Between Antiquarians and Archaeologists—Continuities and Ruptures (2002)

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Schnapp
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Radiometric Dating ◽  
Biological Anthropology ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Systematic Exploration ◽  
Semiotic Systems ◽  
History Of

The current renewal of interest in the history of archaeology has several causes, but it is primarily the result of the extraordinary extension of the discipline’s objectives and methods. During the last decades, the most far-flung regions of the earth have been subjected to systematic exploration, radiometric dating techniques have continually improved, DNA studies have contributed to the transformations of biological anthropology, and indeed the very process of human evolution has been cast in new light by the changing boundaries between human and animal behaviour. A natural science for many founding fathers of prehistory, a social science for those who emphasize its anthropological dimensions, archaeology has remained for others a historical discipline by virtue of its proximity to ancient languages and inscriptions. At one end of the spectrum, some archaeologists see themselves as specialists in material culture, able to deal with objects, both ancient and modern, as simultaneously technical and semiotic systems. At the other end, there are those who will put their faith only in the detailed approach of singular, particular cultures. To put the matter in extreme terms: it seems as if there is a universalist archaeology standing in opposition to a plethora of incompatible and irreducible vernacular archaeologies. In this context, appeals to the history of archaeology can be understood as recourse to the multiplicity of approaches and traditions characteristic of the discipline. The pioneering work of B. Trigger (1989) and L. Klejn (1973, 1977) has contributed much in this respect to our understanding of the development of archaeological thought. Until then, in effect, the history of archaeology was mainly conceived of as a history of discoveries, without taking much account of the ideas and institutions surrounding them. It is ironic to recall that the first syntheses of archaeology in the nineteenth century were rather conceived as phenomenologies of art (Müller 1830), or as histories of oeuvres and their interpretation (Starck 1880). It appears that the critique of the archaeology of art, during the second half of the nineteenth century, had as one of its side effects the rejection of a history of ideas in favour of one centred on discoveries.

Between antiquarians and archaeologists — continuities and ruptures

Antiquity ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 76 (291) ◽  
pp. 134-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Schnapp
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Radiometric Dating ◽  
Biological Anthropology ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Systematic Exploration ◽  
Semiotic Systems ◽  
History Of

The current renewal of interest in the history of archaeology can be explained in several ways, and notably in view of the extraordinary extension of the discipline's objects and methods. In the last decades, the most far-flung regions of the earth have been subjected to systematic exploration, radiometric dating techniques have continually improved, DNA studies have contributed to the transformations of biological anthropology, and indeed the very process of human evolution has heen cast in new light by the changing boundaries between humanity and animality. A natural science for many founding fathers of prehistory, a social science for those who emphasize its anthropological dimensions, archaeology has remained for others a historical discipline by virtue of its proximity to ancient languages and inscriptions. At one end of the spectrum, some archaeologists see themselves as specialists in material culture, able to deal with ohjects, both ancient and modern, as simultaneously technical and semiotic systems. At the other end, there are those who will only put their faith in the detailed approach of singular, particular cultures. To put the matter in extreme terms; it seems as if there existed a universalist archaeology standing in opposition to a plethora of incompatible and irreducible vernacular archaeologies.

Stone Tools

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Old World ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of

The focus of this article is stone tools. The history of stone tool research is linked integrally to the history of archaeology and the study of the human past, and many of the early developments in archaeology were connected with the study of stone artefacts. The identification of stone tools as objects of prehistoric human manufacture was central to the development of nineteenth-century models of prehistoric change, and especially the Three Age system for Old World prehistory. This article draws on concepts derived from interdisciplinary material culture studies to consider the role of the artefact after being discarded. It suggests that it is impossible to understand the meaning or efficacy of stone tools without understanding their ‘afterlives’ following abandonment. This article aims to complement contemporary metrical studies of the identification of stone tools and the description of their production. A brief history of the stone tools is explained and this concludes the article.

Imagining the Woman Reader in the Age of Dante

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
Woman Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Literacy ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
Shed Light

The literature of the Italian Due- and Trecento frequently calls into play the figure of a woman reader. From Guittone d’Arezzo’s piercing critic, the ‘villainous woman’, to the mysterious Lady who bids Guido Cavalcanti to write his grand philosophical song, to Dante’s female co-editors in the Vita Nova and his great characters of female readers, such as Francesca and Beatrice in the Comedy, all the way to Boccaccio’s overtly female audience, this particular sort of interlocutor appears to be central to the construct of textuality and the construction of literary authority in these times. The aim of this book is to shed light on this figure by contextualizing her within the history of female literacy, the material culture of the book, and the ways in which writers and poets of earlier traditions (in particular Occitan and French) imagined her. Its argument is that these figures of women readers are not mere veneers between a male author and a ‘real’ male readership, but that, although fictional, they bring several advantages to their vernacular authors, such as orality, the mother tongue, the recollection of the delights of early education, literality, freedom in interpretation, absence of teleology, the beauties of ornamentation and amplification, a reduced preoccupation with the fixity of the text, the pleasure of making mistakes, dialogue with the other, the extension of desire, original simplicity, and new and more flexible forms of authority.

THE NEW OTHER VICTORIANS: THE SUCCESS (AND FAILURE) OF QUEER THEORY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH STUDIES

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-771 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Kaye
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Sexuality Studies ◽  
Victorian Studies ◽  
Critical Writing ◽  
History Of

Much of the critical writingon Queer Theory and Sexuality Studies in a Victorian context over the last decade or so has been absorbing, exploring, complicating, and working under the burden of the influence of Michel Foucault's theoretical writings on erotic relations and identity. The first volume of Foucault'sThe History of Sexuality(1978), in fact, had begun with a gauntlet thrown down before Victorian Studies, a chapter-long critique of Steven Marcus'sThe Other Victorians(1966), a work that had offered an entirely new and at the time, quite bold avenue of exploring nineteenth-century culture – namely, through the pornographic imagination that Marcus taxonomized with precise, clinical flair as a “pornotopia” in which “all men . . . are always infinitely potent; all women fecundate with lust and flow inexhaustibly with sap or both. Everyone is always ready for everything” (276). In Foucault's telling, however, Marcus demonstrated a theoretically impoverished faith in Freudian models of “repression” in Marcus's examination of “underground” Victorian sexualities. It was Marcus's reliance on the “repressive fallacy,” his conviction that there existed a demarcated spatial and psychic Victorian counter-world thatThe History of Sexualityhad so forcefully undermined.

scholarly journals On the possible ellipticity of Saturn's ring

1924 ◽  
Vol 106 (739) ◽  
pp. 526-552 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gravitational Attraction ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Small Oscillations ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Elliptical Ring ◽  
Single Ring ◽  
History Of ◽  
Concentric Circles

Clerk Maxwell’s investigation into the constitution and stability of Saturn’s Ring was based upon the fundamental supposition that the rings were composed of particles arranged in concentric circles. Although the particles could perform small oscillations about their mean positions, it is evident that the outline of the ring would be to all appearances circular. A line in Clerke’s ‘Popular History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century’ (page 299) suggests that some observers have regarded the outline of the ring as elliptical. It is therefore of interest to enquire under what conditions an elliptical ring could exist. The ellipse is a more general form than a circle. If, therefore, it can be shown that an elliptic ring is possible, any explanation of the origin of the rings must take account of this fact. In this paper a single ring of particles is examined. The actual Ring of Saturn probably consists of numerous rings, one within the other. By their gravitational attraction, each will affect the motions of the others. As a first approximation, however, it is sufficient to consider the case of a single ring.

Gustav Klemm, Cultural History, and Kulturwissenschaft

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter N. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
German Culture ◽  
High Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
Cultural Science ◽  
History Of Culture

This chapter examines a new material-based history of German culture and looks at how a study of material culture had since evolved into “cultural history.” It traces the history of culture in nineteenth-century Germany, at the same time puzzling out the ambiguity of such a category as it was applied during the period. Encompassing both high culture and low, the popular and the elite, cultural history has often seemed borderless and indefinite—leading even its admirers to “search” for it or to see it as a “problem.” The chapter then turns to a study of Gustav Friedrich Klemm (1802–1867), the most important of the cultural historians of the 1840s and 1850s. His General Cultural History (1843–1852) and General Cultural-Science (1855) are both significant works in the field.

When a Daring Chemistry Meets a Boring Chemistry: The Reception of Mendeleev’s Periodic System in Sweden

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Lundgren
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Periodic System ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
The Other ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
History Of Chemistry ◽  
System P ◽  
History Of ◽  
Per Se

The reception of Mendeleev’s periodic system in Sweden was not a dramatic episode. The system was accepted almost without discussion, but at the same time with no exclamation marks or any other outbursts of enthusiasm. There are but a few weak short-lived critical remarks. That was all. I will argue that the acceptance of the system had no overwhelming effect on chemical practice in Sweden. At most, it strengthened its characteristics. It is actually possible to argue that chemistry in Sweden was more essential for the periodic system than the other way around. My results might therefore suggest that we perhaps have to reevaluate the role of Mendeleev’s system in the history of chemistry. Chemistry in Sweden at the end of the nineteenth century can be characterized as a classifying science, with chemists very skilled in analysis, and as mainly an atheoretical science, which treated theories at most only as hypothesis—the slogan of many chemists being “facts persist, theories vanish.” Thanks to these characteristics, by the end of the nineteenth century, chemistry in Sweden had developed into, it must be said, a rather boring chemistry. This is obviously not to say that it is boring to study such a chemistry. Rather, it gives us an example of how everyday science, a part of science too often neglected but a part that constitutes the bulk of all science done, is carried out. One purpose of this study is to see how a theory, considered to be important in the history of chemistry, influenced everyday science. One might ask what happened when a daring chemistry met a boring chemistry. What happened when a theory, which had been created by a chemist who has been described as “not a laboratory chemist,” met an atheoretical experimental science of hard laboratory work and, as was said, the establishment of facts? Furthermore, could we learn something about the role of the periodic system per se from the study of such a meeting? Mendeleev’s system has often been considered important for teaching, and his attempts to write a textbook are often taken as the initial step in the chain of thoughts that led to the periodic system.

Review of Hill (2019): The Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-311
Author(s):  
Giorgio (Georg) Orlandi
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Historical Phonology ◽  
Shared History ◽  
Systematic Exploration ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Abstract The book under review serves as a significant contribution to the field of Trans-Himalayan linguistics. Designed as a vade mecum for readers with little linguistic background in these three languages, Nathan W. Hill’s work attempts, on the one hand, a systematic exploration of the shared history of Burmese, Tibetan and Chinese, and, on the other, a general introduction to the reader interested in obtaining an overall understanding of the state of the art of the historical phonology of these three languages. Whilst it is acknowledged that the book in question has the potential to be a solid contribution to the field, it is also felt that few minor issues can be also addressed.

scholarly journals COLLABORATORS, COLLABORATION, AND THE PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE IN NAPOLEONIC ITALY, THE OPPIZZONI AFFAIR, 1805–1807

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMBROGIO A. CAIANI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Active Agent ◽  
Local History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fine Line ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In ◽  
Going Native

ABSTRACTThe recent bicentennial commemorations of the Napoleonic empire have witnessed a proliferation of new studies. Scholars now possess much more sophisticated conceptual tools than in past decades with which to gauge the problems faced by French imperial administrators throughout Europe. Well-trodden concepts, like centre/periphery or collaboration/resistance, have been reinvigorated by more sophisticated understandings of how rulers and ruled interacted in the early nineteenth century. This article argues that, while much progress has been made in understanding problems of ‘resistance’, there is more to be said about the other side of the same coin, namely: ‘collaboration’. Using the micro/local history of a scandal in Napoleonic Bologna, this article wishes to reaffirm that collaboration was an active agent that shaped, and often shook, the French imperial project. The biggest problem remained that, despite ‘good intentions’, collaborators sometimes simply did not collaborate with each other. After all, imperial clients were determined to benefit from the experience of empire. The centre was often submerged by local petty squabbles. This article will use a specific micro-history in Bologna to highlight the extent to which Napoleonic empire builders had to thread a fine line between the impracticalities of direct control and the dangers of ‘going native’.

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