Impoverished mothers and poor widows: negotiating images of poverty in Marseille's courts

In the early fifteenth century, in Marseille's court of first instance, a sailor's wife Margarida Gramone sued her son-in-law's estate to recoup money she had spent nursing her dying daughter and granddaughter. She justified her claim on the money by arguing that she had been completely impoverished by the medicine, doctors and wet nurses that her sick family had needed. She called witnesses to attest to her impoverished state and they told a story of a woman unable to pay her bills and reliant on the charity of her neighbours. Other witnesses in the same case, however, suggest Margarida was not poor, but a woman of means. Attempting to reconcile this discrepancy, this article will examine how Marseille's legally savvy citizens negotiated between at least two different attitudes towards the poor: a Christian celebration of charity and a legal scepticism of a pauper's word. The legal records from late medieval Marseille show a multivalent attitude towards the poor. They suggest that the city's citizens were able to draw on different narratives about poverty in order to win over the presiding judge. At the same time, witness testimony about the poor reminds us that the burden of charity was not always welcomed by Marseille's citizens.     

Environmental Education in Russian Universities

This paper presents the results of a simulation exercise designed to explore and understand the implications of trying to survive in a marginal and poverty-stricken African community. The aim of the simulation was to create an approximation of a community involved in an income-generating project, akin to a Public Works Programme. This project sought to enable every person to earn a dollar a day on which to live. In addition, the exercise helped the participants to question and assess whether the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have a chance of reaching their proposed targets. The nearly one hundred participants were undergraduate geography students, reading Development Studies and Demography at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. The outcome of the simulation was that the students developed a clearer understanding of poverty, particularly the ‘Deprivation Trap’, and how complex the development process is in practice.     

The Violence of Poverty: Theology and Activism in an “Age of Austerity”

ABSTRACT

Faith groups are in the front line of the struggle to defeat poverty in breadline Britain. Given their roots in local communities Churches and Christian NGOs are well-placed to challenge economic policies that have resulted in the spiraling of food poverty, homelessness, personal debt and child poverty. By framing poverty as a political choice, a form of structural violence and systemic sin this paper brings peace studies and political theology into a constructive dialogue. In the face of ongoing “austerity” the paper demonstrates that poverty represents a clear and present danger to the social fabric of the UK and argues that only a re-imagined interdisciplinary theology of liberation can provide academics and activists with the tools needed to defeat systemic poverty and the cultural violence upon which it rests.     

George G. Chisholm: His influence on university and school geography

EUROPE

I Saw Two Englands. 2nd edition. By H. V. Morton. Demy 8vo. London : Methucn and Co. Ltd. Price 9s. 6d.

The German Lebensraum. By Robert E. Dickinson. Pp. 223. Penguin Special.

Scottish Pilgrimage in the Land of Lost Content. By Radcliffe Barnett. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. x+207. Edinburgh: John Grant, 1943. Price 6s.

Wild Life of Britain. By F. Fraser Darling. Illustrated. 4to. Pp.48. London : Collins Ltd., 1943. Price 4s. 6d.

France. By P. Maiixaud. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×7#fr1/2>. Pp.138. London : Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

The Economic Reconstruction of Lithuania after 1918. By A. Simutis. Demy 8vo. Pp. 148. New York and London : Columbia University Press and Humphrey Milford, 1943.

Orientations. By Ronald Storrs. Definitive Edition. London : Nicholson and Watson, 1943. Price 10s. 6d.

ASIA

The Gobi Desert. By Mildred Cable with Francesca French. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.301. London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1943. Price 21s.

Polynesians : Explorers of the Pacific. By J. E. Weckley. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 77. Washington : Smithsonian Institution, 1943.

Girlhood in the Pacific. By Mrs. Shane Leslie. London : Macdonald and Co. Price 10s. 6d.

Dawn in Siberia. By G. D. R. Phillips. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 196. London : Frederick Muller, 1943. Price 8s. 6d.

My India, My West. By Dr. Krishnalal Shridharani.

Growing Up in New Guinea. By Margaret Mead. Pelican Books, 1942.

India. By T. A. Raman. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×#fr1/2>. Pp.140. London: Humphrey Milford at the Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

Report from Tokyo. By J. C. Grew. Demy 8vo. Pp.103. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1943. Price 2s. 6d.

AFRICA

Diary of a District Officer. By K. Bradley. Demy 8vo. Pp. 192. London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd. Price 5s.

Libyan Log. By E. G. Ogilvie. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×7#fr1/2>. Pp.103. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd Ltd., 1943. Price 51.

North Africa. By A. H. Brodrick. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×7#fr1/2>. Pp.97. London: Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

Across Madagascar. By Olive Murray Chapman. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 144. London : Burrows, 1943. Price 9s. 6d.

Dead Men Do Tell Tales. By Byron de Prorok. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.221. London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1943. Price 10s. 6d.

AMERICA

Canada. By B. K. Sandweix. Illustrated. Pp.124. 7#fr1/2>×4#fr1/2> London: Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

Exploring the Little Rivers of New Jersey. By James and Margaret Cawley. Princeton : Princeton University Press.

South America, with Mexico and Central America. By J. B. Trend. Illustrated. 7#fr1/2>×4#fr1/2>. Pp. 128. London : Oxford University Press, 1942. Price 3s. 6d.

Green Fire. By P. W. Rainier. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+216. London: John Murray, 1943. Price 12s. 6d.

GENERAL

Climatic Accidents in Landscape‐making. By C. A. Cotton. Illustrated. Pp. xx+354. Wellington and London: Whitecombe and Tombs, 1942. Price 301.

Half a Life. By Major C. S. Jarvis. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+216. London: John Murray, 1943. Price 15s.

Scottish Gaelic Studies. Vol. V, Part II. Demy 8vo. Pp. 198. London : Basil Blackwell, 1942. Price 9s.

Auld Reekie. By A. A. MacGregor. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. ix+204. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1943. Price 12s. 6d.

A Journey to Gibraltar. By R. Henrey. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. vi + 169. London : J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1943. Price 12s. 6d.

EDUCATIONAL

Teach Tourself Geography. By J. C. Kingsland and W. B. Cornish. Pp. 287. London : English Universities Press Ltd., 1943. Price 3s.     

Poverty Point Objects Reconsidered

In this paper we examine the enigmatic but plentiful hand-molded, baked-clay objects known as Poverty Point Objects (PPOs) from a number of different facets. Although the vast majority of these Terminal Archaic artifacts are found in the Lower Mississippi Valley, they also are found at sites as far north as Clarksville, Indiana, and as far east as the Atlantic Coast of Florida. Although most archaeologists generally assume PPOs were used primarily for roasting food, we consider a variety of other possible functions, including their use in boiling water and as symbolic tokens linking the far-flung Poverty Point culture area. We demonstrate that even though a few other archaeological cultures in the world used round clay balls for cooking, the Poverty Point culture was unique in the care, variety, and standardized forms of its baked-clay objects. We discuss the various PPO types and their possible functions in nine distinct regions in the southeastern United States and, based on our thin-section analyses of 66 samples, we demonstrate that PPOs circulated among different sites in these regions.     

Post‐conflict Heritage and Tourism in Cambodia: The Burden of Angkor

The World Heritage Site of Angkor is enduring one of the most crucial, turbulent periods in its 1200‐year history. Since the early 1990s over 20 countries have contributed millions of dollars to help safeguard and restore its temples. As one of Southeast Asia’s premier destinations, Angkor has also seen a 10,000% growth in international tourist arrivals in just over a decade. The challenges arising from the intense convergence of these two paradoxical and unstable agendas—heritage conservation and tourism development—are greatly compounded by Cambodia’s need to recover from war and turmoil. This paper explores the critical trends that have surfaced at Angkor and why the challenges posed by surging tourism have been inadequately addressed. It argues Angkor’s dominant role within Cambodia’s post‐conflict heritage and tourism industries requires closer, more critical attention given recent events in the country. This article is the summary of Winter's book Post‐conflict Heritage, Post‐colonial Tourism (Routledge 2007).     

Impoverished mothers and poor widows: negotiating images of poverty in Marseille's courts

In the early fifteenth century, in Marseille's court of first instance, a sailor's wife Margarida Gramone sued her son-in-law's estate to recoup money she had spent nursing her dying daughter and granddaughter. She justified her claim on the money by arguing that she had been completely impoverished by the medicine, doctors and wet nurses that her sick family had needed. She called witnesses to attest to her impoverished state and they told a story of a woman unable to pay her bills and reliant on the charity of her neighbours. Other witnesses in the same case, however, suggest Margarida was not poor, but a woman of means. Attempting to reconcile this discrepancy, this article will examine how Marseille's legally savvy citizens negotiated between at least two different attitudes towards the poor: a Christian celebration of charity and a legal scepticism of a pauper's word. The legal records from late medieval Marseille show a multivalent attitude towards the poor. They suggest that the city's citizens were able to draw on different narratives about poverty in order to win over the presiding judge. At the same time, witness testimony about the poor reminds us that the burden of charity was not always welcomed by Marseille's citizens.     

Formal analyses and functional accounts of groundstone “plummets” from Poverty Point, Louisiana

Groundstone plummets of magnetite or hematite are commonly found artifacts of the Late Archaic period in Louisiana. While often assumed to have functioned as weights for fishnets or as thrown objects used to catch waterfowl, relatively little empirical evidence has been generated to explain their form and features relative to hypothesized performance in prehistoric behavior. To address this deficiency, we provide a morphometric analysis of the variability in plummet shape as a means for studying the performance constraints inherent to their use. Based on our analyses, we find that plummet form is well explained as a component of weighted looms, supporting the early use weaving technology in the Late Archaic of Eastern North America.     

Trajectories of Development: International Heritage Management of Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa

Archaeology and material heritage are increasingly being used for development projects aimed at producing economic growth and reducing poverty. I am interested in how these projects construct particular ‘developmental’ visions of heritage, orienting and circumscribing relationships both with the past and contemporary social contexts. Here I address these processes as developmental technologies that produce poverty as a ‘local’ affair, in need of intervention, set in contrast to the traveling and translational abilities of international expertise in heritage management and development. I trace the expansion of this expertise across the Middle East and North Africa region, in a variety of contexts where material heritage is mobilized to reduce poverty. Importantly, the question of the economic value of heritage is necessarily placed center-stage in such projects. I argue that as archaeologists we need to engage with the economic value of material heritage, in order to start examining how exactly material heritage works in the world: to what ends and results, in what contexts, who gains to profit, and who suffers.     

Tetrahedron baked-clay objects from an early woodland context at the Jaketown site,Mississippi

Excavations undertaken in 1951 at the Jaketown site revealed a dense deposit of fragmented and intact pyramid-shaped baked-clay objects (BCOs) at the base of Mound A. This deposit was associated with the site’s Early Woodland component. Recent fieldwork at Jaketown also encountered the same tetrahedron deposit and identified an additional and distinct pit feature filled with the objects. In this article, we present the results of analyses that examine the production, composition, chronology, and function of these enigmatic baked-clay artifacts. Following a hiatus associated with massive flooding in the Mississippi Valley ca. 3200–2850 cal B.P., Jaketown was re-occupied by people who shared ceramic affinities with groups to the south and to the east and, who like many contemporaries, used BCOs as a part of their cooking technology. The tetrahedron deposit represents one of the earliest dated Tchula contexts at ca. 2600 cal B.P., and was used over a short time for a social purpose that brought populations together for food consumption as a means of encouraging cooperation.