The margin to act: a framework of investigation for women's (and men's) medieval art-making

ABSTRACT

One of the challenges faced by medieval art historians is to recognise the diverse roles women played in matters of medieval art, while seeing also the impact of society on their artistic choices. By tracing how one work of art can open new critical insights into another, and how disparate objects and buildings – if thought through together – can illuminate our understanding of the Middle Ages overall, we can discern the multi-layered stages of the creative process. The term ‘makers of art’ is proposed as a shift away from the commonly used words – artist, patron, recipient – and the preconceived notions about the individuals who fulfilled those roles. The paper also lays out a framework – ‘the margin to act’ – for the investigation of the multi-levelled interactions of women with medieval art and, ultimately, the writing of history.     

Naval Battlefield Archaeology of the Lost Kublai Khan Fleets

From AD 1274 Chinese emperor Kublai Khan dispatched fleets of ships in a series of attempts to expand the empire's hegemony and extend his rule into East Asia (Japan) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Champa and Java). Archaeological remains associated with the fleets and battles have been found at Takashima Island, Japan and on the B?ch Ð?ng River, Vietnam. This paper develops a thematic approach to these sites within a framework of naval battlefield archaeology. It compares the similarities and differences in environmental conditions and archaeological contexts of the two sites in Japan and Vietnam. It also outlines recent archaeological research conducted between 2008 and 2010 on the physical remains at the B?ch Ð?ng River battlefield site.     

CROSS‐CHANNEL CONNECTIVITY: WEALDEN WHETSTONE IMPORTS FROM ROMAN BRITAIN TO THE CONTINENT

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate cross‐Channel exchange of calcareous sandstone‐type whetstones derived from the Weald (Sussex, UK) in the Roman period. The presence of this particular type of whetstone at several Roman sites on the Continent – more specifically, in Belgium, France and the Netherlands – is reported for the first time. The morphology, geological provenance, petrographic characteristics and distribution patterns are discussed, based on a comparative analysis with archaeological and geological reference material. The geological analysis identifies a common geological source for the Continental finds: the very fine‐grained, thin‐bedded, flagstone‐like calcareous sandstone beds of the Lower Cretaceous Wealden Clay Formation. These sandstones were, most probably, extracted in the north‐western part of the Weald area. The distribution pattern of the archaeological material implies the importance of personal mobility, with potential military affinities.     

Servants and Bourgeois Life in Urban Sweden in the Early 20th Century

By 1900, most Swedish servants had a rural background. They had migrated to the city from the countryside to perform domestic service in private households. Here they met bourgeois ideals of the comfortable home where the masters could demand home-cooked meals, clean clothes and pleasant surroundings. Servants were needed in order to fulfil this ideal. Yet, the number of domestic servants declined strongly in urban Sweden during the first half of the 20th century. This problem is often called ‘the servant crisis’. We explore the background to the scarcity of servants, the relationships between masters and servants and the role of servants in creating economic and cultural distinctions. We analyse the various adaptations of bourgeois households to the decline of domestic servants. Qualitative sources from private letters, diaries and autobiographies are combined with quantitative evidence from censuses.     

LOCAL STATUS AND NATIONAL SOCIAL WELFARE

Perceptions of individual well-being are influenced by local status, i.e., one's place in the income distribution of one's reference group. In general, reference groups are smaller than the entire nation. If national social welfare is an aggregate of individual's well-being, then it is not symmetric with respect to all individuals. A geographical interpretation of reference groups means that the welfare of a family living in one region is only influenced by other families in that region. An empirical application, using states, shows that a Gini index modified to reflect local status showed much less improvement 1949-1979 than did the standard Gini.     

Tourism,leisure and work in an east African pastoral society (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article investigates what happens with leisure experience between cultures when the Mursi of southwestern Ethiopia meet with international tourists. I propose that instead of regarding leisure as a fixed human condition within one society, it might fruitfully be approached as a process that evolves when different societies meet, i.e. as a constantly emerging (and disappearing) practice in cross‐cultural encounters. Tourism, studied broadly from an anthropological point of view, offers an excellent field for this investigation. The Western ideology of leisure, mobilized by tourists in non‐Western settings, is a good entry point to make tangible how societies understand leisure pursuits in intercultural encounters.     

Teaching and learning global urban geography: an international learning-centred approach

The recent drive for the internationalization of curricula, together with calls for the internationalization of the sub-discipline of urban geography beyond the “west”, and the growing shift towards learning-centred paradigms in higher education, provided impetus for the design and delivery of an upper level undergraduate urban geography module – “Global Urbanism” – that is reported here. Using this module as a case study, the paper demonstrates the ways in which student learning and engagement with internationalized global urban geography can be facilitated by a learning-centred approach that is enhanced through the design of, and engagement with, assessment items, particularly research-led learning journals.