History of Hillfort Studies

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Harding
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Basic Site ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Comfort Zone ◽  
Initial Investigation ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Landed Gentry ◽  
Site Identification ◽  
The University

Popular perception polarizes opinions, and archaeology is no exception. Instead of complexities and paradoxes, we instinctively prefer simplification and certainties, even if this distorts the truth, except, of course, where academic compromise affords the comfort zone of indecision. Accordingly, Stukeley and the early antiquarians are regarded as eccentrics, concerned only with druids and ancient Britons painted with woad, whilst General Pitt-Rivers has been portrayed as the pioneer of modern, scientific archaeology in an era of dilettante barrow diggers. In Scotland, Daniel Wilson has been acclaimed for his first use in English of the term ‘prehistoric’, yet as far as hillforts were concerned he was scathingly dismissive of their significance. David Christison is widely cited as the excavator whose work at Dunadd on behalf of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland so appalled Lord Abercromby that he misguidedly transferred his bequest, originally in favour of the Society, to the University of Edinburgh for the foundation of the Abercromby Chair of Prehistoric Archaeology. Yet Christison's Early Fortifications in Scotland of 1898 was an authoritative survey of hillforts that was acknowledged as a model in Hadrian Allcroft's Earthwork of England (1908). Every generation likes to imagine that it has advanced the frontiers of knowledge to a degree that allows it to look upon earlier achievements with the benefit of better informed if slightly self-satisfied hindsight, but progress is seldom without its setbacks and sidetracks. Each generation hopefully builds upon the advances of its predecessors, and the questions posed by pioneers will necessarily appear facile to later researchers. Early antiquarian investigations had to address fundamental issues of basic site identification and dating, and it is salutary to recall that even Pitt-Rivers’ initial investigation of Sussex hillforts (Lane–Fox 1869) was primarily designed to advance the case for their being pre-Roman. We might also note that he was in no doubt that their function was as defensive sites, against one alternative view, current even then, that they were used for ritual purposes. Serious study of hillforts, notwithstanding the dilettantish curiosity evinced by landed gentry or leisured clerics, began effectively with the topographic descriptions and surveys of sixteenth-century antiquaries like William Camden, whose Britannia was published in 1586. This monumental work was revised and re-issued in several editions over a period of two hundred years, and was notably extended in Gough's edition of 1789.

The Catholic Recusancy of the Yorkshire Fairfaxes. Part I.

1956 ◽  
Vol 3 (02) ◽  
pp. 68-114
Author(s):  
Hugh Aveling
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Landed Gentry

In the middle ages the Fairfaxes ranked amongst the minor landed gentry of Yorkshire. They seem to have risen to this status in the thirteenth century, partly by buying land out of the profits of trade in York, partly by successful marriages. But they remained of little importance until the later fifteenth century. They had, by then, produced no more than a series of bailiffs of York, a treasurer of York Minster and one knight of the shire. The head of the family was not normally a knight. The family property consisted of the two manors of Walton and Acaster Malbis and house property in York. But in the later fifteenth century and onwards the fortunes of the family were in the ascendant and they began a process of quite conscious social climbing. At the same time they began to increase considerably in numbers. The three main branches, with al1 their cadet lines, were fixed by the middle of the sixteenth century – the senior branch, Fairfax of Walton and Gilling, the second branch, Fairfax of Denton, Nunappleton, Bilhorough and Newton Kyme, the third branch, Fairfax of Steeton. It is very important for any attempt to assess the strength and nature of Catholicism in Yorkshire to try to understand the strong family – almost clan – unity of these pushing, rising families. While adherence to Catholicism could be primarily a personal choice in the face of family ties and property interests, the history of the Faith in Yorkshire was conditioned greatly at every point by the strength of those ties and interests. The minute genealogy and economic history of the gentry has therefore a very direct bearing on recusant history.

scholarly journals William Hayes, 18 January 1913 - 7 January 1994

1996 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 173-189
Keyword(s):  
Biological Research ◽  
Special Contribution ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Academic Activities ◽  
Hammersmith Hospital ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
The University ◽  
System Operating

William Hayes, physician, microbiologist and geneticist, made his own special contribution to modem genetics and molecular biology in a manner unlike those of any of his contemporaries. Bill, as he was universally known, was an unlikely candidate for such distinction. It is interesting to speculate on the events which transformed someone likely to have had a distinguished but still traditional medical career into a world renowned scientist who influenced a whole generation of microbiologists and geneticists. He did not come from a family with a history of scientific or academic activities. Nor did he study at the centres of biological research. Moreover, at the beginning of his meteoric rise to eminence, he did not have the support of the scientific elite or access to research resources. It is likely that had he been born 20 years later the originality that he brought to microbial genetics would have been lost to us. Perhaps the situation he found in India during the war and the relative freedom of the research system operating in the United Kingdom in the 1950s ideally suited the talents of Bill Hayes. He was a dedicated experimentalist with a talent for improvisation, and his major contributions were experiments that he did himself, rather than through an assistant or graduate student. He would not have described himself as a leader, although his associates willingly gave him their loyalty and support. Nor would he have thought of himself as having charisma; indeed he was unusually self-effacing. When he gave up experimental work to write his outstanding and extraordinarily influential book, The genetics of bacteria and their viruses (13), he typed the first draft himself. Administration and the power it can provoke were anathema to Bill. Nevertheless, he created, first at Hammersmith Hospital in London and then at the University of Edinburgh, research groups that were the envy of his peers in terms of their productivity and innovation.

2. On the Natural History of Lewis

1866 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 615-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duns
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Indigenous Plants ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The People ◽  
Outer Hebrides ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Moral Condition ◽  
The University

Comparatively little attention has been given to the natural history of Lewis. Stray notices of the geology, botany, and zoology of the Outer Hebrides are to be met with, but, with one or two exceptions, these are not of much value. Martin's “Description of the Western Islands (1703),” is chiefly interesting for its full account of the industrial and moral condition of the people. Little, however, can be made of his incidental references to the natural history of the islands. Two volumes on the “Economical History of the Hebrides,” by Rev. Dr Walker, Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, were published in 1808, after Dr Walker's death. This work contains a good deal of information on indigenous plants, but almost none on zoology. Dr Maculloch's “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (3 vols., 1819)” is in every way an abler and better work than either of the two now named. Its notices of the geology and mineralogy of the Outer Hebrides are even still valuable.

The Jurisprudence of Humanism

Traditio ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 493-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myron P. Gilmore
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Major Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

During the last decade the works of Professor Guido Kisch have made an outstanding contribution to our knowledge of the legal thought of the sixteenth century, particularly to the school represented by the University of Basel. His articles and monographs have dealt with the biographical and literary history of significant scholars as well as with the rival schools of interpretation represented by ‘mos italicus' and ‘mos gallicus.' Building on these earlier studies, Professor Kisch has now produced a major work of more comprehensive scope, which goes beyond biographical and methodological questions to the analysis of significant change in substantive legal doctrines. Convinced that the age of humanism and the reception of Roman law saw the formation of some of the most important modern legal concepts, he centers his research on the evolution of the theory of equity with due attention, on the one hand, to the relationship between sixteenth-century innovation and the historic western tradition and, on the other, to the interaction between the academic profession and the practicing lawyers.

The Casket Letters: A Famous Case Reopened

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Villius
Keyword(s):  
Small House ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

The place where the University of Edinburgh now stands was once the site of the church of St Mary in the Fields or, as it is usually called, Kirk o'Field. On a February night in 1567, in the small house close to the church, there occurred what is certainly the most frequently discussed event in the history of Scotland, the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, consort to Mary Queen of Scots. Much discussed it has been, but since it is still not properly resolved it merits another look.

scholarly journals SCOTTISH MEDICAL ETHNOGRAPHY: COLONIAL TRAVEL, STADIAL THEORY AND THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RACE, c.1770–1805

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 919-949
Author(s):  
BRUCE BUCHAN
Keyword(s):  
Human Populations ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
James Cook ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Medical Ethnography ◽  
History Of Race

AbstractThis paper will present a comparative analysis of the ethnographic writings of three colonial travellers trained in medicine at the University of Edinburgh: William Anderson (1750–78), Archibald Menzies (1754–1842) and Robert Brown (1773–1858). Each travelled widely beyond Scotland, enabling them to make a series of observations of non-European peoples in a wide variety of colonial contexts. William Anderson, Archibald Menzies and Robert Brown in particular travelled extensively in the Pacific with (respectively) James Cook on his second and third voyages (1771–8), with George Vancouver (1791–5) and with Matthew Flinders (1801–3). Together, their surviving writings from these momentous expeditions illustrate a growing interest in natural-historical explanations for diversity among human populations. Race emerged as a key concept in this quest, but it remained entangled with assumptions about the stadial historical progress or “civilization” of humanity. A comparative examination of their ethnographic writings thus presents a unique opportunity to study the complex interplay between concepts of race, savagery and civilization in the varied colonial contexts of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Robert Kurelić, Daily Life on the Istrian Frontier: Living on a Borderland in the Sixteenth Century. Studies in the History of Daily Life (800–1600), 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019, 230 p.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 307-310
Author(s):  
Svetlana Luchitskaya
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
European Regions ◽  
Cultural And Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Ideological Influence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

It is ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity that lends originality to the Istrian peninsula. Istria is known to be one of the most interesting multicultural European regions where states, languages, and religions <?page nr="308"?>meet. Here is another contribution to the study of this fascinating part of Europe. Though the history of Istria has been researched in detail beginning with the works of the eminent Istrian historian Camillo de Franceschi, who emphasized the Italian nature of the Istrian Peninsula, there are still a few works of Croatian or Slovenian historians written in “understandable” languages. One of them is precisely the book ‘Daily Life on the Istrian Frontier written in English by the Croatian historian Robert Kurelič who teaches at the University of Pula. The author’s merit consists in making the medieval history of Istria as well as its rich multi-language historiography accessible to the widest range of researchers. What is equally important is that the work of Kurelić is surely a thorough academic investigation free of any political and ideological influence meaning?.

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