Land use and settlement history of the southern Inner Hebrides

Author(s):  
Margaret C. Storrie

SynopsisThe earliest evidence of prehistoric activity in Scotland comes from Jura. Most of Jura has been rather inimical to settlement, in comparison with other islands of the southern Inner Hebrides—Colonsay and Oronsay, Gigha and Cara, and Islay—all endowed with deposits more useful to man than Jura. Land use and settlement in these islands spread from the coasts into and up the river valleys until the first half of the19th century, after which they retreated. There have, however, been several waves of retreat and readvance.This paper assesses the present stage of research in the chronicle of these changes in the southern islands, pointing to some of the unanswered questions. The archaeological, onomastic and historical evidence is briefly examined against a slowly changing environment that has been relatively favourable, in a Hebridean context. Areal expansion, upward extension and intensified use of the land increased in momentum, with interruptions, after the late medieval period. The time of greatest change began just after the middle of the 18th century and lasted for another century.Elements of this change and its effects on settlement are discussed, using records and maps from private and official archives, topographic and other writings, and population and agrarian censuses. The important role of landlords, their agents and subsequent planners in instituting, and even containing, change is briefly assessed. In the southern Inner Hebrides an unusual, non-crofting landscape resulted: an estate, farming and sporting landscape, with, in the case of Islay, over a dozen industrial and service villages.The characteristic ‘Highland Problem’ of landscape and land use, increasingly ill-suited to the needs of later 19th and 20th century economy and society, has been less evident in these islands than in others in the Hebrides, although they now show disturbing trends. Present land use and settlement are briefly examined.

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai

Abstract The introduction to this special issue provides some considerations on early modern sanctity as a historical object. It firstly presents the major shifts in the developing idea of sanctity between the late medieval period and the nineteenth century, passing through the early modern construction of sanctity and its cultural, social, and political implications. Secondly, it provides an overview of the main sources that allow historians to retrace early modern sanctity, especially canonization records and hagiographies. Thirdly, it offers an overview of the ingenious role of the Society of Jesus in the construction of early modern sanctity, by highlighting its ability to employ, create, and play with hagiographical models. The main Jesuit models of sanctity are then presented (i.e., the theologian, the missionary, the martyr, the living saint), and an important reflection is reserved for the specific martyrial character of Jesuit sanctity. The introduction assesses the continuity of the Jesuit hagiographical discourse throughout the long history of the order, from the origins to the suppression and restoration.


Author(s):  
Agnès Graceffa

The Merovingian period has long been contested ground on which a variety of ideologies and approaches have been marshaled to debate the significance of the “end” of antiquity and the start of the Middle Ages. Particularly important to these discussions has been the role of this period in shaping national identity across western Europe; interpretations of the Merovingians have varied as political realities have changed in Europe, going back, in some cases, as far as the late medieval period. This chapter focuses mainly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but offers examples as early as the seventeenth century as to how the Merovingian period has been harnessed for a large number of purposes and how these sometimes polemical interpretations have encouraged or stymied our understanding of this period.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (50) ◽  
pp. E11790-E11797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amine Namouchi ◽  
Meriam Guellil ◽  
Oliver Kersten ◽  
Stephanie Hänsch ◽  
Claudio Ottoni ◽  
...  

Over the last few years, genomic studies on Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of all known plague epidemics, have considerably increased in numbers, spanning a period of about 5,000 y. Nonetheless, questions concerning historical reservoirs and routes of transmission remain open. Here, we present and describe five genomes from the second half of the 14th century and reconstruct the evolutionary history of Y. pestis by reanalyzing previously published genomes and by building a comprehensive phylogeny focused on strains attributed to the Second Plague Pandemic (14th to 18th century). Corroborated by historical and ecological evidence, the presented phylogeny, which includes our Y. pestis genomes, could support the hypothesis of an entry of plague into Western European ports through distinct waves of introduction during the Medieval Period, possibly by means of fur trade routes, as well as the recirculation of plague within the human population via trade routes and human movement.


Author(s):  
Charlotte Roberts ◽  
Jelena Bekvalac ◽  
Rebecca C. Redfern

This chapter outlines the contributions bioarchaeology has made to understanding health and well-being in the late medieval period in Britain. Some of the history of the study of medieval bodies is followed by a commentary on the evidence base used to consider health and disease, integrated with contextual data, and the limitations of the data. This is followed by a focus on the largest excavated and well-studied cemetery site globally, to date (St Mary Spital, London). It also discusses the bioarchaeological field, including training and standards, advances in analytical techniques (biomolecular), the need for context in studies, and future developments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.


Author(s):  
Douglas R. Givens

The history of any discipline involves the explanation of its past and how the past has influenced its development through time. Its ‘objects are events which have finished happening, and conditions no longer in existence. Only when they are no longer perceptible do they become objects of historical thought’ (Collingwood 1946: 233). Writing the history of archaeology involves the analysis of past events and of the contributions that individual archaeologists have made to its development through time. The roles of individuals in archaeology are best seen in biographical accounts of their labours and in the contributions to the discipline that they have made. In general, historians of archaeological science, who are interested in explaining the roles of the individuals in its development, must focus their attention on three important items. First, the most important item is evidence that something has occurred. If individuals’ contributions have no basis in truth and cannot be justified, then they are of no value to the historian of archaeology. Second, the historical picture of individuals’ lives and work must have defined boundaries in space and time. These provide the area of focus for study and description of individuals’ activities. Third, the efforts of individual practitioners must be couched within the intellectual climate in which they are made. Individuals’ contributions are not made in an intellectual vacuum, apart from collegial or institutional influences. Biography, as a tool for writing the history of archaeology, must embrace all of these requisites. For those engaged in explaining archaeology’s past, historical evidence of event and period provide the foundation upon which we can trace our science’s development. Studying and evaluating past work can be helpful in separating useful and outdated methodologies of the field and laboratory. Moreover, the study of the history of anthropology may give the anthropologist needed ‘distance from their own theoretical and methodological preoccupations’ (Darnell 1974: 2). What we see anthropology today as being is certainly not what the ultimate science of humankind will be in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Gillman

Background: Joseph Priestley’s discovery of nitrous oxide (N2O) was recorded in 1772. In the late 1790’s, Humphry Davy experimented with the psychotropic properties of N2O, describing his observations in a book, published in 1800. A dentist, Horace Wells discovered anaesthesia with N2O in 1844. Over a century after Davy, its potential usefulness in psychiatry was first recognised. The seminal researches in neuropsychiatry, between 1920 and 1950, mainly used anaesthetic concentrations of the gas. The psychotropic actions of N2O, at non-anaesthetic doses, were first used by dentists, mainly for its anxiolytic action. In modern dentistry, N2O is always mixed with at least 30% oxygen and titrated to doses rarely exceeding 40% of N2O. At these lower concentrations, untoward effects are almost always avoided, including over-sedation and/or anaesthesia. In the early 1980’s, the low-dose dental titration technique was first used to investigate and treat psychiatric conditions, including substance abuse. Until then, most physicians regarded the gas only as an anaesthetic agent. An exception was obstetricians who used a fixed 50% concentration of N2O diluted with oxygen for analgesia during parturition. In 1994, to clearly distinguish between anaesthetic and non-anaesthetic concentrations (as used in dentistry), the term Psychotropic Analgesic Nitrous oxide (PAN) was introduced. Objective: This paper will give a brief history of the use of the N2O in psychiatry since the psychotropic actions were first recognised in the 18th century until the present. Conclusion: The role of other non- opioid systems, and the extent to which they contribute to the psychotropic properties of N2O, still remains to be established.


2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelika Neuwirth

The relationship between Qur'an and history is disputed in more than one respect. The Qur'an as a canonical scripture locates itself beyond history. In most current critical scholarship the pre-canonical Qur'an – regarded as no longer reconstructable – is equally discarded. There have been some attempts, however, to restore to the Qur'an a textual history. 28 years after Günter Lüling, Cristoph Luxenberg has renewed the hypothesis of a linguistically and spiritually Syriac–Christian imprinted pre-canonical text. Luxenberg's reading with its far-reaching conclusions has – though in itself little convincing since largely relying on circular argument – revived the debate about the role of Syriac, as the most vigorous linguistic medium in the transmission of knowledge in Near Eastern late Antiquity, in the emergence of the Qur'an. The present paper advocates a search for historical evidence in the text itself trying to show that the complex relationship between Qur'an and history cannot be tackled appropriately without a micro-structural reading of the Qur'an itself. The history of the Qur'an does not start with canonisation but is inherent in the text itself, where not only contents but also form and structure can be read as traces of a historical process.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
O. W. Saarinen

Kapuskasing, Ontario warrants special mention in the history of Canadian land use planning. The town first acquired special prominence immediately following World War I when it was the site of the first provincially-planned resource community in Canada. The early layout of the settlement reflected the imprints of both the "city beautiful" and "garden city" movements. After 1958, the resource community then became the focus for an important experiment in urban "fringe" rehabilitation at Brunetville, a suburban area situated just east of the planned Kapuskasing townsite. The author suggests that the role of the Brunetville experiment in helping to change the focus of urban renewal in Canada from redevelopment to rehabilitation has not been fully appreciated.


2017 ◽  
pp. 16-33
Author(s):  
Inna Põltsam-Jürjo

From “heathens’ cakes” to “pig’s ears”: tracing a food’s journey across cultures, centuries and cookbooks It is intriguing from the perspective of food history to find in 19th and 20th century Estonian recipe collections the same foods – that is, foods sharing the same names – found back in European cookbooks of the 14th and 15th centuries. It is noteworthy that they have survived this long, and invites a closer study of the phenomenon. For example, 16th century sources contain a record about the frying of heathen cakes, a kind of fritter, in Estonia. A dish by the same name is also found in 18th and 19th century recipe collections. It is a noteworthy phenomenon for a dish to have such a long history in Estonian cuisine, spanning centuries in recipe collections, and merits a closer look. Medieval European cookbooks listed two completely different foods under the name of heathen cakes and both were influenced from foods from the east. It is likely that the cakes made it to Tallinn and finer Estonian cuisine through Hanseatic merchants. It is not ultimately clear whether a single heathen cake recipe became domesticated in these parts already in the Middle Ages. In any case, heathen cakes would remain in Estonian cuisine for several centuries. As late as the early 19th century, the name in the local Baltic German cuisine referred to a delicacy made of egg-based batter fried in oil. Starting from the 18th century, the history of these fritters in Estonian cuisine can be traced through cookbooks. Old recipe collections document the changes and development in the tradition of making these cakes. The traditions of preparing these cakes were not passed on only in time, but circulated within society, crossing social and class lines. Earlier known from the elites’ culture, the dish reached the tables of ordinary people in the late 19th and early 20th century. In Estonian conditions, it meant the dish also crossed ethnic lines – from the German elite to the Estonian common folk’s menus. In the course of adaptation process, which was dictated and guided by cookbooks and cooking courses, the name of the dish changed several times (heydenssche koken, klenätid, Räderkuchen, rattakokid, seakõrvad), and changes also took place in the flavour nuances (a transition from spicier, more robust favours to milder ones) and even the appearance of the cakes. The story of the heathen cakes or pig’s ears in Estonian cuisine demonstrates how long and tortuous an originally elite dish can be as it makes its way to the tables of the common folk. The domestication and adaptation of such international recipes in the historical Estonian cuisine demonstrates the transregional cultural exchange, as well as culinary mobility and communication.


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