Barrows

Antiquity ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. G. S. Crawford

The fascination of Archaeology consists in reconstructing the life of the past, but by a curious paradox we obtain most of our raw material from the graves of the dead. We profit by the superstition which ordained that the dead man should be supplied with tools and weapons, and the dead woman with ornaments, to accompany them to the land of shadows. We profit also by the conservative instinct which regulated the construction of the tomb and the accompanying ritual. Nothing changes so slowly as burial-customs, even in these radical times. In all essentials the modern funeral procession remains Victorian in its gloomy respectability, its tawdry finery, and its obsolete methods of transport.The origin of barrow-making being unknown, one is free to speculate without the risk of being upset by evidence. The earliest deliberate burials occurred in the Mousterian period, in caves; and although connecting links are not numerous, one cannot help feeling that the natural cave must have been the ancestor of the megalithic passage-grave. In all essentials the cave and the passage-grave are the same; the 'points' so to speak, of a habitation cave are (I) the ground in front of the mouth, ( 2 ) the mouth, and (3) the dark, little used interior. Of these the mouth was the most important, and was often walled off; and it is natural to suppose that the darker recesses were used for sleeping in at night. These three features correspond fairly well with the typical arrangement of a passage-grave ; and if the houses of the dead were modelled upon those of the living, as is usually supposed, there may be some truth in this suggested evolution ; but there are many difficulties. However this may be, megalithic burial-places were very often—and always in our country—covered with mounds of earth or, in stony country, cairns of stone : they were in fact the first barrows ; so we must consider them. The subject is a very thorny one, and in order to avoid being drawn into argument, I shall avoid problems and keep to a description of facts. The title of this paper suggests that geographical and ethnographical deductions may for once be given second place.

1975 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 303-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basil Hall

Think nowHistory has many cunning passages, contrived corridorsAnd issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,Guides us by vanities. Think nowShe gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving. Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or if still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion.Historians no doubt have problems enough without setting before themselves that ‘memento mori’ from Eliot, who, though he was describing an old man seeking to understand his own past, leaves nevertheless an echo in the mind disturbing to those who practise the historian’s craft. We assume a confidence which in our heart of hearts we do not always, or should not always, possess. Eliot’s words not only demonstrate the difficulty of one man understanding his own past, but also the historian’s difficulty in understanding those whom they select for questioning from among the vast multitudes of the silent dead, whose deeds, artifacts, ideas, passions, hopes and memories have died with them. We dig into the past, obtain data from archives, brush off the objects found, collect statistics, annotate, arrange, describe, establish a chronology – but do we effectively understand the dead, especially since we are affected by our own beliefs, customs and ideologies? We are, of course, all aware of this: we silently scorn the lecturer who raises these diffident hesitations. For we know our duty: we examine all that we can, we describe our findings, we annotate them, we draw conclusions, or leave our demonstrations to speak for themselves. There are reasons, as I shall hope to show, that these considerations – Eliot’s ominous words and our determination not to be disquieted by them – bear upon the subject of this paper, the almost forgotten Alessandro Gavazzi.


Mnemosyne ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-433
Author(s):  
Jan Erik Heßler
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  

AbstractThis paper investigates the commemoration of the dead as practised in the Epicurean school: for this purpose, it first discusses the remembrance of the past and of the deceased as constitutive elements of the cult community of the Kepos. The community of the Epicureans is studied in the context of other contemporary associations and Hellenistic ruler cults, and with a view to (possible) connections with the cult of the god Dionysus. In a next step, the paper examines Epicurean testimonies on the subject of commemorating the dead in comparison with passages in Plato and theepitaphioi logoi, especially theepitaphioswritten by Hyperides. This way, some striking parallels emerge, and it becomes evident how deeply Epicurean doctrine and practice were embedded in the context of the late Classical and Hellenistic polis.


Author(s):  
Jayne Thomas

This chapter examines Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850). Tennyson was open about the difficulties he sustained in writing the poem, and this chapter argues that the Wordsworthian borrowings in the poem help the later poet to work toward finding a form of consolation, however tenuous this consolation subsequently proves to be, and therefore to make his accommodations with his faith, with the claims of nineteenth-century science and religion, but also with the loss of Arthur Henry Hallam, the direct subject of the poem. It also examines how the Wordsworthian language in In Memoriam helps Tennyson both to stabilise his ‘public’ voice and to develop the pastoral elements of elegy. The borrowings from Wordsworth form a chamber of echoes that Tennyson harnesses, reworks, reconfigures, replays in a different context and in a different time. At times the later poet is unable fully to transfigure and rework Wordsworth’s language, but is constrained, limited, inhibited by it, and these effects make themselves manifest in the poem too.


1884 ◽  
Vol 29 (128) ◽  
pp. 459-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Campbell Clark

Seven years ago Dr. Clouston read a paper to this Association “On the Question of Getting, Training, and Retaining the Services of Good Asylum Attendants.” Such a paper could scarcely fail to attract considerable notice and elicit a very hearty discussion, for the subject is one of far-reaching importance to us as asylum physicians, and of very great moment in the interest of the insane. To get the best raw material possible, and to manufacture out of it the best asylum attendant possible, were two great aims suggested by Dr. Clouston, and the subsequent discussion of his paper showed that the Association was fully alive to these, and the serious obstacles which lay in the way of their accomplishment. If the aims here indicated should be more fully realised in the future than in the past, we will probably find that the third desideratum, viz., the keeping of our attendants for a reasonable length of time, will be realised in like proportion as the others. We all willingly admit that the first serious difficulty is how and where to get them. What will attract the best raw material into the asylum market ? or, putting the question in a negative way, what is it that does not attract the best raw material into asylums? These questions will admit of a variety of answers, many having their root in the idea of non-respectability. Undoubtedly the status of an attendant is at present an inferior one in the industrial scale. Some common popular notions are that the rougher and stronger the material the better is the attendant; that it is not a trade for men, and is suited only for the coarser types of women; that it leads to nothing reliable or desirable as a permanent occupation; and that as a life-work it is not sufficiently respectable to satisfy an average ambition. These and other considerations materially affect the supply of good attendants. Seeing, therefore, that in attendants themselves we find the best advertisement, and through them may command the highest success, it is worth considering, whether or not it is possible for us to advertise asylums, in such a way as to attract to them the better raw material which we crave so much after, and which we need so much. If the public mind must be educated to better purpose we must go upon a new tack. We shall require to bring more elevating influences to bear upon our attendants. In raising their social and industrial status we shall raise them in the estimation of the public and themselves, and may reasonably expect a more marketable article by-and-bye. It is surely fair, in the interest of all concerned, that attendants should receive from us the best possible training of which they are capable. There is reason enough for it in this, that as medical helps they will then develope more fully, and their work will become a life-work worthy of the name.


1934 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 825-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Campbell

The ceaseless struggle of opposing ideas is the historical continuum of political theory. However concrete the situation which launches a particular conflict, all too often the struggle of ideas continues long after the objective scene of the conflict has moved on to quite different fields, long after new problems have outmoded old solutions, and long after new ways of thinking should have revised or displaced old concepts. This intellectual problem of continuity of ideas and of modes of thought is, of course, no more than the reflection of the larger issue of the liberation of human society from the “dead hand of the past.” The solution of this problem is no easy one, entailing as it does careful discrimination and emphasis upon the quality of “deadness,” but many reasoned attempts are being made toward this end.The forms which these attempts are taking in the field of political theory (including the concept of sovereignty, which is the subject of this paper) and of political science in general are several. We have had an increasing, and productive, “realistic presentation of the facts of the governmental process” which has served to deflate such overweening concepts as that of sovereignty.


2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 84-92
Author(s):  
Natalia V. Veselkova ◽  

In the first half of the 20th century a number of projects with a historical and biographical “stuffing” were carried out in our country, from psychologist N. Rybnikov’s activity to establish Biographical Institute up to Gorky’s “History of the Civil War”, “History of Factories and Plants” and the Mintz Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War. The affiliation of these projects to the first stage of the development of the biographical method, better known from the studies of the Chicago school, is asserted. The article attempts to analyze Russian projects on the subject of authorship / subjectivity constructions arising in them in an interdisciplinary way of the biographical method, as well as using a multiscalar approach to the study of social memory. It has been shown that “mass character” in these constructions has several aspects: a) involvement of the “masses”, b) key to verification and consensus in describing the past through the recollections of many participants, c) performativity. The democratization of biography-writing is considered in the context of the ‘Halbwachs Theorem’. In order for people unaccustomed to producing memories to be included in biographical practices, as well as to ensure the completeness and comparability of information obtained not only for political, but also for research purposes, semi-formalized methods were developed. Nevertheless, with all the declarations that the workers are now writing history, for the most part they were only suppliers of raw material, and the complex constructions of distributed authorship actually acted.


2010 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 95-123
Author(s):  
Brian A. Sparkes

Clay is a versatile material with remarkable properties and serves a multitude of purposes. The Greeks shaped and fired clay for statues and figurines, for architectural elements such as metopes and akroteria, for drain pipes, beehives, lamps, and so forth. The major output was pottery, produced in great numbers by different methods (wheelmade, handmade, moulded) and in various categories (coarse, plain, decorated). It was a basic commodity that had many functions – for cooking, drinking, libation, storage, transport, and as offerings to the gods and to the dead. Over the centuries, painted pottery played a large and practical, if unsung, part in the lives of Greeks; it has been estimated that the hundreds of thousands of pots and fragments that are now extant comprise less than one per cent of the pottery produced. Current research into Greek ceramics is strong, and conferences, both national and international, over the past generation, mostly centring on Attic pottery, show how essential the study of pottery is for all aspects of the classical world and how it furnishes wide avenues for investigation. The contents of the published proceedings of the conferences show the main trends. Work on the traditional elements such as techniques, shaping, and painting, and iconography – that is, the initial stages of production – still continues, but there is now much more interest in functions, markets, find-spots, customers, reception, and the like, with complex pie charts, histograms, maps, and statistics, – that is, enquiries into the pottery once it had left the workshop (see Figure 4). This chapter deals with the manufacture of the pots, the shapes fashioned, the painting, and the contexts of use, with a little about the business elements; it also looks at the subject of attribution. The final chapter is mainly concerned with the variety of images and scenes that the pots carry. The chapters cannot be exclusive nor all-encompassing; they can highlight only various aspects. The emphasis, as in the conference proceedings mentioned above, falls on Attic pottery of the Archaic and Classical centuries, because it afords the fullest evidence.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


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