scholarly journals ‘And Raise Me Up a Golden Barrow’

Author(s):  
Jennifer Uzzell

The stories we tell ourselves about our beginnings are a vital part of our sense of identity and belonging. For Druids living in the UK those stories tend to be deeply rooted in a sense of connectedness with the landscape and with the ‘Ancestors’, usually situated in an imagined and often idealized pre-Christian past. Since the time of William Stukeley, himself associated with the Druid Revival of the Eighteenth Century; the Druids have been associated in the popular romantic imagination with the ancient burial mounds that proliferate in the landscape. The fact that this association is not historically correct has done little to weaken its power. This paper will focus on the construction, in recent years, of a number of barrows, mimicking the Neolithic monuments, and designed to take human cremated remains in niches built into the construction. The fact that this initiative has proved hugely popular with Druids, but also with many others testifies to the power that the barrows hold over the imagination. Why is this? What stories are being told about the barrows, and do those stories have to say about connections to ‘deep time’, to the land, to each other, to community and to the future.

Eye ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sana Hamid ◽  
Parul Desai ◽  
Pirro Hysi ◽  
Jennifer M. Burr ◽  
Anthony P. Khawaja

AbstractEffective population screening for glaucoma would enable earlier diagnosis and prevention of irreversible vision loss. The UK National Screening Committee (NSC) recently published a review that examined the viability, effectiveness and appropriateness of a population-based screening programme for primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). In our article, we summarise the results of the review and discuss some future directions that may enable effective population screening for glaucoma in the future. Two key questions were addressed by the UK NSC review; is there a valid, accurate screening test for POAG, and does evidence exist that screening reduces morbidity from POAG compared with standard care. Six new studies were identified since the previous 2015 review. The review concluded that screening for glaucoma in adults is not recommended because there is no clear evidence for a sufficiently accurate screening test or for better outcomes with screening compared to current care. The next UK NSC review is due to be conducted in 2023. One challenge for POAG screening is that the relatively low disease prevalence results in too many false-positive referrals, even with an accurate test. In the future, targeted screening of a population subset with a higher prevalence of glaucoma may be effective. Recent developments in POAG polygenic risk prediction and deep learning image analysis offer potential avenues to identifying glaucoma-enriched sub-populations. Until such time, opportunistic case finding through General Ophthalmic Services remains the primary route for identification of glaucoma in the UK and greater public awareness of the service would be of benefit.


2020 ◽  
pp. bmjmilitary-2020-001455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Blair Thomas Herron ◽  
K M Heil ◽  
D Reid

In 2015, the UK government published the National Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) 2015, which laid out their vision for the future roles and structure of the UK Armed Forces. SDSR 2015 envisaged making broader use of the Armed Forces to support missions other than warfighting. One element of this would be to increase the scale and scope of defence engagement (DE) activities that the UK conducts overseas. DE activities traditionally involve the use of personnel and assets to help prevent conflict, build stability and gain influence with partner nations as part of a short-term training teams. This paper aimed to give an overview of the Specialist Infantry Group and its role in UK DE. It will explore the reasons why the SDSR 2015 recommended their formation as well as an insight into future tasks.


2003 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary H. Dunham ◽  
Debra L. Gold ◽  
Jeffrey L. Hantman

Recent excavation and analysis of the remaining section of the endangered Rapidan Mound site (44OR1) in the central Virginia Piedmont provide new insights into a unique complex of burial mounds in the Virginia interior. Known since Thomas Jefferson's eighteenth-century description, the mounds are both earth and stone and accretional earthen mounds. Thirteen are recorded, all dating to the late prehistoric and early contact era (ca. A.D. 900-1700). Typically containing few artifacts, the accretional mounds are unusual in North America in the numbers of individuals interred, more than one thousand in at least two cases, and in the nature of the secondary, collective burial ritual that built up the mounds over centuries. Following a review of the characteristics of the mound complex, we focus on the Rapidan Mound and the analysis of the collective, secondary burial features in the mound. Precise provenience information and bioarchaeological analyses of two large and intact collective burial features provide new information on health and diet, and several lines of evidence for demographic reconstruction. Finally, we discuss the mortuary ritual conducted at the mounds within the cultural and historical context of the region.


1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Frank O'Malley

The question is: how can you put a prophet in his place when, by the very character of prophecy, he is eternally slipping out of place? William Blake was not an eighteenth century or nineteenth century mind or a typically modern mind at all. What I mean to say, right at the start, is that, although well aware of his time and of time altogether, he was not in tune with the main tendencies of his or our own time. Indeed time was a barrier he was forever crashing against. Blake's talent raved through the world into the fastnesses of die past and dramatically confronted the abysses of the future. His age did not confine him. As a poet he does not seem finally to have had real spiritual or artistic rinship with any of the rationalist or romantic writers of England. As a thinker he came to despise the inadequacy of the limited revolutionary effort of the political rebels of the Romantic Revolution. Blake's name is not to be seen mounted first with that of Paine or Godwin, of Rousseau or Voltaire, of Wordsworth or Shelley or Byron or Keats. With these he has, ultimately, little or nothing in common. At any rate, his voice and mood and impact are thoroughly different from the more publicly successful voices of the period of his life, older and younger generations alike.


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