scholarly journals Elinor Wight Gardner: Pioneer Geoarcheologist, Quaternary Scientist and Geomorphologist

Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Kathleen Nicoll ◽  
Joshua Emmitt ◽  
Maxine R. Kleindienst ◽  
Sarah L. Evans ◽  
Rebecca Phillipps
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Near East ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
Breaking Work

Elinor Wight Gardner (1892–1981) was the first female geologist who worked and published as a geoarcheologist. During her career, she worked in arid lands of North Africa, Mediterranean and the Near East, and was regarded as a pioneering geoscientist who made important contributions in multiple fields, including archeology, geomorphology, paleontology and Quaternary science. Despite her ground-breaking work at many archeological sites, Gardner’s impact has been largely unrecognized. Few details are known about her personal life; she was a private and reserved person who left limited first-hand accounts of her opinions and motivations. Gardner worked with charismatic figures such as her life-long friend and primary collaborator, the archeologist Gertrude Caton Thompson (1888–1985). This biography synthesizes primary sources and draws insights about Gardner’s character from her bibliography, publications and notebooks, and mentions by contemporary peers. Much attention has focused on the historical “ancestral passions” of characters working in the fields of geology and archeology, with much emphasis on the ‘founding fathers’ and significantly less recognition of its ‘grandmothers’. We bring attention to the full scope of Gardner’s insightful contributions through analysis of her important collaborative research projects linking archeology and landscape studies during the early twentieth century.

Founding Gods, Inventing Nations

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. McCants
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Cultural Orientation ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamic Empire ◽  
First Time ◽  
Vast Range

From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, this book traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, the book looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization's origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire. The Greek and Roman conquests brought with them a learned culture that competed with that of native elites. The conquering Arabs, in contrast, had no learned culture, which led to three hundred years of Muslim competition over the cultural orientation of Islam, a contest reflected in the culture myths of that time. What we know today as Islamic culture is the product of this contest, whose protagonists drew heavily on the lore of non-Arab and pagan antiquity. The book argues that authors in all three periods did not write about civilization's origins solely out of pure antiquarian interest—they also sought to address the social and political tensions of the day. The strategies they employed and the postcolonial dilemmas they confronted provide invaluable context for understanding how authors today use myth and history to locate themselves in the confusing aftermath of empire.

Carthage after the Punic Wars and the Neo-Punic Legacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 182-196
Author(s):  
Matthew Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Initial Examination ◽  
The Third ◽  
Funerary Rituals ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Punic Wars

This chapter provides a brief introduction to how the historiographical development of Roman studies, since mid-twentieth century decolonization, has altered our understanding of the developments which took place in North Africa following the destruction of Carthage in 146 bce. The reader is introduced to literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of evidence, which have traditionally been used to argue for either cultural change or continuity. After an initial examination of the immediate aftermath of the Third Punic War, Roman land appropriation and taxation, the focus is on sources of evidence usually described as “Punic,” “neo-Punic” or “Late Punic,” covering the spheres of municipal institutions, language use, and religious and funerary rituals. The vibrant multiculturalism and regional diversity of the Mediterranean and especially North Africa, both before and after the Roman conquest, is the dominant theme. This is used to shift emphasis away from grand explanatory paradigms based on essentialist identity categories, and toward a more nuanced picture of the complex and multivariate processes of cultural development and integration.

Punarvivaham vs. Pativratyam: Pulugurta Lakshmi Narasamamba and the Widow Remarriage Question in Colonial Andhra

2021 ◽  
pp. 025764302110017
Author(s):  
Shaik Mahaboob Basha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Child Marriage ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Women's Journals

The question of widow remarriage, which occupied an important place in the social reform movement, was hotly debated in colonial Andhra. Women joined the debate in the early twentieth century. There was a conservative section of women, which bitterly opposed the widow remarriage movement and attacked the social reformers, both women and men. Pulugruta Lakshmi Narasamamba led this group of women. Lakshmi Narasamamba treated widow remarriage (punarvivaham) with contempt and termed it as an affront to the fidelity (pativratyam) of Hindu women. According to her, widow remarriage was equal to ‘prostitution’, and the widows who married again could not be granted the status of kulanganas (respectable or chaste women). Lakshmi Narasamamba’s stand on the question of widow remarriage led to the emergence of a fiery and protracted controversy among women which eventually led to the division of the most famous women’s organization, the Shri Vidyarthini Samajamu. She opposed not only widow remarriage but also post-puberty marriage and campaigned in favour of child marriage. This article describes the whole debate on the widow remarriage question that took place among women. It is based on the primary sources, especially the woefully neglected women’s journals in the Telugu language.

Electric light and the visualization of Catholic power in Spain during the Restoration Era (1874–1931)

2021 ◽  
pp. 205030322110153
Author(s):  
Daniel Pérez-Zapico
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Electric Light ◽  
Bourbon Restoration ◽  
Popular Magazines ◽  
New Believers

This article analyses the contested adoption of electric lights by the Spanish Catholic church during the Bourbon Restoration era (1874–1931). Through a careful reading of primary sources, namely Catholic popular magazines, and official documents, it will show how Catholic authorities and practitioners resisted, negotiated and, ultimately, engaged with electricity in religious spaces. The article argues that electric light contributed to wider exchanges in a non-monolithic Spanish Catholicism on the observance of traditional values or the possibilities of the church’s modernization. However, amid a particularly tense moment regarding the secular–clerical relations, the systematic use of electric lights in churches at the turn of the twentieth century—but also in other public ceremonies—contributed to the making of religious sensations aimed at attracting new believers and reasserting the presence of the institution in a disputed public space.

Langdell Laughs

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-144
Author(s):  
William P. LaPiana
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Teaching Profession ◽  
The Self ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Self Image ◽  
American Law

The amount of ink spilled in consideration of the life, thought, accomplishments, and legacy of Christopher Columbus Langdell is eloquent testimony to the critical role he plays in the self-image of the American law teaching profession. It is both wonderful and astounding, therefore, to find that critical primary sources remained unread and unused at the very end of the twentieth century. Now that Bruce Kimball has brought them to light, we have a more complete view of the man and his thought, one that, not surprisingly, reveals to us someone quite different from the cruelly and crudely caricatured inventor of those twin devices for stifling young minds, the case and Socratic methods.

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