Time Framing Early Medieval Stone Building North of the Alps—A Discussion of Recent Challenging Results

Radiocarbon ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 1657-1675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Hueglin

AbstractEarly Medieval stone building began earlier and was more widespread than previously thought. This conclusion is the result of scientific dating that challenges traditional views of the “petrification” process in architecture north of the Alps after the Roman period. Radiocarbon (14C) dating is not precise enough to answer detailed questions connected to historical contexts, but recently there have been a number of surprising dates: “Roman” city walls have now Early Medieval phases or meter-high, obscure “dark earth” strata were subdivided and dated. Results not in line with clients’ expectations can be the subject of heated debates, or worse, tend to remain unpublished. To the archaeologist, who is trying to connect scientific dates with historical events, usually is not clear, that mortar dating is a methodology still being developed, while dating organic material like charcoal from mortar is a standard procedure. But even the latter has downfalls like the possible “old-wood-effect,” if such complications are not carefully considered and avoided during the sampling process. Drawing on examples from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and France, recent challenging results will be discussed from an archaeologist’s point of view.

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 15-38
Author(s):  
Jacek Kolbuszewski

Mountaineering, tourism and literature at the turn of the 20th century — links and relations.A preliminary outlineThe second half of the 19th and the early 20th century were marked by extremely significant changes in mountaineering, tourism and literature, changes which can be described metaphorically as the vanguard of 20th-century modernity. Of great importance to the development of both mountaineering and mountain tourism was the creation of associations bringing together tourists and mountaineers, mountain lovers. The associations focused mainly on promoting mountain tourism, making the mountains more accessible building paths, trails, hostels and trying to protect the mountains against the effects of human impact and other civilisational processes — economic, social and technological. The increasingly evident division into mountaineering exploring the mountains by climbing them and tourism, and the spread of this tourism in all mountain ranges in Europe made mountaineering aspecialised form of communing with the mountains, requiring special qualifications and equipment. At the same mountain tourism became amulti-layered phe­nomenon, as it encompassed, in addition to the “classic” tourism “with backpacks”, resort tourism involving walks, atype of tourism playing an important role in socialising and styles of behaviour, completely different from the models characteristic of tourism in the first half of the 19th century. This led to the emergence of characteristic styles of this tourism, which was becoming an important element of bourgeois popular culture, aprocess that immediately resonated in literature. In the second half of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century the substantial growth in the number of tourists arriving in mountain villages led to their rapid civilisational and economic development. However, the concept of building mountain railways that were to bring people closer to the most precious asset of the mountains — their intact primeval nature — was asimple extension of the sedentary lifestyle. The development of mountaineering consisted in traversing increasingly difficult routes. This involved not just the ordinary climbing of peaks, but traversing mountain walls. In 1880 and 1881, Albert Frederick Mummery, climbing Grands Charmoz 3,455 m and Grépon 3,482 m, became the first man to traverse extremely difficult routes Grade 5 in the Welzenbach scale. In 1884 Walter Parry Haskett Smith decided to traverse agrade 3 difficult route on his own and two years later he climbed the twenty-metre Lapes Needle in the Lake District, England, which gave rise to competitive climbing, adiscipline distinct from mountaineering. Mountaineers also produced literary works Eugčne Rambert. The so-called “Alpine literature” “la littérature alpestre” encompassed, as its unique variety, par excellence Alpine literature providing an image of the mountains from the point of view of mountaineering and way of approaching mountaineering. Its leading exponents were Edward Whymper and Leslie Stephen; Albert Frederic Mummery 1855–1895 won considerable renown as the author of My climbs in the Alps and Caucasus 1895 as did Henry Russel-Killough 1834–1909 regarded as excellent writer and aman who made a great contribution to the exploration of the Pyrenees Souvenirs d’un Montagnard, 1908. On the other hand, the ideological motivation of Polish mountaineering echoed with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Henri Bergson, introducing the subject of mountain climbing into highbrow literature.


1956 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecil Roth

The problem of the attitude of Judaism towards art and images, at the beginning of the Christian era, has again come to the forefront of scholarly enquiry as a result of the publication of the first volumes of E. R. Goodenough's monumental work, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (vols. 1–3, New York 1953; vol. 4, New York 1954). In these learned pages, every particle of evidence bearing on the subject is carefully considered, and the author emphatically confirms as fundamental to his main thesis the accepted view: that at least up to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, there was a completely effective Rabbinic ban on any sort of iconographic representation for whatever purpose. (His striking conclusions with regard to the later period need not concern us here.) In this article, I would like to reconsider this matter from a slightly different point of view. I propose in it, however, to adopt a criterion which is nowadays becoming somewhat unusual: not only to confine myself to strictly contemporary testimony, but moreover to assume that the contemporaries meant exactly what they said.


ARCHALP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Fusari

The verb “to dwell” has seen its meaning gradually expanded beyond the field of housing to cover wider ranges. In its various extensions, the debate on housing today has been mainly developed within the urban environment, while in the mountain (and alpine) context there seems to be a greater interest in matters of expressive language. The echoes of the close coherence between building, living and housing that characterised the Alps of the past are now far away. This contribution investigates how, in light of a point of view on dwelling between housing and territory, architecture can help to develop a project for the home that represents the new vitality that is affecting the Alps and its society. Ethics of the job, meaning of building, response to social questions, relational value of the architectural form and of the “in-between” space are some themes that are introduced as possible tools for a practice on the subject.


1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (05) ◽  
pp. 246-247
Author(s):  
S. C. Jain ◽  
G. C. Bhola ◽  
A. Nagaratnam ◽  
M. M. Gupta

SummaryIn the Marinelli chair, a geometry widely used in whole body counting, the lower part of the leg is seen quite inefficiently by the detector. The present paper describes an attempt to modify the standard chair geometry to minimise this limitation. The subject sits crossed-legged in the “Buddha Posture” in the standard chair. Studies with humanoid phantoms and a volunteer sitting in the Buddha posture show that this modification brings marked improvement over the Marinelli chair both from the point of view of sensitivity and uniformity of spatial response.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Brandon W. Hawk

Literature written in England between about 500 and 1100 CE attests to a wide range of traditions, although it is clear that Christian sources were the most influential. Biblical apocrypha feature prominently across this corpus of literature, as early English authors clearly relied on a range of extra-biblical texts and traditions related to works under the umbrella of what have been called “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” and “New Testament/Christian Apocrypha." While scholars of pseudepigrapha and apocrypha have long trained their eyes upon literature from the first few centuries of early Judaism and early Christianity, the medieval period has much to offer. This article presents a survey of significant developments and key threads in the history of scholarship on apocrypha in early medieval England. My purpose is not to offer a comprehensive bibliography, but to highlight major studies that have focused on the transmission of specific apocrypha, contributed to knowledge about medieval uses of apocrypha, and shaped the field from the nineteenth century up to the present. Bringing together major publications on the subject presents a striking picture of the state of the field as well as future directions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Nazhan Hammoud Nassif Al Obeidi ◽  
Abdul Wahab Abdul Aziz Abu Khamra

The Gulf crisis 1990-1991 is one of the important historical events of the 1990s, which gave rise to the new world order by the sovereignty of the United States of America on this system. The Gulf crisis was an embodiment to clarify the features of this system. .     The crisis in the Gulf was an opportunity for the Moroccans to manage this complex event and to use it for the benefit of the Moroccan situation. Therefore, the bilateral position of the crisis came out as a rejection, a contradiction and a supporter of political and economic dimensions at the external and internal levels. On the Moroccan situation, and from these points came the choice of the subject of the study (the dimensions of the Moroccan position from the Gulf crisis 1990-1991), which shows the ingenuity of Moroccans in managing an external crisis and benefiting from it internally.


2003 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-172
Author(s):  
Mir Annice Mahmood

To implement any successful policy, research about the subject-matter is essential. Lack of knowledge would result in failure and, from an economic point of view, it would lead to a waste of scarce resources. The book under review is essentially a manual which highlights the use of research for development. The book is divided into two parts. Part One informs the reader about concepts and some theory, and Part Two deals with the issue of undertaking research for development. Both parts have 11 chapters each. Chapter 1 asks the basic question: Is research important in development work? The answer is that it is. Research has many dimensions: from the basic asking of questions to the more sophisticated broad-based analysis of policy issues. The chapter, in short, stresses the usefulness of research which development workers ignore at their own peril.


Globus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Bagandova ◽  

This study is devoted to the study of the features of the archetype of the Dargins, the formation of which dates back to the times of paganism and, which was imprinted by both religious ideas and historical events that had a significant impact on the worldview and worldview of the people. This work is the first attempt to analyze the archetype of the Dargins from the point of view of its inherent fatalism on the basis of proverbs, sayings and legends of the Dargin people, which represent the wealth of oral folk art and reflect the specifics of the psychological formation of the people that have been taking shape for millennia


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-289
Author(s):  
Tadeusz Liziński ◽  
Marcin Bukowski ◽  
Anna Wróblewska

Projects for flood protection are increasingly the subject of investment projects in the field of water management. This is related to the increasing frequency of worldwide threats caused by extreme weather conditions, including extremely high rainfall causing floods. Technical and nontechnical flood protection measures are also increasing in importance. In the decision-making process, it is necessary to take into account both the costs and benefits of avoiding losses, including an analysis of social benefits, whose valuation of non-market goods is an essential element. A comprehensive account of projects in the field of flood protection based on the estimated costs and benefits of the investment allows the economic efficiency from a general social point of view to be determined. Previous evaluations of the effectiveness of investment projects have mainly taken into account only categories and market values. The aim of the article is to identify the possibilities to expand the values of non-market assessments and categories formulated on the basis of the theoretical economics of the environment. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
Lidia Peneva

Crimes against marriage and family are a particular group of social relation­ships that the law has defended properly in view of the high public significance and value they enjoy. At the moment they are regulated in Chapter VI, Section I, of the specific part of the Penal Code the Repub­lic of Bulgaria. The subject matter of this Statement will, however, be the legisla­tive provisions concerning these criminal­ized acts in retrospect. The purpose of the study is to show by historical method and through the comparatively legal method the development of these criminal groups during the periods of various criminal laws in Bulgaria. This will also provide a basis for reflection on possible de lege ferenda proposals. This report from a structural point of view will be divided into three distinct points, marking each of the penal laws in the Republic of Bulgaria, which were in force before 1968.


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