Chronological Limits Research Articles

Chronology of latest Pleistocene mountain glaciation in the western Wasatch Mountains, Utah, U.S.A.

Understanding the timing of mountain glacier and paleolake expansion and retraction in the Great Basin region of the western United States has important implications for regional-scale climate change during the last Pleistocene glaciation. The relative timing of mountain glacier maxima and the well-studied Lake Bonneville highstand has been unclear, however, owing to poor chronological limits on glacial deposits. Here, this problem is addressed by applying terrestrial cosmogenic 10Be exposure dating to a classic set of terminal moraines in Little Cottonwood and American Fork Canyons in the western Wasatch Mountains. The exposure ages indicate that the main phase of deglaciation began at 15.7 ± 1.3 ka in both canyons. This update to the glacial chronology of the western Wasatch Mountains can be reconciled with previous stratigraphic observations of glacial and paleolake deposits in this area, and indicates that the start of deglaciation occurred during or at the end of the Lake Bonneville hydrologic maximum. The glacial chronology reported here is consistent with the growing body of data suggesting that mountain glaciers in the western U.S. began retreating as many as 4 ka after the start of northern hemisphere deglaciation (at ca. 19 ka).

Review: Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640 by Mark Girouard

Book Review| June 01 2011 Review: Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640 by Mark Girouard Mark GirouardElizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009, 530pp., 338 color and 226 b/w illus. $65, ISBN9780300093865 Kimberley Skelton Kimberley Skelton Milford, Conn. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2011) 70 (2): 252–253. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.2.252 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kimberley Skelton; Review: Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640 by Mark Girouard. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 June 2011; 70 (2): 252–253. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.2.252 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search “Strangeness” (xii), “capricious,” “dreadful shock,” “transformation,” “startling assembly of incongruities”: theorists and scholars from the early nineteenth-century John Soane to, more recently, Mark Girouard have found themselves oddly perplexed as they examine Elizabethan architecture.1 It is a world, a society, and a set of ideas difficult to pin down, never stationary—“transforming” at a “capricious” and unpredictable whim. A building might seem an easily comprehensible block, yet suddenly a ray of sun reflects blindingly off a large window and repulses the viewer's eye. Symmetry might suggest regularly organized living spaces and so comprehensible patterns of daily life, but building plans can be puzzling symbols into which interior rooms are then compressed. Physically and intellectually, Elizabethan buildings slip from the viewer's grasp. Nineteenth-century authors time and again sought to codify an Elizabethan style, yet they could at best say what it was not and suggest chronological limits.2 Twentieth-century scholars, in... You do not currently have access to this content.

Figuring the Feminine: The Rhetoric of Female Embodiment in Medieval Hispanic Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Figuring the Feminine: The Rhetoric of Female Embodiment in Medieval Hispanic Literature Núria Silleras-Fernández Ross, Jill . Figuring the Feminine: The Rhetoric of Female Embodiment in Medieval Hispanic Literature. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008. 305 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8020-9098-0 Figuring the Feminine uses five medieval Iberian literary texts to examine "the implications of the conjoining of body and language especially when the body is figured as feminine" (8). The author situates the feminine body at the center of medieval hermeneutics and writing, searching "to contribute to the ongoing exploration of a medieval poetics that uses the body as the primary vehicle for 'thinking through' questions of critical cultural importance" (9). Ross's selection of texts for "figuring the feminine" is particularly interesting. Three of the works analyzed are among the most canonical of Castilian literature: the Poema de mio Cid, Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora and Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. But the other two are less conventional; they frame the canonical readings chronologically, giving an interesting and comparative twist to the project. They situate the book in a more complex, multicultural and exciting medieval Iberian space, with its rich diversity [End Page 212] of language and ethno-religious traditions and interactions. The inclusion of the Peristephanon by Aurelius Prudentius, a late antique Hispano-Roman poet (c. 348-413) from the Tarraconensis, pushes the chronological limits of what is traditionally considered medieval. The other noncanonical author included is Rabbi Shem Tov ben Isaac Ardutiel of Carrión, better known in Spanish as "Santob." He was a contemporary of Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, and was, like him, from northern Castile. Thus, the book covers a selection of Iberian texts written in Latin, Castilian/Spanish and Hebrew that span ten centuries, from the end of the fourth to the mid-fourteenth century — an exercise of reading in the longue durée. Readers will appreciate that Ross provides translations into English alongside excerpts given in the original languages. Together, the introduction and ch. 1, "Carnal Knowledge: Metaphor, Allegory, and the Embodiment of Truth", provide a theoretical framework for the study. Ross acknowledges her debt to Carolyn Dinshaw's Chaucer's Sexual Poetics and E. Jane Burns's Bodytalk among others works that have explored the possibilities of an embodied medieval poetics, and builds her argument through a discussion of key figures, including Plato, Augustine, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida, as well as feminists scholars such as Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Toril Moi, Carolyn Dinshaw, and Jane Burns. She discusses male writers' attitudes toward the female body and uses the concept of kairos, "the 'right or opportune moment' that governs all human communicative situations and informs the production of belief" (11), to break the binary associated with Plato's epistemology as employed by the fifth-century sophist, Gorgias of Leontini. Ross aims through a series of close readings of the texts, or episodes within them, to bring out this kairos in order to contribute to our understanding of how male authors manipulate a text embodied as feminine, and to reflect on the implications that this gendered textuality entails regarding the processes of both writing and reading. Each of the remaining chapters center on a specific work; these are treated in chronological progression. Ch. 2, "Dynamic Writing and Martyrs' Bodies in Prudentius's Peristephanon", studies this early-fifth-century collection of fourteen poems about Spanish and Roman martyrs (six from Hispania), regarded as the founding work of Hispanic hagiography. Ross analyzes the metaphor of the text as body and the connection between martyrdom and writing. She sees Prudentius's poems as transforming tortured bodies into salvational texts with the aim of earning the author "a hearing with the holy martyrs who then will plead his case with Christ" (77). These poems resonate in the following two chapters. [End Page 213] The third chapter, "Macho Words: Writing, Violence, and Gender in the Poema de mio Cid", examines a concrete episode of the anonymous epic poem: the so-called Afrenta de Corpes in which Dona Elvira and Doña Sol, the daughters of the Castilian hero par excellence, the Cid, are...

Dating megafaunal extinction on the Pleistocene Darling Downs, eastern Australia: the promise and pitfalls of dating as a test of extinction hypotheses

A key to understanding Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction dynamics is knowledge of megafaunal ecological response(s) to long-term environmental perturbations. Strategically, that requires targeting fossil deposits that accumulated during glacial and interglacial intervals both before and after human arrival, with subsequent palaeoecological models underpinned by robust and reliable chronologies. Late Pleistocene vertebrate fossil localities from the Darling Downs, eastern Australia, provide stratigraphically-intact, abundant megafaunal sequences, which allows for testing of anthropogenic versus climate change megafauna extinction hypotheses. Each stratigraphic unit at site QML796, Kings Creek Catchment, was previously shown to have had similar sampling potential, and the basal units contain both small-sized taxa (e.g., land snails, frogs, bandicoots, rodents) and megafauna. Importantly, sequential faunal horizons show stepwise decrease in taxonomic diversity with the loss of some, but not all, megafauna in the geographically-small palaeocatchment. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of our intensive, multidisciplinary dating study of the deposits (>40 dates). Dating by means of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C (targeting bone, freshwater molluscs, and charcoal) and thermal ionisation mass spectrometry U/Th (targeting teeth and freshwater molluscs) do not agree with each other and, in the case of AMS 14C dating, lack internal consistency. Scanning electron microscopy and rare earth element analyses demonstrate that the dated molluscs are diagenetically altered and contain aragonite cements that incorporated secondary young C, suggesting that such dates should be regarded as minimum ages. AMS 14C dated charcoals provide ages that occur out of stratigraphic order, and cluster in the upper chronological limits of the technique (∼40–48 ka). Again, we suggest that such results should be regarded as suspicious and only minimum ages. Subsequent OSL and U/Th (teeth) dating provide complimentary results and demonstrate that the faunal sequences actually span ∼120–83 ka, thus occurring beyond the AMS 14C dating window. Importantly, the dates suggest that the local decline in biological diversity was initiated ∼75,000 years before the colonisation of humans on the continent. Collectively, the data are most parsimoniously consistent with a pre-human climate change model for local habitat change and megafauna extinction, but not with a nearly simultaneous extinction of megafauna as required by the human-induced blitzkrieg extinction hypothesis. This study demonstrates the problems inherent in dating deposits that lie near the chronological limits of the radiocarbon dating technique, and highlights the need to cross-check previously-dated archaeological and megafauna deposits within the timeframe of earliest human colonisation and latest megafaunal survival.

BOOK PUBLISHING IN LITHUANIA DURING NAZI OCCUPATION (1941–1944)

Scientists have devoted substantial attention to the period of the second occupation of Lithua­nia. However, the issue of book publishing, printing and distribution during the period hereinbefore mentioned was covered in outline until now. The purpose of the article is to com­prehensively highlight different aspects of book publishing in Lithuania, including Nazis’ illegal actions and high-handed behaviour towards Lithuanian publishing and printing houses and the brave attempts of the latter to protect and maintain the publishing of books. Particular at­tention is given to social, cultural and political processes involved in book publishing, printing and distribution. The Nazi controlled the whole process of publishing, from the check of a book’s contents to the distribution. Nonetheless, there were published many books important for the Lithuanian culture, owing to the courage and wit of publishers, printers, readers and others who cherished books and realized their value for the coming generations. The chronological limits of the research were fixed between the second half of 1941 and the sec­ond half of 1944 inclusive, and the territory cov­ered the Vilnius region regained in 1939, but did not cover the Klaipėda region annexed the same year. The bibliographical periodical “Bibliografijos žinios” published in 1941–1943 as well as a signif­icant collection of different administrative docu­ments belonging to the publishing house “Valsty­bine leidykla” and books published in 1941–1944, kept in the National Martynas Mažvydas library, should be considered the most valuable sources of the printed heritage of the period. It is exactly these sources that were mainly used to make a compre­hensive bibliographical listing of books published during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, an accu­rate statistical analysis due to which it was possible to assess the publishing tendencies.

The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965-1968 (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 66 be frustrated that they must visit a website (TheAgeofLincoln.com) for Burton’s extensive footnotes. This will not likely trouble students, and The Age of Lincoln seems ideally suited for classroom use, as Burton raises many topics for discussion, writes clearly, provides a wealth of information , and includes many effective vignettes to illustrate his points. Burton’s work further demonstrates Robert Penn Warren’s observation that “in the American mind, the Civil War itself never truly ended.” By the conclusion of the book one is able to see how it was possible for a conflict of such magnitude to become “transmuted to a romantic memory ” where people participate in re-enactments or visit battlefields without ever addressing the true causes and consequences of the war (p. 369). MATTHEW NORMAN Gettysburg College The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965–1968. By David C. Carter. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xv, 359 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-8078-3280-6. On August 5, 1966, one year after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, Mary McGrory of the Washington Evening Star reported, “the music has gone out of the movement” (p. 158). As David Carter explains, McGrory and others believed that “dissension and pessimism had replaced the harmony and optimism” that had characterized the Civil Rights movement (p. xv). Even though Carter considers McGrory’s “musical epitaph simplistic and premature,” he adopts her description for the title of his book (p. xv). Rejecting a simple, straight declension narrative, Carter’s eight chapters seek to tell a more complicated, uneven story of how the music went out of the movement during the administration of Lyndon Johnson. Two crucial events—President Johnson’s address at Howard University on June 4, 1965, and the release of the Kerner Commission’s report early in 1968—provide the chronological limits of Carter’s story. In between he explains the development of turbulence, chaos, disagreement , and miscommunication in the administration, in the movement, and between them. Influenced by Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s research for the “Report on the Negro Family,” which appeared later, Johnson’s Howard University speech announced his intention to broaden the Civil Rights movement to encompass fundamental economic rights, because “freedom is not enough” (p. 4). The president stressed “not just equality as a right and J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 67 a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result,” and he sought to unite what had become “two nations” (pp. 4, 7). According to Carter, Johnson “reset the bar of political and economic expectations at a daunting new height” (p. 9). LBJ’s “rhetorical expansion” that appeared to combine the movement with his War on Poverty soon succumbed to “a gradual disengagement from the civil rights agenda” through “retreat, withdrawal, loss of will, and even betrayal” (p. 22). Though Carter takes a national, White House–based policy perspective , two discursive chapters focus on Mississippi (Alabama does not even appear in the index). A short history of the Child Development Group of Mississippi depicts a controversial attempt to join civil rights and economic justice. The aborted 1966 march of James Meredith, the emergence of Black Power, and the shrinking of the “middle ground” within an increasingly fractured movement threatened the Johnson administration ’s hopes (p. 131). Interspersed with the Mississippi chapters, Carter discusses the administration ’s handling in the late summer of 1965 of the Watts riots, the Moynihan Report, and the growing Vietnam War. He finds striking similarities in “theme and architecture” between Johnson’s Howard speech and the Moynihan Report and recognizes the “understandable but erroneous linkage” between the report and the Watts uprising (pp. 71, 70). With dissension created by urban riots, the war, Black Power, and Republican victories in 1966, Johnson’s civil rights consensus, according to Carter, collapsed. Johnson and his advisers struggled to formulate a coherent civil rights policy. To gather reliable information on the spreading urban disorders, the administration secretly sent trusted aides to more than...

Features of peaceful contacts between Lithuanians and Germans in the 14th-century vortex of war

The aim of this article is to make an enquiry into the peaceful contacts between the Lithuanians and the Germans, which were bound to take place against the backdrop of continual hostilities in the 14th century. Scholarship has made very much in terms of political history of this war (circumstances and results of military campaigns, their chronological sequence, participants, etc.), but, in our opinion, it has so far not devoted sufficient attention to the fact that even in those circumstances the pagan society of Lithuania was rather receptive to the military and non-military innovations that arrived in the wake of this war. The chronological limits of our paper lie largely in square with those of the chronicle of Wigand of Marburg (1311–1394), a chronicle which, along with that of Peter of Duisburg, supplies the bulk of evidence and spans a rather long period of time to allow us to see what spheres of interaction were most exposed to mutual contacts. In pursuing this aim, we have broken down the availbale material into what follows: a) talks and banquettes of Lithuanian grand dukes with Teutonic knights; b) knights serving at the grand-ducal court; c) German and Lithuanian deserters and d) the movement of military innovations in both directions. It became clear that peaceful contacts were quite intensive between the parties, but they involved only a very limited number of men: such contacts were maintained by Lithuanian dukes and their closest entourage and by the top military officers of the Teutonic Order (mainly grand master and marshal) and the commanders of frontier castles (Ragnit, e. g.). The contacts between them may be regarded as pragmatic in the sense that they were unavoidable in the midst of hostilities when talks on armistice and negotiations over the matters related to prisoners-of-war had to be on the order of the day. This zone of interaction produced a thin social stratum that must be regarded as the main go-between who brought news to one side about the other (they were spies, scouts, deserters and the like). It is also clear that contacts between the Lithuanian grand dukes and the knights were instrumental in stimulating the Lithuanians to adopt certain elements of knightly culture while they were still pagan (the second half of the 14th – first half of the 15th century).

Gênero e política no noticiário das revistas semanais brasileiras: ausências e estereótipos

O artigo analisa as relações entre gênero e política no noticiário das revistas semanais brasileiras Veja, Época e Carta Capital, em 2006 e 2007. Os dados permitem constatar a presença reduzida de mulheres no noticiário e a existência de estereótipos de gênero que remetem a compreensões do papel da mulher nas sociedades e de sua competência para atuar na vida pública. Por meio da análise das mulheres políticas que tiveram maior visibilidade no período analisado - Heloisa Helena, Marta Suplicy e Dilma Rousseff -, discute representações de feminilidade e de masculinidade, do privado e do público, que atribuem sentidos à presença diferenciada de homens e mulheres na política e na mídia.

Editor's Introduction: Epistemic Boundaries

As science studies scholars, one of our basic tasks is to draw the boundaries that will de?ne our units of inquiry and constrain the chronological and geographical limits of our studies. Without these boundaries, the categories of our analysis remain imprecise. Fortunately, we now have an extensive toolkit to help us with this task. With paradigms, research programs, epistemic cultures, or styles of reasoning, historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science now have a large set of resources for locating the ?ssures and discontinuities in science. The papers from the focused discussion of this issue of Spontaneous Generations present us with an opportunity to take a step back and examine the ways that science studies scholars are currently drawing boundaries. In reviewing the articles for this discussion, our aim as editors was to re?ect on what boundaries scholars were paying attention to and what use we can make of these boundaries.

Liver Resection of Colorectal Metastases in Elderly Patients

The ageing population, the specific epidemiology of colorectal cancer (CRC) and the high incidence of colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) have all led to a significant increase in elderly patients with CRLM seeking surgical management. Due to physiological and functional changes with advancing age (which may decrease the ability of the elderly to sustain aggressive treatment) and the lack of validated guidelines, surgeons still hesitate to plan surgical resection of CRLM in the elderly. Recently, a few studies have suggested that resection of CRLM in the elderly is feasible and yields good short- and long-term outcomes in the context of an intention-to-treat strategy. This article discusses the relevant literature and tries to put forth possible recommendations for the surgical management of elderly patients with CRLM. No chronological upper age limit should contraindicate curative treatment and well-selected elderly patients with advanced CRC can be offered a similar chance of long-term survival with the use of an optimal onco-surgical strategy.

<i>The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Volume II, 1100–1400</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Volume II, 1100–1400 Ralph Hanna The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Volume II, 1100–1400. Edited by Nigel J. Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xxiv + 616; 82 plates. $190. This is a volume anyone interested in book history should be extremely grateful to have. It has been orchestrated by the doyens of the field (“middle medieval English book production”?), among the most respected of its scholars. Thomson is without peer in his knowledge of monastic production of the twelfth century (and provides another iteration on the subject here, pp. 136–67), and Morgan is a preeminent commentator on illustrated books of the thirteenth and early fourteenth. As one would have expected from such expert hands, the editors have assembled a cadre of generally distinguished contributors to produce this volume, the third in a series of seven projected. The ensemble is comprised of twenty-eight essays, covering 485 text pages, on an extremely wide, yet carefully [End Page 389] chosen, range of topics. We will remain in Morgan and Thomson’s debt for their capable solution of monumental logistics problems and their persistence in bringing so diverse and generally useful a volume to conclusion, after more than a decade since its inception. That being said, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Volume II (hereinafter cited as CHB II) labors under certain immediate limitations. The most pressing of these is external, the unfortunate editorial decisions made in the previously published, yet successor volume III of the series, covering 1400–1557. Among a good many other shortsighted policies on view there, that history was devoted solely to the new medium of print (in spite of abundant evidence that preparation and circulation of works in manuscript, and a rather constant oscillation between script and print, typified English book culture well into the eighteenth century). Thus, Morgan and Thomson’s contribution, in spite of the series’ preimposed chronological limits, must stand as The Cambridge History’s bow to post-Conquest medieval manuscript production. The editors attempt to obviate this difficulty in the first sentence of their preface (p. xvii) by extending their remit to cover the period ca. 1066 to ca. 1425, but this does not fully address a problem not of their making. Moreover, such a scholarly endeavor is a distinctly new one (paralleled by a Cambridge History of the English Library), and one that has its unique challenges. On the whole, the editors have guided their contributors between what might be construed as the Scylla and Charybdis that could beset volumes like this. On the one hand, the study can become absorbed into something else, a broader study than “the book.” On the other, it might easily fall into an indigestible rash of particulars. At one extreme, because books are always engaged with texts, one could choose to write simply a literary history, a listlike run-through of some sequence of canonical texts. But a “book history” ought to engage itself otherwise: it should be a study of those mechanisms by which the textual becomes visible, instantiated in books, and ones of various specifiable sorts. At the other extreme, the history of book production has customarily been pursued through the extended article or monograph, relatively limited in its scope yet rich in codicological detail. Such studies build toward tentative generalizations only at their conclusion. A volume like this, while remaining aware of the imbrication of a discipline in such necessarily minuscule attentiveness (and one in which “all situations are unique”), nonetheless needs to arrive at larger, yet still nuanced, generalizations. All the contributors here are well aware of and contribute aptly to what might be identified as the book’s general thesis, the arc of the longue durée between the Conquest and the Lancastrians. The twelfth century was the great age of the English monastic book. For much of this century, book production was limited to a relatively narrow range of enclosed centers, and in the main catered to the needs of holy men and women. The most typical products of such production certainly focused on the great staples of monastic...

Русские евреи в нацистской Германии (1933–1941)

SUMMARY: Usually, students of the Russian Jewish emigration to Germany assume as the natural chronological limit for their inquiry the year 1933, which marked the establishment of the Nazi regime. The article by Oleg Budnitskii is a rare attempt to go beyond this limit in the history of Russian Jews in Germany. He reconsiders the view according to which the events of 1933 inaugurated a mass and speedy emigration of Russian Jews to other European countries. Budnitskii shows that Jewish public life in Germany continued until the early 1940s. These years are the focus of his analysis. He treats in detail the response of the Russian emigrants to the Nazi rise to power. This political change split the Russian emigre community along both political and “racial” lines. He considers the reasons that kept many Russian Jews in Germany throughout the 1930s. Finally, the article tells the story of the philanthropic activities of Jewish organizations (first of all, the Union of Russian Jews in Germany). The latter discussion is based on a thorough investigation of the unpublished exchanges of Alexei Alexandrovich Goldenweiser, a distinguished representative of Russian-Jewish Berlin and legal adviser to the Union of Russian Jews in Germany, with his many correspondents.

Late Chalcolithic/Early Bronze I Transition Settlements in the Middle Jordan Valley: Investigating Alluvial Sequences as a Chronostratigraphical Framework, and Cycles as a Social Organising Component

Recent palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data from the Middle Jordan Valley give evidence of important geomorphic modifications during the Late Chalcolithic and the early beginning of the Bronze Age. Significant human settling/ resettling activities were also identified during this period and found to be concurrent with these modifi cations. A major phase of cutting-down, followed by the development of wide floodplains at the foot of escarpments and on the banks of the Wadi Zarqa, appears to mark the chronological limit between settlements displaying the classic Late Chalcolithic “ Ghassulian” culture material, and others from the Late Chalcolithic/ Early Bronze I (EBI) horizon. Some sites of “ pure Ghassulian” culture might have coexisted with the new settlements and their mixed culture material. These changes in the natural and cultural landscapes of the study region were preceded by a period of prolonged drought, which might have been the regional expression of the worldwide cold and dry event of around 5500 14C BP.

THE ETHNIC HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL NOVGOROD (BASED ON CRANIOMETRIC DATA)

Cranial series from cemeteries on the territory of the medieval Novgorod Republic were subjected to multivariate analysis. Northwestern Russia is the region where important population changes occurred in the early 2nd millennium AD. As a rule, earlier groups (11th – early 13th centuries) are dolichocranic and exhibit a sharp horizontal facial profile. In those series whose lower chronological limit is 11th–12th centuries, diachronic morphological changes can be traced. In later groups (13th–14th centuries), the cranial index is higher than in earlier ones (11th – early 13th centuries), whereas cranial height and nasal protrusion angle decrease, and the orbits become narrower. Series from the 13th– 16th century cemeteries apparently attest to an admixture. A combination of traits, correlated mostly at the between- group level (orbital breadth, nasal height, and nasal prominence angle), points to the presence of two components. This combination separates early and late Novgorod groups, at the same time opposing neighboring non-Slavic populations. While early groups (11th–13th centuries) resemble the 10th–18th century Balts, late ones (late 13th – early 20th centuries) resemble various Finnic groups of the same period.

Modernization in Russia since 1900 by Markku Kangaspuro , Jeremy Smith (review)

374 SEER, 87, 2, APRIL 200g Kangaspuro,Markkuand Smith, Jeremy(eds).Modernization in Russiasince 1 goo. StudiaFennica:Histórica, 12.Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki, 2006. 331pp. Illustrations. Tables. Figures.Notes.Bibliography. €31.00 (paperback). As the editorspoint out in theirintroduction, modernization in Russian history hasassumedvariousguises. Imitating, catching upwithandovertaking theWesthas been embeddedintoRussianpoliticalculturesincePeterthe Great,whileidealizedvisionsofsuper-modernized outcomeshave also been influential, especiallyduringthe twentieth century. Reason and Idealism might be seenas contesting thecontent ofRussianmodernization. The conceptmusttherefore be flexible and capacious.As a result, itis sometimes a helpful guide,sometimes a vaguemaster. In thisvolume, modernization isthe structuring motif fora discussion ofaspectsofRussiafrom 1900tothepresent, bringing together sixteen valuablecontributions bymostly Finnish and British scholars. These essayscoverhistory, social scienceand, in one instance,literary studies.Only one contribution takesforitssubjecttheperiodbefore1917, elevenare substantially focused on theSovietUnion,and fourare concerned mainly withthepost-Soviet years.Thismulti-disciplinary approach,therefore, allowsthe readerto considerthe relevanceof 'modernization' acrossthe conventional chronological limits of1917 and 1991.The essays aredivided into twosections, 'perspectives' and 'case studies'. In thefirst section, PeterGatrell writes on theusesand impacts ofmodernization, primarily on theeconomy, before1917.MarkkuKangaspurodiscusses'The BolshevikModernization Project', alsoinquitegeneral terms. R. W. Daviesconsiders themodernization oftheSovietinterwar economy, MarkB. Taugeranalyses themodernization of agriculture in the SovietUnion, Sari-AutioSarasmo coversthe uses of borrowing fromtheWestin themodernization oftheSovieteconomy, and MelanieHicdiscusses theimpactofmodernization on Sovietwomen.David Lane's essayconcerns themodernization ofsocialstructures and stratifications during latesocialism, whiletwoothereminent socialscientists, PhilipHanson and RichardSakwa,writerespectively on thepost-Soviet economyand its political leadership. In thecase studies ofthesecondsection, Tomi Huttenen discussesmontageas an agentforthepost-revolutionary modernization of Russianculture; Christopher Williams presents hisrecent research on Russian health care, especiallyin the inter-war period;JeremySmith provides new insights intoKhrushchev's educationpolicy;whilethe essaysof Katri Pynnöniemi and Linda Trautmanfocuson different aspectsofSoviettransportpolicy . Two further essays inthecasestudy section explorecontemporary concerns: Stefanie Harteron themodernization ofpublicadministration, and JulianCooperon theInternet. This is a formidable scope,and theeditors have succeededin assembling a greatdeal ofpertinent material, written byan impressive line-upofprominentscholars .Giventhebias towardsthe Sovietperiod,historical studyis at the heartof the collection, so the book is perhapsespeciallyusefulfor historians. Some of the historical essayspresentimportant new workon under-researched areas, such as Smithon Khrushchev's educationpolicy. Othersdisplay accumulated expertise, refracted through theprism ofmodernization ;examplesincludeDavies on the economy,Tauger on agriculture reviews 375 and Die on women.The collection focusesprimarily on politicaland socioeconomicsubjects , whichis entirely legitimate in a studyofmodernization, butdoes notreallyengagewithcultural history, either in content or in conceptualmethod . Perhapsas a consequence, thevolumedoesnotquiteexplain how and whyitsorganizing conceptof modernization can standalongside the 'modernity' thesisof neo-totalitarian scholarship, or challengethe neotraditionalist arguments ofa relatedbodyofwork,eventhoughtheessaysof Gatrell, Kangaspuroand Pynnöniemi interrogate theconceptofmodernizationinparticularly interesting ways.In a fewoftheessays, theconceptseems to be an argumentative add-on,rather thana convincingly integral element deriving from theevidence.Despitethisreservation, thebookis ablyedited by Smithand Kangaspuro,and the collectionoverallmakesan engaging case, on itsown terms, foritsguidingprinciple. Modernization remainsan essential highway and yeta sometimes imprecise routeintoinvestigations of Russianhistory (andRussianstudies moregenerally), and thisbook'svaluable and interesting essayswill accordingly be read withprofit and occasional scepticism byundergraduates and specialist scholars alike. UCL SSEES Mark B. Smith Turda, Marius and Weindling, Paul J. (eds). BloodandHomeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Centraland Southeast Europe1900-194.0. Central EuropeanUniversity Press,Budapestand New York,2007.x + 467 pp. Map. Illustrations. Notes.Bibliography. Index.£13.95(paperback). World War One increasedsocial expectations throughout Europe. It also raisedinterest ineugenics - theimprovement ofthehumanspecies, notonly through improved publichealthbytheelimination ofdiseasesliketyphus, but through improvement of thegeneticstockby selective breeding.Since the subjectwas forbidden underCommunism, the relevantarchiveshave only recently been opened,so thisvolumeadds muchto our knowledge ofhow eugenicideasand practice developedinCentralEuropeand theBalkans.We knowthatthestory endedinthemasskilling ofgypsies, thementally subnormal and sixmillion Jews,and manyassumethattheprocesswas inevitable. Notso.Within theeugenics movement emotional romanticism competed with conventional medicine and enlightened traditions. Indeed,thelatter prevailed untilthe 1930swhendespairgenerated by theGreatDepressionled to the triumph ofprejudiceoverscience,and thennoteverywhere. Zoologists,psychologists, anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as medicalresearchers helpedto developeugenicthinking; and Germanyand Austriaexertedthe mostpowerful influences. As Turda pointsout in the introduction to thiscollection ofpapers,professional eugenicists werelargely dependenton the stateforfunding, and so came to servenation-building agendas.'Defining thenation',therefore, 'becamesynonymous with justifying thedomination ofa givenethnicmajority', and itwas notlongbeforesome eugenicists werearguing that'genetically inferior individuals' shouldbe eliminatedto prevent 'thedegeneration ofthenation'.Geneticsciencewas as yet in itsinfancy, leavingspace forideasbased on popularideology. Oftensuch ...

Flexible Friendships: Martha Vicinus Explores Women’s Intimacy

M Vicinus is one of those rare scholars whose mere name instantly conjures the history of a field of study, a vision of research breadth and depth, of analytical originality and brilliance. Her reputation has transcended the geographical and chronological limits of the context of her primary research, nineteenth-century England. Indeed, the boundaries that define and separate disciplines cannot contain her: she is, herself, professor of English, women’s studies, and history. One suspects that there are other departments, centers, and research fields that would wish to claim her as their own as well. This is the context in which Vicinus’s work is read, and this accounts for the almost unreasonable levels of expectation the reader brings with her. Yet for all that baggage, Vicinus does not disappoint: Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928 is a landmark in whichever field of research the reader wishes to locate it—women’s / gender history, the history of sex / sexuality, nineteenth-century history. This is a work of immense learning, written in an accessible style. It will serve to enlighten, entertain, or even affirm scholarly and popular audiences equally well. Intimate Friends comprises a series of case studies or microhistories. The intimate life and relationships of various women are recuperated and discussed, as far as possible, based on their own words and those of their friends and relations, both female and male. Stretching from the legendary Ladies of Llangollen (1778–1829) to the equally legendary Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943), Vicinus presents lively portraits of fascinating women alongside her analysis of the qualities, structures, and social contexts that informed their lives. By examining both the internal dynamics of relationships and the external perceptions of them by individual and institutional observers, Vicinus reveals the opportunities and challenges that confronted women as they sought to structure their lives in ways that accommodated and nurtured their same-sex desire. Over the 150 years considered, women employed a variety of models to develop emotional and erotic relationships with other women, to express their feelings to each other, and to present themselves to the world. Some of the models women invoked to structure their relationships and to make sense of their individual predilections, desires, and identities will be familiar, even comfortable; others may prove disquieting or disturbing. The exemplar available to the earliest couples was that of traditional pairings

Distribution et caractéristiques des associations d’ostracodes au Pléistocène supérieur et Holocène au niveau de la marge orientale du détroit de Gibraltar (mer d’Alboran, Maroc)

A detailed study of the upper Pleistocene and Holocene ostracode fauna from the Moroccan margin of the Western Mediterranean is here presented based on sediments of three cores drilled near the Straits of Gibraltar (Sea of Alboran), between 300 and 550 m of depth. Information on the quantitative and qualitative distribution of the ostracodes was obtained, for the first time, in this area. This study also allowed to identify recall the main climatic and eustatic variations as recorded in the sediments and the faunal composition and to identify the corresponding chronological limits from the last glacial maximum to the present time.

Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660–1760 (review)

Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660-1760. By Clare Haynes. (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2006. Pp. xii, 185. $99.95.) This excellent, accessibly written, and carefully evidenced study addresses the intriguing and long-neglected issue of religious and (in a deliberately more limited way) sculpture in England after the Reformation. The received notion has always been that antipapist iconoclasm and widely disseminated propaganda against imagery in Protestant churches, along with well-publicized laments from artists about the lack of native patronage for religious paintings, meant that there was indeed no pictorial work to speak of in churches in this period. The fact that wealthy and educated aristocrats who had undertaken the Grand Tour bought works of religious art by Italian artists has been explained by invoking the prevailing aesthetic hierarchy that-following the model taught by the French Academy and adopted in England-placed painting (i.e., subjects inspiring moral virtue whether from classical history or the Bible) as far superior to other genres. Few have asked what, in fact, the owners of these paintings-whether situated in private chapels or in grand saloons-understood these paintings to signify or how they reconciled their imagery with the dictates of Protestant teaching. Moreover, anyone who regularly explores English cathedrals and parish churches can see for themselves a remarkable number of religious paintings from this period survive, not to mention stained glass and other church furnishings. Furthermore exhibition catalogues of the Royal Academy in London (founded in 1768-outside this book's chronological limits) furnish many more examples of religious art than might popularly have been supposed. Haynes draws out the complexities and nuances of these issues. Her proposition that religion in England was not all of the plainness of Puritanism, the fervor and political dominance of which tends to overshadow our understanding of this period, provides the premise for chapters that deal specifically with Grand Tour education, the interpretation of Catholic pictures in England with particular reference to Raphael's cartoons (commissioned by Pope Leo X and purchased by Charles I-now on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum from the Royal Collection), the collecting of Catholic pictures with particular attention to Holkham Hall and Horace Walpole's sermon of 1752, and the dispute over the positioning of an image of St. …

Iran e Mediterraneo nella Tarda Antichità (a proposito di un convegno recente)

With the recent publication of the proceedings of an international conference held at Eutin (Germany) in 2000 (in collaboration with German, French and Italian students, and edited by Joseph Wiesehöfer et Philip Huyse), it is now possible to outline some of the characteristics of Late Antique Iran, under the Sassanians. While the chronological limits of this historical period in Iran correspond almost perfectly to those of Late Antique Greek and Roman world, several other similarities between these two perpetual enemies of Antiquity may also be highlighted. The perspective adopted in this excellent, highly interdisciplinary publication (though based essentially on approaches drawn from Iranian studies) constitutes a significant advance in the state of knowledge regarding relations between Ctesiphon and Rome/Constantinople.

Guillelmi de Luxi Postilla super Baruch, Postilla super Ionam. Edited by ANDREW T. SULAVIK.

The Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis puts medievalists in its debt not only by publishing a steady stream of modern editions of familiar texts and adding new ones, but by going beyond the chronological limit set by J.-P. Migne's decision to end his Latin series of the Patrologia with Innocent III (at the very moment when universities were coming into existence, the academic study of the Bible was reaching new levels of sophistication, and the mendicant orders were giving a new meaning to preparation for preaching). Here is a gap-filler exemplifying the genre of the ‘postill’, the fruit of what the editor describes as ‘the reshaping of the biblical commentary … particularly by the Dominican masters at Paris’ (p. ix). The development of the genre so soon after the (more or less) completion of the differently conceived Glossa Ordinaria, and with an intended special relevance to the needs of a new kind of preacher, marks a significant stage in the development of medieval exegesis.