Minerva, urban defenses, and the continuity of cult at Pompeii

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 283-300
Author(s):  
Ivo van der Graaff ◽  
Steven J. R. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Local Elite ◽  
City Gates ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Reciprocal Process

The religious landscapes of Republican-era urban communities in central and southern Italy were built on complex relationships between the inhabitants and their sacred spaces. The critical need to defend sacred sites such as temples, shrines and altars contributed directly to the shaping of urban centers and the formation of their cultural identities. Many urban centers had a separate citadel where communities protected their sanctuaries behind fortifications. In a reciprocal process the gods protected settlements. Some city gates (e.g., Volterra, Perugia, Falerii Novi) still carry prominent adornments in the form of busts and reliefs that evoke implicit civic and religious associations. The deities' presence implies a complex political and social interaction between the population, protective gods, and fortifications. As tutelary deities, their manipulation whether by a local élite or by a power such as Rome was an important part of the definition and appropriation of local identity.

Perspective istoriografice privind spațiul sacru al Sibiului în evul mediu

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Maria Crîngaci-Țiplic
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Urban Hierarchy ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

This paper presents an overview of the historiography that describes and investigates the components which compose the sacred spaces of Sibiu in the Middle Ages. It is well known that Sibiu had a preeminent position in the urban hierarchy of medieval Transylvania and of the south-eastern Europe. The city was attested for the first time in 1191 as an ecclesiastical center of the Transylvanian Saxons and was home to numerous places of worship and sacred sites (churches, monasteries, chapels, cemeteries, hospitals etc.). However, with the advent of the Reformation in the 16th century and the noticeable changes that occurred during the industrial age and the communist dictatorship (the 19th and 20th centuries), the medieval sacred building and their neighborhoods have been deeply transformed and medieval ecclesiastical topography became unrecognizable in modern day Sibiu. The recreation of the ecclesiastical topography and even more of the sacred spaces could be recreated through analyses and research of different type of sources from charters and town chronicles of the 16th-18th centuries to the most recent archaeological studies or papers on medieval art, architecture, or historical urban evolution. With this in mind, the study aims to provide references on the topic and establishes the main periods of the historiography and their relevant ideological and theoretical changes during over 400 hundred years of debates or research.

Familiar Strangers

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-346
Author(s):  
Peter Baskerville
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Benchmark Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Economic Circumstance ◽  
Shed Light

Much has been written about boarding and lodging in late-nineteenthcentury North America. Modell and Hareven 1977 provides a benchmark study of boarding in East Coast urban centers in the United States. For Canada, Medjuck 1980; Katz 1975; Katz et al. 1982; Harney 1978; Bradbury 1984, 1993; and Harris 1992, 1994, and 1996 shed light on aspects of boarding in various Canadian urban communities from the 1850s to the 1950s. In general these studies emphasize the importance of family cycles and economic circumstance for an understanding of the boarding process (see also Robinson 1993; Shergold 1982). Some point to the similarity in social and class background of boarders and boardinghouse keepers (Harney 1978;Medjuck 1980; Modell and Hareven 1977; Harris 1992). Literature on boardinghouse keeping has focused generally, however, on the economic rather than the social or cultural importance of boarding. Even when cultural implications are explored, the unit of analysis is that of community or region or, as in the literature on the acculturation of newcomers, on sojourners and immigrants only

Men’s Economic Status and Marriage Timing in Rural and Semi-Urban Malawi

Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Pike
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Family Characteristics ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Marriage Timing ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Individual

Abstract In recent decades, qualitative research from across sub-Saharan Africa has shown how young men are often unable to marry because they lack wealth and a stable livelihood. With survey data, researchers have begun to study how men’s economic circumstances are related to when they marry in the continent’s capitals and larger urban centers. However, our understanding of these dynamics outside of large cities remains limited. Drawing on longitudinal survey data, this paper examines how men’s economic standing, both at the individual and household level, relates to their marriage timing in rural and semi-urban communities in the Salima district of Malawi. The findings show that men who have higher earnings, work in agriculture, and come from a household that sold cash crops were more likely to marry. In contrast, students as well as men from households owning a large amount of land were substantially less likely to marry. Additionally, men living in the semi-urban communities were around half as likely to marry as their rural counterparts. This negative association is largely explained by the greater proportion of men who are students in towns and trading centers and also the relatively less agricultural nature of these communities. These findings show the value of considering both individual and family characteristics in studies of marriage timing and also suggest that as sub-Saharan Africa urbanizes, the age of marriage for men will likely rise.

Cluster of Cities versus City Region in Regional Planning

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 1375-1386 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Krakover
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Retail Trade ◽  
City Region ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
The North ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Growth Center ◽  
North Carolina Piedmont ◽  
Urban Places ◽  
Centralization And Decentralization

In this study the hypothesis, that patterns of spatial centralization and decentralization vary between single-centered urban regions and regions characterized by clusters of cities, is examined. The hypothesis is tested by comparing the dispersion of growth of employment in retail trade in the Philadelphia urban field with that in the area covered by the North Carolina Piedmont dispersed city. The results obtained by using a distance–temporal regression model support the hypothesis that the dispersion of growth in the surrounding area of cluster of cities is wider, and more equitably spread, in comparison with the situation in the case of a single-centered region. This finding suggests that the multiplicity of urban centers in a given region, traditionally viewed as a drawback to a successful application of the growth-center policy, has certain advantages in the long run. Therefore when growth-center policy is applied, it should not be carried out too fiercely to the detriment of other surrounding urban communities. On the contrary, policies geared toward the survival of non-growth-center urban places may yield rewards in the future in the form of wider and more equitable spread of growth throughout the entire region.

scholarly journals Dengue Serotype Differences in Urban and Semi-rural Communities in Ecuador

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sully Márquez ◽  
Julio Carrera ◽  
Emilia Espín ◽  
Sara Cifuentes ◽  
Gabriel Trueba ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Dengue Virus ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Rural Community ◽  
Community Hospital ◽  
Serum Samples ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Tropical Regions ◽  
Denv Serotypes ◽  
Vector Borne

Dengue is a major vector-borne infection causing large outbreaks in urban communities in tropical regions. During the period 2010- 2014; 434 serum samples from febrile patients were collected from a  semi-rural community hospital located in the norwestern region of Ecuador. Dengue virus (DENV) was investigated by reverse transcriptase PCR; a total of 48 samples were positive for dengue. During our study we detected  DENV-2 and DENV-3 from 2010 to 2013 and the four  DENV  serotypes during the period 2013-2014.  Surprisingly, our results contrasted with surveys carried out in urban centers throughout the  Ecuadorian Coast in which  DENV-1, DENV-2 and DENV-4 were prevalent during years 2010-2013 and only 2 serotypes  (DENV-1 and DENV-2) in 2014.These results suggest  that dengue viruses in semi-rural communities didn’t  originate in the Ecuadorian cities.   

scholarly journals Phantasmagorical Buddhism: Dreams and Imagination in the Creation of Burmese Sacred Space

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Patton
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
The Creation

Despite the growing research done on sacred spaces in Buddhist Myanmar, no attention has yet been given to the role dreams play in the selection and development of such spaces. This article will address this lacuna by exploring how dreams are regarded by 20th–21st centuries Buddhists in Myanmar, as evidenced in autobiographies, ethnographic work, and popular literature in relation to the creation and evolution of sacred places. Although there are many kinds of sacred sites in Myanmar, this article will look specifically at Buddhist stupas, commonly referred to in Burmese as, pagoda or zedi. These pagodas, found in nearly every part of Buddhist Myanmar, are also those structures most prevalent in Buddhist dream accounts and often take on phantasmagorical qualities when those same Buddhists attempt to recreate the pagodas of their dreams.

scholarly journals Saints, Sacred Trees, and Snakes: Popular Religion, Hierotopy, Byzantine Culture, and Insularity in Cyprus during the Long Middle Ages

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 738
Author(s):  
Chrysovalantis Kyriacou
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Distinct Group ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
The Creation ◽  
And Performance

The holiness of sacred spaces is expressed through the creative synthesis and performance of different symbolic or iconic elements. This article concentrates on the medieval church of Ayios Iakovos in Nicosia, Cyprus. Dedicated to Saint James the Persian, the church became, by the 1600s, a shared shrine for Christians of different denominations (Orthodox, Maronites, and Latins) and Muslims. The aim of this article is to investigate in an interdisciplinary way the formation, adaptation, and negotiation of insular religious identities in relation to Ayios Iakovos’ hierotopy, official and popular religious practices, and the appropriation of Byzantine culture. The components in the creation of this sacred space reflect long-term contact between Cyprus and Greater Syria, constructing an inclusive religious environment with its own insular characteristics. It will be argued that these characteristics were shaped by global, regional, and local developments, including trade, pilgrimage, war, and environmental changes. Being in dialogue with recent scholarship on mixed sacred sites, this case study stresses the importance of interconnectivity and mobility in the creation of shared places of worship. It also shows that phenomena of religious co-existence and syncretism do not always result in homogenisation but maintain distinct group identities.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
David Dickson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
And Function

This chapter describes most of Ireland's larger towns, Viking seaports, and the process of urbanization in the country. It recounts the earlier cycle of urban growth in the thirteenth century when Anglo-Normans controlled the island, the slipping back of the urban share of Ireland's modest population in the early fourteenth century, and the large number of villages and small towns established during the seventeenth century in port hinterlands. Following this, the chapter presents the 'long' eighteenth century — from the 1660s to the 1820s — an era of deepening if unsteady commercialization of what had been a largely pre-market economy and, related to this, the transformation in size and function of a handful of very old urban centers. Finally, the chapter reviews North Munster and south-east Ireland's medieval urban system. It examines how the ports of London/Derry and Sligo developed strategically important urban functions during the eighteenth century within their respective hinterlands — west Ulster and north Connacht — and how they merit inclusion in the top group of urban communities.

Women of the Wall

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuval Jobani ◽  
Nahshon Perez
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Religious Plurality ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Western Wall

For more than twenty-five years, the Women of the Western Wall (WoW) have been leading a groundbreaking struggle, attempting to gain permission from Israeli authorities to pray according to their manner at Judaism’s holiest prayer site, the Western Wall. The WoW’s determined activism has gained widespread media coverage. This book is the first comprehensive academic study of their struggle, and it seeks to place it in a comparative and theoretical context. It explores various dimensions of the group’s struggle, including an analysis of the women’s attempts to modify Jewish Orthodox mainstream religious practice from within and invest it with a new, egalitarian content; a comprehensive survey of the numerous legal rulings of various courts about the case; and considerations of the broader political and social significance of the WoW struggle. This analysis in turn makes it possible to address several wider questions in religion-state relations: How should governments manage religious plurality within their borders? How should governments respond to the requests of minorities—in this case, religious women—that conflict with the mainstream interpretation of a given tradition? How should governments manage disputed sacred spaces located in the public sphere? Women of the Wall: Navigating Religion in Sacred Sites critically explores several theories of religion-state relations, and concludes that a context-sensitive privatization is the most adequate governmental response, for the WoW struggle as well as for similar current religious conflicts over sacred sites and public spaces.

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