bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Huju
Authors: Stock Jonathan P. J.
Published: February 2012

China has over three hundred distinct styles of music drama, from exorcism theatre to farce, historical romance, and shadow puppetry. This study considers one of the newer operatic forms. Established just two centuries ago, huju (Shanghai opera), is renowned for its portrayal of ordinary people, not the emperors, courtesans, and heroes of older forms. Acting and make-up aim for realism rather than symbolism, and stories deal with contemporaneous themes: the struggles of lovers to marry, women's rights after the Communist revolution (1949), and life under the new social order established by Deng Xiaoping's reforms in the 1980s. Music ranges from local folksong to syncretic adoptions of Western popular music. Adding to his extensive research on Chinese music, the author's eighteen months of fieldwork in Shanghai have allowed him to interweave material from historical reports, sound recordings, live performance, and first-hand accounts of three generations of singers into a study of a unique Chinese opera form seen equally as historical tradition, venue for social action, and forum for musical creativity. Assessing first the roots of huju in local folksong and ballad, he looks at the enduring role of emotional expressivity. The text then focuses on the rise of actresses, laying out a ‘musical’ reading of gendered performance.
Idols of the People
Authors: Moorey P.R.S.
Published: February 2012

This book presents work that investigates the numerous miniature baked clay images from Canaan, Israel and Judah (c.1600–600 bc). They constitute vital evidence for the imagery and domestic rituals of ordinary people, but significantly are not explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament. These terracottas are treated as a distinctive phenomenon with roots deep in prehistory and recurrent characteristics across millennia. Attention is focused on whether or not the female representations are worshippers of unknown deities or images of known goddesses, particularly in Early Israelite religion.
Geography applied
Authors: Bennett Robert J. , Wilson Alan G.
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses the main trends and the most prominent focuses of research regarding geography as an applied discipline. It concentrates on the contributions of geographers in Britain and the applied developments in human geography. The development of physical geography and earth sciences has been particularly influential on the development of applied geography at various stages. The chapter also examines regional planning and policy, town and country planning, land use planning and other specific fields.
Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song
Authors: Constantine Mary-Ann , Porter Gerald
Published: February 2012

This book is about traditional songs. Folk song scholarship was originally obsessed with notions of completeness and narrative coherence; yet field notebooks and recordings (and, increasingly, publications) overwhelmingly suggest that apparently ‘broken’ and drastically shortened versions of songs are not perceived as incomplete by those who sing them. This study turns the focus on these ‘dog-ends’ of oral tradition, and looks closely at how very short texts convey meaning in performance by working the audience's knowledge of a highly allusive idiom. What emerges is the tenacity of meaning in the connotative and metaphorical language of traditional song, and the extraordinary adaptability of songs in different cultural contexts. Such pieces have a strong metonymic force: they should not be seen as residual ‘last leaves’ of a once complete tradition, but as dynamic elements in the process of oral transmission. Not all song fragments remain in their natural environment, and this book also explores relocations and dislocations as songs are adapted to new contexts: a ballad of love and death is used to count pins in lace-making, song-snippets trail subversive meanings in the novels of Charles Dickens. Because they are variable and elusive to dating, songs have had little attention from the literary establishment: the authors of this book show both how certain critical approaches can be fruitfully applied to song texts, and how concepts from studies in oral traditions prefigure aspects of contemporary critical theory. Coverage includes English, Welsh, Breton, American, and Finnish songs.
Life and works
Authors: Hodgson Katharine
Published: February 2012

This chapter sets out a chronological account of the poet's career, her publication history and critical reception during her lifetime, and situates her among her contemporaries. It outlines the main trends in the critical treatment of Berggol′ts's work after her death.
Reconstruction of a 3D Mummy Portrait from Roman Egypt
Authors: Linney Alf , Campos João , Alusi Ghassan
Published: February 2012

This chapter focuses on the reconstruction of the portrait mummy of Hermione, which was excavated in 1911. Hermione lived during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius and belonged to the Greek immigrants of ancient Egypt who were descendants of the soldiers who have fought Alexander the Great and the Ptolomies. Hermione is believed to have been a school teacher, as her coffin portrait bears the Greek inscription ‘Hermione grammatike’. To reconstruct the face of Hermione, x-ray imaging processes were first employed to gain vital information without moving the painted cartonnage and wrappings of the mummy. Computed tomography and CT scanning technology was also used to provide a measurement of the 3D distribution of x-ray absorption coefficients throughout the scanned volume. This more advanced form of scanning allowed for the creation of 3D reconstruction of the volume. For the 3D reconstruction of the face of Hermione, four methods were necessary. These were the acquisition of 3D data on what lies inside the wrappings, the 3D reconstruction of the skull, the reconstruction of the soft tissues over the skull, and the application of texture to the reconstructed facial surface.
Meeting the Missionaries: Rural Education, 1920–9
Authors: Butler Matthew
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the history of rural education in Michoacán, Mexico during the period from 1920 to 1929. It explains that during the 1920s, revolutionaries invested more efforts in educational reform than in agrarismo as a means of achieving national reconstruction. It discusses the educational programmes of the Secretaría de Educación Publica (SEP) and suggests that local communities reacted to the SEP in various ways which reflected their own historical trajectories, agrarian and political aspirations, and cultural expectations.
A Post-Ukanian Response to Keith Robbins
Authors: Edna Longley
Published: February 2012

This chapter comments on Keith Robbins' lecture on the history of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It commends Robbins' remarkable historical overview, particularly his summation ‘a multilateral set of political and cultural configurations which criss-cross the Isles’. It discusses Robbins' problematic of Ireland/Scotland/Wales in the context of Northern Irish and Anglophone literary studies. It also highlights the importance of studying Northern Irish writing and Northern Ireland or Ulster.
Trust and Distrust in Old and New Democracies
Authors: Macek Petr , Marková Ivana
Published: February 2012

Research on the transition of countries in post-Communist Europe towards democracy mostly indicates that there is more political and institutional trust in Western democratic countries than in the post-Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Questions about citizens' trust and distrust in the newly formed institutions and about the trustworthiness of these institutions seem to be just as compelling today as they were in the early 1990s. In the context of the rapid socio-political and economic changes that influence citizens' daily lives, political trust and distrust appear to fluctuate alongside the rise and fall of optimism and pessimism. Among the unquestioned consequences of totalitarianism, the profound demoralization of citizens, learned helplessness, undemocratic thinking, and distrust of institutions have been generally diagnosed as being the most significant. Research on trust and democratic transition in post-Communist Europe has involved, over a number of years, into the exploration of both public opinions and social representations. This chapter examines trust and distrust in old and new democracies as well as the link between political revolutions and human psychology.
From Eulogy to Biography: The French Academic Eloge
Authors: France Peter
Published: February 2012

This chapter focuses on academic eulogy, a component of biography that urges to celebrate. It also examines how biography developed in the eulogies of the various French academies. Epideictic speeches, such as funeral oration or hagiography, are close relatives of written biography. In this type of biography, the biographer is tasked to provide moral lessons through a narrative that offers examples to be followed or avoided. Funeral orations are governed by praise or blame in the writing of lives; however, most of the eulogies are overshadowed by praises. In this form of biography, the focus is on celebration and the praise of a Carlylean hero. In addition to the celebration of life, eulogy has other important functions as well. One of these is to pay a debt of gratitude, whether on the part of humanity, nation, or some limited group. To praise the dead also means to empower the living; during this period, eulogies paved the way for laudatory biographies of various groups such as writers, artists, and scientists. They also helped form an edifice of corporate self-representation.
The Newness of the ‘New Biography’: Biographical Theory and Practice in the Early Twentieth Century
Authors: Marcus Laura
Published: February 2012

The dominance of modernist and avant-garde literature in the early decades of the twentieth century directed attention away from certain texts and genres. Biography was one of the genres that underwent transformation. In the 1920s and 1930s, it took new forms, which gave rise to an unprecedented popularity of life-writing. This rise in the popularity of biographies was linked to the perception that they had been reinvented, requiring a new level of critical self-awareness. This chapter discusses biographical theory and practice in the early twentieth century. This biographical dimension crossed national boundaries wherein common biographical tenets were developed. In this period, the concept of ‘new biography’ proliferated. This new concept of biographies was grounded on the relationship between the literary and the scientific, and the importance of the study of the character. In the chapter, the tenets and characteristics of the ‘new biography’ and the ‘new biographers’ are considered. It examines the new equality between the biographer and the subject; the brevity, selection, and attention to the form and unity associated with fiction; the development of central motifs in a life and of a key to personality; and the focus on the character rather than the events.
Writing Lives Forwards: A Case for Strictly Chronological Biography
Authors: Kinkead-Weekes Mark
Published: February 2012

There could be different ways of writing biographies, just as there are different kinds of novels. Modern biographers who are sensitive to the trends in fiction and criticism may avoid the chronological approach, as it is often seen as old-fashioned. They may prefer a more subtle kind of structuring; for instance, Hermione Lee, who wrote Virginia Woolf's life, argued that there are several ways in which a ‘Life’ may begin apart from the start of the subject's birth. Likewise, Jean Sartre asserted the need to use an inverted chronology wherein regression should come first before progress can be properly grounded. This chapter discusses the chronological biography and, in particular, strict chronological biography. First, it examines D.H. Lawrence's biography, which is arranged and structured chronologically, and considers two biographies that are arranged in innovatory ways: Sartre's biography of Flaubert and Lee's narrative of Virginia Woolf. While Sartre and Lee's methods were interesting, the chronological approach, however old-fashioned, has positive aspects: it allows miming of the reader of how a life may have felt to live; throws emphasis on the experience of the biographee rather than commentary of the biographer; allows the reader to watch the life as it unfolds rather than having its significance anticipated; and delays verdicts until there has been sufficient exploration of the process and development.
The Russian Army’s Use of Balkan Irregulars during the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War
Authors: Bitis Alexander
Published: February 2012

This chapter considers the role Balkan partisans were assigned in the war of 1828–9 — a role tempered by the tsarist regime's fear that their participation might unleash a general uprising in the Balkans. It tackles the 1828 campaign, the developments over the 1828–9 winter, the 1829 campaign. It also examines whether the Balkan irregulars are freedom-fighters or brigands; Russia and the formation of the militia in the Principalities.
The Lightning Flash on the Road to Baghdad: Issues of Evidence
Authors: Hennessy Peter
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the positive legislative and governmental impacts of the Hutton and Butler Reports. It describes how Lord Hutton worked by assessing the evidence in terms of charges made and how Robin Butler and his colleagues worked like contemporary historians by reconstructing reality from documents and oral evidence. It suggests that the Hutton and Button Reports could lead to a significant and enduring shift in the balance of power between the Executive and the Legislature.
Lessons for Governmental Process
Authors: Quinlan Michael
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the governmental process lessons that can be learned from the Hutton and Butler Reports. Though the Hutton and Butler inquiries were directly concerned with aspects of the Iraq saga, they had interest and significance reaching beyond the Iraq issue. This chapter explains that the inquiries prompted questions about the place of such investigations in British constitutional practice and that the unfettered access to information given to the investigators yielded an extraordinarily close and revealing portrait of how contemporary government at the centre of the British system has been functioning.
Financing the Union: Goschen, Barnett, and Beyond
Authors: Mclean Iain
Published: February 2012

In the ensuing 1886 General Election, the Conservatives swept to power with their new Liberal Unionist allies, including Joseph Chamberlain and George Goschen. Lord Salisbury appointed Goschen as Chancellor of the Exchequer later in 1886. Goschen announced his ‘equivalent’ or ‘proportion’ in his 1888 Budget. The politics of Barnett formula's origins and its implications for public finance since 1997 are shown. This formula was never intended to be permanent. Lord Barnett has told the Treasury Committee that he did not expect it to last ‘a year or even twenty minutes’. Barnett was also a new Goschen for modern unionists. Three of the four main parties have called for Barnett reform. Scottish National Party and some Liberal Democrat and Conservative politicians have called for ‘fiscal autonomy’. The chapter then outlines the Conservative fiscal autonomists' position, not necessarily in language they would use. The explanation of regression on past spending is also given.
Scotland’s Fiscal Relationships with England and the United Kingdom
Authors: Heald David , Mcleod Alasdair
Published: February 2012

This chapter argues that it may soon go too far and stir up legitimate resentment in Scotland and Wales — precisely because it will get too close to equal per capita expenditures. It also provides the consequences on whether the imperfect integration of Scotland into the union is something to be celebrated or deplored depends upon the perspective adopted. Both the Goschen formula and the Barnett formula became at various times something for the Scottish Office to defend as a means of protecting its policy space and the perceived expenditure advantage they protected. Attitudes to formulae such as Goschen and Barnett are conditioned, partly at least, by the perceptions of the extent to which the arrangements are favourable. It then addresses how the arrangements have worked under devolution. Moreover, it considers the two questions: how expenditure is to be determined; and how it is to be funded. The example presented shows the obvious point that a UK government that wished to make the union unworkable could do so. However, it also shows that union has demonstrated a remarkable resilience and its future is properly a political choice.
The Auld Enemy in the New Scotland
Authors: Hussain Asifa , Miller William L.
Published: February 2012

This chapter reports considerable experience of harassment in Scotland. But those involved rate the conflict between themselves and Scots as far less serious than the sectarian conflict between Protestant and Catholic Scots has been rated. Devolution and nationalism challenge the identities of the English in a unique way. Their own criteria of English identity for national identity prevent them from identifying with Scotland. They are indeed willing ‘to adopt the culture’ but (psychologically) unable to ‘join the nation’. The real reason why Scottish perceptions of English disloyalty do not indicate an immediate crisis is the absence of a sufficiently acute conflict. There is a self-conscious perception amongst English immigrants that while they might have some conflict with majority Scots, other conflicts have been worse. English immigrants cope with the problem of identity by describing themselves as ‘British’ rather than ‘English’.
Omisso speciosiore stili genere
Authors: Russell D. A.
Published: February 2012

This chapter first examines in detail the three passages in which Quintilian’s comments on the way he is presenting his material, and comparing what follows the announcement of a change with what precedes it. But before coming to the passages themselves, it makes a few preliminary observations. Quintilian announces that he is now going on to the traditional core of rhetoric. The chapter then turns to omisso speciosiore stili genere, the programmatic announcement made at 7.1.54. But it must put it in its context, which has several interesting features. Quintilian often changes register without giving prior warning. Periodic writing does of course make recognizable patterns more frequent and obvious, but even in his simplest writing Quintilian appears to be rhythmical by instinct.
English Apprenticeship: A Neglected Factor in the First Industrial Revolution
Authors: Humphries Jane
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the role of apprenticeship in the British Industrial Revolution. The apprenticeship system contributed in four ways. First, it provided training of necessary skills in the expanding area of employment and newer sectors. Second, it promoted efficient training among masters and men. Third, it reduced the transaction costs involved in transferring resources from agriculture to non-agriculture and facilitated the expansion of sectors which promoted trade and commerce. Finally, apprenticeship saved poor children from social exclusion and enabled them to become more productive adults. The chapter also suggests that the apprenticeship system also created a structure of contract enforcement which ensured that both masters and trainees would derive the benefits from human capital accumulation.
Lessons from Italy’s Monetary Unification (1862–1880) for the Euro and Europe’s Single Market
Authors: Conte Leandro , Toniolo Gianni , Vecchi Giovanni
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the effects of monetary unification on market integration. It offers a new perspective on the Euro's likely effectiveness in achieving the ‘Single Market’ goal of European economic integration, by examining the impact of a nineteenth-century national currency reform. It looks back at the experience of Italian monetary unification after 1861 and describes how rapidly the prices of the basic factors of production, wages, and interest rates began to converge after the introduction of the national currency.
Market Crime
Authors: Shaw James E.
Published: February 2012

The weakness and unreliability of the public administration forced the government to work closely with private interests, leaving responsibility for policing and taxation to private corporations. Without the guilds, which provided a kind of self-interested policing system, it would have been extremely difficult for the government to tax and regulate the economy. This chapter examines the consequences of this in terms of how market justice was experienced in practice on the streets of Venice. It presents a detailed study of law enforcement in practice, using one of the few surviving registers of criminal denunciations at the Giustizia Vecchia. To understand the real meaning of market justice for ordinary people, the discussion focuses on the mundane and the everyday, the sort of ordinary crime that constituted the background to economic life.
Conclusion
Authors: Shaw James E.
Published: February 2012

This study has revealed an alternative picture of Venetian justice as mild and forgiving, where the full rigour of the law was rarely enforced. Only token punishments were applied to those who submitted to court authority and expressed due contrition, and sentencing was usually adjusted in response to extenuating circumstances, such as the poverty of defendants. It could be justified in legal terms by appealing to the ideals of equity. The permeation of the justice system by private interests is particularly clear in the case of the guilds. Comparing the Giustizia Vecchia with other Venetian courts underlines the importance of distinguishing between two different levels of penal justice: a higher level of ‘serious’ crime; and a lower level of ‘petty’ crime, the practices of everyday life.
The Venetian Chronicles and Archives as Sources for the History of Byzantium and the Crusades (992–1204)
Authors: Angold Michael
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses the Venetian Chronicles and archives as potential sources of information regarding the history of Byzantium and the Crusades. It shows that the histories of the crusades, Venice, and Byzantium are interlinked, and the scholarly approaches to this relationship are presented. The Venetian sources are categorized into three main groups – narrative sources, diplomatic sources, and commercial documents – which are discussed in the chapter. The Fourth Crusade and the Crusader states are also examined.
Sources in Arabic
Authors: Hillenbrand Carole
Published: February 2012

This chapter provides an overview of sources in Arabic. It studies medieval Arabic narrative sources that deal with the period 1025–1204, and presents a survey of medieval Islamic prosopographical material, which includes autobiographical and biographical literature. An analysis of the present state of research on Islamic prosopography is also included. Certain ancillary sources, i.e. inscriptions, are mentioned here. Ancillary sources are considered to be useful prosopographical tools.
Arabic Sources for Sicily
Authors: Johns Jeremy
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses briefly the history of Sicily from 1025 to 1204. It concentrates mostly on the less-well-known and more complicated periods, specifically the last few years of Islamic Sicily and the passage from Norman rule to the reign of Emperor Frederick II. The politically uncomplicated reign of the Norman kings is mentioned in passing. The chapter also discusses the fate of the Muslims of Sicily under Christian rule, along with the unique mass of Arabic sources from Norman Sicily.
Varieties of Transparency
Authors: Heald David
Published: February 2012

Although the purpose of this chapter is to construct an anatomy of transparency, it is essential to address the triangular relationship between transparency, openness, and surveillance. The first question is whether a clear distinction can be drawn between transparency and openness. The second question concerns the relationship between transparency/openness and surveillance. This chapter examines transparency, focusing on directions and varieties of transparency and how they interact with their habitat and with each other. It distinguishes four directions of transparency and maps its varieties. The chapter also emphasizes the importance of examining the habitats within which transparency operates. Finally, it draws some brief conclusions, stressing the implications of the analysis for the measurement of transparency. The aim is to identify different directions and varieties of transparency in relatively neutral terms. Abstracting from the issue of direction, transparency can be analysed by means of a set of three dichotomies: event transparency versus process transparency; transparency in retrospect versus transparency in real time; and nominal transparency versus effective transparency.
The Sasanian relief at Rag-i Bibi (Northern Afghanistan)
Authors: GRENET FRANTZ , LEE JONATHAN , MARTINEZ PHILIPPE , ORY FRANÇOIS
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the rock carving in Rag-i Bibi in northern Afghanistan. The rock carving is situated a kilometre south of the village of Shamarq and its name literally means Veins of the Lady; which, according to local sources, refers to Bibi Fatima. The chapter also discusses iconographic and historical comments on Rag-i Bibi and evaluates the application of three-dimensional laser scanning to the Rag-i Bibi relief.
The Fortifications at Gobekly-depe
Authors: KOSHELENKO G. A.
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses the result of research on the Gobekly-depe fortifications at the north-western edge of the Merv Oasis conducted by the South Turkmenistan Archaeological Multi-Disciplinary Expedition (YuTAKE) in the late 1940s. The findings suggest that the fortress served as a residence for the state dignitary in charge of the fortress and as a warehouse to which specific commodities were sent from Merv and from which they were then distributed further. The plan of the fortifications involved towers in all four corners and an entrance in the middle of the south wall, and the walls were built with alternate layers of mud bricks and pakhsa.
Staging Matters: Shakespeare, the Director, and the Theatre Historian
Authors: DESSEN ALAN C.
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses the bases for the gap between Globe practitioners and the Shakespearean academic community and develops some implications. It attempts to recover a lost or blurred vocabulary of the theatre. The discussion also includes two assumptions: that Shakespeare and his colleagues actually knew what they were doing, and that their methods and working assumptions were not being taken for granted more than four centuries later. It notes that there is a proposition for the play adaptations of Shakespeare's work to be approached as scripts designed to be staged, rather than as solely literary texts to be read.
The Judges: Active or Passive
Authors: BINGHAM OF CORNHILL LORD
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses the traditionalist view of the judicial role. Three propositions are used as the basis for this view, beginning with the separation of powers. The second and third propositions relate to non-statutory areas of the law, and that the authority and standing of the judges depend on their strict adherence to rules. The chapter also touches on the constitutional implications of this choice.
Anglo-Saxon England
Authors: Henry Loyn
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines British research on the history of Anglo-Saxon England. There are about two hundred significant books and a thousand or so significant articles wholly or partly devoted to the history of England between c. 450 and 1066 written by British scholars. One of the most pioneering works was Anglo-Saxon England by F.M. Stenton which covers the period from 500 to 1087. Other notable British publications during the twentieth century include The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest by Thomas Hodgkin and England before the Norman Conquest by Sir Charles Oman.
English History 1066–1272
Authors: Holt J. C.
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines British studies on English history for the period from 1066 to 1272. It discusses works which changed the direction of historical thinking, yielded new conclusions, deployed new methods and exploited sources hitherto unplumbed. These include William Stubbs' Constitutional History, J.H. Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville, F.W. Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond, and F.M. Stenton's Documents Illustrative of the Social and Economic History of the Danelaw.
Language
Authors: Robins R. H.
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the history and developments in British scholarship on medieval language studies. It clarifies three topics sensitive to the analysis of British medieval language studies. These include the content of the term medieval as a historical adjective, the meaning and concept of language and what is specifically British scholarship. This chapter focuses on the medieval study of language as a specifically human activity and part of the divine creation of mankind.
Latin
Authors: Sharpe Richard , Deyermond Alan
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the study of Latin language and literature in Great Britain during the twentieth century. It explains that Latin is so pervasive in the literature, philosophy, science, law and historiography of medieval western Europe that most aspects of scholarship on Latin are covered in most medieval studies. It provides background information on Latin language of the earlier middle ages and discusses Latin literature.
Cartography
Authors: Harvey P. D. A.
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the progress and developments in the study of medieval cartography in Great Britain during the twentieth century. Throughout the twentieth century the study of medieval cartography has been a wholly international activity. The three successive milestones in its development include the six-volume study of medieval world and regional maps by German Konrad Miller, the standard descriptive catalogue of late-medieval world maps edited by Frenchman Marcel Destombes, and the first volume of the History of Cartography. In all, British scholars have made a significant contribution to the study of medieval maps in the twentieth century, both intellectually and at the organizational level.
The History of the Book
Authors: Gameson Richard
Published: February 2012

This chapter examines the history and developments in study of medieval manuscript books in Britain during the twentieth century. The twentieth century saw the study of the manuscript book rightly move from the margins to centre stage in British medieval studies. However, much of what was accomplished was due to the heroic labours of a small number of dedicated and determined individuals rather than to coherent institutional support. In addition, Great Britain still lags behind France and Germany in manuscript book research.
Exploiting molecular and isotopic signals at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition
Authors: Evershed Richard P.
Published: February 2012

The paucity of cultural finds at this key stage in human prehistory increases the need to fully and effectively exploit all the sources of evidence that exist. Organic residues, preserved in association with skeletal remains and pottery, have the potential to provide various levels of information relating to diet and subsistence, and thus the wider interactions of ancient humans with their environment. This chapter explores the potential to enhance the rigour and level of information retrievable from the biochemical constituents of skeletal remains and pottery by exploiting new sources of molecular and isotopic information. It addresses the following possibilities: (i) deriving palaeodietary information from human remains via the complementary use of amino acid and lipid components; and (ii) assessing terrestrial and marine contributions to organic residues preserved in skeletal remains and pottery.
Houses, bodies and tombs
Authors: Bradley Richard
Published: February 2012

The house is among the features that are supposed to characterize early farming. Its presence implies sedentism, while its absence suggests a mobile pattern of settlement. That idea raises many problems. What applies to individual houses also applies to settlements. British archaeologists have been frustrated by their inability to locate what they had expected to find. If people were growing crops and raising livestock, then surely they must have occupied more substantial shelters than mobile hunter-gatherers, and their living sites ought to be easier to identify. That has been difficult to demonstrate, with the result that at different times a wide variety of earthwork enclosures have been claimed as permanent settlements; ditches and pits have been recruited as subterranean dwellings; and even mortuary monuments have been assigned to the living rather than the dead. This chapter argues that the survival of houses has been given an importance that it cannot support. It suggests that the reason why the field evidence poses so many problems is because the histories of the buildings in which people had lived were reflected by the ways in which their bodies were treated when they died.
Seven Steps in the Evolution of the Human Imagination
Authors: MITHEN STEVEN
Published: February 2012

The modern human is a product of six million years of evolution wherein it is assumed that the ancestor of man resembles that of a chimpanzee. This assumption is based on the similarities of the ape-like brain size and post-cranial characteristics of the earliest hominid species to chimpanzees. Whilst it is unclear whether chimpanzees share the same foresight and contemplation of alternatives as with humans, it is nevertheless clear that chimpanzees lack creative imagination — an aspect of modern human imagination that sets humanity apart from its hominid ancestors. Creative imagination pertains to the ability to combine different forms of knowledge and ways of thinking to form creative and novel ideas. This chapter discusses seven critical steps in the evolution of the human imagination. These steps provide a clear picture of the gradual emergence of creative imagination in humans from their primitive origins as Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago. This chronological evolution of the imaginative mind of humans involves both biological and cultural change that began soon after the divergence of the two lineages that led to modern humans and African apes.
Great Ape Cognition and the Evolutionary Roots of Human Imagination
Authors: SUDDENDORF THOMA , WHITEN ANDREW
Published: February 2012

The imaginative powers of humans obviously exceed those of other species; however these characteristics and knowledge did not spring from nowhere. Instead they evolved on the shoulders of the distinctive psychology of man’s pre-human ancestors. This chapter defines the key characteristics of the ancestral foundations of man and describes the evidence in great ape behaviour for two aspects of imagination. The first level of imagination is inventiveness. Inventiveness is the capacity to generate novel and diverse behavioural responses to any given environmental circumstance. In the experimental studies presented in this chapter wherein chimpanzees are tasked to solve particular problems, it was found that great apes such as gorillas, orang-utans, and chimpanzees display imaginative skills compared to other primates. The second aspect of imagination refers to the capacity to operate mentally in a ‘pretend’ world. This second level of imagination is higher than inventiveness as it requires holding mind distinctions between the hypothetical and real world. Although the experimental studies generated intriguing results, these results are limited, and while the pretence in apes should be observable, it is dominated by the manifestation of a more general capacity for secondary representation.
Benjamin John Pimlott 1945–2004
Authors: Hennessy Peter
Published: February 2012

Ben Pimlott's writings provided one of the most significant scholarly spinal cords of post-war contemporary British history from Attlee to Blair. The politics of the centre Left were central to his scholarship, his personal convictions, and his renown as a public intellectual. Yet Pimlott was never tainted by dogma or ideology, and respect for him and his works straddled the political divides. Very tall, arresting, quietly spoken, courteous, attractive to women, and intellectually fastidious, he dominated – but never domineered – his special scholarly patch and, in the 1980s and 1990s, raised the art of political biography to new heights.
Introduction
Authors: Becker Felicitas
Published: February 2012

Muslims and Muslim polities have been present for hundreds of years on the coast of East Africa. Some 80 percent of the population in Southeast Tanzania is estimated to be Muslim. How and why this came to be the case, and how this process has shaped both the ritual practice of these Muslims and the way they understand their place within their country, is the subject of this book. It concentrates on the role of proselytizers rather than the motives of converts, emphasizing the former's personal commitment and piety. The conversion to Islam among non-Muslims in the countryside, and the spread of Sufi orders in the towns where many people already were Muslim, are addressed. The religious practice and everyday life, and the role of the state, travel, and local society in the production of oral records are described. Moreover, the chapter discusses the historicity of local views of history and religion, kin networks, villages and religious affiliations, and the polyvalence of religious change, struggle, and negotiation.
Anthropology is Not Ethnography
Authors: INGOLD TIM
Published: February 2012

This lecture presents the text of the speech about the differences between anthropology and ethnography delivered by the author at the 2007 Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology held at the British Academy. It explains that the objective of anthropology is to seek comparative understanding of human beings, while ethnography aims to describe the lives of people other than ourselves. The lecture also discusses the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic inquiry.
‘Hell, and Rome…have long been confederate against us’:1 Jesuits and Protestantism
Authors: Hinds Peter
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses how Jesuits were represented and perceived in popular discourse. It looks at the significance of this perception throughout the Popish Plot. It considers in detail how the Jesuits were represented and perceived in relation to Protestant Dissent and the Church of England. This discussion reveals the importance of certain keywords, together with the battle for their appropriation and the significance of the long-term, underlying structures of anti-Catholic thought.
The Pre-Columbian City
Authors: BRAY WARWICK
Published: February 2012

This chapter attempts to visualize how Tenochtitlan may have looked and functioned before the Spanish invasion. This usually assumed barbaric society with a culture of sacrificing thousand of captives for the blood-thirsty Aztecs was truly a civilized city by any criteria used to define civilizations such as the existence of bureaucracy, sophisticated agricultural technology, ceremonials and monumental architecture. Aztec Tenochtitlan was built and has been civilized more than 2,000 years ago. This ancient Mexican city started in the year Two Reed, it proliferated into stone-built city larger than Europe and had functions and bureaucracy similar to that of the sixteenth century Madrid. In terms of agriculture, the Aztec city has sophisticated agricultural technology—the chinampas which provided for the Aztecs and which provided insight into the chinampa ownership history of this ancient civilization. Complex architectural buildings also graced the Aztec civilization before the invasion of the Spaniards. Palaces, temples and avenues were dominant in this old Mexican civilization. These buildings were characterized by their complex decorations of serpents, murals and sculpture celebrating the state, its rulers, its gods and their conquests.
The Poetic City
Authors: QUIRARTE VICENTE
Published: February 2012

This chapter discusses the ways in which the poet and poetry have traced the invisible map of Mexico City and how this literary art protected and strengthened memories while also helping the Mexicans to live each day with an increased dignity. The focus of this chapter is on the reflections created by the poets and their poetry from the Tenochtitlan period to the early twenty-first century with emphasis on the mid-nineteenth century onwards. This period is specifically a century of prose and poetry that stood as testaments to the beauty, downfall and the rise of Mexico City. Through the poets, poetry has became an avenue for the rich illustrations of the transformations Mexico has undergone such as the rise of nationalism, and the emergence of a gender role and a new gender awareness. Writing in this period has become a source of enlightenment and poets specifically have played a prominent role as urban planners, insiders who narrated the city’s transformations, educators who enforced virtues, and biographers of emotions. From the King Nezahualcóyotl to the poet Eduardo Lizalde, poets have found ways of describing and celebrating the city without falling into despair, because the very naming and exploration of despair is a way of transcending it.
The Photographic City
Authors: TERCERO MAGALI
Published: February 2012

This chapter presents powerful images and accounts that chronicle contemporary urban life in Mexico. The images discussed were captured by the photographer Maya Goded. These photographs and narratives chronicle the desolation of death, the world of the child and the bleak world of prostitution. In addition to these, the woman’s prison, the attractions of lucha libre (masked wrestling), the national lottery and games of chance, and the mass rallies of the Zapatistas, are painted vibrantly through chronicles and accounts. In these chronicles and photographs, the theme of poverty and the failure of the government to address the needs of the marginalized people form the unifying voice of these accounts. Prostitution, wrestling and the lottery became means for the people to escape poverty and the humdrum of everyday lives marked with difficulties. And the mistreatment of children, the trafficking of the rights of women in prisons and the lack of systematic identification of the victims of death reflect the failure of the government to produce laws and services that protect its people. However, despite the bleakness of the photographs and the chronicles presented herein, they nevertheless reflect the resilience of the Mexicans in surviving the challenges of life despite the feeling of being marginalized.
Scout’s Honour: Contending for Loyalty among the Youth
Authors: Dueck Jennifer M.
Published: February 2012

This chapter tackles features shared by scouting in both Syria and Lebanon. These include the main foreign influences from French, British, Italian, and German sources, as well as local political, religious, and military components. The parallel national movements shared a number of features, namely their appropriation of different European models of youth organization, their implication in politics, their intermingling of religion and scouting, as well as their association with fascism and militarism. The foreign influences, which are explored here first, comprised an unlikely mix of French and Anglo–Saxon scouting models alongside Italian and German fascist youth organization. Overall, local scout movements demonstrate the extensive cross-pollination between foreign imports and local innovations, the implication of scouting in politics, and the fluid philosophical underpinnings of the movement as a whole.
Borderline Citizens
Authors: Gleadle Kathryn
Published: February 2012

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of women's involvement in British political culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is based on extensive archival research, but also engages with recent feminist theories in the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology. The volume looks at both rural and urban experiences of politics. The author throws new light on women's political activities and challenges many traditional assumptions about contemporary politics. The book gives fresh insights into the Reform Act of 1832, pays attention to continuities in political practice and ideas, and brings focus to the primary significance of parish politics within the day-to-day activities of the middling and gentry classes.
Human Social Evolution: A Comparison of Hunter-gatherer and Chimpanzee Social Organization
Authors: Layton Robert , O'Hara Sean
Published: February 2012

This chapter compares the social behaviour of human hunter-gatherers with that of the better-studied chimpanzee species, Pan troglodytes, in an attempt to pinpoint the unique features of human social evolution. Although hunter-gatherers and chimpanzees living in central Africa have similar body weights, humans live at much lower population densities due to their greater dependence on predation. Human foraging parties have longer duration than those of chimpanzees, lasting hours rather than minutes, and a higher level of mutual dependence, through the division of labour between men (hunting) and women (gathering); which is in turn related to pair-bonding, and meat sharing to reduce the risk of individual hunters' failure on any particular day. The band appears to be a uniquely human social unit that resolves the tension between greater dispersion and greater interdependence.
Small Worlds, Material Culture and Ancient Near Eastern Social Networks
Authors: Coward Fiona
Published: February 2012

The cognitive, psychological and sociological mechanisms underpinning complex social relationships among small groups are a part of our primate heritage. However, among human groups, relationships persist over much greater temporal and spatial scales, often in the physical absence of one or other of the individuals themselves. This chapter examines how such individual face-to-face social interactions were ‘scaled up’ during human evolution to the regional and global networks characteristic of modern societies. One recent suggestion has been that a radical change in human sociality occurred with the shift to sedentary and agricultural societies in the early Neolithic. The discussion presents the results of a focused study of the long-term development of regional social networks in the Near East, using the distribution of different forms of material culture as a proxy for the social relationships that underpinned processes of trade, exchange and the dissemination of material culture practices.
John Anthony Crook 1921–2007
Authors: Garnsey P. D. A.
Published: February 2012

John Anthony Crook (1921–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was a distinguished ancient historian with a special interest in Roman history and law. Among historians, his knowledge and understanding of Roman law was unequalled. Crook's academic career was spent for the most part in the University of Cambridge, and at St John's College. He entered the college as an undergraduate in 1939, and served as a Fellow from 1951 until his death on September 7, 2007. Within the Faculty of Classics he rose to be Professor of ancient history in 1979. Crook was born in Balham, London, the only child of a bandsman in the Grenadier Guards. In his book Law and Life of Rome, he gave a brilliant demonstration of how legal sources might be made accessible and used constructively for social history. In the late 1970s, Crook joined forces with J. G. Wolf to produce an edition of the Murecine Tablets, to which they had been drawn independently.