The Prehistoric Landscape of Dartmoor Part 2: North and East Dartmoor

1983 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Fleming

This paper describes the distribution of reaves (Bronze Age land boundaries) on North and East Dartmoor (cf. Fleming 1978a for South Dartmoor). It is suggested that they form a pattern which reflects the territorial arrangements of several communities distributed around the edge of Dartmoor. Each of these territories tended to be about 3–4 km in breadth and to include a single block of enclosed land laid out on one axis, sometimes covering over 1000 ha. The scale of territories here is more independent of the incidence of major geographical features than is the case on South Dartmoor. There is normally a simple division between enclosed land and upland pasture, without the intermediate settled valley zones which are important on the South Moor. Classic parallel reave systems occur, but so do simpler ‘block systems’, and this variability can best be conceptualized as a continuum, within a broad tradition of laying out enclosed land on a major axis and in rectangular parcels. It is suggested, mainly on the basis of the interdependence of the pattern's components, that most boundaries on Dartmoor were laid out in response to a single decision taken around 1300 bc (1700/1600 BC), although some cross-ridge reaves may be earlier in date. Some details of the layout reflect different levels of social organisation — what are here termed the neighbourhood group, the community, and the regional level of organisation. The paper also discusses the settlement history of different regions of Dartmoor, suggesting that a third major upland common, the East Moor, should be considered equivalent to the North Moor and the South Moor in terms of the development of land use. The East Moor was eventually encroached upon by the Rippon Tor parallel reave system, probably the largest prehistoric field system known in Britain.

1987 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 182-182
Author(s):  
Reynold Higgins

A recent discovery on the island of Aegina by Professor H. Walter (University of Salzburg) throws a new light on the origins of the so-called Aegina Treasure in the British Museum.In 1982 the Austrians were excavating the Bronze Age settlement on Cape Kolonna, to the north-west of Aegina town. Immediately to the east of the ruined Temple of Apollo, and close to the South Gate of the prehistoric Lower Town, they found an unrobbed shaft grave containing the burial of a warrior. The gravegoods (now exhibited in the splendid new Museum on the Kolonna site) included a bronze sword with a gold and ivory hilt, three bronze daggers, one with gold fittings, a bronze spear-head, arrowheads of obsidian, boar's tusks from a helmet, and fragments of a gold diadem (plate Va). The grave also contained Middle Minoan, Middle Cycladic, and Middle Helladic (Mattpainted) pottery. The pottery and the location of the grave in association with the ‘Ninth City’ combine to give a date for the burial of about 1700 BC; and the richness of the grave-goods would suggest that the dead man was a king.


1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Forbes Manz

Temür has been many things to many people. He was nomad and city-builder, Turk and promoter of Persian culture, restorer of the Mongol order and warrior for the spread of Islam. One thing he was to all: a conqueror of unequalled scope, able to subdue both the vast areas of nomad power to the north and the centres of agrarian Islamic culture to the south. The history of his successors was one of increasing political fragmentation and economic stress. Yet they too won fame, as patrons over a period of brilliant cultural achievement in Persian and Turkic. Temür's career raises a number of questions. Why did he find it necessary to pile conquest upon conquest, each more ambitious than the last? Having conceived dreams of dominion, where did he get the power and money to fulfill them? When he died, what legacy did Temür leave to his successors and to the world which they tried to control? Finally, what was this world of Turk and Persian, and where did Temür and the Timurids belong within it?


1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (95) ◽  
pp. 327-340
Author(s):  
Francis Thompson

The Irish land act of 1881, it is generally agreed, was a victory for the Land League and Parnell, and nationalist policy with regard to the act and the attitude of southern tenants towards it have been many times subjected to detailed examination by historians of this period. In these analyses of the events of 1880–81, however, little reference is normally made to the part played by the different parties and interests in the north of the country. It is often assumed, for example, that the Ulster tenants held aloof from the campaign for reform, lending no more than occasional vocal support to the agitational efforts of tenants in the south and west. Indeed, they were later excoriated by William O'Brien, Michael Davitt and others not only for giving no support to the land movement but also for sabotaging Parnell's policy of testing the 1881 act by precipitately rushing into the land courts to take advantage of the new legislation: ‘that hard-fisted body of men, having done nothing themselves to win the act, thought of nothing but turning it to their own immediate use, and repudiating any solidarity with the southern and western rebels to whom they really owed it’. If, however, northern tenants were harshly judged by nationalist politicians in the years after 1881, the part played by the northern political parties in the history of the land bill has been either ignored or misunderstood by historians since that time. The Ulster liberals, for example, are rarely mentioned, the implication being that they made no contribution to the act even though it implemented almost exactly the programme on which they had been campaigning for much of the previous decade. The northern conservatives, on the other hand, are commonly seen as leading opponents of the bill, more intransigent than their party colleagues in the south, ‘quick to denounce any weakening of the opposition’ to reform, and ‘determined to keep the tory party up to the mark in defending the landlord interest’


Starinar ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 269-286
Author(s):  
Perica Spehar ◽  
Natasa Miladinovic-Radmilovic ◽  
Sonja Stamenkovic

In 2012, in the village Davidovac situated in south Serbia, 9.5 km south-west from Vranje, archaeological investigations were conducted on the site Crkviste. The remains of the smaller bronze-age settlement were discovered, above which a late antique horizon was later formed. Apart from modest remains of a bronze-age house and pits, a late antique necropolis was also excavated, of which two vaulted tombs and nine graves were inspected during this campaign. During the excavation of the northern sector of the site Davidovac-Crkviste the north-eastern periphery of the necropolis is detected. Graves 1-3, 5 and 6 are situated on the north?eastern borderline of necropolis, while the position of the tombs and the remaining four graves (4, 7-9) in their vicinity point that the necropolis was further spreading to the west and to the south?west, occupying the mount on which the church of St. George and modern graveyard are situated nowadays. All graves are oriented in the direction SW-NE, with the deviance between 3? and 17?, in four cases toward the south and in seven cases toward the north, while the largest part of those deviations is between 3? and 8?. Few small finds from the layer above the graves can in some way enable the determination of their dating. Those are two roman coins, one from the reign of emperor Valens (364-378), as well as the fibula of the type Viminacium-Novae which is chronologically tied to a longer period from the middle of the 5th to the middle of the 6th century, although there are some geographically close analogies dated to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century. Analogies for the tombs from Davidovac can be found on numerous sites, like in Sirmium as well as in Macvanska Mitrovica, where they are dated to the 4th-5th century. Similar situation was detected in Viminacium, former capital of the roman province of Upper Moesia. In ancient Naissus, on the site of Jagodin Mala, simple rectangular tombs were distributed in rows, while the complex painted tombs with Christian motifs were also found and dated by the coins to the period from the 4th to the 6th century. Also, in Kolovrat near Prijepolje simple vaulted tombs with walled dromos were excavated. During the excavations on the nearby site Davidovac-Gradiste, 39 graves of type Mala Kopasnica-Sase dated to the 2nd-3rd century were found, as well as 67 cist graves, which were dated by the coins of Constantius II, jewellery and buckles to the second half of the 4th or the first half of the 5th century. Based on all above mentioned it can be concluded that during the period from the 2nd to the 6th century in this area existed a roman and late antique settlement and several necropolises, formed along an important ancient road Via militaris, traced at the length of over 130 m in the direction NE-SW. Data gained with the anthropological analyses of 10 skeletons from the site Davidovac-Crkviste don't give enough information for a conclusion about the paleo-demographical structure of the population that lived here during late antiquity. Important results about the paleo-pathological changes, which do not occur often on archaeological sites, as well as the clearer picture about this population in total, will be acquired after the osteological material from the site Davidovac-Gradiste is statistically analysed.


1950 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 34-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Williams

Charmy Down is a plateau three miles north-east of Bath (fig. 1, 1), east of the Bath-Tetbury road. About a square mile in extent it has a general height of well over 600 ft. To the north the scarp falls swiftly, on the east more gently, to the wooded valley of St. Catherine's Brook, a tributary of the Bristol Avon and the modern Somerset–Gloucester boundary. At the foot of the steep western scarp a second stream flows south to the Avon. On the south Chilcombe Bottom separates Charmy Down from Solsbury Hill, distinguished by its Iron Age earthwork. The underlying rock is oolite, a southward continuation of the Cotswold formation.


2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mordechai Cogan

Beginning with the death of David and the rise of Solomon, 1 Kings charts the history of Israel through the divided monarchy, when Ahab reigned in the north and Jehoshaphat reigned in the south. This new translation, with introduction and commentary by biblical scholar Mordechai Cogan, is part of the Anchor Bible Commentary series, viewed by many as the definitive commentaries for use in both Christian and Jewish scholarship and worship. Cogan's translation brings new immediacy to well-known passages, such as Solomon's famously wise judgment when asked by two prostitutes to decide their dispute regarding motherhood of a child: "Cut the live son in two! And give half to one and half to the other." With a bibliography that runs to almost a thousand articles and books, Cogan's commentary demonstrates his mastery of the political history described by 1 Kings, as well as the themes of moral and religious failure that eventually led to Israel's defeat and exile.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-274
Author(s):  
Flemming Kaul

Abstract The introduction of the folding stool and the single-edged razor into Southern Scandinavia, as well as the testimony of chariot use during the Nordic Bronze Age Period II (1500-1300 BC), give evidence of the transfer of ideas from the Mediterranean to the North. Recent analyses of the chemical composition of blue glass beads from well-dated Danish Bronze Age burials have revealed evidence for the opening of long distance exchange routes around 1400 BC between Egypt, Mesopotamia and South Scandinavia. When including comparative material from glass workshops in Egypt and finds of glass from Mesopotamia, it becomes clear that glass from those distant lands reached Scandinavia. The routes of exchange can be traced through Europe based on finds of amber from the North and glass from the South.


Author(s):  
Stefan Nygård

The history of modern Italy is an illustrative example of the different social and spatial layers of the North–South divide. Since unification in 1861, Italy has struggled to overcome regional imbalances, mainly although not exclusively along a North–South axis. With an emphasis on the period following unification, when North-South was placed at the centre of national politics, this chapter surveys the lingering debates on Italy’s so-called Southern question and the dynamics of nation-state formation in which it is embedded. The contested history of this process includes debates over economic and moral debts caused by the uneven distribution of gains and sacrifices between North and South as a result of unification. Socio-economically, two North–South divides developed in parallel after unification; the more significant one between Italy and transalpine Europe, and the initially minor but eventually growing divergence between the northern and southern regions within Italy. The ideas of development, catching-up and “Europeanization” were recurring themes in the intellectual and political debates discussed in the chapter. The contested issue was whether the North was developing the South, or vice versa.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-393
Author(s):  
Manisha Desai

In this article, I focus on the work of the South Asian Network for Gender Transformation (SANGAT) to show how it goes beyond the current turn to the Global South in much contemporary transnational feminisms. It does so in two ways. One, as evident in the name, it defines a regional imaginary, which is place-based and informed by the long history of interactions in the area beyond the colonial, postcolonial, and recent global forces, as well as in conversation with discourses and practices from the North. Second, its praxis connects activists across borders in a process of mutual learning that acknowledges power inequalities and draws upon local as well as transnational feminist theories and methodologies to enable sustainable collaborations for social and gender justice in the region. Thus, rather than reproducing the North/South binaries with its attendant erasures SANGAT seeks to go beyond them to develop place-based yet connected ‘solidarities of epistemologies’ and praxis.


Inner Asia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Elke Studer

AbstractThe article outlines the Mongolian influences on the biggest horse race festival in Nagchu prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).Since old times these horse races have been closely linked to the worship of the local mountain deity by the patrilineal nomadic clans of the South-Eastern Changthang, the North Tibetan plain. In the seventeenth century the West Mongol chieftain Güüshi Khan shaped the history of Tibet. To support his political claims, he enlarged the horse race festival's size and scale, and had his troops compete in the different horse race and archery competitions in Nagchu. Since then, the winners of the big race are celebrated side by side with the political achievements and claims of the central government in power.


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