bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Social Cognitive Theory and Motivation
Authors: Schunk Dale H. , Usher Ellen L.
Published: February 2013

Social cognitive theory is a theory of psychological functioning that emphasizes learning from the social environment. This chapter focuses on Bandura's social cognitive theory, which postulates reciprocal interactions among personal, behavioral, and social/environmental factors. Persons use various vicarious, symbolic, and self-regulatory processes as they strive to develop a sense of agency in their lives. Key motivational processes are goals and self-evaluations of progress, outcome expectations, values, social comparisons, and self-efficacy. People set goals and evaluate their goal progress. The perception of progress sustains self-efficacy and motivation. Individuals act in accordance with their values and strive for outcomes they desire. Social comparisons with others provide further information on their learning and goal attainment. Self-efficacy is an especially critical influence on motivation and affects task choices, effort, persistence, and achievement. Suggestions are given for future research directions.
Flow
Authors: Jackson Susan A.
Published: February 2013

The concept of flow is one that is central to understanding human motivation and the capacity of humans to function optimally in the psychological realm. In this chapter, the concept of flow is defined and described from its dimensional perspective. An overview of some of the research that has been conducted on flow is provided, measurement options are explored, and the critical question of how to facilitate this optimal psychological state is addressed.
Achievement Goals
Authors: Murayama Kou , Elliot Andrew J. , Friedman Ron
Published: February 2013

In this chapter, we describe the achievement goal construct's origin and highlight noteworthy developments in the literature. We then use this historical overview to provide the context for several key theoretical and empirical issues surrounding the current achievement goal approach, including the precise definition of achievement goals, the possible inclusion of additional goals into the achievement goal approach, the measurement of achievement goals, the debates surrounding performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals, contextual effects on achievement goals, and the consideration of methodological expansion.
Goal Pursuit
Authors: Gollwitzer Peter M. , Oettingen Gabriele
Published: February 2013

We start out with describing how the goal concept emerged in the history of the psychology of motivation to better understand the important role it plays in current research on motivation. We then suggest a differentiation between studies targeting the setting of goals versus the implementation of goals to get a grip on the host of empirical work the goal concept has triggered. With respect to goal setting, we first discuss studies that explore determinants affecting the content and structure of set goals (e.g., entity vs. incremental theories of intelligence influence the setting of performance vs. learning goals). We then turn to studies on the self-regulation of goal setting and discuss in detail how a self-regulation strategy called mental contrasting of future and reality facilitates strong commitment to feasible goals but dissolves commitment to unfeasible ones. With respect to goal implementation we first refer to studies on the determinants of effective goal striving (e.g., the framing of the set goal in terms of approach vs. avoidance) and then turn to analyzing the effective self-regulation of goal implementation. Here we focus on the strategy of forming implementation intentions (i.e., if-then plans) and explicate in detail how such planning helps in overcoming classic hurdles to goal attainment (e.g., distractions). We will end the chapter by reporting the results of recent intervention studies that successfully enhanced goal attainment in the health, academic, and interpersonal domains by combining the self-regulation strategy of mental contrasting with that of forming implementation intentions.
Avoiding the Pitfalls and Approaching the Promises of Close Relationships
Authors: Gable Shelly L. , Prok Thery
Published: February 2013

People are powerfully motivated to form and maintain social relationships. Indeed, health and well-being are strongly tied to the course and quality of social bonds. However, while close relationships provide people with many advantages such as intimacy and social support, relationships can also be a detriment, such as when they are wrought with hostility and potential rejection. We present a framework of social and relationship motivation that simultaneously accounts for people's tendencies to both approach the incentives and avoid the threats in close relationships. Research examining the correlates of approach and avoidance motives and goals in relationships is reviewed and mediating mechanisms are explored. The implications and advantages of an approach and avoidance model of social motivation are highlighted and future research directions are discussed.
Neuroscience and Human Motivation
Authors: Reeve Johnmarshall , Lee Woogul
Published: February 2013

Recognizing the potential for interdisciplinary research in motivational neuroscience, the goal of the present chapter is to show the relevance of neuroscience research to human motivation researchers and to suggest ways to expand their programs of research, methodological options, and theoretical conceptualizations of the motivational constructs with which they work. To illustrate the neural bases of human motivation, we highlight 15 key motivation-relevant brain structures, identify the neural core of reward-based motivated action, and discuss a range of brain-generated motivational states that extend from those that are relatively automatic and stimulus dependent (e.g., pleasure from taste) to those that are relatively intentional and context sensitive (e.g., goals). We then examine the following 10 well-researched concepts from the human motivation literature to suggest how each might be enriched through neuroscientific investigation: agency, volition, value, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, flow, expectancy, self-efficacy, self-regulation, and goals. We conclude with suggestions for future research.
Effort Intensity: Some Insights From the Cardiovascular System
Authors: Gendolla Guido H. E. , Wright Rex A. , Richter Michael
Published: February 2013

This chapter deals with the psychological process that determines effort intensity in instrumental behavior. According to motivation intensity theory, effort should be proportional to experienced task difficulty as long as success is possible and justified and low when success is impossible or excessively difficult, given the available benefit. When task difficulty is unspecified or unknown, effort should be proportional to the importance of success. We report a program of experimental studies that have operationalized effort intensity as cardiovascular reactivity during task performance and used multiple manipulations of variables influencing subjective task difficulty (e.g., performance standards, ability, mood) and the amount of justified effort (e.g., material incentive, instrumentality, evaluation). The empirical evidence is in clear support of the principles of motivation intensity theory and challenges a number of other theoretical accounts. Directions for future research are discussed.
Through a Fly's Eye: Multiple Yet Overlapping Perspectives on Future Directions for Human Motivation Research
Authors: Ryan Richard M. , Legate Nicole
Published: February 2013

In this final chapter we examine future directions in motivation research by looking through the individual lenses of our volume authors. We review each chapter for viewpoints on new directions for research. Each chapter offers some unique ideas relevant to the particular area of inquiry, but there is also overlapping emphasis on several issues facing the field as a whole. The most widely cited future direction was for more research into dual-process models of motivation. There were also frequent calls for more intervention research, especially interventions in which process variables and active ingredients can be carefully assessed. A desire for more developmental and neuropsychological studies of motivation was also common among this selected group. The centrality of motivation for human adaptation and wellness makes the pursuit of these topics a central task for psychology.
Empathy, sympathy, and prosocial preferences in primates
Authors: Silk Joan B.
Published: February 2013

Differences in the deployment of altruism in human and non-human primate groups raise two different questions in this article. This article considers some of the factors that may limit the extent of cooperation in non-human primate groups. In particular, it focuses on the evidence for the features that are associated with altruistic behaviour in humans: the capacity for empathy, the existence of moral sentiments, and the concern for the welfare of others. The article also defines cooperation as equivalent to the biological definition of altruism, and uses these terms interchangeably. It distinguishes between empathy and sympathy. The definition of empathy corresponds to Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal's concept of ‘cognitive empathy’. While one often conflates empathy and sympathy, the two can be uncoupled. Thus, empathy is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for sympathy.
Body Odours and Body Odour Preferences in Humans
Authors: Wedekind Claus
Published: February 2013

Body odours seem to reveal different kinds of information about humans, and they typically behave as if they do not want to give this information away. This article briefly summarises the kind of information that may be revealed in odours. It then concentrates on the link between the MHC (major histocompatibility complex, a group of genes) and odours and odour preferences. It also shows that metabolism inevitably produces volatile chemicals that may be difficult to hide completely. Therefore, it may not be surprising that body odours reveal some information about human metabolism. Odours are, for example, of primary importance in the sexual life of mice and rats, and certainly not without importance for primate sexual behaviour. A large body of work suggests that a group of genes within the MHC (major histocompatibility complex) is important in the link between odours and mate preferences in several vertebrates, including humans.
Reproductive strategies and tactics
Authors: Gangestad Steven W.
Published: February 2013

Optimality models seeks to specify which strategy of a strategy set is optimal under constraints. Broadly speaking, it takes two forms. Optimisation models are used to predict outcomes when individuals ‘play’ in the face of fixed constraints. An example is modelling the optimal number of offspring to produce in light of constraints on the overall amount of investment given to all offspring and the effect of investment on an offspring's probability of surviving. Second, game theoretical models are required to model outcomes when two or more players each attempt to optimize their outcomes is response to what the other players do. In a mating market, for instance, each individual competes against others of the same sex and in response to preferences of the other sex — the precise nature of which, in turn, may depend on what members of the first sex do to ‘please’ their preferences.
Explaining altruistic behaviour in humans
Authors: Gintis Herbert , Bowles Samuel , Boyd Robert , Fehr Ernst
Published: February 2013

This article presents evidence supporting strong reciprocity. It explains why, under conditions plausibly characteristic of the early stages of human evolution, a small fraction of strong reciprocators could invade a population of self-regarding types, and why strong reciprocity is an evolutionarily stable strategy. It uses the term ‘self-regarding’ rather than the more common term ‘self-interested’ to avoid the question as to whether it is selfish to help others if that is how one ‘maximizes utility’. Although most of the evidence it reports is based on behavioural experiments, the same behaviours are regularly observed in everyday life, and of great relevance for social policy. Despite the fact that strong reciprocity is altruistic, its results do not contradict traditional evolutionary theory. A gene that promotes self-sacrifice will die out unless those who are helped carry the mutant gene, or its spread is otherwise promoted.
Word processing in the brain as revealed by neurophysiological imaging
Authors: Pulvermüller Friedemann
Published: February 2013

The advent of neuroimaging opened new research perspectives for the psycholinguist as it became possible to look at the neuronal mass activity that underlies language processing. Studies of brain correlates of psycholinguistic processes can complement behavioural results, and in some cases can lead to direct information about the basis of psycholinguistic processes. Even more importantly, the neuroscience move in psycholinguistics made it possible to advance language theorising to the level of the brain. This article discusses neurophysiological imaging with electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography. It examines behavioural and neurophysiological evidence in psycholinguistic research, focusing on lexical class membership and word frequency. The article also considers event-related potentials indicating language processing, early and late language potentials and their implications for psycholinguistics, the universe of psycholinguistic variables and its neurophysiological reality, and laterality of neurophysiological activity interpreted as the critical brain feature of language.
The biocognition of the mental lexicon
Authors: Ullman Michael T.
Published: February 2013

The mental lexicon is rooted in the biology of the brain. Therefore, understanding the biological bases of the lexicon is critical for a full understanding of the lexicon itself. The vast majority of research on the biology of the mental lexicon and other aspects of language has thus far focused on the level of structural brain anatomy. However, the roles of many other substrates, from cells to molecules to genes, must also be elucidated. One can ask a number of different questions about the biocognition of the mental lexicon. This article examines four broad issues, most—but not all—of which have been and continue to be major areas of research: biological substrates, separability, redundancy, and domain specificity. It also discusses brain regions other than the temporal lobes that underlie aspects of lexically related knowledge and processing. In addition, the article considers how acetylcholine and estrogen modulate aspects of the lexicon and conceptual semantics. Finally, it analyses the link between lexical memory and declarative memory.
Alignment in dialogue
Authors: Garrod Simon , Pickering Martin J.
Published: February 2013

This article argues that psycholinguists need to think in a different way to understand processing in dialogue. According to this view, interlocutors do not use language to encode and decode messages, but rather as a means by which they can align their mental states, so that they come to have the same ideas about the topic under discussion. It would in principle be possible to decompose this task into discrete acts of comprehension and production, but in practice real dialogue involves constant overlaying of production and comprehension. It is much better to understand dialogue as a joint activity, like ballroom dancing or using a two-handed saw, and to assume that alignment follows from this inherently interactive process. On the assumption that the goal of dialogue is alignment, this article discusses ways in which interlocutors come to achieve this state. First, it considers alignment via beliefs about one's interlocutor, and then discusses alignment via imitation. The article also looks at alignment via agreements between interlocutors, alignment via feedback, and alignment via physical co-presence.
Word form retrieval in language production
Authors: Meyer Antje S. , Belke Eva
Published: February 2013

Current models of word form retrieval converge on central assumptions. They all distinguish between morphological, phonological, and phonetic representations and processes; they all assume morphological and phonological decomposition, and agree on the main processing units at these levels. In addition, all current models of word form postulate the same basic retrieval mechanisms: activation and selection of units. Models of word production often distinguish between processes concerning the selection of a single word unit from the mental lexicon and the retrieval of the associated word form. This article explores lexical selection and word form retrieval in language production. Following the distinctions in linguistic theory, it discusses morphological encoding, phonological encoding, and phonetic encoding. The article also considers the representation of phonological knowledge, building of phonological representations, segmental retrieval, retrieval of metrical information, generating the phonetic code of words, and a model of word form retrieval.
Cross-linguistic research on language production
Authors: Costa Albert , Alario F.-Xavier , Sebastián-Gallés Núria
Published: February 2013

A full description of the language faculty requires uncovering both the universal characteristics of the language system and the modulations imposed by language specific properties. This second requirement can only be achieved by conducting cross-linguistic research. This article reviews some of the recent research conducted in the field of language production that bears on cross-linguistic issues. It focuses on psycholinguistic experiments in which chronometric and/or accuracy performance is registered in normal speakers. The article also assesses several studies which have addressed the processes involved in the retrieval from the lexicon of open-class words (that is, lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, certain adverbs, etc.). Moreover, it discusses how closed-class words are retrieved from the lexicon (closed-class words are grammatical words such as determiners, prepositions, and conjunctions); how speakers compute agreement during speech production; the processes involved in the construction of syntactic structures during speech planning; some research addressing the structure of the phonological and phonetic representations; and research addressing the issue of phonological planning in speech production.
Spoken language processing by machine
Authors: Moore Roger K.
Published: February 2013

The past twenty-five years have witnessed a steady improvement in the capabilities of spoken language technology, first in the research laboratory and more recently in the commercial marketplace. Progress has reached a point where automatic speech recognition software for dictating documents onto a computer is available as an inexpensive consumer product in most computer stores, text-to-speech synthesis can be heard in public places giving automated voice announcements, and interactive voice response is becoming a familiar option for people paying bills or booking cinema tickets over the telephone. This article looks at the main computational approaches employed in contemporary spoken language processing. It discusses acoustic modelling, language modelling, pronunciation modelling, and noise modelling. The article also considers future prospects in the context of the obvious shortcomings of current technology, and briefly addresses the potential for achieving a unified approach to human and machine spoken language processing.
Relating structure and time in linguistics and psycholinguistics
Authors: Phillips Colin , Wagers Matthew
Published: February 2013

The field of psycholinguistics advertises its mentalistic commitments in its name. The field of linguistics does not. Psycholinguistic research frequently involves ingenious experimental designs, fancy lab equipment such as eye-trackers or electroencephalograms, large groups of experimental subjects, and detailed statistical analyses. Linguistic research typically requires no specialized equipment, no statistical analyses, and somewhere between zero and a handful of cooperative informants. This article examines issues in the representation of unbounded syntactic dependencies, as a case study of what psycholinguistic methods can and cannot tell us about linguistic questions, and vice versa. The status of constraints on long-distance dependencies, such as the ban on dependencies that span relative clause boundaries, is a major topic of linguistic research. This article discusses the effects of such constraints on language processing, and their implications for the relation between linguistic and psycholinguistic models. It reviews experimental studies of island constraints on dependencies.
Language and mirror neurons
Authors: Rizzolatti Giacomo , Craighero Laila
Published: February 2013

Besides linguistic communication, which is at the core of human communication, humans communicate using arm gestures, body postures, facial expressions, eye contact, and head and body movements. Communication may be intentional or non-intentional. It is very plausible that intentional communication is an evolutionarily late development of non-intentional communication. In the motor cortex of the macaque monkey, it was discovered that there is a particular set of neurons that discharge both when the monkey observes a given motor act and when it does the same act. These neurons, called “mirror neurons,” represent a system that directly matches observed and executed actions. This article first provides an overview of the mirror neuron system in monkeys and then looks at its role in intention recognition. It also considers neurophysiological evidence of the mirror system in humans and discusses brain imaging studies of the human mirror system, the link between mirror neurons and language, the transition from gestures to sound, and the appearance of echo-mirror neurons.
Modern Approaches to Case
Authors: Butt Miriam
Published: February 2013

An example of a generalisation that has become standard knowledge within general linguistics is M. Silverstein's (1976) proposal of an implicational preference hierarchy for the appearance of ergative case on subjects, known as the NP-hierarchy. But perhaps the most influential idea has been the proposed classification of languages into types based on the case marking of their core arguments, including C. J. Fillmore's case relations. A comparative look at the underlying ideas contained in syntactic theories from antiquity to modern times identifies several major lines of enquiry that have been postulated to help understand the distribution of case. Some of these include the notion of semantic roles, lexical decomposition, proto-roles, grammatical relations, and linking.
Case in NSM
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna
Published: February 2013

The natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) theory of language assumes, with Franz Boas, that the grammatical categories of a language represent a given speech community's interpretation and classification of experience. As Boas put it, ‘Since the total range of personal experience which language serves to express is infinitely varied, and its whole scope must be expressed by a limited number of phonetic groups, it is obvious that an extended classification of experiences must underlie all articulate speech’. To many contemporary linguists, especially cognitive linguists, Boas' view of grammatical categories may seem so uncontroversial as to be hardly worth recalling. For Boas, however, this view had important methodological consequences which are at variance with most contemporary approaches, ‘cognitivist’ or otherwise. This article considers case in NSM, focusing on the Polish dative. First, it discusses metalanguage as a central problem for semantic analysis, and then discusses NSM, psychologically cognitive scenarios for Polish cases, and Polish transitive constructions with the dative.
Asymmetry in Case Marking
Authors: Iggesen Oliver A.
Published: February 2013

Many languages with nominal case inflection apply the same distinctions of case forms evenly across their entire nominal lexicon. Hence, all conceivable subclasses of nominals must unequivocally be analysed as exhibiting exactly the same inventory of case categories. This morphological state of affairs is known as case-symmetry. There are, however, languages in which certain (or all) case distinctions apply rather selectively to only a subset of their nominals, in such a way that the inflectional paradigms of the minority subclass can be envisaged as containing more, less, or substantially different case categories than the bulk of the nominals. In other words, certain morphological cases arguably fail to have scope over the entire nominal lexicon in such languages. This is known as case-asymmetry. This article discusses asymmetry in case marking, focusing on nominal vs. pronominal systems. It examines the theoretical implications and argumentative rationale of case-asymmetry and illustrates a case-asymmetrical paradigm structure: the opposition of direct case vs. objective case in English, which applies only to a small number of pronominal lexemes.
Case and Alternative Strategies
Authors: Siewierska Anna , Bakker Dik
Published: February 2013

It is often assumed and sometimes explicitly stated that both agreement marking and word order constitute viable alternatives to morphological case with respect to some subset of the functions that case marking may fulfil. This article examines the extent to which this is indeed so and how the three forms of marking interact with each other on a cross-linguistic basis. First, it provides an overview of what are typically considered to be the primary functions of case marking, agreement, and word order, and then considers the ways in which case marking interacts with word order and agreement. It discusses the relationship between case marking and basic clausal constituent order first noted by Greenberg (1966), namely, the predilection for case marking of core grammatical relations in languages with basic APV order and the scarcity of case marking in languages with basic AVP order. The article also explores core grammatical relations including those found in ditransitive clauses, focusing on the differences in the degree of overlap in case and agreement marking exhibited by the verbal arguments.
Varieties of Comitative
Authors: Stolz Thomas , Stroh Cornelia , Urdze Aina
Published: February 2013

This article describes the formal varieties and polysemy patterns of comitative case based on a worldwide convenience sample of 320 languages (including regional varieties). The inventory of formal means expressing Comitative comprises the following major strategies: affixation (both on [pro]nouns and verbs), adpositional constructions, adverbial constructions, and serial-verb constructions. For the present purpose, these strategies are considered instances of case relators. In the sample, bound morphology encodes Comitative in 50 per cent of those cases which do not display Comitative-Instrumental syncretism. As to affixation, suffixation expectedly predominates. However, prefixation and circumfixation are also attested more than just once. Similarly, the adpositional strategies include prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions. This article also discusses restrictions on the use of Comitative, uses of comitative markers in complex structures, and the diachrony of Comitative.
Differential Case Marking of Arguments in Amharic
Authors: Amberber Mengistu
Published: February 2013

This article examines the case and agreement systems of Amharic with particular reference to the phenomena of differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM). It discusses two interrelated issues: the semantic factors that may be relevant to DSM and DOM, and the interaction between DSM/DOM and agreement on the verb. First, the article provides a brief typological and genetic background of the Amharic language and then establishes the presence of the grammatical relations subject and direct object on the basis of language-internal formal evidence. It also considers word order in Amharic, the accusative suffix -n, the distribution of the object/indirect object agreement suffix, the quirky (non-canonical) case marking of certain subjects, and experience predicates.
Africans, Early European Contacts, and the Emergent Diaspora
Authors: Northrup David
Published: February 2013

Although Atlantic Africa was the last of the continent's shores to establish regular overseas connections, many aspects of its interactions mirrored those of East and North Africa. Ghana's successors in the Western Sudan, the empires of Mali and Songhai, continued to assure safety, stability, and wealth to Arab and Berber traders from the north. Trans-Saharan trade supplied books and paper to the centres of Islamic learning at Timbuktu and elsewhere. In 1591, however, the power, wealth, and expansive policies of the Songhai rulers provoked a retaliatory invasion by the sultan of Morocco. This article explores the first two centuries of contacts in the African Atlantic under three interconnected and somewhat overlapping headings: the establishment of diplomatic relations, the growth of commercial exchanges, and the development of intercultural and cross-cultural relations. In each case it notes the different patterns that developed in Upper Guinea, the Gold Coast, the Niger Delta, and West Central Africa.
Anglo‐Saxon Timber Buildings and their Social Context
Authors: Hamerow Helena
Published: February 2013

Despite the great progress made in the fifty years since Radford described the study of timber buildings as ‘one of the most intractable problems in the whole range of early medieval studies’, key issues remain unresolved regarding their origins, construction, and function, and consideration of the relationship between buildings and the social life of Anglo-Saxon communities has scarcely begun. Apart from churches and a handful of high-status late Saxon buildings, timber construction — mostly using oak — continued to dominate during the mid and late Saxon periods. Convincing examples of halls, kitchens, bakehouses, barns, granaries and latrines have all been identified in Anglo-Saxon buildings. If most Grubenhäuser possessed suspended floors and could have been as substantial as earthfast buildings, then this has enormous implications for the interpretations of Anglo-Saxon settlements. The distinction between earthfast timber buildings and Grubenhäuser may yet prove to have been less rigid than archaeologists have tended to assume.
Local Churches in the Anglo-Saxon Countryside
Authors: Morris Richard
Published: February 2013

The ‘Anglo-Saxon landscape’ was a realm of co-varying regions and economies, some quite uniform, others highly differentiated, within which hierarchies of settlement changed in shape, function, and complexity as time passed. Burial across a wide area followed by contraction or re-adjustment of boundaries is known in a number of places. The issue of extensive, cross-country quarrying has implications for landscape and church-building along the length of England's Jurassic stone outcrop. Anglo-Saxon church history was once conceptualized in two halves — pre- and post-Viking — and told as a story in three acts: a monastic flourishing in the seventh and eighth centuries, institutional decay and Viking destruction in the ninth, reform, renewal, and growing localism in the tenth and eleventh. Today, ‘the evolution of institutions through the whole period’ is told as ‘one continuous story’.
The Mid Saxon ‘Final Phase’
Authors: Welch Martin
Published: February 2013

Whether the terms Final Phase or Conversion Period should be assigned to the mid Saxon period, as implied in the heading of this article, is open to question. This article highlights the continuity of early Saxon furnished burial and use the term Final Phase to represent burial practices that have their origins towards the end of the sixth century and disappear early in the eighth century. The initial finding that women buried with ‘classic’ Final Phase dress fittings seem to belong to a single generation centred on the third quarter of the seventh century. For the Anglo-Saxon political elite, a recently established norm was barrow burial accompanied by the symbols of power and of the lifestyle of the warrior caste. Cremation was already going out of fashion during the sixth century and, where it survived, conversion to Christianity assured its disappearance.
Anglo‐Saxon Fields
Authors: Oosthuizen Susan
Published: February 2013

This article addresses how and when the small, rectilinear or irregular fields of Roman Britain were transformed into the open and common fields of medieval England. Furthermore, the sparse and often unsatisfactory physical indicators of continuities and discontinuities in the layout and management of arable fields during the Anglo-Saxon centuries are explored. Mid Saxon agricultural innovation seems to have included an increase in the area under cultivation, and the introduction of new crops, new technologies, and new approaches to maintaining the fertility of the soil, within the familiar structures of infield-outfield cultivation which remained the basis of arable management. The two general types of mid Saxon field layouts are explained: enclosed and unenclosed. The data suggests that the process of the transformation of ancient into medieval fields may have been more attenuated than previously supposed.
Britons and Anglo‐Saxons
Authors: Loveluck Christopher , Laing Lloyd
Published: February 2013

This article explores the evidence for contacts between different areas and population groups, as ‘trade’ is only one mode of achieving ‘exchange’, and cannot always be separated from the rest. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, new analytical technologies have been applied to the question of the relationship between indigenous British and incoming ‘Germanic’ population elements in the creation of Anglo-Saxon societies. The development of Anglo-Saxon societies in Mercia and Northumbria kingdoms is presented. There is little evidence for extensive contact between the British kingdoms of Wales and the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the fifth or sixth centuries, though there is epigraphic evidence showing travel, at least at the level of the British social elite, between Wales and British territories in eastern Britain. The most notable evidence for Anglo-Saxon advance into Welsh territory was the foundation by Edward the Elder in 921 of the Anglo-Saxon burh at Rhuddlan, Clwyd.
Coinage in its Archaeological Context
Authors: Blackburn Mark
Published: February 2013

This article describes some uses and limitations of numismatic evidence and the specialist methodology, while illustrating the directions in which current research is developing. Coins are both archaeological artefacts and historical documents. The designs on a coin should be regarded as complementing the inscriptions and from time to time as conveying a message. It is important to distinguish between the date of production of a coin, and the date of its loss. The intensity of use of Anglo-Saxon coinage was probably less than it would be in the later Middle Ages, and the periods of circulation were much shorter. There are five English coin types known from four different sites, all of them with some archaeological context. In the coming decades, greater emphasis will probably be placed on the wider economic and social implications to be drawn from the use of coinage.
The Archaeology of Paganism
Authors: Pluskowski Aleks
Published: February 2013

This article describes how the archaeology of early Anglo-Saxon religion can contribute to the understanding of variety within a pre-Christian world-view where many elements were shared by societies across the North Sea and Baltic. Evidence for paganism in Old English place-names has been traditionally used to reconstruct the topography of belief in early Anglo-Saxon England. The symbolic use of animals is one of the most visible aspects of early Anglo-Saxon religion. There has been increasing interest in the mutability of Anglo-Saxon paganisms in response to religious systems within Britain. As with the earlier Anglo-Saxon migration, religion was intimately associated with identity. Early Anglo-Saxon religion can be understood on many levels, with variation arising as a result of local responses to changing social and political situations; however, for archaeologists the most visible indicators of Anglo-Saxon spirituality are in the symbolic roles played by animals.
Place‐Names and Archaeology
Authors: Gelling Margaret
Published: February 2013

Place-names are one of the three main sources of information which can be drawn upon in attempts to chart the course of events in post-Roman Britain. They differ from other sources of information by being both abundant and ubiquitous; and while they do not provide firm answers to the problems they must be taken into account in all discussions about the period from ad 400 to ad 600. Any assessment of the historical significance of the survival of Brittonic place names depends on correct identification. Pre-English names adopted by Anglo-Saxons can be placed in an historical context. The observations about feld and land only apply to their use as generics in settlement-names: their use in district-names is a different matter. The reference books addressed include The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names and The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names.
Technology and Material Life
Authors: Hollenback Kacy L. , Schiffer Michael Brian
Published: February 2013

Humans live in a world of things. They are surrounded by artefacts. Referred to as the social shaping of technology, this has been an interesting area of research in the recent past. The focus of this article is on the ‘material life’ of human beings, and the place of technology within it. The authors approach this topic from the discipline of archaeology, specifically behavioural archaeology, but also draw on research in other fields. This article, expands this framework to include the life histories of technologies and associated material practices. This article further contextualizes contemporary technology studies, primarily in archaeology, and considers how theoretical concepts from behavioural archaeology and social constructivist studies of technology might be combined. Archaeological studies of technology are explained in details in the following section with special emphasis on performance characteristics. This article also explains the life history of technology which helps us conceptualize material practices in relation to objects and technologies.
The Malice of Inanimate Objects
Authors: Jones Andrew M. , Boivin Nicole
Published: February 2013

The concept of ‘material agency’ and the attendant concept of materiality has been widely adopted in the recent literature in archaeology and anthropology, yet its meaning has been widely misunderstood. Typical responses treat the concept as a step too far or as employed mainly for its shock value rather than for any higher intellectual purpose. This article argues that the perceived problems with the concept of material agency in archaeology and anthropology derive from similarly narrow conceptions. The article begins by outlining the semiotic view of material culture that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s, and how recent critiques of this view have prompted scholars to address notions of materiality and material agency. The article then summarizes some of the long history of the notion of material agency, in a range of disciplines from economics to anthropology. The article addresses concepts of material agency in the work of scholars from Karl Marx and Marshall McLuhan to Anthony Giddens and Alfred Gell. It then discusses differing ontologies of agency, including animism and fetishism, in which material agency plays a key role.
Architecture and cultural history
Authors: Lounsbury Carl R.
Published: February 2013

The major focus of this article happens to be architecture and cultural history. Buildings tell many stories. They are complex material objects wherein we live, work, worship, socialize, and play. They serve basic functions but also embody culture and express the dynamics of its social, economic, and political fortunes. Buildings also communicate their messages by their unusual forms, gigantic scale, or dramatic settings. The vast majority blend together as unconscious backdrops to daily routines. Buildings have life cycles. Most buildings have brief tenures before they are destroyed or fall into ruin. Only a very small number of them survive for long periods to give an historical dimension to the landscape. This article proceeds to explain design sources of architectural structures. From the eighteenth century through the early twentieth century, architects in Europe and America found design precedents in the early buildings of their native lands. Buildings are often seen as embodiments of culture.
Slavery in the Americas
Authors: Paquette Robert L. , Smith Mark M.
Published: February 2013

This article presents a general discussion of slavery in the Americas. Slavery in the Americas pre-dated Columbus, but once taking root in the Americas under western European auspices, acquired a predominantly commercial character whose benefaction to the sustained economic growth of the Western world no serious scholar can any longer doubt. The introduction of slavery into the New World affected indigenous peoples in many ways, sometimes drawing them into the orbit of slave society, sometimes alienating them from it, and sometimes augmenting a preexisting commitment to different types of slavery already practiced by some of those societies. The experiences of the enslaved also varied depending in factors such as the ethnic origins of the slave, the timing of his or her forced relocation to the Americas, the type and size of plantation, and the particular proclivities and personalities of the master and mistress.
Masters
Authors: Genovese Eugene D. , Ambrose Douglas
Published: February 2013

This article focuses on southern slaveholders. Slave ownership in the South varied considerably, from region to region, from farm to plantation, and from settled society to frontier. Unlike their counterparts in the British and French Caribbean, antebellum southern masters tended to be residents not absentees. Unlike their counterparts in nineteenth-century Cuba and Brazil, they presided over an American-born slave population since the mid-eighteenth century. Unlike slaveholding sugar planters throughout the Americas, few owned more than 100 slaves. Conflicts arose among masters, who, because of slavery's influence, zealously guarded their liberty and grew especially touchy on questions of honour. Slave societies, like all social formations, evolved through time, and masters, as parts of those societies, changed along with them. In the case of southern slaveholders, the most important change over time was that from patriarchalism to paternalism.
‘What's Love got to do with it?’
Authors: Miller Paul Allen
Published: February 2013

This article notes that the largely erotic poetry written by canonical Latin elegists are ‘ironic, darkly comic, and politically self-conscious’. It specifically argues that ancient Latin elegy could be self-reflexive, to the point that its very ground of reflection can be located in its own narration of experience. Then, it informs that the complexities of Latin elegy do not make much of the ‘mourning, self-pity, and long good byes that would characterize its modern form’. The characteristic of Latin elegy concentrates on the erotic, the motif of the lover as the soldier, first person subjective narration, a combination of irony, preciosity, and a learned allusive style. The elegiac collection allows for the elaboration of a distinct subject position that is not only unprecedented in Hellenistic elegy but also unique to this period and genre of Latin literature. An examination of Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid is finally provided.
Late Roman Elegy
Authors: Roberts Michael J.
Published: February 2013

This article highlights that elegy in the late Roman period was highly adaptable to subject matter, its form serving a variety of purposes, from the martyrdom of St Hippolytus to Christian moral instruction to the later life musings on earlier affairs by the mid-sixth-century Maximianus. The poems of Rutilius Namatianius, Orientius, and Maximianus represent the most ambitious and longest elegies from late antiquity. Venantius Fortunatus enhances the tendency for coincidence of metrical unit and sense both within and between elegiac couplets. Poetry in the elegiac metre continued to be written in large quantities in late antiquity, both epigrams and more extensive compositions, though the distinction between the two, if there ever was one, becomes increasingly blurred. The variety of poems surveyed in this article bears witness to the adaptability of metre, and to the special expressive possibilities that metre was capable of bringing to a poem.
The Consolations of Philosophy
Authors: Fumo Jamie C.
Published: February 2013

This article highlights that ‘Elegy as a pure or self-articulated form did not exist in medieval England; when employed by modern critics with reference to poems such as Pearl or Book of the Duchess, the term is no more than a matter of critical convenience’. After offering its caveat about the nomenclature of elegy, it moves on to echo the thesis about the self-reflexive nature of the genre. However, this reflexivity plays itself out in a tension between a Stoic-Boethian assertion of loss and the creative potential of loss, a potential that yields poetry with a recuperative function. Moreover, the association of poetic identity and the ‘medieval’ more generally, with the temporal constructions of elegy is elaborated. For both Lydgate and Hoccleve, Chaucerian elegy serves as a point of origin for the development of a vernacular poetic identity and a national myth of English poetry.
The Funeral Elegy in Early Modern Britain
Authors: Clymer Lorna
Published: February 2013

This article explores the funeral elegy in early modern British literary history with an emphasis on the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. It also reports that the English funeral elegy often evoked the religious sublime by attending to three related concerns: lament, praise, and consolation. Examples of funeral elegy are presented, which range from an occasional, partisan, and anonymous Restoration broadside on the death of a public figure; to two poignant early eighteenth-century lyrics by women on the death of infants, miniature in focus; and finally to the most extended funeral elegy of the early modern period, a vast mid-century Christian apologetic. The history of the early modern British funeral elegy vividly shows some of the complexities and paradoxes involved in making art out of mortality created from perplexing issues raised by the traumatic, often grotesque subjects of death, decay, separation, and change.
Kaddish
Authors: Shreiber Maeera Y.
Published: February 2013

This article considers the subject of survival, focusing on the continuation of Jewish rituals of mourning and memory in Jewish poetry. Poets such as Charles Reznikoff, Allen Ginsberg, and Adrienne Rich show how the kaddish is used in ways that complicate and thicken the understanding of the modern elegy. Of the three poems discussed, Reznikoff's ‘Kaddish’ is the most critical of this shift from the human to the divine; instead of directing the poem towards God. Ginsberg's ‘Kaddish’ significantly avoids the ancient Hebrew prayer altogether. In Rich's ‘Tattered Kaddish’, it is observed how the liturgical frame may be appropriated and refashioned in the service of reclaiming ritualized grieving in such a way that challenges the idea of poetic mourning as an individualized mode of expression. Rich insists that institutions, whether they be religious, political, or aesthetic, be able to accommodate pain and unmitigated loss.