The Archaeology of Hassanamesit Woods

Author(s):  
Heather Law Pezzarossi ◽  
Stephen A. Mrozowski

Chapter 5 shares the results of eight years of field work conducted at the Hassanamesit Woods Land Trust in Grafton, Mass., focused on the Sarah Burnee/Sarah Boston Homestead site on Keith Hill. The material recovered from the site dates to the eighteenth and nineteenth century occupations and demonstrates how this homestead functioned as a center of activity and gathering for the Nipmuc community. Loss of this parcel in 1854 provides one example of how land sales by this family (and others) over the generations resulted in dispossession of the tribal land base in Nipmuc homelands. The archaeology at this site contributes information about different dimensions of the Nipmuc community (such as occupational diversity) and emphasizes the contributions archaeology can make to the enrichment of Nipmuc historical narratives and of the present-day tribe, which has embraced learning more about this site and its occupants through the Hassanamesit Woods project.

Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Dariusz Lorek

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The issue touched upon in the research is connected with the interdisciplinary attitude towards the study of the constantly changing landscape in the nineteenth century Central Europe. Such interdisciplinarity results from the combination of the historical approach with the geographical attitude towards the examination of the past presented by unique cartographic materials.</p><p>The aim of the research was to work out the method of employing cartographic sources and adapting other sources of spatial information for the study and presentation of the landscape transformations in the nineteenth century that occurred as a result of the industrialization process in Europe.</p><p>Prussian manuscript topographic maps at 1&amp;thinsp;:&amp;thinsp;25&amp;thinsp;000 scale along with early nineteenth-century maps depicting the pre-industrial landscape constitute a significant cartographic source of knowledge. Apart from city plans and other maps, also space descriptions, preserved statistical data, documents, inventories and archives were utilized as sources of spatial information. Photographs, postcards and prints depicting the nineteenth-century landscape were another relevant source of information. Moreover, the data collected during field work, e.g. pictures and short videos made in selected research areas, were also highly useful. The research was conducted, for example, in towns of Greater Poland of different level of economic development. A few types of settlement units were selected, i.e. the village, the town with a mansion (palace), the ‘Olęder’ settlement and the town.</p><p>On the basis of maps and archives collected for the research area the multimedia method of presentation of landscape types and their transformations, with the employment of geoinformation tools, was suggested. That methodology of multimedia integration of historical materials allowed one to demonstrate consecutive stages of the transformation characteristic of the nineteenth-century landscape.</p><p>As a result, it became possible to define landscape types for the areas of different level of transformation and preserve the pre-industrial state. Short videos consisting of several sequences that demonstrated the changing form of specific topographic objects, elements of the landscape from the nineteenth century till this day, were the effect of the work. On the basis of the nineteenth-century topographic maps that employed the hatching method for the demonstration of the relief the models of the terrain were generated, which allowed one to create the transition from the parallel perspective to the bird’s eye view that was employed to depict the pre-industrial landscape.</p>


Author(s):  
Niall Sharples

In the summer of 1979, when I was working on my undergraduate dissertation in the National Museum, I became involved in an interesting piece of field-work that has direct relevance to the material that we are going to examine in this chapter. A Mrs MacDonald came into the museum to enquire whether some objects she had in her possession were of any archaeological significance. She had been encouraged to make this visit by a recent television programme where the presenter discussed and exhibited objects that were similar to those in her possession. She explained to the curator that the objects had been found by a family member during ploughing and had been kept in the kitchen drawer for the last two decades, though they were often brought out for the children to play with. She then removed, from her shopping bag, a gold bracelet and a gold ‘dress fastener’ of distinctive Late Bronze Age type. This had the immediate effect of rendering the museum curator speechless—these were in the days before metal detecting had become a popular hobby, and new finds of this significance were seldom made. The most recent discovery of comparable objects was in the nineteenth century. Further discussion of the nature of the discovery revealed that the location of the find was still remembered; it was just behind the farmhouse. It was also thought that other objects were discovered at the time, but these were discarded, as they were not so interesting. As there was a possibility that objects were still present in the field it was decided that a team would be sent by the museum to explore the finds location. I was dispatched, with two other students then working in the museum, and a metal detector, purchased specially for the occasion, to see what we could find. I have to say that metal detecting must be one of the most boring pastimes ever invented. In our youthful enthusiasm, we decided to be thorough and systematic. We set out a grid that covered the area where the gold had been discovered and began work.


2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL GUTACKER

Joseph Milner's ‘History of the Church of Christ’ (1794–1809) was the most popular English-language church history for half a century, yet it remains misunderstood by many historians. This paper argues that Milner's Evangelical interpretation of church history subverted Protestant historiographical norms. By prioritising conversion over doctrinal precision, and celebrating the piety of select medieval Catholics, Milner undermined the historical narratives that undergirded Protestant exceptionalism. As national religious identities became increasingly contested in the 1820s and 1830s, this subversive edge was blunted by publishers who edited the ‘History’ to be less favourable toward pre-Reformation Christianity.


2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 1216-1226 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. Wilkinson ◽  
P. Wadhams

Abstract Variations in the extent of sea ice within the Greenland Sea on daily, seasonal, or longer time scales are well documented, while changes in ice conditions are not. By combining historical information on the location and timing of the hunt for the whelping harp seal (Phoca groenlandica) with the ice conditions needed for the seals to give birth, details of the types, concentration, and extent of ice within the central Greenland Sea in winter have been determined for the mid- to late nineteenth century. These in turn have been compared to ice extent and concentration from the passive microwave era, as well as ice types from field work in the region. Results suggest that the ice conditions in the central Greenland Sea in the mid- to late nineteenth century were significantly different from those witnessed in recent decades. These differences manifest themselves not only in the extent of ice, but in ice types, concentration, and longevity of the ice cover. It is hypothesized that these changes could be due to an increase in both air temperature and wave energy, which is consistent with an increase in the strength and frequency of southerly and easterly winds during winter.


Author(s):  
Shane Nagle

This chapter proposes a comparative study of how ideas of monarchical rule and authority were conceptualised in historical narratives produced by nationalist writers in Ireland and Germany during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For Irish and German nationalists, the historical reality of monarchical authority was not always compatible with the historical narratives they wished to articulate; this form of authority needed both to be nationalised and in certain circumstances ‘written out’ of the national(ist) past as something illegitimate or contrary to the authentic national community. In broad terms, the engagement with monarchical authority in the Irish past among nationalists contributed to a political culture that was anti-monarchical even if not philosophically republican, just as in Germany it created within nationalism on the Right (centrist or authoritarian) a political culture that was at best sceptical of and at worst hostile to republicanism, and amenable to the rule of a dictator.


Author(s):  
Martin L. Cody ◽  
Enriqueta Velarde

Very few of the early scientific explorers in the Gulf of California had much to say about the land birds. There might be two reasons for this: first, the land birds in arid, desert regions are sparse and in general unbecoming, and second, the species encountered are by and large those seen in the much more accessible regions of southwestern North America. Chapter 1 introduced János Xántus, who is recognized as the pioneer ornithologist (or at least bird collector) in the cape area of Lower California, whose contributions (e.g., 1859, in which the first description of the Gray Thrasher, Toxostoma cinereum, was published) are appropriately commemorated in the Xantus Hummingbird, the most spectacular endemic on the peninsula. Lawrence (1860) first described the species as Amazilia xantusi (thence Hylocharis xantusii, and now Basilinna xantusii), and P. L. Sclater announced the discovery to Ibis readers in the same year. By the end of the nineteenth century, several ornithologists had collected in the southern peninsula and reported their findings (e.g., Baird 1870; Belding 1883; Bryant 1889; Ridgway 1896), but very little of this work referred to the islands in the gulf. Brewster’s (1902) report on the cape region avifauna was the most comprehensive of the earlier studies. Serious attention was first paid to the gulf island birds by Maillard (1923) and Townsend (1923), and the latter’s 1911 island-hopping trip in the Albatross served as a model for many similar expeditions later. The first distributional synthesis of their work, and especially that of Nelson (1921), Lamb (e.g., 1924), and Thayer (e.g., 1907), was published by Joseph Grinnell in 1928 in a monograph that is still the standard reference for the peninsula and gulf area. The last 50 years have seen little progress beyond the accumulation of further distributional records and the description of new subspecies (e.g., van Rossem 1929, 1932; Banks 1963a,b,c, 1964, 1969). The island birds remain rather poorly known; even species lists are likely to be incomplete, and ecological studies of the island populations have scarcely begun. In this chapter we report on the results largely of our own field work.


2018 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
George Hook

The colonial artist Eugene von Guérard travelled extensively throughout south-eastern Australia sketching thousands of views during his three-decade-long sojourn in Australia. His field drawings are renowned for their fidelity to nature and observational accuracy, but the validity of the latter claim depends on comparing drawings with the view at the sites where he sketched. The location of the view in some artworks, such as Mount Kosciusko, seen from the Victorian Border, has eluded art historians and aficionados who have ventured into the field. This article discusses the collation of clues from historical narratives, maps and surveying techniques to limit the search area for the vantage point where he sketched the view on which he based his painting of the Kosciuszko massif. Novel use of spatial technology utilising satellite imagery, Global Positioning System (GPS) and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, particularly digital elevation models, to locate the actual site is explored, and the topographical accuracy of his sketches evaluated when compared with photographs taken from close to the site. Finally, the potential value of using spatial technology in art history field work is discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Narvselius

The article explores ways in which the nineteenth-century Prussian military architecture has been used and promoted as a part of the local heritage in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Accommodation of the old fortification buildings to tourism and museum work has been publicly discussed since the beginning of the 2000s, but neither local nor federal authorities have proposed a plan to adapt them to non-military purposes. As a result, these structures, which are protected by federal heritage laws and uniformly built of characteristic red bricks, have become an arena for various initiatives, experiments, and games with the past. Strategies of virtualization discussed in the paper reveal a lack of open public discussion about dark episodes of Russian and Soviet history. Consequently, it is important to learn more about how and why contemporary Kaliningraders appropriate the local German legacies, use globally accepted strategies of heritage construction, and develop cooperation with the EU countries, while remaining receptive to official historical narratives promulgated by the national center.


Author(s):  
Chelsea Stieber

This book begins where so many others conclude: 1804. Recent scholarship has begun to explore the challenges that Atlantic world powers posed to Haitian sovereignty and legitimacy during the Age of Revolution, but there existed an equally important internal challenge to Haiti’s post-independence sovereignty: a civil war between those who envisioned a military authoritarian empire and those who wished to establish a liberal republic. This book argues that the post-independence civil war context is central to understanding Haiti’s long postcolonial nineteenth century: the foundational political, intellectual, and regional tensions that constitute Haiti’s fundamental plurality. Considerable work has been dedicated to unearthing the uneven and unequal production of historical narratives about Haiti in the wake of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s groundbreaking Silencing the Past, but many more narratives—namely, those produced from within Haitian historiography and literary history—remain to be questioned and deconstructed. This book unearths and continually probes the conceptually generative possibilities of Haiti’s post-revolutionary divisions, something the current historiographic framework on Haiti’s long postcolonial nineteenth century fails to fully apprehend. Through close readings of original print sources (pamphlets, newspapers, literary magazines, geographies, histories, poems, and novels), it sheds light on the internal realities, tensions, and pluralities that shaped the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath to reveal the process of contestation, mutual definition, and continual (re)inscription of Haiti’s meaning throughout its long nineteenth century.


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