bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Holy Wisdom and British foreign policy, 1918–1922: the St. Sophia redemption agitation
Authors: Goldstein Erik
Published: January 2014

As the Ottoman Empire tottered towards its final collapse at the end of the First World War the fate of its various territorial components aroused the interest not only of other states, but of interest groups within those states. Britain in particular revealed a strong concern with this subject, having long been interested in the Eastern Mediterranean. The end of the Ottoman Empire saw the legendary Lawrence of Arabia grasping the Arab lands, various secret treaties with the other Great Powers disposed of much of Anatolia, and the future of Turkish rule over Constantinople, that much sought after city, now hung in the balance. The final fate of the city would be decided at the postwar Paris Peace Conference. Of all of the spoils of the Ottomans none evoked such passions as that inspired by Constantinople — Byzantium, the Second Rome. If any building could epitomise the Europeans’ vision of this city it was the St Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, which since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 had been a mosque. With the end of Ottoman dominance an opportunity was seen by some of symbolically completing a crusade begun centuries before, with the expulsion of the Turks, and Islam, from Europe. Nothing could so symbolise a change of control at Constantinople than the reconversion of St Sophia into a church. This found support from those who wished to see the Turk expelled bag and baggage from Europe.
Colour and the Byzantine rainbow
Authors: James Liz
Published: January 2014

Colour is the ‘dark continent’ of Byzantine art history, the most neglected element of art. In 1931, Ernst Diez wrote: ‘a coming generation of art-historians may be puzzled to understand the paradoxical prejudice still latent in our time, which treats colour as not the most significant quality of a coloured work of art, but as an accident that can be overlooked in scientific research work’. A similar comment would still be valid today. Colour is barely, if at all, recognised as an aspect of artistic style; it rarely features in stylistic analysis. Its significance within a picture is ignored — analyses of Byzantine colour iconography and symbolism are few and far between. We have not even begun to ask whether colour is a meaningful aspect of Byzantine art.
Complicity and conflict: some aspects of reading and gender in Cavafy
Authors: Prinzinger Michaela
Published: January 2014

Reading Cavafy or Cavafy Reading or Cavafy’s Readings or Cavafy Reading Cavafy have been aspects of scholarly interpretive interests regarding either the author C.P. Cavafy or applied textual strategies. Relatively little attention has been paid to the reader on the opposite end of the chain of literary communication. The dominant paradigm of literary criticism regarding Cavafy’s texts has been for a long time the inference of the authorial intention by interpretive acts of the literary critic. Fragments of Cavafy Reading have been puzzled together to shed some light on the author’s poetically functioning brain. But — as recent approaches to the complex phenomenon of reading in Cavafy have shown — inferring some sort of ‘meaning’ can also be regarded as based on cooperative acts between reader and text and on shared knowledge about the procedures of interpreting texts.
The campaign of Shaykh Djunayd Ṣafawī against Trebizond (1456 AD/860 H)
Authors: Shukurov Rustam
Published: January 2014

Trebizond, on the southern coast of the Black Sea is separated by the distance of nearly one thousand kilometres from Ardabīl, the native town of Safawids, situated not far from the Caspian Sea. Despite that, in the midst of the 15th century fate amazingly brought together two royal families: the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond and the Safawids of Iran. Shāh Ismācīl (1501–1524), the founder of the Safawid state was born in 1487/892 of Halima-begum, the daughter of the Trepezuntine despoina Theodora and the Aq Quyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan (1457–1478). Shaykh Djunayd Ṣafawī (d. 1460), the grandfather of Shāh Ismācīl, had nearly seized the city of Trebizond, about thirty years before the birth of his famous grandson. The Trapezuntine nobles left their sovereigns, the emperor John IV (1429–1459) and, likely, his sister Theodora, the future wife of Uzun Ḥasan and grandmother of Ismācīl. Trebizond remained unprotected and, if shaykh Djunayd were more persistent in his attempts to capture the city, who knows what would be the future of both celebrated dynasties.
The making of a lawyer: humanism and legal syncretism in Venetian Crete
Authors: Kitromilides Paschalis M.
Published: January 2014

In the history of European humanism law and legal scholarship have been distinctly connected with processes of ideological change. Conceptions of law, the uses of legal texts and the professional practices of lawyers have repeatedly provided the matrix within which the understanding of the collective destinies of societies has been shaped. It is therefore rather paradoxical that research on Venetian Crete, the foremost hearth of post-Byzantine civilization in the Greek lands whose experience has been stamped by a sustained growth of humanism over three centuries, has paid scant attention to this aspect of humanist culture.
On handling the menavlion
Authors: Anastasiadis Michael P.
Published: January 2014

The study of Byzantine military treatises is often fraught with obstacles due to the interpretation of technical terms which have lost their meaning through the passage of time. This paper is concerned with an obscurity called the menavlion and the soldiers who wielded that weapon: the menavlatoi . The menavlion has been identified as a heavy javelin or spear, a short hunting-spear and, more recently, as a pike comparable to that carried by the heavy foot-soldiers in the Byzantine army.
Household and small-scale rural enterprises in the southern European periphery: a case-study from Peonia, Greece
Authors: Simmons C. , Kalantaridis C.
Published: January 2014

Since the mid-1970s a number of rural areas on the periphery of Southern Europe have undergone rapid economic growth and structural transformation. They appeared to be following the earlier and much celebrated experience of the Third Italy. The major form of industrial organisation which emerged in these regions was the small ‘flexible’ firm, and this was widely regarded as an alternative to the Taylor-Fordist paradigm which lay at the heart of the industrialisation process of the more favoured regions, both within Southern Europe and beyond. However, almost from the outset, the idea that Flexible Specialisation presents an all-embracing, coherent robust organisational model was controversial. Several important disputes concerning the precise meaning of the term and the causes, processes and its prospects arose. Most attention was directed to Iberia, and Greece has only attracted a very limited degree of scholarly interest — despite its earlier accession to the EC.

Our study, which is based upon primary data obtained through extensive fieldwork investigation, focuses upon a particular county (eparkhia) — that of Peonia (located in Macedonia) which, we argue, exemplifies rural industrialisation. The recent history of the county illustrates a complex articulation of exogenous and local factors in generating growth. Driven by the remarkable expansion of garment manufacturing since 1978, Peonia was characterised by what we call a cost paring and cost evading regime; a feature depressingly common to sweatshop garment producers the world over. Rather than suggesting the emergence of a brave new era of Flexible Specialisation, the case of Peonia is more akin to that of an ‘informal’ or ‘underground’ economy facing a highly uncertain future.
Petitions from Orthodox church officials to the Imperial Diwan, 1675
Authors: Ursinus Michael
Published: January 2014

Justice in an Islamic state was administered primarily by the kadis and their representatives, applying Islamic law, the sharia. In most Islamic states, including the Ottoman empire, there existed a number of special jurisdictions besides that of the kadis. The most significant of these were the jurisdictions of the various non-Muslim groups under Islamic rule, the dhimmis, applying their own, Christian or Jewish, religious laws. Apart from such jurisdictions limited to particular (religiously defined) groups, general jurisdictional powers lay in the hands of the Muslim head of state, such as the Sultan, who could delegate his jurisdictional powers to his representatives, the Grand Vizier or the kaymakam, his deputy in the capital.
Towards Post-Soviet Pre-Modernism: on recent approaches to early Rus(s)ian hagiography
Authors: Franklin Simon
Published: January 2014

The appearance of Paul Hollingsworth’s book of translations, The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’ (Hollingsworth 1992), provides the pretext for this survey. Tales of saints, or of candidates for sainthood, constitute a substantial proportion of the extant native literature of pre-Mongol Rus, comparable in volume only with the chronicles. This in itself has ensured that the study of hagiography has had a prominent place in the study of early Rus literature and culture, and hence in the wider field of byzantinorussica. In recent years native saints have benefited additionally from changes in the cultural and political climate: the advent of glasnost (from 1985), one of whose main themes was the recovery of the past; the millennium of the Conversion of the Rus, whose celebration in 1988 became a test and a manifestation of glasnost; and eventually, at the end of 1991, the collapse of the USSR and the sharpening of competition between national mythologies (competition for the same cultural space) both within and between the newly independent East Slav states of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The surge of ‘native’ interest has been matched, only in part fortuitously, by an increase in western publications.
The transition from polis to kastron in the Balkans (III-VII cc): general and regional perspectives
Authors: Dunn Archibald
Published: January 2014

Much of the evidence for the changes which scholars perceive in the Late Roman-to-Early Byzantine periods (the ‘Late Antique era’) and in the ‘Dark Age’-to-Middle Byzantine periods in the eastern empire, that is, changes occurring between the mid third and the eighth-to-ninth centuries, whether this evidence is textual, archaeological, or topographical, concerns in one way or another what might be called the upper levels of the settlement-system. These levels consist of settlements or sites distinguishable at various times from the undefended rural majority (or what in most areas forms the majority) of settlements by status (i.e., civic, that of a polis), form, size, situation, or associated functions. They may for present purposes be simply categorised as civic urban settlements, non-civic urban settlements, and non-civic non-urban fortifications or fortified settlements. To study the fate of such places, as settlements and as communities, is to confront the cultural, economic, and internal political history of the period in all its complexity, a task which in most respects is inconceivable without recourse to archaeology and topography. The following observations concern the need to rectify some imbalances in the emphases of research which distort some general analyses of the history of Late Antique and also Middle Byzantine settlements, and so distort our view of cultural, economic, and political change in the periods named.
The immaterial presence of women in contemporary Greek theatre
Authors: Sakellaridou Elizabeth
Published: January 2014

Since the beginning of the 1970s the women’s/feminist theatre has gained a dominant position on the European and the American stage. Women have stormed the postmodern stage either as solo dramatists and artists or as collaborative teams, forging a new female theatre language and training audiences to new ways of theatre reception. The publication of Lizbeth Goodman’s Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own (Routledge, 1993), one in a long series of recent studies on women’s theatre, already heralded an advanced epoch of a polyvocal feminist theatre embracing a multiplicity of female differences along the paradigms of gender, race, sexuality and ethnicity. Within the dynamic spectrum of development and inter-cultural exchange that ensued in the field of women’s theatre the Greek women’s contribution is faceless and anaemic. The situation is both distressing and calling for systematic research, especially since the scanty sociological studies concerning the position of women in contemporary Greece are inadequate in throwing full light on such a complicated problem. In 1992 Savas Patsalidis made the first serious attempt to analyse the foetal state of women’s theatre in Greece in his article ‘Greek Female (Feminist?) Theatre: A Preliminary Approach’, published in the Greek journal Utopia (4, Nov.-Dec. 1992, 105-38). My own interest in the issue in my capacity as a feminist and drama critic springs from my long-standing research in British women’s theatre and my understandable comparative inquiry, as a Greek national, into the causes that might have led to the striking absence of an analogous phenomenon in my native country. I have deliberately used the word immaterial in the title of this paper in order to suggest, on the one hand, the relative lack of a distinct theatre discourse of women as speaking subjects and moving bodies on stage, inscribing female experience and female desire, and, on the other hand, the unimportance, in terms of power, of women theatre practitioners as still very few of them hold key positions in theatre institutions and the theatre industry.
Varus of Egypt: a Fictitious Military Martyr
Authors: Woods David
Published: January 2014

The attitude of the early church to war and military service is a subject which has long exercised the attention of many scholars, and doubtlessly this will continue to be the case. There are those who hold a pacifist viewpoint and argue that originally the early Christians completely rejected military service, and there are others who are opposed to this viewpoint. However, all agree on one issue, that there is far less early material on this subject than one would initially prefer. Thus, both sides have felt the need to utilise sources and materials which would otherwise lie neglected, the hagiographical accounts of the early military martyrs in particular. Debate has now centred upon a relatively small number of texts, those which have traditionally been accepted as the genuine acts of authentic military martyrs, to which ever increasing attention has been paid. Unfortunately, concentration upon these texts in particular seems to have led to a neglect of texts which are of great interest in their own right. This was inevitable given that the accounts of the military martyrs have normally been examined only as to their suitability for use as weapons in the ongoing polemic concerning the ‘true’ attitude of the early church to war. Seldom has the development of the cult of military martyrs been regarded as a historical phenomenon worthy of study in itself. Thus, it is the purpose of this note to begin to rectify this situation by drawing attention to the neglected acts of a military martyr, Varus, who allegedly suffered death in Egypt during the reign of Galerius Maximianus (305-311).
‘In the Goddess’ Name I Summon You’: Byzantine and Modern (Greek) fortunes of the ancient novel
Authors: Beaton Roderick
Published: January 2014

The prose fiction of the ancient world is the oldest that we possess, and historically marks the founding of the literary genre which, by some indicators at least, has outstripped all others in the European-derived ‘Western’ culture of the last two centuries. Yet even the recent upsurge of interest in the subject, and corresponding upwardly mobile evaluations of it on the part of classical scholars, has focussed on the ancient novel not as a beginning but as an end. In the eyes of the dwindling number of specialists who can read and evaluate these texts in the original languages, the novel makes a very late appearance on the scene. In aesthetic terms it frequently demands some degree of apology; its greatest and most productive feature of interest in recent years has been its very self-conscious belatedness, inscribed on every page of its texts in the blatant, comic, and often extremely subtle, re-use of older, culturally sanctioned material. The ancient novel is like those buildings of the late antique city in which the spolia of an earlier epoch are artfully put to new use. The ancient novel, precursor of so much that came later, has by its very nature little that is conspicuously originary about it. It wears its borrowings on its sleeve, proudly; and enough survives of the culture from which it borrowed that the classicist, exactly like his late antique and Byzantine predecessors, can have fun identifying them.
Silks, skills and opportunities in Byzantium: some reflexions
Authors: Shepard Jonathan
Published: January 2014

Silks gave visible form to Byzantium’s political culture and, being light to carry, could circulate widely. Many of the garments issued to recipients of offices and titles were made of silk and the Book of the Eparch takes for granted the close connection between imperial prerogatives, silken vestments of various shades of purple and restrictions on foreigners’ access to them. Through whetting appetites for silks and maintaining a monopoly over the finest quality products, the emperor could hope to arouse in his own subjects and foreigners alike the desire to gain them through some form of ‘service’. These products simultaneously expressed his wealth, superior knowledge and — by the symbols on them — the antiquity and unsurpassable legitimacy of his rule.
The Magyar connection or Constantine and Methodius in the steppes
Authors: Nikolov Stephan
Published: January 2014

This paper is aimed at provoking the imagination of its readers rather than at giving any final settlement to a topos explored already in numerous Cyrillo-Methodian studies. The problems discussed here are related to the Byzantine Balkan policy as a background to Constantine’s mission to the Khazars. It seems to me that the Moravian mission of SS Cyril and Methodius came as an outgrowth of Constantine’s mission to the steppes. Moravia, Bulgaria and the Pontic steppes seem in many respects different parts of the one domain of the Byzantine ‘Northern policy’
The shape of the market: mapping the Book of the Eparch
Authors: Thomov Thomas , Ilieva Annetta
Published: January 2014

The perspective of this paper could certainly be judged as somewhat narrow by urban historians of ninth-century Constantinople. For the sake of clarity we should like to stress from the very start that it is the Bulgarian aspect of the problem that interests us. Whatever the answer to the question whether Byzantium was ‘dead or alive’ at the time, for Boris (who forced Bulgaria into Christendom), for his son Symeon (who became Bulgaria’s first tsar), and for Symeon’s son Peter (who took the first Byzantine princess to Veliki Preslav), the empire was certainly very much alive. These three rulers of the first Bulgarian kingdom lived at the time when the renovatio encapsulated by Theoktistos and Theodora in A.D. 843 was taken over by the usurper Basil; when, subsequently, the ascending genos of the dysgenes killer recreated — and at the same time distanced itself from — the broader framework of the Justinianic age; and, finally, when eugenes usurpers triumphed within the already established ‘Macedonian’ universe. Among the three of them, however, only Symeon had the rare opportunity of living in Constantinople, for fourteen years or so — between 872/4 and 887 — and in its First Region at that. Symeon became no Theodoric but what was it that he saw which made him ‘half-Greek’ and could have moulded or influenced some of his policies that led to the establishment of a new empire in the Balkans?
Greece and the European Union in the 1990s: the challenge to the domestic state
Authors: Featherstone Kevin
Published: January 2014

For the last decade or more, domestic political debate in Greece has focussed on the nature and role of the state. The debate has raised questions about the extent of the state’s role in the domestic economy, and the state’s domination of civil society. New liberal economic philosophy has pressed for greater market freedoms, on the one hand, whilst separate criticism has been made of the corruption and inefficiency of the ‘party-state‘. On both fronts—political and economic—the domestic role of the state has appeared to be under more serious challenge than for many years previously (Featherstone, 1994).
Turkish-Israeli military co-operation: changing implications for Greece and Cyprus
Authors: Nachmani Amikam
Published: January 2014

In order to fully grasp the dynamics of the trilateral relations between Israel, Turkey, and Greece today, one must look first to the history of their mutual interrelations in the last 50 years, that is, from the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.
Physical evidence revealed during the cleaning and the excavations of the outer wall of the land walls of Constantinople at the Porta Romanus
Authors: Ersen Ahmet
Published: January 2014

During the clearance, excavations and conservation of the Land walls of Constantinople in 1992-93 at the Porta Romanus (Topkapi) some original details of the Theodosian construction techniques and the subsequent repairs were found. It was seen that the structural system of the outer wall which supports the parapet walk and the battlement had been altered during the Late Byzantine era. It was also affirmed that the inner and the outer terrace had been used as a burial ground and ceramic pipes for the water supply system of the moat and stone culverts for the disposal of the ground water of the inner terrace were found.
Woman repels pirates: note in a Florentine manuscript
Authors: Dennis George T.
Published: January 2014

A miscellaneous manuscript in the Mediceo-Laurentian Library in Florence, Conventi soppressi, 20, contains, on fol. 73v, a brief notice about a woman on the Karian coast, a fearsome archer, who repelled two pirate ships. A date, ζωμθ (= 1341), is also written in, presumably the date of the event recorded. The manuscript contains works of Maximos Planoudis; the notice in question follows a poem on meter. The following folio, 74, begins works of Libanius, the first being ‘epistolomaei characteres’. Text (editio princeps) and translation of the notice follow.
On St. Artemius as ‘Deacon’
Authors: Woods David
Published: January 2014

The publication of an English translation of the 7th-century Miracles of St. Artemios, with facing Greek text and accompanying commentary, is most welcome, and will undoubtedly invite further discussion of the various points of interest raised by this text. Here I wish to focus on the physical appearance of St. Artemios, in particular his alleged appearance as a deacon in miracle 32. In this miracle, a friend tells a certain Menas how St. Artemius had appeared to him as he slept in the Church of St. John the Baptist and had cured his hernia. The text, and recent translation, run:

καἱ τῆ τρίτη ήμέρᾳ όρῶ καθ’ ὕπνους τινά χλαινηφόρον στιχάριν φοροῦντα καἱ βαλτίδιον...

“and on the third day” I saw in my sleep someone wearing a cloak, also a deacon’s alb and a belt ...
Information, ceremony and power in Byzantine fiscal registers: varieties of function in the Cadaster of Thebes
Authors: Neville Leonora
Published: January 2014

This paper examines the Cadaster of Thebes, an eleventh-century Byzantine fiscal document, to see what light it sheds on both the intention and ability of the Byzantine bureaucracy to maintain a formal taxation system based on land registration. While the document attests to efforts at maintaining such a system, the quality of record keeping in the Cadaster of Thebes is insufficient for the document to play the role formally accorded to it within that system. It is suggested that Byzantine cadasters aided taxation by creating the impression of a pervasive imperial government and ceremonially connecting every household to the emperor through his interceding administrators.
Some observations on the administrative terminology of the second Bulgarian empire (13th-14th centuries)
Authors: Biliarsky Ivan
Published: January 2014

The paper presents some aspects of the juridical terminology in the Second Bulgarian Empire: the appellations of the titles of the hierarchical system and those of the administrative services. The use of the statistical methods offers some impressive results in regard to the correlation between the terms of Byzantine origin (translated or transliterated from Greek) and those that derive from Bulgar language, either purely Slavonic terms or ones of other derivation. About three quarters of the terminology derives from the juridical language of the Eastern Roman Empire! These results might be supported by the observations on the fiscal terms, the appellations of the territorial units and so on. Needless to say that these results are not unexpected — they confirm again the affiliation of the mediaeval Bulgaria to the East Roman or byzantine civilisation.
Fourteenth-century Albanian migration and the ‘relative autochthony’ of the Albanians in Epeiros. The case of Gjirokastër
Authors: Giakoumis Konstantinos
Published: January 2014

The purpose of this article is to put together recent linguistic and historical studies, in order to challenge the views of ‘older’ Greek and Albanian scholarship with respect to the presence of a solely Greek or Albanian population in the regions of Epeiros, with specific reference to the district of Dropull in the light of primary sources dealing with the Albanian immigrations of the fourteenth century. It will show that Greek and Albanian-speaking populations had all along been living together in Epeiros, while in the fourteenth century immigrant Albanians migrated into the regions of Gjirokastër. The reactions of local milieux against the new settlers shall be attributed to the disintegration of the previous local elites.
Meurtre à Byzance: Byzantine murders in modern literature
Authors: Nilsson Ingela
Published: January 2014

Byzance est là oú je suis.

Thus runs the suggestively recurrent theme in a recent novel by Julia Kristeva, the famous psychoanalyst, linguist and semiotician (Meurtre à Byzance. Paris: Fayard, 2004). Kristeva, who immigrated to France from Bulgaria in the 1960s, here seizes the opportunity to set forth problems concerning her own East European and Orthodox background. She does so in a form that to a remarkably high degree mirrors her own work as a scholar: Meurtre à Byzance, with its manifold references to medieval and modern literature, is imbued with intertextuality and polyphony, literary devices which she herself as a theorist has largely helped define. And the complex story is not, as one might expect from the title, a historical detective novel set in a Byzantine milieu, but a romantic yet critical story about contemporary society, our search for origin and meaning, our longing for — as Kristeva puts it — a Byzantium of our own.
The Film Source for the Age
Authors: Crockford Susan
Published: January 2014

Our period, La Belle Epoque, corresponds to the early, the Nickelodeon Age, of the cinema. But for those who made the films, and for those who watched the flickering screen, the period was neither fine nor beautiful but harsh and grim. It was the submerged mass of the working class, Jack London's People of the Abyss, who went to the cinema to escape from an almost intolerable reality. The cinema followed in the tradition of the music halls rather than the legitimate stage and not till 1912/13 did it begin to appeal to a more sophisticated audience. But the effect of the new medium on those who watched it was steady and far-reaching. Whereas the telephone and telegraph had hardly touched the lives of more than a fortunate few, the cinema straightaway opened new horizons for its audience.
Gloves
Authors: Rigden P.H.
Published: January 2014

Gloves appear to have been known among civilised peoples for a very long time and reference to both leather and linen gloves has been found in Egyptian tombs. Early use of gloves was mostly ceremonial, such as silk gloves for the regalia of early Christian Bishops. First real use of gloves for dress purposes in England was in Elizabethan times, when they were produced with highly ornamented cuffs and must have been very expensive.
The Royal Navy
Authors: Annis P.G.W.
Published: January 2014

To what extent the Royal Navy can ever have been described as "elegant" it is impossible to say. That service, during the period of the wars with France can be described, indeed has been described in a number of ways but the concept of elegance has been conspicuous by its absence. We should begin, therefore, by looking in a very general way at the Navy in the approximate period 1780-1820.
Machine-made Lace 1780-1820 (Pillow and Bobbin to Bobbin and Carriage)
Authors: Halls Zillah
Published: January 2014

The period we are now considering – the last two decades of the eighteenth and the first two of the nineteenth century – was one of transition in many fields, artistic, industrial and political. In the comparatively minor field of lacemaking too it is a period of significant change, hence the title of this paper. Lace had been made for centuries by hand in this country, by manipulating a large number of threads on a pillow, each thread wound on a separate bobbin. By the end of the period net was being made by machine, very efficiently and in enormous quantities. Bobbins of a different kind were used for this too, but instead of being arranged on a pillow and moved by hand, they were mounted in metal carriers (carriages) which were pushed backwards and forwards by machine.
The Real Thing: The Study of Original Garments in Britain since 1947
Authors: Tarrant Naomi E. A.
Published: January 2014

This is a revised version of the paper given in July 1997 at the Fiftieth Anniversary Conference for the opening of the Gallery of English Costume at Platt Hal, Manchester, in 1947. It is dedicated to the Gallery's first Keeper, Anne M. Buck, in anticipation of her ninetieth birthday.
Embracing uncertainty and challenging dualism in the GIS-based study of a palaeo-flood plain
Authors: Gillings Mark
Published: January 2014

The following paper aims to take a critical look at the role that can be played within the broad context of landscape based archaeological research by Geographical Information Systems (GIS). It will be argued that the rapid acceptance of GIS by archaeologists has not been without its problems, with a number of archaeologists wondering whether, despite the hype, any new approaches have been introduced at all. This, it will be argued, is a direct result of GIS-based applications tending to work within a largely inherited theoretical framework and, more importantly, lacking at present a critical theory of practice.

The aim of the paper is move beyond critique to suggest how GIS can provide not only an efficient means of generating simple distribution maps, but a flexible environment within which to bridge developments in theory and practice. Using an on-going case-study centred upon flood events in the palaeo-flood plain of the river Tisza, the implications of using GIS to welcome uncertainty into the analytical environment are explored and a number of approaches advocated. The significance these developments have in expanding our interpretive frameworks is explored through the fore-grounding and challenging of a number of dualistic modes of thought in that area actively encouraged and reinforced by the use of traditional GIS.
Late upper Paleolithic subsistence strategies in southern Iberia: Tardiglacial faunas from Cueva de Nerja (Málaga, Spain)
Authors: Morales Arturo , Roselló Eufrasia , Hernández Francisco
Published: January 2014

Faunal reports from Magdalenian levels at Cueva de Nerja have been surveyed from both a taxonomic and a paleocultural standpoint in order to spot overall and specific patterns concerning the exploitation of animal resources. Although both diachronic and inter-site comparisons are limited due to the scarcity of data and the assemblages themselves have been studied by different scientists with different aims and methods, both first- and second-order magnitude patterns emerge from this study. The most important pattern concerns the constancy of the main subsistence basis throughout the periods under consideration despite dramatic differences in the diversity of cropped resources. Such a result substantiates, to a certain extent, the hypotheses concerning an intensification of cropping by humans during the latest stages of the upper Paleolithic (a phenomenon which we have named the ‘Tardiglacial paradigm’).
Case studies in indigenous developments in early Italian centralization and urbanization: a Dutch perspective
Authors: Attema P.A.J. , Burgers G.-J. , Kleibrink M. , Yntema D.G.
Published: January 2014

The authors discuss results of long-term Dutch field projects in three regions in Italy and review case studies taken from these study areas in the light of indigenous developments in early Italian centralization and urbanization. By looking at regional developments in the domains of economy, religious and funerary practice as well as that of social relationships, they arrive at the conclusion that material culture was actively used in indigenous contexts. There is a consequent need for re-definition of centralization and urbanization, which in the Italian context are often seen as non-indigenous achievements. Comparative regional research, as suggested by the authors' case studies on the Sibaritide, the Brindisino and the Pontine region, will reveal both general trends concerning the concepts discussed and regional idiosyncrasies depending on regional traditions, histories and the regional landscape. To this end, a new project was launched, known as the Regional Pathways to Complexity project, that is introduced to the reader at the end of this paper.
The Goths in Poland — where did they come from and when did they leave?
Authors: Urbańczyk Przemysław
Published: January 2014

Recent archaeological discoveries and reinterpretations of written sources supported by the concepts of historical anthropology allow the creation of a new picture about the Goths. Most of the archaeologists studying the cultural situation in northern Poland during the Roman period admit today that the roots of the Wielbark culture commonly identified with the early Goths are to be sought in local traditions. The results of that process, which can be explained in terms of change in symbolic consciousness rather than by a demographic expansion, became archaeologically visible in the mid-first century AD. The decision to leave the Baltic zone could have been taken by a Gothic social elite endangered by tensions resulting from unstable trade relations with the Roman Empire and climatic deterioration. However, a substantial part of the agricultural Wielbark population stayed behind, preferring well-known circumstances than risks of an unpredictable fate in distant lands. Among those people, after some time, the hierarchization process was repeated, leading to the emergence of a new elite, which decided to follow their predecessors by migrating to the south east. They are identified by the sources as the Gepids. There are strong archaeological indications that some part of the Wielbark population must have again stayed behind in Poland maintaining close contacts with their southern ‘cousins’. Archaeologists today suggest that some ‘Gothic’ groups from the Pontic steppes returned to the Baltic. The merging of Germanic and Baltic traditions resulted in a new cultural formation. In the ninth century AD, its material culture became more and more Prussian but there is evidence for lively contacts with western Europe, Scandinavia and the Abbassid Khalifate. A specific tradition recorded in the oldest Polish chronicles and in the twelfth century epitaph of the first Polish king Boleslav the Brave raises the serious possibility that some memory of the presence of Goths east of the Vistula somehow survived over centuries and it was used for construction of the Piasts' dynastic tradition.
Archaeomagnetism, Methodology and Applications: Implementation and Practice of the Archaeomagnetic Method in France and Bulgaria
Authors: Lanos Philippe , Kovacheva Mary , Chauvin Annick
Published: January 2014

Recent improvements in archaeomagnetism applied to archaeological baked clay, in France and Bulgaria, are presented in this paper. After reviewing the historical development of the method in France and Bulgaria, and the principles of the method, we present sampling techniques for in situ structures (kilns and hearths) and sets of displaced materials (bricks or tiles). In the analysis protocol, we stress the importance of correcting the magnetic anisotropic effects especially for bricks. We also show how the problem of brittle specimens can be solved by induration. After a review of the published archaeomagnetic data currently available for France and Bulgaria, we present different smoothing techniques applied to data obtained in these countries. Finally, we present the usage of the variation curves of the geomagnetic elements in the past to calculate the archaeomagnetic dates. One of these techniques is based on a Bayesian approach, similar to the case of the dendro-chronological calibration of radiocarbon ages. The main goal of the paper is to highlight for the archaeologists the possibilities of archaeomagnetism for dating purposes and for other problems in archaeology, on the basis of the experience of the laboratories in France and Bulgaria. The developments of selected archaeomagnetic studies in other European countries are quoted and referenced.
Archaeology, science-based archaeology and the Mediterranean Bronze Age metals trade
Authors: Knapp A. Bernard
Published: January 2014

Archaeologists often seem either sceptical of science-based archaeology or baffled by its results. The underpinnings of science-based archaeology may conflict with social or behavioural factors unsuited to quantification and grouping procedures. Thus, the interaction between archaeologists and their science-based colleagues has been less profitable than it might have been. The main point I consider in this study, and exemplify by considering metals provenance studies in the Bronze Age Mediterranean, is the relevance and application of the stated aims of science-based archaeology to the contemporary discipline of archaeology. Whereas most practitioners today recognize that science-based archaeology has the potential to contribute positively to the resolution of problems stemming from our field's inadequate and incomplete data resource, I contend that science and scientific analyses alone cannot adjudicate between cultural possibilities. Rather they provide analytical data which are likely to be open-ended, subject to multiple social interpretations, and in need of evaluation by collaborating archaeologists using social theory.
The archaeology of osteoporosis
Authors: Turner-Walker Gordon , Syversen Unni , Mays Simon
Published: January 2014

The application of medical scanning technologies to archaeological skeletons provides novel insights into the history and potential causes of osteoporosis. The present study investigated bone mineral density (BMD) in medieval skeletons from England and Norway. Comparisons between the two adult populations found no statistically significant differences. This compares with a modern fracture incidence for the femoral neck in women from Norway that is almost three times that in the UK. The pattern of age-related bone loss in medieval men was similar to that seen in men today. In contrast, the pattern in medieval women differed from that of modern young women. On average, medieval women experienced a decrease in BMD at the femoral neck of approximately 23 per cent between the ages of 22 and 35. These losses were partially recovered by age 45, after which BMD values show a decline consistent with post-menopausal bone loss in modern western women. A possible explanation of the rapid decline in BMD in young medieval women is bone loss in connection with pregnancy and lactation in circumstances of insufficient nutrition.
‘Princely graves’ of the central Balkans – A critical history of research
Authors: Babić Staša
Published: January 2014

This article critically explores the century-long history of research into a particular set of archaeological finds. The ‘princely graves’ – funerary assemblages dated to the early Iron Age (seventh to fifth centuries BC) containing, among other things, luxurious objects produced in Archaic Greek workshops – are known from various parts of temperate Europe, and were first recorded in the central Balkans region by the end of the nineteenth century. By their very nature, these finds pose several important theoretical and methodological problems, one of them being the need to bridge the divide between the procedures of prehistoric and classical archaeologies. The first attempts to account for these exceptional finds, in Europe as well as in the Balkans, were guided by the culture-historical procedure, typical of the archaeological investigation of the time. During the 1960s New Archaeology brought about the notion of chiefdom as a tool to account for the Iron Age societies. The concept was introduced into research on the central Balkan finds, proving successful in overcoming the shortcomings of the previous explanations, but at the same time creating new ones, encapsulated in the critique of the evolutionary approach. This review of research into the ‘princely graves’ concludes in proposing several new lines of inquiry, already introduced in the European archaeological theory: issues of group identity and individual actors, and phenomenological approaches to time and space.
Power relations and social space: A study of the late medieval Archbishop's Palace in Trondheim
Authors: Saunders Tom
Published: January 2014

This article concerns the study of power and space within the Archbishop's Palace in Trondheim and, in particular, how the structure and organization of the precinct in the late medieval period formed a medium through which the archbishop's powers were exercised. Its aim is to explore the ways in which the spatial patterning of occupation, as revealed by the recent excavations in the palace, can cast light on the articulation of the archbishop's wealth, status and authority during the turbulent period prior to the Reformation.

The theoretical starting point is a reformulation of Michael Mann's theory of social power and Anthony Giddens's concept of ‘locale’ within a Marxist framework. It is suggested that, in the historical context of the crisis of Scandinavian feudalism, the palace at Trondheim became the focus for overlapping networks of ideological, economic, military and political power. These developments were expressed through the reorganization of the architectural space and the construction of a series of workshop complexes within the walled precinct betweenc.AD 1500 and 1537. By analysing the archaeological evidence for craft production, in particular minting, this paper considers how the palace formed a locale for the interaction of a specific set of social relations. It consequently examines some of the processes underpinning the expansion of the archbishop's power during the late medieval period, and discusses the social dynamics behind the conflict between the Church and the centralizing, Protestant-leaning forces of the Danish-Norwegian state.
Formation and Land-Use History of Celtic Fields in North-West Europe – an Interdisciplinary Case Study at Zeijen, the Netherlands
Authors: Spek Theo , Waateringe Willy Groenman-van , Kooistra Maja , Bakker Lideweij
Published: January 2014

Celtic field research has so far been strongly focused on prospection and mapping. As a result of this there is a serious lack of knowledge of formation and land-use processes of these fields. This article describes a methodological case study in The Netherlands that may be applied to other European Celtic fields in the future. By interdisciplinary use of pedological, palynological and micromorphological research methods the authors were able to discern five development stages in the history of the field, dating from the late Bronze Age to the early Roman Period. There are strong indications that the earthen ridges, very typical for Celtic fields in the sandy landscapes of north-west Europe, were only formed in the later stages of Celtic field agriculture (late Iron Age and early Roman period). They were the result of a determined raising of the surface by large-scale transportation of soil material from the surroundings of the fields. Mainly the ridges were intensively cultivated and manured in the later stages of Celtic field cultivation. In the late Iron Age a remarkable shift in Celtic field agriculture took place from an extensive system with long fallow periods, a low level of manuring and extensive soil tillage to a more intensive system with shorter fallow periods, a more intensive soil tillage and a higher manuring intensity. There are also strong indications that rye (Secale cereale) was the main crop in the final stage of Celtic field agriculture.
Use of Micro-Organisms for the Recovery of Metals
Authors: Tuovinen O. H. , Kelly D. P.
Published: January 2014

The environmental prophets forecast a world-wide depletion of mineral resources within the toming decades; the supply of ores of mercury, copper, and many other metals is uncertain.1 For this reason, we are seeing the increasing development of interest in new and more selective methods of metal recovery from the earth. Brooks2 has pointed out the distinction between metals like Fe, AI, Ti that could be successfully mined (though often present in the ores now, worked at only 2-4 times their average abundance in the Earth's crust) and those essential ‘metal vitamins’ (e.g. Hg, W, Ta, Ag, Sn, Mn, Mo) which, because supplies must be obtained either from enriched, ore bodies, or from the rock material having only the average crustal abundance, comprising the bulk of the Earth's crust, will eventually cease to be available to conventional extraction procedures as a gradual increase in expenditure and effort along conventional lines cannot maintain a constant level of economic, production. A similar problem may exist with Cu, Co, Ni, V, and Pb as known workable ore bodies may be depleted by the year 2000.2,3 Four obvious alternatives, all of which could be employed concurrently, present themselves in seeking and ensuring continued supplies of metals vital for our technology
Void Formation in Fast-Reactor Materials
Authors: Nelson R. S.
Published: January 2014

The dimensional and mechanical stability of fuel-cladding and structural components of fast-reactor systems is of prime concern to the reactor engineer. In 1966 Cawthorne and Fultonl discovered that austenitic stainless-steel fuel-cladding exposed to high doses of fast neutrons developed an internal porosity in the form of small (∼ 100 Å) cavities. Such cavities were shown to be essentially empty and were therefore called ‘voids’(see Fig. 1). Previously recognized problems associated with irradiation in a fast-neutron, environment such as lowtemperature hardening, high-temperature embrittlement, and the acceleration of diffusion-controlled processes-although still far from completely understood-have tended to give rise to less concern as more experimental evidence has been accunlulated. On the other hand the consequences of void formation tend to dominate current assessments of fuel-pin and structural material behaviour in fast reactors.