scholarly journals The Romanesque sculpture from Nowy Targ Square in Wrocław (Lower Silesia, Poland) in the light of interdisciplinary studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 221-241
Author(s):  
Paweł Duma ◽  
Piotr Gunia ◽  
Beata Miazga ◽  
Jerzy Piekalski ◽  
Jerzy Serafin

The article discusses the results of interdisciplinary studies of a Romanesque stone head of high-quality artistry. It was discovered in 2017 during excavations at Nowy Targ (New Market) Square in the city of Wrocław (Lower Silesia, Poland). The sculpture originally came from one of the Romanesque sacred buildings of Wrocław, none of which have survived to this day. Although it had been made in the mid-12th century, it was found in the remains of a wooden residential building burnt down in the 14th century. The results of petrographic analyses indicate that the stone head was made of fine-grained sandstone classified as lithic wacke. The raw material was most likely a Devonian-Carboniferous sandstone from the Opava Mountains. However, similar sandstones also occurred in several medieval mines located in Upper Silesia. According to a popular belief, medieval aesthetics required such sculptures to be polychromed. The non-destructive analyses conducted with the microscopic XRF , XRD , and FTIR methods demonstrated that a clean stone surface was also acceptable.

Author(s):  
Stanisław Rosik

The cult of Triglav in the Polabian-Pomeranian territory in the 12th century confirms an evolution of the religious system of the local Slavic communities towards monolatry, largely affected by confrontation as well as a cultural dialogue with the Christian culture. At first, at the time of the Pomeranian missions of Saint Otto of Bamberg in the 1120s, attempts at suppressing the cult did not bring about long-term effects. However, a wave of the so-called pagan reaction led to some sort of a compromise made in Szczecin, leading to official coexistence of the cult of Triglav and the newly introduced cult of Jesus Christ. From the point of view of mythology, the competences of the two divine figures turn out to be convergent and universal, yet still, as part of the Szczecin “religious dualism”, no attempt was made to identify them (following the rule of interpretatio Slavica of the elements of Christianity). The belief in the autonomy of Triglav and Christ (“A German God”) was confirmed in Szczecin in the course of Otto’s evangelization which resulted in a Christian community in the city. The phenomenon of syncretism, present there until Otto’s second mission (1128), was therefore an attempt at maintaining unity in a religiously divided society following the first mission of the Apostle of Pomeranians (1124-1125).


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 823 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Piderit ◽  
Susan Agurto ◽  
Laura Marín-Restrepo

Chile is a resilient country which has been struck by a series of natural disasters, affecting heritage areas whose inhabitants live under a great economic and energy vulnerability. Although there are some advances that have been made in the country to recover its heritage, these do not include energy efficiency parameters. In this context, intervention in heritage properties requires a specific, complementary treatment above and beyond what is currently applied. Consequently, this research aims to develop a methodology that balances heritage and energy in energy vulnerability contexts. The proposed methodology analyzes heritage and energy aspects separately through attribute matrices, as well as the building pathologies, to later integrate the results in a final matrix which allows defining an energy-heritage intervention plan. In this way, it includes the systematic identification of elements that require intervention because of pathological issues, as well as the type of intervention that would be acceptable given its heritage significance and whether they mean a possibility to optimize the energy performance. The methodology, for its validation, was applied in a heritage residential building inhabited by low-income occupants. The case study presents physical damages and is located in the city of Lota, an area with an outstanding cultural heritage from the mining era.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2662 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Seth Wexler ◽  
Ahmed El-Geneidy

As cities worldwide try to increase the adoption of the bicycle as a legitimate mode of urban transportation, the perception of danger plays a significant role in deterring potential new users. In a study conducted in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, bicycle users claimed to perceive intersections with bidirectional cycle tracks twice as negatively as they perceived either similar protected facilities midblock or intersections with painted bicycle lanes. This study aimed to understand this negative perception through a fine-grained analysis and observation of the interplay between infrastructure design and bicycle users’ behavior at these intersections. Researchers used the Desire Lines Analysis tool pioneered by Copenhagenize Design Company and developed recommendations and design interventions for two intersections with bidirectional facilities in the city of Montreal. Study results demonstrated that most users followed the prescribed routes of the street design through each intersection and shone light on users who did not—more than a quarter of users. The trajectories of bicycle users that were questionably legal resulted in observed conflicts at both bidirectional intersections. Conflicts were grouped into three major observed themes: counterflow interactions, priority confusion, and directional awareness. Recommendations made in this paper aim to address each one of these observed themes with appropriate designs that are choreographic, prioritized, and predictable for all road users. Planners, engineers, and urban designers can gain significant insight into best-practice bicycle infrastructure through techniques, such as desire lines analysis, that observe behavior and design accordingly.


1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-84
Author(s):  
J. G. Scott
Keyword(s):  

Summary This copper alloy crucifix was found during excavation at Macewen's Castle in Argyll in 1968 and closely resembles others known to date from the 12th century; it may have been made in Belgium. The arms could have been bent back to aid concealment in the 17th or 18th centuries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-73
Author(s):  
Zaitun Zaitun

This research was conducted to find out how big the interest of tourists who come to visit wajik stalls and sugar cane juice sweet so that in know whether the two places are worthy made in culinary branding in the city of Berastagi tourism. The method used in this research is qualitative method with descriptive research type which explain the actual condition that happened in the field with data collection technique through observation, interview and documentation. Based on the results of the research can be in the know that in general the interest of visitors to enjoy the menu at the stall wajik peceren better in comparison the interest of visitors in sweet sugar cane stalls. The price offered in these two stalls is very relative and classified as not so expensive and visitors who come to stalls wajik peceren usually buy diamonds that are characteristic of the shop to be brought as by the family at home while the visitors who enjoy the menu at the sweet sugar cane where in general, visitors who come only enjoy the menu on offer, especially Berastagi sugar cane and not brought home as souvenir for the family.


2001 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross W. Jamieson

As one of the most common artifact categories found on Spanish colonial sites, the wheel-made, tin-glazed pottery known as majolica is an important chronological and social indicator for archaeologists. Initially imported from Europe, several manufacturing centers for majolica were set up in the New World by the late sixteenth century. The study of colonial majolica in the Viceroyalty of Peru, which encompassed much of South America, has received less attention than ceramic production and trade in the colonial Caribbean and Mesoamerica. Prior to 1650 the Viceroyalty of Peru was supplied with majolica largely produced in the city of Panama Vieja, on the Pacific. Panama Vieja majolica has been recovered from throughout the Andes, as far south as Argentina. Majolica made in Panama Vieja provides an important chronological indicator of early colonial archaeological contexts in the region. The reproduction of Iberian-style majolica for use on elite tables was symbolically important to the imposition of Spanish rule, and thus Panamanian majolicas also provide an important indicator of elite status on Andean colonial sites.


1955 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 106-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Caputo ◽  
Richard Goodchild

Introduction.—The systematic exploration of Ptolemais (modern Tolmeita), in Cyrenaica, began in 1935 under the auspices of the Italian Government, and under the direction of the first-named writer. The general programme of excavation took into consideration not only the important Hellenistic period, which gave the city its name and saw its first development as an autonomous trading-centre, but also the late-Roman age when, upon Diocletian's reforms, Ptolemais became capital of the new province of Libya Pentapolis and a Metropolitan See, later occupied by Bishop Synesius.As one of several starting-points for the study of this later period, there was selected the area first noted by the Beecheys as containing ‘heaps of columns’, which later yielded the monumental inscriptions of Valentinian, Arcadius, and Honorius, published by Oliverio. Here excavation soon brought to light a decumanus, running from the major cardo on the west towards the great Byzantine fortress on the east. Architectural and other discoveries made in 1935–36 justified the provisional title ‘Monumental Street’ assigned to this ancient thoroughfare. In terms of the general town-plan, which is extremely regular, this street may be called ‘Decumanus II North’, since two rows of long rectangular insulae separate it from the Decumanus Maximus leading to the West Gate, still erect. The clearing of the Monumental Street and its frontages revealed the well-known Maenad reliefs, attributed to the sculptor Callimachus, a late-Roman triple Triumphal Arch, and fragments of monumental inscriptions similar in character to those previously published from the same area.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kang Liu ◽  
Ling Yin ◽  
Meng Zhang ◽  
Min Kang ◽  
Ai-Ping Deng ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Dengue fever (DF) is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that has threatened tropical and subtropical regions in recent decades. An early and targeted warning of a dengue epidemic is important for vector control. Current studies have primarily determined weather conditions to be the main factor for dengue forecasting, thereby neglecting that environmental suitability for mosquito breeding is also an important factor, especially in fine-grained intra-urban settings. Considering that street-view images are promising for depicting physical environments, this study proposes a framework for facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting by integrating the urban environments measured from street-view images. Methods The dengue epidemic that occurred in 167 townships of Guangzhou City, China, between 2015 and 2019 was taken as a study case. First, feature vectors of street-view images acquired inside each township were extracted by a pre-trained convolutional neural network, and then aggregated as an environmental feature vector of the township. Thus, townships with similar physical settings would exhibit similar environmental features. Second, the environmental feature vector is combined with commonly used features (e.g., temperature, rainfall, and past case count) as inputs to machine-learning models for weekly dengue forecasting. Results The performance of machine-learning forecasting models (i.e., MLP and SVM) integrated with and without environmental features were compared. This indicates that models integrating environmental features can identify high-risk urban units across the city more precisely than those using common features alone. In addition, the top 30% of high-risk townships predicted by our proposed methods can capture approximately 50–60% of dengue cases across the city. Conclusions Incorporating local environments measured from street view images is effective in facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting, which is beneficial for conducting spatially precise dengue prevention and control.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktória Mozgai ◽  
Bernadett Bajnóczi ◽  
Zoltán May ◽  
Zsolt Mráv

AbstractThis study details the non-destructive chemical analysis of composite silver objects (ewers, situlas, amphora and casket) from one of the most significant late Roman finds, the Seuso Treasure. The Seuso Treasure consists of fourteen large silver vessels that were made in the fourth–early fifth centuries AD and used for dining during festive banquets and for washing and beautification. The measurements were systematically performed along a pre-designed grid at several points using handheld X-ray fluorescence analysis. The results demonstrate that all the objects were made from high-quality silver (above 90 wt% Ag), with the exception of the base of the Geometric Ewer B. Copper was added intentionally to improve the mechanical properties of soft silver. The gold and lead content of the objects shows constant values (less than 1 wt% Au and Pb). The chemical composition as well as the Bi/Pb ratio suggests that the parts of the composite objects were manufactured from different silver ingots. The ewers were constructed in two ways: (i) the base and the body were made separately, or (ii) the ewer was raised from a single silver sheet. The composite objects were assembled using three methods: (i) mechanical attachment; (ii) low-temperature, lead-tin soft solders; or (iii) high-temperature, copper-silver hard solders. Additionally, two types of gilding were revealed by the XRF analysis, one with remnants of mercury, i.e. fire-gilding, and another type without remnants of mercury, presumably diffusion bonding.


1938 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 152-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick H. Wilson

The first of these Studies was concerned chiefly with the history of Ostia during the period when the city was still growing and its prosperity increasing. Even so, during the period already considered, the prosperity of Ostia, though real, was to this extent artificial, in that it depended upon factors over which the citizens themselves had no control. Ostia was the port of Rome, and nothing else, and in consequence any lowering of the standard of living in, or reduction of imports into the capital city must have had immediate and marked repercussions upon her prosperity. She even lacked to a great extent those reserves of wealth which in other cities might be drawn upon to tide over bad times. The typical citizen of Ostia came to the city in the hope of making his fortune there; but when he had made it, he usually preferred to retire to some more pleasant town, such as Tibur, Tusculum, Velitrae, or Rome itself, where he could enjoy his leisure. Few families seem to have remained in the city for more than two, or, at the most, three generations. Whilst therefore fortunes were made in Ostia, wealth was not accumulated there.


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