Inventing Revivalist Millennialism: Edwards and the Scottish Connection

Revivalism and millennialism are important concepts that influence contemporary evangelicalism. However it was in the Great Awakening that Jonathan Edwards and select Scottish ministers first connected revivalism and millennialism together in a new evangelical print culture. Evangelical ministers used publications and personal correspondence to hypothesise that the current Atlantic revivals were signs pointing towards Christ’s millennial kingdom. The 1740s stands as a unique decade where evangelical ministers created an influential synthesis of revivalism, social progress, and millennialism. The revivalist and millennial synthesis was a harbinger of the evangelical future for religious movements in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

New field and geochemical evidence from vitrified forts in South Morar and Moidart,NW Scotland: further insight into melting and the process of vitrification

New field and laboratory work has been carried out on two vitrified forts, Rhubh Aird Ghamhsgail near Arisaig and The Torr near Acharacle. Fieldwork confirms that both are constructed from rubble largely comprising local psammitic Moine Supergroup rocks and that their walls are relatively well preserved with large portions of vitrified material remain, particularly at The Torr, where remnants of up to four courses of stone facing occur. The preserved wall fills comprise mostly psammitic rubble set in a dark brown, vesicular, glassy to aphanitic matrix that in many places preserves evidence of downward flow. Conventionally, vitrification is explained through combustion of timber interlacing within the walls leading to melting that has been modelled in the granite system. However, considering Iron Age smelting technology, this leads to problems in obtaining high temperatures (≥1000 °C) over tens of metres of wall length. Geochemical analysis of the vitrification indicates that modelling the melting within the granite system is incapable of providing a partial melt matching the composition of vitrification. At The Torr, pelite fragments have been found near the base of the wall where partial melt occurs as black bubbles. In these fragments it appears that micas (largely biotite) have formed the melt via the reaction biotite + quartz = sanidine + orthopyroxene + liquid which takes place at temperatures c. 850 °C. Quench crystals in the melt include orthopyroxene, plagioclase, spinels, ilmenite, magnetite, anatase and apatite confirming that it was not a granite melt. These melted fragments are found next to material with biotite that, superficially, appears unmelted, suggesting that some of the heating took place perhaps away from the edifice and unmelted residue was utilised as part of the rubble fill, suggesting that in situ partial melting of the rubble is unlikely. However, in other parts of the edifice heat affected, yet unmelted, fragments are dominant. The new evidence indicates that vitrification occurred at lower temperatures than previously modelled and thus the melts could have been achieved more easily than previously thought.     

Fixing a Swamp of Cobras: The Clash between Capital and Water in Shaping Urban Vulnerabilities

This paper addresses how capital can refashion landscapes and patterns of risk and vulnerability. Drawing on the emblematic case of the conversion of Thailand’s Cobra Swamp into Suvarnabhumi International Airport we argue that there is a fundamental clash between the internal logic of capital accumulation and the ecology of water that occurs in places in which land is under water for much of the year. Counterintuitively investment in public infrastructure such as airports targets locations that are exposed to flood risks. While the literature on capital fixes tends to treat “land” writ large, this paper adds a dimension that has been overlooked in the theoretical work, by highlighting the significance of the ecology of the land in which such fixes occur as a means of understanding patterns of investment, land use change and vulnerability. Our analysis draws on three separate but related concepts of capital “fixes”—spatial, technological and high/low road fixes. We argue the importance of recognising the specific ecological characteristics of land that capital “fixes”. This perspective has global significance in providing critical insight into the ways in which capital creates and accommodates the kinds of vulnerabilities and risks associated with climate change.     

Experimentally produced glass compared with that occurring at The Torr, NW Scotland, UK: vitrification through biotite melting

It is proposed that the vitrification in some Iron Age forts in NW Scotland can be explained through decomposition of micas (largely biotite) giving melts that react with or dissolve quartz and crystallise orthopyroxene and feldspars, so equating with the reaction biotite + quartz = sanidine + orthopyroxene + liquid. A sample of Moine semi-pelite has been experimentally melted at c. 850 °C demonstrating this breakdown reaction. A preserved thermal gradient across the sample reveals the progressive degradation of biotite towards the melting (upper) surface. Degradation is evident from the initial emphasis of mica cleavages in grains at the bottom of the sample, and then appearance and progressive increase in size of bubbles associated with biotite and melt towards the top of the sample. A chocolate-brown melt was produced as a coating on the upper surface and along micaceous layers. A near equivalent sample was located from the fort at The Torr that, whilst being more thoroughly affected by heat, with no unaffected biotite, preserved similar textures. Compositions of original Moine minerals are used to constrain the melts produced and melt evolution is tracked through quenched crystals. These include ternary feldspars as well as sanidine, spinels and orthopyroxene. Spot geochemical evidence demonstrates the heterogeneity of the melts, plus varying contributions of Ca and Na that could be attributed to the onset of reactions involving feldspars and other minerals from the original assemblage. It is thus concluded that a similar temperature to that of c. 850 °C derived in the experiment was reached in the vitrification process at The Torr in order to produce the glass observed.