Cattle, community and corrals

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Creighton
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Area Of Influence

Jean and John Comaroff's paper provides an elegant narrative describing the processes at work behind the adoption of coinage amongst the Tswana of southern Africa under the influence of European missionaries and colonists. My own particular interests are set back two thousand years earlier with the adoption of coin in France and Britain. At this time Rome was the up-and-coming imperial power engaged in trade, and then conquest, stretching its area of influence and dominions from the Mediterranean littoral into temperate Europe. As such I envy the Comaroff's ability to use a rich array of source material that is unavailable to me with my much poorer archaeological remains and fragmentary literary sources. None the less, many of the themes have echoes of processes that must have taken place many years before in this other time and place.

Wheat in thn Roman World: an addendum

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mayerson
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Wheat Production ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Bona Fide

J. K. Evans' well-documented article, ‘Wheat production and its social consequences in the Roman world’, correctly makes the point that ‘the evidence with regard to wheat yields is at once meagre and plainly contradictory’. The difficulty in assessing yields arises, of course, from the character of the available source material; namely, literary sources. The information comes from the hands of men such as Cicero and Varro who were concerned with matters other than specific data on the cultivation and production of grains, and who probably never sowed or reaped a modius of wheat. What was lacking until recently was a bona-fide document from the hands of a farmer or a community intimately concerned with the growing of wheat. We now have one such document, P. Colt 82 of the seventh century A.D., that fills a gap in the evidence for yields for both wheat and barley.

scholarly journals Yes, John G Lake was a Con Man: A Response to Marius Nel

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Morton
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Apostolic Faith Mission

This response to Marius Nel’s 2016 article (in Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae no. 42, 1, 62-85) uses primary source material to refute his claims that John G Lake, the initiator of Pentecostalism in southern Africa, was an upstanding man of God. A wide array of American and South African sources show that Lake invented an extensive but fictitious life story, while also creating a similarly dubious divine calling that obscured his involvement in gruesome killings in America. Once in South Africa, he used invented “miracles” to raise funds abroad for the Apostolic Faith Mission. Before long, he faced many accusations of duplicity from inside his own church.

New Media in the Late Iron Age

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Middle Iron Age

This chapter analyzes coins and writing in late prehistoric Europe. The development of coinage in temperate Europe and the first regular signs of writing are innovations that share some important features. Both were introduced from outside the region, specifically from the Mediterranean world, toward the end of the Middle Iron Age. Although both had existed in the Mediterranean world for centuries before their introduction and adoption in temperate Europe, both appear in temperate Europe at about the same time, during the third century BC and more abundantly during the second and first centuries. They were both adopted at a particular time in Europe's developmental trajectory, and under specific economic and political circumstances.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Ian Worthington
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The Mediterranean

WHEN WE THINK OF ANCIENT Athens, the image that invariably comes to mind is of the Classical city: the Athenian military fighting the Persians for Greek freedom; monuments, like the Parthenon and Erechtheum on the Acropolis, beautifying everywhere one looked; the expansive Agora swarming with people conducting business, discussing current affairs, and generally chit-chatting; citizens taking part in their democracy; and a flourishing intellectual, artistic, and literary life, from performances of tragedies and comedies to the teaching of philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to great orators like Pericles and Demosthenes declaiming in the Assembly, where domestic and foreign policy was debated and made. Life was anchored in the ideals of freedom, autonomy, and democracy, and in the fifth century at least, Athens was an imperial power second to none in the Mediterranean....

The Treaty of Apamea and the Later Seleucids

Antichthon ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 30-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliezer Paltiel
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Roman People ◽  
The Mediterranean

, gloated Roman soldiers after the battle of Magnesia. To the historian they have left the task of assessing the ex-greatness of the Seleucid empire under the shadow of the victor. That all subsequent Seleucid rulers were compelled to play to the Roman audience when acting on the Mediterranean stage needs no emphasis. However to gauge more precisely the degree of their dependence is much more difficult.Prima facie, the literary tradition offers at least one document that clearly delineates the extent of Roman control over Seleucid affairs. The Treaty of Apamea established φιλία (= amicitia) between the Roman people and King Antiochos III , and it is widely assumed that this treaty governed relations between Rome and the Seleucids during the subsequent half-century. However, a cursory reading of the literary sources immediately reveals two or three striking facts that contradict this assumption.

Optimum temporal and spectral window for monitoring crop marks over archaeological remains in the Mediterranean region

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 1479-1492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athos Agapiou ◽  
Diofantos G. Hadjimitsis ◽  
Apostolos Sarris ◽  
Andreas Georgopoulos ◽  
Dimitrios D. Alexakis
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Spectral Window ◽  
The Mediterranean

Genetics and Domestic Fauna in Southern Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Ann Horsburgh
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Nuclear Genome ◽  
Genetic Data ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Morphological Identification ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Low Genetic Diversity ◽  
Domestic Livestock ◽  
Domestic Stock

Genetic analyses of southern African livestock have been limited and primarily focused on agricultural production rather than the reconstruction of prehistory. Attempts to sequence DNA preserved in archaeological remains of domestic stock have been hampered by the discovery of high error rates in the morphological identification of fauna. As such, much DNA sequencing effort that was directed at sequencing southern Africa’s domestic livestock has been expended sequencing wild forms. The few genetic data that are available from both modern and archaeological domestic stock show relatively low genetic diversity in maternally inherited mitochondrial lineages in both sheep and cattle. Analyses of modern stock show, in contrast, that the bi-parentally inherited nuclear genome is relatively diverse. This pattern is perhaps indicative of historic cross-breeding with stock introduced from outside Africa. Critically important to moving forward in our understanding of the prehistory of domesticates in southern Africa is attention to the high error rates in faunal analyses that have been documented both genetically and through ZooMS.

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