Cultural Horizons Research Articles

Christian (Re)Encounters with Jews in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean

This essay considers how the reencounter between Christians and Jews over the course of the sixteenth century shaped the evolution of European attitudes toward Jews. It notes that, while 1492 marked an end to a long-standing era of Christian-Jewish relations in Europe, it also signaled an important shift toward new thinking about the once-familiar Jews. The combined effects of the absence of Jewish communities from most of Western Europe, the failure of Christian society effectively to integrate the Conversos of Spain and Portugal, and the expanded cultural horizons engendered by the Age of Discovery helped challenge and alter popular images of the Jews that had been inherited from the Middle Ages. The lands of the Muslim Mediterranean operated as an important stage on which the Christian reencounter with Jews played out, and travelers’ accounts of the Jews in these lands came to exert a powerful influence on the way in which the image of the Jew was recast in the European imagination. The discussion here seeks to expand on recent work on sixteenth-century Christian ethnographies of the Jews and to complicate some of our notions of the nature and development of Christian attitudes toward the Jews during the transition from the medieval period to the early modern.

Ivan Hribar and the ‘Russian Grain’ Association

The article discusses some of the still unexplored Russian- Slovenian relations in the early 20th century, focusing on the co-operation of the Slovenian Liberal Ivan Hribar with the ‘Russian Grain’ Association. They jointly organised travels for the Russian country youth, sent to the Slovenian provinces for practical training between 1909 and 1913. The research was based on the archive materials from the Manuscript Department of the National and University Library in Ljubljana and from the Central State Historical Archives in St. Petersburg. The cultural and economic co-operation between Russians and Slovenes proved extremely successful. During their internship, the Russian farmers became acquainted with Western farming technologies, which they successfully applied in their homeland. The internships of Russian farmers in Slovenia expanded the cultural horizons for Russian practitioners and Slovenian farmers alike.

Icons of remorse: photography, anthropology and the erasure of history in 1950s Italy

This essay explores the 1950s as a space of cultural transition through two bodies of iconic images: Tazio Secchiaroli’s 1958 reportage of Aiché Nanà’s striptease and Franco Pinna’s documentation of the rituals of mourning during his work in Salento with anthropologist Ernesto de Martino. Produced on the eve of themiracolo economico, these images are iconic condensations of the contrasting cultural horizons defining the national imaginary of 1950s Italy. Challenging the self-containment of these images, the essay journeys outside the frames into the surrounding historical, cultural and geographical landscapes. To explore how, through photography, Italy visually negotiated the persistence of the past and the advent of modernity, the author traces a genealogy of Italian photography from political action topaparazzismoand examines the significance of the ethnographic journey to the south. Pinna’s photography and de Martino’s ethnography emerge as sites where post-war Italy faces the intractable realities of death and the return of a ‘bad’ past. The essay investigates how ritual mourning engages the photographic image to reveal an amnesiac culture of the spectacle exposing Italy’s relation to history as a modern repressed.

Short-term natural events at the thermal humid maximum in the tenth to twelfth centuries in the environs of early Yaroslavl

The succession of short-term natural events at the thermal humid maximum in the Middle Ages (10th–12th centuries) within the forest zones of European Russia was established. The archaeological excavation in the most ancient part of the town of Yaroslavl opened a thick cultural horizon, where fragments of lacustrine deposits dating back to the 11th–12th centuries were preserved. The most ancient fragments of the construction, found in lacustrine deposits, date back to the first third of the 13th century. An analysis of the structural and textural peculiarities of these deposits made it possible to reconstruct types of hydrogeological regime in the Timerevo paleolake and a paleostrait between this paleolake and Lake Nero. Thus, the waterway between the central part of the Principality of Rostov and early Yaroslavl (the first Russian settlement at the Great Volga Waterway) was revealed. The probable reasons for a rapid warming event followed by a cooling one in the Middle Ages are discussed.

Art/Science & Big Data: Parts 1, 2 and 3

The essay materials abstracted below present a look at Big Data and a review of the role the arts play in the evolution of the human species and the collective, cumulative project of assembling scientific and artistic knowledge: Part 1: how art and science are similar; Part 2: how their approach to “knowing” differs and how together they create knowledge; and Part 3: how these systems of knowing apply to the transformations activated by the digital revolution of the past 25 years. In concert, art and science might enable a collective human response sufficiently resilient to survive the natural and cultural challenges ahead. These essays start with the observation that art and science are the primary, interlocked and essential components in the production of human knowledge: Art and science are distinct and intertwined, two elements of a single compound. By the conclusion of the essays it starts to emerge that art contains the sciences by virtue of being the unmoored, radical vanguard in collective thought. In this sense, science is suspended in the arts; science is the crystalline forms that appear in the matrix of art’s critical, complex and enigmatic thinking. The arts work one step beyond the collective conversation we call culture, and from that place just over the perimeter, the arts compassionately and sometimes jarringly bring us along to see the view from this new spot. Within these cultural horizons, science is doing the hard work of making what we encounter “real.” These essays present the arts and sciences as parallel yet intertwined, like two components of a composite organism, feeding off each other to sustain a growing and adapting life form bigger than either.

In Quest of Oneself: Cultural Identity in Modern Kazakhstan Sculpture Space

Background: The article presents a culturological analysis of searching the cultural identity through the poetry of visual and artistic image in modern sculpture of Kazakhstan. Methods: The methodology of this study is based on the culturalhistorical and hermeneutic methods; it allows a deeper and wide-ranging looking at the problem of relationship of imagery language and socio-cultural landscape; axiological method is able to identify the value orientations of modern sculpture as a reflection of cultural identity. Findings: One of the important results of our study is the interrelation of work of sculpture with art material selected by the sculptor for it. “Iron” people-heroes of the 1950-70s were imprinted in metal, stone and marble; after the 1980s and especially the 1990s masters are increasingly turning to new materials for sculpture – plastic, glass, alloys, artificial stone, etc. We interpret this rather as a kind of reflection of the multiculturalism and multiple identities due to them, but not just as an attempt to diversify the arsenal of art. The problem of investigating the Kazakhstan experience about specifics of cultural identity searching on the example of the sculpture has never been studied either in foreign or in the Kazakhstan science. This socio-cultural context is considered for the first time. Now, despite the problems, characterized by the abuse of “national originality”, sovereign Kazakhstan has gained its unique cultural code and awareness of its own identity. Improvements: Freedom of imagery and expressive language (external) in the plastic art is directly proportional to the expansion of social and cultural horizons (internal) of the new generation of Kazakhstanis.

11,000 years of craniofacial and mandibular variation in Lower Nubia.

The transition to agriculture was a key event in human history. The extent to which this transition is associated with biological changes in different world regions remains debated. Cultural and osteological records in Lower Nubia throughout the Holocene have been interpreted as a result of in situ differentiation or alternatively as migratory events and possible admixture with surrounding populations. Here we investigated the patterns of craniofacial and mandibular variation from Mesolithic hunting-gathering to late farming, a period spanning 11,000 years. We analyzed 102 adult specimens spanning five cultural horizons: Mesolithic, A-group, C-group, Pharaonic and Meroitic, by means of 3D geometric morphometric methods, in order to assess shape variation and diachronic patterns at the transition to farming and in subsequent periods. Our results highlight a strong morphometric distinction between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and farmers as well as differences between transitional and intensive farmers in mandibular variation which is consistent with differential impact of selective pressures on different regions of the skull. This study corroborates a major biological change during the transition from hunting to farming, supporting the masticatory-functional hypothesis for the mandible and suggesting population continuity among farming populations throughout the Holocene based on the overall shape of the cranium.

Looking ahead: new approaches to medieval Iberian heritage

ABSTRACTThis special issue, “Looking ahead: new approaches to medieval Iberian heritage”, is the main output of a fruitful collaboration between the humanities and the experimental sciences, which has greatly contributed to increase our knowledge of creative processes in medieval Iberia. The articles examine a wide range of objects produced using very different media, such as illuminated manuscripts, glass, monumental painted altarpieces and azulejos (glazed tiles). Some of these objects were studied for the first time in the framework of this project, while others had received very little attention previously. Moreover, several of the case studies concern unfinished works, which gives us an opportunity to better approach the creative processes. This introductory article aims to establish the main overarching themes that have emerged from the joint efforts of the participating scholars and teams. These themes include the multicultural context of medieval Iberia, a revision of the traditional notion of the medieval workshop, a consideration of the materials used to construct colours and molecular palettes, and the transfer of technological processes between the different cultural and religious horizons that coexisted in the Iberian Peninsula. This paper also investigates the new avenues of research that the articles have opened, such as the role played by medieval Iberia in a broader European, Mediterranean and global context regarding the arrival of precious materials from the Far East.

Comunicazione, metodo e interpretazione

Communication, method, and interpretation are always tightly related, but the current cultural scene - also thanks to the society of - makes the interpretative nature of the method more undeniable. This article looks into this cultural horizon in order to briefly illustrate what is changing in the field of social research methodology. The active use of media, the concept of text, the investigation on the new media, the convergence of qualitative and quantitative research, and the relation between method and art are only but a few examples of the topics elicited by communication sciences, which also concern the methodologist.

Bondi Cave and the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in western Georgia (south Caucasus)

Abstract The late Pleistocene expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) into Eurasia and the concurrent demise of the Neanderthals appears to be a complex and regionally variable process. The southern Caucasus region, with its rich cave-sites, has recently provided important results regarding this process. In this paper we report on the results of fieldwork in Bondi Cave, Western Georgia, providing a new radiocarbon chronology, stratigraphic observations, analyses of lithic technology and provenance, faunal and floral remains as well as paleoenvironmental data. The cave includes Middle Palaeolithic (ca, 45,000 ka cal. BP) cultural horizons and a long Upper Palaeolithic sequence (ca. 40,000–27,000 cal. BP from layer V to IV). A modern human tooth was found in layer Vb. We estimate its age at 39,000–35,800 Cal BP (95.4%), based on the Bayesian age model we built. If the context of the tooth is reliable, as we think it is, this would make it the oldest morphologically modern human in the Caucasus. Upper Palaeolithic hunting of tur and bison, as well as the collection of various plants including flax is attested. Mobile Upper Palaeolithic foragers inhabited the cave in generally cold and dry periods, but a mosaic of environments, including forests and meadows, was nonetheless available to them. The archaeological sequence of Bondi and adjacent sites indicates a substantial time gap between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic occupations, thus disproving Neanderthal-AMH interaction in this area and lending support to a replacement scenario in the southern Caucasus, assuming of course that the Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) is related to the arrival of AMHs.

A diachronic perspective on Great Basin projectile point morphology from Veratic Rockshelter, Idaho

Veratic Rockshelter (10CL3), located in the Birch Creek Valley on the northern border of the Snake River Plain, has long been considered among the most significant prehistoric sites in southeastern Idaho. Initially excavated by Earl Swanson in 1961, this site produced over a thousand stone tools from stratified contexts, including hundreds of diagnostic projectile points ranging from the late Paleoindian to the late prehistoric period from 13 cultural horizons. This paper provides a new evaluation of the geochronology of the site using 18 new AMS radiocarbon dates acquired from charcoal features sampled during the original excavation. These new ages are then compared with metric analyses of diagnostic projectile points from the existing assemblage to examine diachronic variability and morphological discreteness in this artifact class to tie them to existing Snake River Plain and Intermountain West projectile-point typologies as well as answer questions about late Paleoindian and Archaic spear- and dart-point variability. Results indicate that: 1) Western Stemmed Tradition points at Veratic date to significantly later than previously thought (9500–10,000 cal B.P.) and have a relatively broad spectrum of morphological variability, 2) Elko and Northern Side Notched points found in a middle-Holocene horizon (∼6000 cal B.P.) are morphologically distinct from each other, supporting the concept of an Elko “long chronology.” 3) Elko Corner Notched and Eared, Northern Side Notched, Stemmed Indented Base (including Gatecliff and possibly Pinto forms), Humboldt, and Salmon River points were found together in multiple middle-Holocene components at Veratic, indicating a period of greater variability that ended with the onset of the late Holocene by 3200 cal B.P., after which only Elko Corner Notched forms continued.

A New Art of Dying as a Cultural Challenge

In North Atlantic culture dying is mostly seen as a personal event. The societal dimension of dying and the impact of the cultural horizon are often overlooked. In this contribution a revised version of a medieval Ars moriendi model is used as a lens to perceive the one-sidedness of North Atlantic culture.

Grave Matters: Mediating Corporeal Objects and Subjects through Mortuary Practices

Grave Matters: Mediating Corporeal Objects and Subjects through Mortuary Practices

Culture and Truth: Nietzsche and Classical Philology

Several recent studies have returned to the famous controversy over the reception of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872). By reinterpreting it within the immediate context of Germany in the early 1870s, James Whitman understands this controversy as a Methodenstreit within Classical Philology and James I. Porter claims that, through this controversy, Nietzsche developed an extensive critique of modern culture. I contend that Nietzsche’s reaction to the scholarly rejection of his first publication resulted in no immediate response on his behalf; rather, it led to three years of intense rethinking and strengthening of the position he took in The Birth of Tragedy. This is evidenced in his early published essays and notebooks of 1872–1875. From the first readers of these early notebooks, Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders, to its most recent interpreters, Richard T. Grey and Alexander Nehamas, these scholars are unanimous in understanding them as Nietzsche’s attempt to work through a number of conventional philosophical problems. I argue that Nietzsche developed in these essays and notebooks a type of criticism that broke away from all traditional philosophical problems and creatively introduced such notions as cultural horizon, background phenomena, and life as a philosophical measure — all of which would be further refined in his mature texts of the 1880s and underpin his innovative concepts of the will to power and eternal recurrence.

Using Soil Magnetic Properties to Determine the Onset of Pleistocene Human Settlement at Gledswood Shelter 1, Northern Australia

In regions that lack built structures or stratified open archaeological sites, such as precolonial Australia, rockshelters are a major source of detailed information for understanding the nature and timing of human occupation. A key concern is that the proposed ages for the earliest archaeological sites are based on luminescence dating of sediments, rather than directly of cultural materials, leaving the association between the sediments and evidence of human activity questionable. Here, we present evidence of magnetic enhancement associated with cultural horizons within the deposits of a Pleistocene rockshelter in interior northern Queensland. Soil magnetic studies combined with experimental burning show that magnetically enhanced sediments in Gledswood Shelter 1 are the result of anthropogenic burning of hearth fires, which burn hotter and for a longer time than natural wild fires. These techniques appear to work in this setting because of the nature of the local geology and the geological antiquity of the landscape. Susceptibility and frequency dependence of susceptibility signatures provide a critical tool to resolve that human occupation starts at 2.2 m depth within a stratigraphic section. In conjunction with luminescence dating, soil magnetic studies provide an opportunity for archaeologists to resolve the timing of human settlement in Australia and other intracratonic plate settings.

Middle Stone Age reduction strategies at the desert's edge: A multi-site comparison across the Gebel Akhdar of northeast Libya

Haua Fteah cave, situated between the Mediterranean coast and the Gebel Akhdar of northeast Libya, preserves rich Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Late Stone Age (LSA) cultural horizons. Excavated in the 1950s and more recently, the richness and time-depth of the cave's archaeological record are unsurpassed by any other site in northern Cyrenaica. As a result, the Haua Fteah sequence has long been used to represent the culture history of the region as a whole. Recent geoarchaeological surveys of the Gebel Akhdar, as well as pre-desert and desert biomes further to the south, have resulted in the discovery of numerous MSA and LSA sites. The vast majority of these sites consist of surface lithics that cannot be dated currently. In contrast, parts of the Haua Fteah sequence have been dated using various chronometric methods. Using data collected through lithic attribute analysis, coupled with various statistical approaches (including Discriminant Function Analysis, or DFA), this paper explores variation in core reduction strategies within Haua Fteah from the early MSA to early LSA. Collections of cores from various sites located throughout the landscape are contrasted against those from Haua Fteah. By comparing undated cores from the landscape with those from different occupation phases at Haua Fteah, DFA classification is tested as a method for imparting an approximate chronology to the former. The results indicate notable variation in reduction strategies within the MSA at Haua Fteah, and notable similarities between early MSA (“Pre-Aurignacian”) and early LSA (“early Dabban”) core morphologies and technologies. Because of the latter in particular, together with several other factors that may be underpinning spatio-temporal variability in core reduction strategies, caution is recommended in loosely assigning approximate chronologies to surface lithic sites.

Use of Mussel Casts from Archaeological Sites as Paleoecological Indicators: An Example from CA-MRN-254, Marin County, Alta California

Archaeological investigations at prehistoric site CA-MRN-254 at the Dominican University of California in Marin County, California, revealed evidence of Native American occupation spanning the past 1,800 years. A dominant source of food for the inhabitants in the San Francisco Bay area was the intertidal, quiet-water dwelling blue mussel (Mytilus trossulus), although rare occurrences of the open coast-dwelling California mussel (Mytilus californianus) suggest that this species was also utilized sporadically. On rare occasions, cultural horizons at this site contain abundant sediment-filled casts of the smaller mussel Modiolus sp. These casts were formed soon after death when the shells filled with sediment and were roasted along with living bivalve shellfish for consumption. Thin sections of these mussel casts display sedimentological and microbiological constituents that shed light on the paleoenvironmental conditions when they were alive. Fine-grained sediment and pelletal muds comprising these casts suggest that the mussels were collected in a low energy, inner bay environment. The rare presence of the diatoms Triceratium dubium and Thalassionema nitzschioides indicate more normal marine (35 psu) and possibly warmer conditions than presently exist in San Francisco Bay. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal associated with the mussel casts containing these diatoms correlates with a 600-year period of warming from ca. A.D. 700–1300, known as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Results of this mussel cast study demonstrate that they have great potential for providing paleoenvironmental information at this and other archaeological sites.

Новая интерпретация каменной индустрии нулевого слоя стоянки Шугноу (Предпамирье)

The article studies the Final Pleistocene - Early Holocene stone industry of layer 0 of the Shugnou site. The Shugnou site is located in the Cis-Pamir (Tajikistan). The site was discovered in 1968 by V.A. Ranov. Field excavations at Shugnou were carried out in 1969 and 1970. On the Shug nou site V.A. Ranov deter mi ned 5 cult ural horizons (4 to 0): four lower horizons were attributed to the Upper Paleolithic, and layer 0 was attributed to the Epipaleolithic. Given that the new stage of research was reconsidered, the review was made of the attribution of the Upper Paleolitic materials of Shugnou and a lot of new data on the Mesolithic complexes in the region were obtained. The 0 layer industry of the Shugnou monument requires detailed study to clarify its cultural and chronological position. The collection of stone ar tifacts of layer 0 in Shugnou currently has more than 200 artifacts. Primary knapping in the Shugnou industry is represented by flat-face and prismatic cores, in the tool kit the point with backed distal end and end scrapers were defined. The materials of the Shugnou material layer under research demonst rate the highest degree of similarity on the technical and typological level with the complexes of the early and middle stages of the Tutkaul line of the development which presents the similar tools and strategies for the primary cleavage. Accordingly, it is proposed to consider the zero-layer materials of Shugnou as the ones close in appearance to the industries of the Tutkaul line of development. DOI 10.14258/izvasu(2016)4-42

Transformación Cultural y Formación Docente

El presente trabajo presenta una propuesta de reorientación del proceso de formación de los docentes dominicanos. Para esto parte de la necesidad de tomar en consideración la dinámica social y los elementos del contexto cultural de los candidatos y su incidencia en la conformación de las “condiciones de entrada” con que los estudiantes arriban a su proceso de formación. En respuesta a estas condiciones el autor propone un proceso de “inmersión formativa integral” que se oriente a profundizar los factores contextuales positivos y a transformar los elementos negativos del mismo. La atención adecuada a seis dimensiones fundamentales ayudarían a hacer de la formación docente una palanca de transformación cultural: el conocimiento, la ciudadanía, la ética, la estética, la emocionalidad y la espiritualidad, ámbitos que se corresponden con la equilibrada complejidad del ser humano y de su realidad, y que deben servir como elementos constitutivos de un horizonte educativo y cultural que oriente la vida de todos hacia el esfuerzo por la excelencia, la cultura del trabajo, la pasión por aprender y conocer y el amoroso cuidado de sí, de los otros y del mundo.

Исследования нового палеолитического комплекса культурного горизонта 2Б стоянки Ков-рижка IV на Витиме в 2015–2016 гг. (предварительное сообщение)

Исследования нового палеолитического комплекса культурного горизонта 2Б стоянки Ков-рижка IV на Витиме в 2015–2016 гг. (предварительное сообщение)