Skating before Figures

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Hines
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Figure Skating ◽  
Recreational Activity ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
Ice Skating ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Account ◽  
Bodies Of Water

Today, skating on artificial ice in indoor rinks is a year-round recreational activity enjoyed by people of all ages and abilities as well as a sport both amateur and professional that enjoys unprecedented popularity. But throughout most of its history, ice skating has been an activity limited to short seasons and possible only in countries where lakes, ponds, canals, or other bodies of water provide frozen surfaces on which skaters could enjoy the challenge and excitement of gliding across natural ice. In the ancient world, long before skating became a recreational activity or a sport, those same frozen surfaces provided a different kind of challenge. Passage over them was a necessity for survival during harsh winter months. This chapter traces the history of ice skating before the advent of competitive figure skating. It discusses mythology and the earliest skaters; the earliest skates; an early account of recreational skating; skating as a tool of warfare; figure skating's patron saint, the virgin Lydwina of Schiedam.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Hines
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Figure Skating ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Proficiency Tests ◽  
Recreational Activity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
National Styles

This introductory chapter begins with a brief history of figure skating. The birthplace of figure skating is England, following the return of Charles II in 1660. For two hundred years it remained exclusively a recreational activity, and still in the mid-nineteenth century members of the London Skating Club opposed adamantly anything suggesting competition, even proficiency tests. Competitive figure skating, local at first, dates from the mid-nineteenth century in most countries. It became international later in the century, and problems surfaced almost immediately as skaters trained in their own national styles competed against skaters trained in other styles. The chapter then sets out the book's focus, namely World and Olympic championship skaters from 1896 through 2002. Their successes and their failures are identified; their contributions are celebrated. The narrative through the postwar period progresses generally by decades. It emphasizes major issues, some short-lived but others extending over longer periods, that are identified with the skaters most directly affected. General concerns of the International Skating Union are addressed throughout.

Conditions of Visibility

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Shared Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Prejudice ◽  
Historical Past

We often assume that works of visual art are meant to be seen. Yet that assumption may be a modern prejudice. The ancient world - from China to Greece, Rome to Mexico - provides many examples of statues, paintings, and other images that were not intended to be visible. Instead of being displayed, they were hidden, buried, or otherwise obscured. In this third volume in the Visual Conversations in Art & Archaeology series, leading scholars working at the intersection of archaeology and the history of art address the fundamental question of art's visibility. What conditions must be met, what has to be in place, for a work of art to be seen at all? The answer is both historical and methodological; it concerns ancient societies and modern disciplines, and encompasses material circumstances, perceptual capacities, technologies of visualization, protocols of classification, and a great deal more. The emerging field of archaeological art history is uniquely suited to address such questions. Intrinsically comparative, this approach cuts across traditional ethnic, religious, and chronological categories to confront the academic present with the historical past. The goal is to produce a new art history that is at once cosmopolitan in method and global in scope, and in doing so establish new ways of seeing - new conditions of visibility - for shared objects of study.

Ice Skating (Figure Skating) 101: A Lifelong Fitness Activity!

Strategies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
By Kristie Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Figure Skating ◽  
Ice Skating

Domestic Everyday Life, Manners, and Customs in the Ancient World

1876 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 364-415
Author(s):  
George Harris
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

Thereis nothing which contributes more fully to throw light on the manners and habits of a people, or more forcibly to exhibit to us the tone of thought which prevailed among them, than the rites and ceremonies that they adopted connected with their religion. And the wilder and more extravagant the superstitions which in such a nation prevailed, the more strikingly do they evince the tone of thought and feeling that animated the people. Potent everywhere, and under whatever phase, as was the influence of these notions, they served in each case to develop the whole mind and character of the nation; as each passion, and emotion, and faculty, were exerted to the very utmost on a subject of such surpassing interest to them all. Imagination here, relieved from all restraint, spread her wings and soared aloft, disporting herself in her wildest mood; and the remoter the period to which the history of any particular country reaches, and the more barbarous the condition in which the people existed, the more striking, and the more extraordinary to us, appear the superstitions by which they were influenced. Human nature is by this means developed to the full, all its energies are exerted to the utmost, and the internal machinery by which its movements are impelled, is stimulated to active operation. We gaze with wonder and with awe upon the spectacle thus exhibited. However involuntarily, we respect a people—misguided and erring as they were—whose eagerness to follow whatever their conscience prompted, urged them to impose such revolting duties on themselves; while we regard, with pity and with horror, those hideous exploits which were the fruit of that misguided zeal.

A Review of Peter Temin's The Roman Market Economy

2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1151-1159
Author(s):  
François Velde
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
History Of

Herein, I review Peter Temin’s book, The Roman Market Economy, and take the occasion to alert economists to the exciting work that is being done and could be done in the economic history of the ancient world. (JEL C80, N01, N13, N73)

A History of the Ancient World

1912 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 417
Author(s):  
W. S. Ferguson ◽  
George Willis Botsford
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
History Of
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