scholarly journals The Early Modern Silesian Gallows (15th–19th Century) as an Example of Stray Animals Utilization before the Rise of Institutional Veterinary Care

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1210
Author(s):  
Aleksander Chrószcz ◽  
Dominik Poradowski ◽  
Paweł Duma ◽  
Maciej Janeczek ◽  
Przemysław Spychalski

In the past, executioners played an important role in the legal system. Besides sentence executions, they also worked as dogcatchers (i.e., eliminating stray animals or cadavers of dead animals from towns), and were responsible for sanitary conditions within their towns and closest neighborhoods. Archaeological explorations of gallows in the towns of Lower Silesia (Poland) provide evidence of such activities, including animal skeletal remains. Archaeozoological analysis of these materials from the towns Kamienna Góra (Landeshut), Złotoryja (Goldberg), and Jelenia Góra (Hirschberg) are the subjects of this study. Our work also stresses the nature of the executioner’s profession in animal health control and town hygiene maintenance before the development of modern veterinary services. The results show significant differences in the frequency of species and distribution of anatomical elements in accessible assemblages compared with animal skeletal remains unearthed in typical waste pits or classical inhumation, allowing the assumption that the animals were anatomically adults, and their health statuses were generally good. The dominant species, equids and dogs, were represented by skeletal remains, with the predominance of less valuable body parts (distal parts of appendices, caudal parts of the vertebral column). The fragmentation of accessible bone assemblages narrows the ability of larger conclusions (i.e., minimum number of individual estimations). The work enlightens the complex role of executioners pertaining to the hygiene of early modern town communities, a role later replaced by professional veterinarians with all of the consequences of the transition process.

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM

ABSTRACTThis article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 20 Oct. 2011. It explores how the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, stimulated shifts in historical method, and transformed the culture of memory, before turning to the interrelated question of when and why contemporaries began to remember the English Reformation as a decisive juncture and critical turning point in history. Investigating the interaction between personal recollection and social memory, it traces the manner in which remembrance of the events of the 1530s, 1540s, and 1550s evolved and splintered between 1530 and 1700. A further theme is the role of religious and intellectual developments in the early modern period in forging prevailing models of historical periodization and teleological paradigms of interpretation.


Author(s):  
Vicki Cummings

The transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland remains one of the most debated and contested transitions of prehistory. Much more complex than a simple transition from hunting and gathering to farming, the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain has been discussed not only as an economic and technological transformation, but also as an ideological one. In western Britain in particular, with its wealth of Neolithic monuments, considerable emphasis has been placed on the role of monumentality in the transition process. Over the past decade the author‧s research has concentrated on the early Neolithic monumental traditions of western Britain, a deliberate focus on areas outside the more ‘luminous’ centres of Wessex, the Cotswold–Severn region, and Orkney. This chapter discusses the transition in western Britain, with an emphasis on the monuments of this region. In particular, it discusses the areas around the Irish Sea – west Wales, the Isle of Man, south-west and western Scotland – as well as referring to the sequence on the other side of the Irish Sea, specifically eastern Ireland.


Author(s):  
Barbara Arciszewska

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.


1981 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Sharpe

One of the most striking features of recent writing on early modern social history has been the emergence of the family as a subject of central concern. As befits an historical area being subjected to new scrutiny, much of this concern has expressed itself in the form of specialized, and often narrowly-focused articles or essays.1 To these have been added a number of more general works intended to examine the broader developments in and implications of family life in the past.2 Several themes within family history have already received considerable attention: the structure of the family, for example, a topic already rendered familiar by earlier work on historical demography; the concomitant topic of sexual practices and attitudes; and the economic role of the family, especially in its capacity as a unit of production. These are, of course, important matters, and the research carried out on them has revealed much of interest and consequence to the social historian; this should not, however, obscure the existence of a number of other significant dimensions of family life in the past which await thorough investigation.


Author(s):  
Barbara Pitkin

Distinctly modern forms of historical consciousness emerged first after the Enlightenment but were anticipated by early modern developments in attitudes towards and strategies for recovering the past. Scholarship has only recently focused on how religious perspectives of the sixteenth century and the demand for alternative visions of religious history contributed to broader developments in early modern historiography. This chapter investigates the role of the past in Calvin’s vision of reform through the lens of his 1543 treatise, Supplex Exhortatio, to show how an early modern version of historical thinking is reflected in and shapes his reforming agenda. Though much of his programme is in continuity with Western reforming traditions, Calvin’s vision involves more conscious and critical engagement with and re-evaluation of the past. Attention to the contours of Calvin’s historical thinking illuminates the highly complex relationships among religious orientations, religious conflicts, and engagements with history in the sixteenth century.


2018 ◽  
Vol 473 (473) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Aleksander KOWALSKI

Despite the relatively large number of individual landslides recognized and described over the last several years from the Sudety (Sudetes) Mountains (Lower Silesia, SW Poland), most of the papers focused on the geomorphological characterisation of these forms. This paper presents the results of geological and geomorphological mapping of individual landslides, recognized within three geological units: the Wleń Graben (Northsudetic Synclinorium), the Łączna Elevation (Intrasudetic Synclinorium) and the Glinno Graben (Sowie Mountains Block). Particular attention has been paid to the role of the geological structure in the initiation and development of mass movements as well as the degree of transformation of the planar, structural elements (bedding planes, joints, faults) of the landslide bedrock. The results of geological mapping and geomorphometric analysis with a basis in Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) show that the structural measurements carried out in the past within previously unrecognized landslides were probably the main reason for incorrect interpretations of the geology of the areas investigated.


HISTOREIN ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Cornel Ban ◽  
Jorge Tamames

Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan’s opus on democratic transition and consolidation put Spain and Romania at the extreme ends of these processes and paid little attention to the domestic and external economic constraints on the transition process. This paper interrogates these claims. It shows that in retrospect Spain looks a lot less exemplary and Romania a lot less hopeless than this iconic contribution suggested at the time. Moreover, while external economic shocks and local attempts to buffer them through social compensation shaped both transitions, Romanian governments faced balance of payments crises and international policy conditionality constraints, while their Spanish counterparts did not. This difference invites a greater appreciation of the role of political economy analyses when comparing the policy options of political elites ruling in times of democratic transition and consolidation.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Gajda ◽  
Paul Cavill

This introduction explores the relationship between intellectual, political and religious history, and how they should fruitfully be integrated with classic parliamentary history. It argues that the early modern parliament must be understood through broader developments in historical thought and practice. The first part of the introduction examines the changing and unchanging character of history in this period, which provides the context for the essays in the volume. Thereafter the introduction relates approaches to the past to the growing historical consciousness within and about parliament and the historicised modes through which early modern authors chose to think and write about it. These new perspectives are analysed in the context of the historiography of parliament of the past century. It is argued that the constitutionalist mode of thinking so dominant at the end of our period grew out of the interaction of history, law and politics in, around and about parliament. The collection thus restates the crucial role of institutions for the study of political culture and thought.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
Birgit Tremml-Werner ◽  
Dorothée Goetze

Abstract This special issue has been motivated by the drive to contextualize the role of individuals of various backgrounds in early modern foreign relations. All contributions cover a broad geographic scope and stress the impact of non-European practices and stages for the study of early modern foreign relations. Four thematic articles follow diverse diplomatic actors, ranging from non-elite envoys to chartered companies, Catholic friars and ministers on ships, to foreign courts, and behind their desks. They provide insights into these individual actors’ functions and achievements and raise questions about social belonging and knowledge channels. The introduction below portrays the development of an actor-oriented research angle in the field of New Diplomatic History over the past decades and addresses blurring concepts and over-generalizations. It attempts to redefine the heterogeneous group of early modern diplomatic actors as products of their involvement in political and material struggles, both at home and abroad.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-67
Author(s):  
Uladzimir Kananovich

The paper examines the process of forging a new historical memory in a particular area of the late medieval and early modern Eastern Europe. Because of contemporary intellectual controversy in present-day Lithuania and Belarus over its role in the early Grand Duchy of Lithuania, I have chosen for the study the historical land of Navahrudak. In order to elucidate the role of Navahrudak in the past, I have tried to investigate what a ruling class in Navahrudak did really remember of its past, as well as what was forgotten and why, in the specific conditions of the early sixteenth-century of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. First of all, by utilizing primarily such historical evidence as chronicles and by focusing mainly on the memories of dukes who had ruled in the region, I tried to understand the process of how the region’s historical memory was being forged. My research clearly reveals that most of what we actually know about Navahrudak’s past appears as nothing else as the sixteenth-century construction, initiated primarily by the contemporary Lithuanian chancellor Albertus Gastoldus and forged by a remarkable team of Renaissance intellectuals employed in the grand ducal chancellery. Their vision of the region’s past was greatly influenced by the actual political, social and even personal (familial) considerations and was clearly aimed at glorifying Navahrudak’s past, by highlighting especially Navahrudak as Lithuania’s first political center, where Albertus Gastoldus had began his political career and where also the political and economical interests of his kin were located.


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