The Roman Retail Revolution

Author(s):  
Steven J. R. Ellis

Tabernae were ubiquitous among all Roman cities, lining the busiest streets and dominating their most crowded intersections, and in numbers not known by any other form of building. That they played a vital role in the operation of the city—indeed in the very definition of urbanization—is a point too often under-appreciated in Roman studies, or at best assumed. The Roman Retail Revolution is a thorough investigation into the social and economic worlds of the Roman shop. With a focus on food and drink outlets, and with a critical analysis of both archaeological material and textual sources, Ellis challenges many of the conventional ideas about the place of retailing in the Roman city. A new framework is forwarded, for example, to understand the motivations behind urban investment in tabernae. Their historical development is also unraveled to identify three major waves—or, revolutions—in the shaping of retail landscapes. Two new bodies of evidence underpin the volume. The first is generated from the University of Cincinnati’s recent archaeological excavations into a Pompeian neighborhood of close to twenty shop-fronts. The second comes from a field survey of the retail landscapes of more than a hundred cities from across the Roman world. The richness of this information, combined with an interdisciplinary approach to the lives of the Roman sub-elite, results in a refreshingly original look at the history of retailing and urbanism in the Roman world.

The article attempts to comprehend the essence and possibility of forming discourse competence among foreign and Russian students with simultaneous immersion in patriotic discourse. It is highlighted that the addition of the humanitarian series of “History of Civilizations” and “Features of Russian Civilization” to the educational process at the university creates the necessary pedagogical conditions for organizing a special linguo-ethno-cultural environment that forms active social interaction of authors within the framework of the medical and patriotic linguistic scenario. The authors of the article conducted a semantic and historical analysis of interpretations of the concept of “patriotism” that were studied from the point of view of traditional and liberal culture. The article presents the results of a socio-pedagogical study of students' perceptions of this concept. The article describes various theoretical and methodological approaches to the definition of the concepts of “discourse” and “discursive picture of the world” as well as psycholinguistic features of the method of semantic differential. Special attention in the article is paid to the typologies of discourse presented in the scientific literature. The authors of the article present the principle of genre and the principle of thematic correlation as the basis for distinguishing between types of discourse and highlight differences in language and discursive pictures of the world. The tasks of educators is to form not only purely medical discursive competence, but also to immerse the listener in “correctly” interpreted picture, saturated with verbal patterns that allow to create statements of patriotic content.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Luyk

Batten, Jack. Oscar Peterson: The Man and His Jazz. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2012. Print. This young adult non-fiction novel explores the life of the legendary Canadian jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson. Beginning with an account of Peterson’s 1949 breakthrough performance at Carnegie Hall as part of the influential Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concert series, Batten traces the seventy year musical career of Oscar Peterson in an engaging and insightful style. This book seamlessly combines a personal and musical biography of Peterson with a history of the development of jazz from the 1920s to the time of Peterson’s death in 2007. True to the title of the book, Batten’s is indeed one about both the man and his music. From Peterson’s humble upbringing as the son of immigrants from the West Indies living in poverty in Montréal, the influence of his family on his personal and musical development is a consistent theme throughout the book. Batten does not hold back when describing the social conditions Peterson was operating under throughout his career. The racism Peterson encountered both at home and abroad, as well as the drug use prominent among jazz musicians is honestly explored, as are the personal tragedies Peterson faced, including his failed marriages and consistently poor health. Peterson’s many longtime musical collaborations are explored in great detail, with Batten highlighting the influential performing and recording achievements of his career. From his longtime relationship with the jazz promoter Norman Granz, through the many iterations of Peterson’s famous trio, Batten doesn’t leave out the details at any point. The addition of multiple photographs, quotes from Peterson’s teachers and collaborators, and a selected bibliography and discography add to the historical richness of this title. This book is recommended to the young adult reader with an interest in jazz history, and the life and accomplishments of one of Canada’s most cherished musicians.Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Sean LuykSean is the Music Librarian for the Rutherford Humanities and Social Sciences Library at the University of Alberta. Sean holds an MA in Music Criticism and B.Mus from McMaster University, as well as an MLIS from the University of Western Ontario.


Author(s):  
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III

This introductory chapter provides a definition of magic. One of the most useful adjustments in the recent scholarship on magic has been the turn to considering magic as a dynamic social construct, instead of some particular reality. Magic is not a thing, but a way of talking. Thus, magic is a discourse pertaining to non-normative ritualized activity, in which the deviation from the norm is most often marked in terms of the perceived efficacy of the act, the familiarity of the performance within the cultural tradition, the ends for which the act is performed, or the social location of the performer. Such a discourse always has a history, since such a way of talking about things shifts over time as different people do the talking. When one speaks of “magic,” therefore, one should always explain: “magic for whom?” Any specific piece of evidence from the ancient Greco-Roman world provides an example of magic for that particular person, from one particular perspective. To speak of “magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world” is thus to refer to the whole range of things that various people in those cultures during those times could label as “magic.” The chapter then considers the act of drawing down the moon.


PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey T. Schnapp

The year 2008 was one of fruitful disjunctions. I spent the fall teaching at Stanford but commuting to the University of California, Los Angeles, to cochair the inaugural Mellon Seminar in Digital Humanities. During the same period, I was curating—at the Canadian Center for Architecture, in Montreal—an exhibition devised to mark the centenary of the publication of “The Founding Manifesto of Futurism,” by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Whereas other centennial shows (at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, and at the Palazzo Reale, in Milan) sought to celebrate the accomplishments and legacies of Marinetti's avant-garde, the Canadian exhibition, Speed Limits, was critical and combative in spirit, more properly futurist (though thematically antifuturist). It probed the frayed edges of futurism's narrative of modernity as the era of speed to reflect on the social, environmental, and cultural costs. An exhibition about limits, it looked backward over the architectural history of the twentieth century to look forward beyond the era of automobility.


1934 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Pringsheim

The reign of Hadrian marks the beginning of a new epoch in Roman administration and in the history of Roman Law. Hadrian's visit to Britain is immortalised by the Wall which he built from Tyne to Solway. Its construction is characteristic of the Emperor's willingness to renounce further conquests and even to abandon land which had been Roman. The Wall marked the limit of the districts which he was prepared to retain and administer. It followed, not the shortest and easiest route, but a line beyond the fortified area whence a look-out could be kept over the barbarians outside, and its object was the completion and definition of the fortified frontier region whereby it became easier to civilise and to pacify the country which lay to the south. Hadrian's aim was to bring order and peace to the land bounded by the new frontiers of the Roman world. Thus Hadrian may be sharply contrasted with his predecessor Trajan, the soldier on the throne, who owed his elevation to his successful wars in the Rhine region, and who as Emperor extended the frontiers of the Empire on the lower Danube and in the East. On Hadrian's accession the Empire was more powerful than ever before or afterwards, but its financial and military resources were strained to the utmost, and indeed frequently had been overstrained. The small peasant owners and small towns, sources of Roman culture and prosperity, had begun to suffer and disappear.


1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-169
Author(s):  
James A. Reilly

The importance of sharī‘a law-court registers as sources for the social and economic history of Syria/Bilād al-Shām in the Ottoman period has been recognized for some time. A number of studies based on them have appeared, but the registers are so vast that scholars have in fact barely begun to investigate them. The Historical Documents Center (Markaz al-Wathā’iq al-Tārīkhīya) in Damascus holds over one thousand volumes. Additional originals exist in Israel/Palestine and a large collection of Syrian and Palestinian registers is available on microfilm at the University of Jordan (Amman). Although it is difficult to use the Lebanese registers nowadays (and those of Sidon may have been destroyed) a volume of the Tripoli registers from the seventeenth century has been published in facsimile by the Lebanese University. Dearth of material, therefore, is not a problem. One obstacle facing researchers, however, is unfamiliarity with the manner in which the registers present information. Persons whose native tongue is not Arabic have the additional problem of language to overcome. Therefore, an orientation to the registers is helpful, and this article is written with that purpose in mind.


Author(s):  
Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer

Although born in the territory of the Counts of Mansfield, Luther’s connection to Saxony began early. He attended school in Eisenach (1498–1501), located in electoral Saxony, and enrolled in university (1501–1505) and later entered the Augustinian monastery (1505–1508) in Erfurt, an independent city with close economic and political ties to Saxony. Luther’s association with Saxony and its electors, however, was sealed with his 1508 arrival at the University of Wittenberg, followed by his return to Wittenberg in 1511, where he was to reside for the most remainder of his adult life. His relationship with the rulers in Ernestine and Albertine Saxony and their reaction to his reform movement proved fundamental to Luther’s life and career, just as Luther has become inextricably linked to the history of Saxony and Wittenberg. Scholars have concentrated on Luther’s interactions with the elector of Saxony Frederick III, “the Wise” (1463–1525, r. 1486–1525), during the early Reformation. Less scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between Luther and the electors of Saxony during the reign of Frederick’s brother John the Steadfast (1468–1532, r. 1525–1532) and nephew John Frederick (1503–1554, r. 1532–1547), despite the vital role that these rulers played during the development of the new confessional identity. Discussions of Luther’s interaction with these Saxon electors were featured in 16th-century publications and art as well as early histories of the Reformation and of Saxony. Over the course of subsequent centuries, the relationship between Luther and the Ernestine electors has become central to the story of the Reformation and to Saxon history.


1977 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. K. McConica

If study of the university can have any place in the general history of society, it must be understood as a part of a much larger historical phenomenon, of whose vastness and complexity the university's records themselves make us aware. In the sixteenth century we are conscious of powerful currents of social change and energy upon which the universities floated with little or no power of control: a rapidly growing population, geographically and economically on the move; a burgeoning school system; urban wealth growing and changing location, but always under the massive dominance of London; an active land-market; rise in prices; and the work of governments, both national and local, concerned with education and its consequences. This is the setting of Tudor society, and only special optical devices will enable us to pick out the university and set it in the foreground. In the process some distortion is inevitable. An indication of the problems that occur in university history may be found in the view of a recent student of Tudor Cambridge who, while acknowledging that one contribution of the universities to the complex change within English society was ‘the creation of a more refined and integrated cultural and intellectual milieu’ centred upon London and the court, finds the truly significant contribution in a more informed, vigorous and tenacious local solidarity in the ‘country’. Another historian of Elizabethan England tells us that in the universities, ‘the interesting thing, as so often in English life, is the extent and intimacy of the social mixture’.


Abgadiyat ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-35
Author(s):  
Hamdi Abbas Ahmed Abd-EI-Moniem

Abstract Some may believe that the history of mankind begins with the appearance of writing only a few several thousands of years ago (cf. 4000-3000 BCE). Our history, however, extends beyond that date millions of years. The history of mankind, indeed, is deeply rooted in the remote past which is called 'prehistory'. With the lacking of any form of writing, this 'prehistoric' period can be examined directly solely by recourse to the study of archaeological remains. The purpose of this account is to introduce rock art to the readers and show the significant role of this sort of archaeological material in studying the history of mankind before the appearance of written records. The current work, therefore, is divided into three main sections: the first deals with definition of rock art and its nature; the second section is devoted to showing the significance of this aspect of material culture in exploring a long and mysterious period of the early history of man characterized by the complete absence of written records or historical documents; the third and last section, which is a vital and integral part of this work, comprises an explanatory pictorial record to promote the understanding of prehistoric rock art as a source of information needed for writing the history of prehistory.


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