Industrial Archaeology

Author(s):  
Robert B. Gordon ◽  
Patrick M. Malone

The prominence of industry in the culture of the North Atlantic nations has provoked thoughtful people to ask penetrating questions about the roots of innovation and the social and environmental consequences of industrial technology. One cluster of questions, long of interest to scholars, focuses on how and by whom new technologies were created and how their selection, use, or rejection has been influenced by cultural values. In the past quarter century, the impact of technologies and industries on the environment has become a widespread concern among citizens of the industrialized nations. People are raising questions about the past and present uses of natural resources and how their availability influences economic growth. They are concerned about the consequences of releasing industrial wastes and effluents into the air and water. They are also exploring their personal experiences with mechanisms and technological devices—how these artifacts enter work, play, and art, and how they express cultural values. Because the field of the history of technology is relatively new, scholars have approached it within the framework of established disciplines. The work of historians with the written record and of economists with numerical data is securely established in the academic world. We would add to these the material record, the domain of the industrial archaeologist. Evidence from artifacts is particularly important for the study of workers (because the written record is sparse), of inventors (because much of the secondary literature simplifies the complexities of invention), and of the industrial landscape. To discover the texture of industry, we need to examine both the documentary and the material record; artifacts as well as documents must speak for the experiences ot past workers. An artifact, in the words of historian Brooke Hindle, is “a solid piece of the past in a way that no quotation can ever be.”' Students of industry must rely heavily on material evidence because few participants in industry left written records of their experiences and because some aspects of technology cannot be expressed effectively in words.

Author(s):  
Yaisna Rajkumari ◽  

The paper will establish a connection between folktales and the cultural history of a region, particularly with respect to the Indian state of Manipur. It is premised on the belief that a study of folktales can alert us not only to the various interconnections between folktales and the cultural history of a place but also help analyse the dynamics of the publication of the anthologies of folktales in relation to this cultural history. The paper will include analyses of Meitei and tribal tales pertaining to the nationalist phase and contemporary period in the history of the North Eastern Indian state of Manipur and look at how in the past few years, compilers and translators have incorporated versions of tales different from the earlier anthologies, establishing a direct link between the tales and the times of their publication.


2014 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 169-185
Author(s):  
Jarosław Źrałka ◽  
Katarzyna Radnicka

The Ixil Maya area is located in Quiche Department of the north-western part of the Guatemalan Highlands. It has witnessed a continuous occupation since the 1st millennium BC till today. This archaeologically interesting region has provided many important discoveries of rare cultural mixture, with distinct features typical for both Maya Highlands and more distant Lowlands. Recently, the scholarly interest has focused on Chajul where a few years ago, in one of the local houses, well preserved wall paintings dated to the Colonial period were exposed by the house owner during the process of its renovation. With this extraordinary finding a question emerged - are we able to confirm the cultural continuity between the pre-Columbian settlers and modem Ixil who claim «to be always here»? This paper presents a brief outline of the history of the Ixil Maya. It also presents results of some recent and preliminary studies conducted by Polish scholars in this region.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prudhvi Parne

With recent advances in technology, internet has drastically changed the computing world from the concept of parallel computing to distributed computing to grid computing and now to cloud computing. The evolution of cloud computing over the past few years is potentially one of the major advances in the history of computing. Unfortunately, many banks are still hesitant to adopt cloud technology. New technologies such as cloud and AI will have the biggest impacts on the banking industry. For banks and credit unions wanting to achieve greater business agility, cloud technology enables organizations to respond instantly to changing market conditions, leveraging data and applied analytics to achieve customer experience and operational productivity benefits. As a result, cloud computing comes in to provide a solution to such challenges making banking a reliable and trustworthy service. This paper aims at cloud computing strategy, impact in banking and financial institutions and discusses the significant reliance of cloud computing.


Author(s):  
Federico Varese

From the mid-nineteenth century, many Sicilians, including members of the mafia, were on the move. After sketching the contours of the mafia in Sicily in the nineteenth century, this chapter outlines the parallel history of Italian migration and mafia activities in New York City and Rosario, Argentina, and offers an analytic account of the diverging outcomes. Only in the North American city did a mafia that resembled the Sicilian one emerge. The Prohibition provided an enormous boost to both the personnel and power of Italian organized crime. The risk of punishment was low, the gains to be made were enormous, and there was no social stigma attached to this trade.


Author(s):  
GORDON F. McEWAN

Linguistic studies have shown that the traditional idea that the expansion of the Inca Empire was the driving force behind the spread of all Quechua cannot be correct. Across much of its distribution, Quechua has far greater time-depth than can be accounted for by the short-lived Inca Empire. Linguistics likewise suggests that Aymara spread not from the south into Cuzco in the late Pre-Inca period, but also from an origin to the north. Alternative explanations must be sought for the expansion of these language families in the culture history of the Andes. Archaeological studies over the past two decades now provide a broad, generally agreed-upon outline of the cultural history of the Cuzco region. This chapter applies those findings to examine alternative possibilities for the driving forces that spread Quechua and Aymara, offering a clearer cross-disciplinary view of Andean prehistory.


2021 ◽  
pp. 46-92
Author(s):  
James Waller

The past in Northern Ireland is always present and always contested. This chapter is not a rehashing of the complex history of the north of Ireland nor is it an attempt to place blame for the origin or continuation of the sectarian divide that defines it. A legion of scholars have addressed the former, and the latter—“the conflict about the conflict”—is a daily exercise for most everyone in Northern Ireland. Rather, this chapter offers a broad survey of that scarified history in recognition that understanding the origins of those competing social identities and the ways in which they became cemented over generations, is essential context and a necessary reference point for our coming analysis of risk and resilience in contemporary Northern Ireland.


1893 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 396-401
Author(s):  
Henry Hicks

In a recent article on the Pre-Cambrian Rocks of the British Isles in the Journal of Geology, vol. i., No. 1, Sir Archibald Geikie makes the following statement: “There cannot, I think, be now any doubt that small tracts of gneiss, quite comparable in lithological character to portions of the Lewisian rocks of the North-West of Scotland, rise to the surface in a few places in England and Wales. In the heart of Anglesey, for example, a tract of such rocks presents some striking external or scenic resemblance to the characteristic types of ground where the oldest gneiss forms the surface in Scotland and the West of Ireland.” To those who have followed the controversy which has been going on for nearly thirty years between the chiefs of the British Geological Survey and some geologists who have been working amongst the rocks in Wales, the importance of the above admission will be readily apparent; but as it is possible that some may be unable to realize what such an admission means in showing geological progress in unravelling the history of the older rocks in Wales during the past thirty years, a brief summary of the results obtained may possibly be considered useful.


Author(s):  
Richard Campanella

As an urbanized river-dominated delta, New Orleans, Louisiana, ranks among the most experimental of cities, a test of whether the needs of a stable human settlement can coexist with the fluidity of a deltaic environment—and what happens when they do not. That natural environment bestowed upon New Orleans numerous advantages, among them abundant fresh water, fertile soils, productive wetlands and, above all, expedient passage between maritime and continental realms. But with those advantages came exposure to potential hazards—an overflowing Mississippi River, a tempestuous Gulf of Mexico, sinking soils, eroding coasts, rising seas, biotic invasion, pestilence, political and racial discord, conflagration—made all the worse by the high levels of social vulnerability borne by all too many members of New Orleans’ population. More so than any other major metropolis on the North American continent, this history of disaster and response is about the future of New Orleans as much as it is about the past. This article examines two dozen disasters of various types and scales, with origins oftentimes traceable to anthropogenic manipulation of the natural environment, and assesses the nature of New Orleans’ responses. It frames these assessments in the “risk triangle” framework offered by David Crichton and other researchers, which views urban risk as a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. “Hazard” implies the disastrous event or trauma itself; “exposure” means human proximity to the hazard, usually in the form of settlement patterns, and “vulnerability” indicates individuals’ and communities’ ability to respond resiliently and adaptively—which itself is a function of education, income, age, race, language, social capital, and other factors—after having been exposed to a hazard.


Author(s):  
Jaime Schultz ◽  
Shelley Lucas

This chapter focuses on a defunct version of high school girls' basketball known as “six-on-six” and how it expressed community identity in Iowa. Throughout the twentieth century, more than a million Iowa high school girls played the half-court, two-dribble version of basketball known as “six-on-six.” Originally conceived to accommodate girls and women's perceived physical limitations, six-on-six basketball often lent itself to fast-paced, high-scoring, crowd-rallying competitions. This chapter first provides a historical background on six-player basketball in Iowa before discussing how girls' six-on-six basketball has been relegated to the past, yet lives on in many places and memories, thanks in part to new technologies and understandings of community. It argues that the history of Iowa's six-player basketball is alive and thriving in alternative forms, citing the emergence of new, transitory communities to sustain its remembrance. The chapter considers two sites: a 2003 reunion game that gathered former players and supporters, and a Facebook page which fosters a virtual kinship of more than 7,000 members.


Author(s):  
Saliha Ozelmas Kahya

Folktale is the name given to the products of folk literature created on the basis of the deep effect of any event or literal product left a trace in the society in oral culture. It is a long winded type of narration about real or real-like events. They are stories with traditional content which are narrated orally from one generation to the next. They generally deal with love and heroism. Kerem & Aslı is one of the most famous folk tales.Kerem & Aslı tale is one of the folk tales which was revealed by late 16th century, known and liked in other nations than Turkey and Oguz Turkish tribes (Armenian, Georgian, Lezg, etc.) addressing broad masses. Similar tales including Kerem & Aslı tale popular among broad masses are significant sources particularly in terms of revealing cultural values since they represented the past and future of the society.The purpose of this research is to find terms of garment, accessories, fabrics referred in the Kerem & Aslı tale, reveal meanings thereof and provide information about how they were used in the tale. Written sources were reviewed in order to collect research data. The characteristics of clothing of the characters in the Kerem & Aslı tale were revealed and a general assessment was made in the research and what the terms of garment, accessories, fabrics meant was explained. It was determined that the following terms were referred in  the Kerem & Aslı tale; don (underpants), hırka (cardigan), pestamal, libas (clothes), esvap (clothes), saya (clothes), fistan (clothes), kaftan (caftan), gomlek (shirt), arakcın, cevre, serpus, nikab, kalpak, oya (lace), aba, atlas, sal (shawl), yaglık (handkerchief), elvan, kusak (belt), tulbent (gauze).Keywords: folktale, traditional dressing, history of dressing, Kerem & Aslı tale


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