Early Modern Tragedy and the Mystery Plays: New Material Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-43
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Mystery Plays ◽  
New Material ◽  
Material Evidence

Coins and amphoras—Chios, Samos and Thasos in the fifth century B.C.

1981 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 78-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold B. Mattingly
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Peloponnesian War ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
The South ◽  
Floor Level ◽  
South West ◽  
New Material ◽  
Material Evidence

The American excavators in the south-west area of the Forum at Corinth have revealed an intriguing architectural complex, which they have called the ‘Punic Amphora Building’. Evidently it housed a thriving import business with a speciality in fish and wine, whose trade extended in one direction to Sicily and perhaps Spain and in the other to Chalkidike and Chios. Masses of fragments of Punic and Chian amphoras were found crushed and pounded in the make-up of successive floor-levels in the courtyard, together with numerous pieces from Mende and elsewhere. Many others emerged from the single floors of most of the rooms or were discovered in the littered debris from the final phase of occupation. The life of this business house was somewhat short, but a domestic building on the same site had earlier been partly devoted to the same trade. All this activity ceased with dramatic suddenness; the emporium went out of use and in the late fifth century it was overlaid in one area by a new road. The end seems to be securely dated c. 430 B.C. by Attic black-glaze pottery in the final floor-level or in the debris covering the last floor. Professor Williams plausibly links the collapse of business with the interruption of Corinth's trade caused by the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War: one of Athens' first war measures was to blockade both the Saronic and the Corinthian Gulfs. This new material evidence for Corinthian commerce is most welcome in itself and, as I hope to show in this paper, it may help clarify other problems.

The role of ancient remains in the Sarmatian culture of early modern Poland

2018 ◽  
pp. 286-304
Author(s):  
Barbara Arciszewska
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Ancient Remains ◽  
Class Discourse

Visible material remnants of ancient cultures were, for a variety of historical reasons, not particularly abundant in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795). The past monuments of these lands were not hewn in stone and marble but in timber, leaving behind no impressive structures to provoke the interest of subsequent generations. The dearth of material evidence did not, however, prevent generations of Polish historians and antiquarians from assigning Greco-Roman identities to local monuments. They were keen to offer tangible proof of the past glory of the land inhabited by the alleged descendants of the Sarmatians. In this paper, some of these monuments are explored, especially the Mounds of Krakus and Wanda near Cracow as well as an alleged tomb of Ovid in Vohlyna. The narratives fabricated around them as a part of the ideology of Sarmatism, a class discourse, which constructed an identity for the Polish nobility as the descendants of the ancient tribe of Sarmatians, are also examined.

Cultures of collecting

2021 ◽  
pp. 138-164
Author(s):  
David Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Book Collecting ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Material Evidence

Studies of private libraries and their owners invariably talk about ‘book collecting’—is this the right terminology? After summarizing our broadly held understanding of the evolution of bibliophile collecting from the eighteenth century onwards, this chapter considers the extent to which similar behaviours can be detected (or not) in the seventeenth, drawing on the material evidence of bookbindings, wording in wills, and other sources. Do we find subject-based collecting, of the kind we are familiar with today, as a characteristic of early modern book owners? Some distinctions are recognized in ways in which medieval manuscripts (as opposed to printed books) were brought together at this time. The relationship between libraries and museums, and contemporary attitudes to them, is explored. The concluding argument is that ‘collecting’ is a careless word to use in the seventeenth-century context; just as we should talk about users rather than readers, we should use ‘owners’ rather than ‘collectors’ as the default term, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

The Book I

2018 ◽  
pp. 335-348
Author(s):  
Thomas Nail
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Material Technology ◽  
The West ◽  
New Material ◽  
Direct Causation

This chapter argues that medieval and early modern ontological descriptions made use of a new material technology of inscription with the same tensional regime: the book. Without assuming any direct causation, the following two chapters show a clear similarity of kinetic structure in both theological description and its technology of inscription during this time. The new kind of kinography that rose to dominance in the West around the fourth and fifth centuries was called “bibliography”. The rise of bibliography, or book writing, functioned according to two major kinographic operations: the binding of the book, and the comprehension (or kinetic tension between author and the reader) of the book. Between the fifth and eighteenth centuries, two major book technologies were used in theological descriptions: the manuscript codex, from the fifth to fifteenth centuries, and the printed codex, from the fifteenth up to the eighteenth century.

From Menasseh ben Israel to Solomon Proops : Amsterdam Jewish Druckwesen in the Library of Isaiah Sonne*

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Martina Mampieri
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Modern Era

Abstract The Isaiah Sonne collection, today preserved in library of the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, contains some seventy copies of Jewish books in several languages (Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, and Dutch) printed in Amsterdam during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This sub-collection within Sonne’s wider library, second in number only his copies of Venetian editions, confirms Sonne’s particular interest in Jewish printing in Amsterdam ‐ an interest that runs through his published scholarship and through these books, in the form of Sonne’s marginalia. By connecting his interest as a book collector to his scholarship on Amsterdam Jewry in the early modern era, this article intends to give a first presentation of the Amsterdam editions from the Sonne collection and reflect on the circulation of his particular copies throughout time and space on the basis of material evidence.

Unpublished material from the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut and the British School at Athens and its Contribution to a Better Understanding of the Early Bronze Age settlement pattern on Lesbos

1997 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 73-107
Author(s):  
Kyriacos Lambrianides ◽  
Nigel Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
First Generation ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Settlement Pattern ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
British School ◽  
New Material ◽  
Material Evidence

This paper presents previously unpublished material from the archives of the DAI and BSA, assessing its contribution to a better understanding of the settlement pattern on the north-east Aegean island of Lesbos in the Early Bronze Age, a period known only in terms of the single excavated sites of Thermi on its east coast. Using this new material evidence, the study places Thermi in its wider context within EBA Lesbos, demonstrating that several other EBA sites co-existed with Thermi, not only on the coast but also inland. It then places EBA settlements on the island in their west Anatolian context through an examination of ceramic parallels and affinities with mainland sites. It is argued: (1) that in view of the extensive distribution of EBA sites on Lesbos, colonization of the island must have begun long before the emergence of Thermi; (2) that several sources and mechanisms of colonization were involved in the process of settlement, which may be reflected in the fact that at least two distinct groups of sites can be identified on the island; and (3) that some of these sites appear to have relied upon agriculture rather than marine resources. Such inland agricultural sites may represent the first generation of purely endogenous communities which emerged on the island after its colonization.

Tracing 2000 Years at the Source of the Douix, Côte-d’Or, France: Water, Offerings, and Recurrence

2019 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 307-330
Author(s):  
Katherine M. Erdman ◽  
Bruno Chaume
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
La Tène ◽  
Ritual Activity ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
La Tene ◽  
Material Evidence

The Source of the Douix in Châtillon-sur-Seine, France, has been visited by local inhabitants for over 2000 years and served as a watery focal point for the ritual deposition of various types of offerings. While water deposits are by no means uncommon across Europe, the continued use of a single space over multiple millennia is. An examination of the preserved offerings at the Douix indicate there are three phases of depositional activity: late Hallstatt to early La Tène periods, late La Tène to Gallo-Roman periods, and the early modern period. Despite being separated by hundreds of years there are similarities across depositional phases including the importance of modified metallic objects, personal ornamentation, and possible connections to women. Could the persistence of these ritual practices be the result of behavioural and ideological continuities? If not, how can we interpret this complex record of intermittent deposition? We examine the deposits from each phase in their wider social and ritual contexts, including the Douix’s connection to the Hallstatt princely centre of Mont Lassois, Gallo-Roman ritual traditions, and the historic folklore surrounding springs. We then explore the inter-depositional phases and discuss the conditions that could lead to the persistence of ideas despite the dearth of material evidence and summarise what these patterns mean for the history of ritual activity at the Source of the Douix.

When is a Room a Music Room? Sounds, Spaces, and Objects in Non-courtly Italian Interiors

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
FLORA DENNIS
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Social Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Evidence

Although never an easy feat, tracing the connections between sounds, spaces and objects becomes easier the higher up the social scale one goes in the Early Modern period. The survival of documentary and material evidence helps to identify musical repertories that were known to have been performed in specific spaces on particular instruments. Given the lack of comparative sources at lower social levels, is it possible to establish relationships between these three elements in non-courtly contexts? This chapter considers non-courtly ‘music-rooms’, addressing how practical material and conceptual motivations forged links between music and domestic space in this period. It goes on to examine broader, perhaps unexpected, connections between musical sound and the material culture of the Early Modern domestic interior.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 233-238
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Lecky
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Critical Time ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Everyday Practice ◽  
Physical Scale ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Early Modern Britain ◽  
Material Evidence

The epilogue to this book reinforces the assertion that the physical scale of little maps, atlases, playing cards, and distance tables altered the very essence of what they represented. It synopsizes how pocket cartography and nation-building poetry together recalibrated the British topography to accommodate an expansive public, at a critical time when the nation was shifting from a realm to a commonwealth. It also explores the ramifications of current archiving systems and the scholarly practices associated with them, both of which tend to dismiss or conceal the material evidence of ordinary practitioners and their everyday practice in early modern Britain.

scholarly journals The Pageant of History: Nostalgia, the Tudors, and the Community Play

Sederi ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 5-25
Author(s):  
Michael Dobson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Mystery Plays ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Status ◽  
Post War ◽  
History Play ◽  
Ethnic Origins

This paper considers the persistence of the Renaissance pageant in modern and post-modern culture, both as a recurrent metaphor for history in general and as a feature of stage, cinematic and communal representations of early modern history in particular. After examining the status of public processions in Renaissance London as conscious revivals of the Roman triumph, indebted at the same time to aspects of the medieval mystery plays, the essay examines the English historical pageants of the Edwardian and inter-war years as themselves revivals of both Renaissance pageantry and aspects of the Shakespearean history play. It looks in particular at their emphasis on the Tudor monarchs and on the ethnic origins of Englishness, identifying the fading of the pageant as a genre in the post-war years with the collapse of certain ideas about English exceptionalism and historical continuity.

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