A Family Business: The Bartholomews of Edinburgh in the First World War

This article examines the lived experience of the Bartholomew family of Edinburgh during the course of the First World War. Families, as much as nations, empires and other communities, were important participants in the conflict that collapsed the boundaries between the various battlefronts and homefront like none before. The Bartholomews’ letters to one another were the chief means by which the shared experience of total war was mediated and constructed, as well as a vital source for ascertaining the role played by the family in their nation’s war effort. In them, we can see the way unpalatable truths were concealed beneath literary tropes, drawn from the language of glory and sacrifice, but also the way such sentiments were real and deeply felt to a generation not yet experienced in the cynicism and sarcasm that the war occasioned in the English language as much as the mind. These letters also represent a form of organically created propaganda that sustained the Bartholomews’ morale and commitment to the war effort, and also their collective identity as a family unit, despite the scattering of parents and siblings from Edinburgh, to Flanders, and northern Italy.     

British School Atlases, 1880–1930: Questions of Relevance,Credibility and Authorship in the Production of Geographical Knowledge

Abstract

The focus in this article is on school atlases produced in Britain in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and on what is revealed, both in their pages and in the processes behind their compilation, about the people who were producing and using such map books. The Bartholomew Archive, in Edinburgh, has proved to be an exceptionally rich source of hitherto unexamined data on the business and personal activities of one of the leading producers of school atlases, the local firm of John Bartholomew and Son, which was active in map making and publishing between 1880 and 1987. The sociology and pattern of communication of publishing, explored by book historians and historians of science, geography and cartography in other contexts, are here considered in relation to the atlases that were produced in Britain for schools in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the Empire in the period 1880–1930. Particular attention is paid to the efforts of mapmakers, publishers, geographers and other professionals to ensure the relevance of the maps selected in school atlases for specific audiences, to guarantee the credibility of the information communicated through these atlases, and to negotiate questions of authorship.     

Matthew Clark and the Beginnings of Chart Publishing in the United States

ABSTRACT

At the end of the eighteenth century Boston, Massachusetts, emerged as a centre of chart publishing in the United States. With little cartographic experience among them, Bartholomew Burges, John Norman and, later, Matthew Clark undertook a publishing venture that resulted in the first atlas of sea charts made in the United States. The research presented here redefines the roles of the principals and examines the atlas's relationship to other Boston publications.     

On Trial—Social Relations of Map Production in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain

ABSTRACT

This article examines the social relations of map production in mid-nineteenth-century Britain with reference to moments when maps and their makers were ‘on trial’—legally in court in Edinburgh in 1853 and by public opinion in London in 1854 following a lecture. The principal protagonists include Alexander Keith Johnston of the map firm W. & A. K. Johnston, the German cartographer August Petermann, the mapseller Trelawney Saunders and John Bartholomew junior of the Bartholomew map firm. The article draws upon Thomas Gieryn’s idea of the ‘truth spot’ and on Matthew Edney’s call for studies in processual map history.     

Refit and Oxygen Isotope Analysis of Freshwater Mussel Shells from the Tillar Farms Site (3DR30), Southeast Arkansas

ABSTRACT

We investigate the link between the consumption of foodstuffs, excavation of a large pit, and disposal of waste at the Tillar Farms site (3DR30), southeast Arkansas, using refit and oxygen isotope analyses of well-preserved freshwater mussel shells from Feature 1. Only 0.13% of 7,408 valves analyzed were unidentifiable to species.The refit analysis produced 460 refits across 23 species and strongly indicates that the shell midden represents a single episode of shellfish gathering, consumption, and discard. Oxygen isotope analysis of five randomly selected shells are used as a test of the refit results. δ¹⁸O values from the five archaeological shells are compared to modern control samples of live-collected specimens from Bayou Bartholomew in winter of 2011. Refit analysis suggests the accumulation of mussel shells occurred quickly, likely as a result of one collection, consumption, and discard event. δ¹⁸O values suggest this activity took place during a single winter season.