarding school despite their parents living in the same village, and also why an additional school for mentally disabled children, a school half as big as the boarding school for “regular” children, was opened. Data from oral history interviews among former pupils and teachers, both indigenous and incomers, are combined with archival materials. Using the concepts of cynical knowledge as well as the Bourdieuan notions of social exclusion and reproduction, concealed functions of the boarding school system are identified, among which are the attenuation of housing shortage and the operation of the school out of economic interests, alongside with ethnocentric and paternalist patterns. The stigmatization of mostly Sámi children from relocated families as mentally disabled is set in a frame of individualization of the negative, which sought to present failures of the state’s social engineering as personal fallibility.     

Understanding Abandonments in the North American Southwest

The North American Southwest is renowned for its rich archaeological record. Thousands of prehistoric houses and ceremonial centers remain partially standing or form mounds that mark prehistoric villages that were once actively occupied and remain important to the descendants. The visibility of archaeological remains has sparked interest in questions of abandonment among archaeologists and the lay public. We explore reasons for this interest, how it is manifest in archaeological research, and how perception of that research influences popular views of the past and of native people. Our focus is on explanations for the causes of site and regional abandonment as well as on explications of the processes by which abandonments occur. Essential to our perspective is the view that abandonment is a process that involves decisions to move, which may be promoted by dire circumstances, but which are most often settlement strategies. The process of moving requires economic, social, and political decisions about the places from which people move and to which they move.     

792 or 793? Charlemagne’s canal project: craft,nature and memory

In autumn 793, Charlemagne visited the fossatum magnum (the ‘big ditch’ or canal) between the Rhine and Danube. Excavations, dendrochronology and a re‐reading of Carolingian Annals shed new light on the chronology and setting of this canal, which was planned in 792, initiated in 793, and abandoned later that year. The abandonment is attested by both written and archaeological evidence. The different versions of the annals offer a unique opportunity for comparison with the archaeological record. Evidence that works of Vitruvius circulated in the Carolingian court suggests that Charlemagne’s advisers were drawing on classical tradition when they pitched the idea of digging the canal.     

Natron as a flux in the early vitreous materials industry: sources,beginnings and reasons for decline

Natron deposits, the best known of which being those at Wadi Natrun in Egypt, have been used as the flux in the production of vitreous materials from the early 4th millennium BC onwards. In the present paper, the history of the use of natron as a flux is traced from its beginnings in the glaze of Badarian steatite beads, through its use in glass production starting in the 1st millennium BC, until its apparent shortage during the 7th to 9th centuries AD, and its subsequent replacement by plant ash during the 9th century AD. Documentary evidence for possible natron sources in Egypt, including the Wadi Natrun, and around the eastern Mediterranean is summarised, and the results of recent fieldwork at the Wadi Natrun and at al-Barnuj in the Western Nile Delta are presented. The possible reasons for the apparent shortage of natron from 7th to 9th centuries AD and its subsequent replacement by plant ash as the flux used in glass production during the 9th century AD are then considered. These include the possibility that, because of the massive scale of glass production, the demand for natron exceeded its supply; the possible effect of climatic changes; and the potentially disruptive role of political events in the Wadi Natrun–Delta region.     

Changes in regional organization and mobility in the Zuni region of the American Southwest during the Pueblo III and IV periods: insights from INAA studies

The transition from the late Pueblo III (AD 1200–1275) to Pueblo IV (AD 1275–1400) period marks one of the most dramatic eras of demographic and social upheaval in the American Southwest. At this time, much of the northern Southwest was depopulated as thousands of ancestral Pueblo people moved to new homelands. In the Zuni region, this transition included a residential shift from dispersed, largely household-scale settlements to massive, multi-storied pueblos housing hundreds of people and a simultaneous contraction of regional settlement to a central core along the Zuni River and its major tributaries. This article presents a synthesis of our recent independent efforts to utilize instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) to investigate changes in social interaction in the Zuni region before and after this transition. We suggest that in addition to significant local and regional settlement shifts, the Pueblo III–IV transition in the Zuni region was accompanied by a major reorganization of pottery distribution networks as clear social boundaries began to emerge between village clusters. More generally, our combined study also highlights the iterative nature of INAA data analysis, the benefits of large sample sizes, and the utility of a diachronic interpretative approach.     

A Ground Motion Record Selection Approach Based on Multiobjective Optimization

The evaluation of the seismic safety and reliability of buildings and building contents within a probabilistic framework often requires response history analyses using site-specific ground motion records. The ground motion selection method proposed in this paper addresses this issue by a stochastic search procedure in which record sets are selected such that first- and second-order statistics (median and dispersion) satisfy predefined ground motion spectrum targets over a wide period range. Once a ground motion record set is selected, it can be used for seismic assessment of a broad class of buildings within the target period range at the given location.     

Refining correspondence analysis-based ceramic seriation of regional data sets

Ceramic seriation is one of the primary tools used by archaeologists to create chronologies, especially for surface survey data. In this article, we outline a bootstrapped approach to correspondence analysis-based seriation designed to help assess and improve the stability of relative orderings produced through such analyses. This procedure systematically identifies and removes small samples and sites with unusual samples, such as those with multiple components, which are not handled well by seriation and require secondary interpretation. Our approach combines data from multiple projects in the Zuni region of the American Southwest in order to gauge the effects of intraregional variation in ceramic distributions and reexamine prior interpretations of demographic change based on individual projects. This analysis highlights two previously unknown regional trends, including variation in the distribution of multicomponent sites and potential short-term depopulation of a significant part of the region. Based on this example, we further suggest that our method may be particularly useful in situations where little prior chronological information is available.