Cultural Encounter

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-25
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth

This chapter begins to set out the landscape of Willem Bosman's cultural encounter as it unfolded on the Gold Coast from the late fifteenth century. It highlights a set of fundamental metaphysical questions that, in the broadest sense, framed understandings of life and death among the Akan and their neighbours: Where did mankind come from? How did death come into the world? Where do people go when they die? By beginning the story with Bosman, the intention is not to recapitulate older ideas of the coast of Guinea as a 'white man's grave'. Rather, the chapter suggests that the reality and representation of the African encounter with mortality became entangled with the encounter with European others.

Mega-structures of the Middle Ages: the construction of religious buildings in Europe and Asia,c.1000–1500

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten Prak
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Construction Work ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Modern Engineering ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractHow did medieval builders manage to construct some of the tallest structures in the world without access to modern engineering theories? Construction drawings were limited to details and, with only a handful exceptions, manuals for builders only appeared in the late fifteenth century. By implication, the relevant knowledge had to be transferred on a personal basis. Its underlying principles must therefore have been reasonably simple. This article shows how a modular design, combined with on-site experimentation, guided much of the construction work on large projects such as European cathedrals, Middle Eastern mosques, Indian temples, and Chinese pagoda towers.

Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I. The matter of Bitu

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Late Fifteenth

In late medieval and early modern times West Africa was one of the principal suppliers of gold to the world bullion market. In this context the Matter of Bitu is one of much importance. Bitu lay on the frontiers of the Malian world and was one of its most flourishing gold marts. So much is clear from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings, both African and European. A review of this body of evidence indicates that the gold trade at Bitu was controlled by the Wangara, who played a central role in organizing trade between the Akan goldfields and the towns of the Western Sudan. It is shown that Bitu cannot be other than Bighu (Begho, Bew, etc.), the abandoned Wangara town lying on the northwestern fringes of the Akan forest country, which is known (from excavation) to have flourished in the relevant period. In the late fifteenth century the Portuguese established posts on the southern shores of the Akan country, so challenging the monopolistic position which the Wangara had hitherto enjoyed in the gold trade. The Portuguese sent envoys to Mali, presumably to negotiate trade agreements. The bid was apparently unsuccessful. The struggle for the Akan trade in the sixteenth century between Portuguese and Malian interests will be treated in the second part of this paper.

Northern Frontiers

2021 ◽  
pp. 277-290
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Horse Riding ◽  
Volta Basin ◽  
History Of ◽  
Northern Territories

This chapter recounts the early life and death of Gandah, a naa or 'chief', of Birifu, a dispersed settlement of traditional mud-walled compounds located near the bank of the Black Volta River in the northwestern corner of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast. It narrates the final stages of Gandah's life as a renowned healer and accumulator of ritual 'medicines'. The chapter investigates how Gandah's story encapsulated key themes in the history of death and the dead in the Northern Territories in the first half of the twentieth century. This was a region that was in many ways quite distinct from the Akan forest and Gold Coast to the south. Historically, connections between the Akan world and the peoples of the middle Volta savannas did exist. Yet in terms of ecology, culture and political structure, the savanna, as the Akan perceived it, was another realm. The chapter outlines the emergence of a complex of kingdoms forged by horse-riding migrants who from the fifteenth century entered the savannas of the Volta basin straddling present-day Burkina Faso and northern Ghana.

scholarly journals New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
The World ◽  
Objects Of Knowledge ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Cabinet Of Curiosities ◽  
Private Collections

From the late fifteenth century to the present day, the New World has been plundered and pilfered for its many ‘treasures’ and ‘wonders’ and as a consequence, many of its natural and cultural productions have been scattered around the world, often hidden in libraries, museums and private collections. New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities gathers a fascinating sampling of these scattered objects in forty richly illustrated essays written by world-leading scholars in the field. We discover the secret, often global, itineraries of such things as Aztec codices and Inca mummies, colonial paintings and indigenous maps, giant tortoises and precious hummingbirds.

scholarly journals Holy Land Pilgrimage and Geography in Fifteenth-Century England

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-139
Author(s):  
Marianne O’Doherty
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
English Manuscript

This article discusses a single late-fifteenth-century English manuscript as evidence for an understudied form of “virtual” pilgrimage. Bringing together the techniques of codicological, textual, and cartographic-historical research, the article shows how Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 426 presents a vision of the world profoundly inflected by Holy Land pilgrimage, in which scholarly, mathematical geography is placed in the service of knowledge and understanding of the Holy Land. Indeed, within MS 426, the process of gaining understanding of the world’s geography and of the place of the Holy Land within it becomes a kind of virtual pilgrimage: a form of vicarious wandering that prompts religious contemplation and devotion. The article, which includes discussion of the manuscript’s unique and previously unstudied Jerusalem map, thus reminds us to keep in mind the inadequacy of modern taxonomies for dealing with the messy materialities of medieval texts.

Contextualizing Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-240
Author(s):  
Clare Bokulich
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Moment

Notwithstanding the reputation of Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena as a touchstone of late–fifteenth-century musical style, little is known about the context in which the piece emerged. Just over a decade ago, Joshua Rifkin placed the motet in Milan ca. 1484; more recently, Theodor Dumitrescu has uncovered stylistic affinities with Johannes Regis’s Ave Maria that reopen the debate about the provenance of Josquin's setting. Stipulating that the issues of provenance and dating are for the moment unsolvable, I argue that the most promising way forward is to contextualize this work to the fullest extent possible. Using the twin lenses of genre and musical style, I investigate the motet’s apparently innovative procedures (e.g., paired duos, periodic entries, and block chords) in order to refine our understanding of how Josquin’s setting relates to that of Regis and to the Milanese motet cycles (motetti missales). I also uncover connections between Josquin’s motet and the music of earlier generations, above all the cantilena and the forme fixe chanson, that offer new insights into the development of musical style in the fifteenth century. The essay concludes by positioning the types of analyses explored here within a growing body of research that enables a revitalized approach to longstanding questions about compositional development and musical style.

Histórias escritas com sangue: Uma análise de processos judiciários de assassinatos de mulheres em Goiânia (1970-1984)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neide Célia Ferreira Barros
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Case Reports ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Country Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Gender Power

This book analyzes the criminal processes of homicides or attempted homicides of women in Goiânia during the period of 1970-1984. We observed the gender power relations in the capital of Goiás, a border region, a mixture of country life elements and discourses of modernity. Hence, through case reports of women who suffered attacks on their lives in a period of intense changes, such as the organization of feminist groups in Brazil and the world, political and economic repercussions of the construction of Brasília in Goiás and mass immigration to Goiânia, we have pursued to understand what it meant socially to "be a man" and "to be a woman" in this capital and what consequences were brought into their bodies, concerning life and death, protection and punishment.

Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Rodrigo Jimenez De Rada ◽  
The Way

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document