Peter Astbury Brunt 1917–2005

Author(s):  
Michael Crawford

Peter Astbury Brunt (1917–2005), a Fellow of the British Academy, served in the Ministry of Shipping (later War Transport), alongside his undergraduate contemporary and friend, Basil Dickinson. After his release from the Ministry, he took up at the beginning of 1946 a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College, to which he had been elected the previous autumn, and the Craven Fellowship that had been awarded to him in 1939, choosing as a topic for research the relations between governed and governors in the Roman Empire, and set off for the British School at Rome. It was Roman Stoicism that claimed more and more of Brunt's attention. He was happy to admit the influence on his thinking of Geoffrey de Ste Croix, despite the differences in their political views. One of the themes that occupied Brunt during the period from 1951 to 1968 was that of ancient slavery. During his seventeen years in the University of Oxford, he undertook major administrative tasks both for his college and for the university.


Antiquity ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 24 (94) ◽  
pp. 84-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. P. Bradford

The first (1949) season of archaeological reconnaissance on the Foggia Plain in South Italy has confirmed, in the most striking manner, the existence of one of the densest concentrations of ancient sites to be identified in Europe in an area of comparable size. For readers of ANTIQUITY, their nature had already been foreshadowed in these pages.These discoveries were first made from British air photographs taken in June 1945, which revealed the plans of settlements, farms, roads and field-systems existing below the surface of the ground or clearly visible to the air camera. They were distributed across 3000 years of Italian history, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, and illustrate from the archaeological record three principal stages in the rise of a European peasantry. This is a theme that affords ideal ground for the conjunction of Archaeology and Ethnology ; and it is appropriate that the Expedition should be based on the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, which was founded on this very principle.Now, thanks to the Apulia Committee, set up under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries and representing the University of Oxford and learned societies, it has been possible to proceed to the second and fundamental stage:—namely, to carry out the first systematic programme of archaeological investigation based on air photographic data ever conducted in Italy. This also included the first British excavations there for a number of years, with the permission and helpful co-operation of the Italian authorities, and the support of the British School at Rome.



2013 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 3-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Morgan

The School's archaeological programme in 2012–2013 included fieldwork, museum studies (notably a project led by Robin Barber to complete the publication of material from early 20th-century excavations at Phylakopi now held in the National Museum in Athens) and many individual and group projects housed at Knossos and in the Fitch Laboratory. Following the success of the conference Interpreting the Seventh Century BC, in December 2011, a further workshop in December 2012 on Thessalian sanctuaries and cults, organized in collaboration with the University of Oxford, brought together 24 speakers, including many colleagues from Thessalian ephoreias and the University of Thessaly, to present new data and reflections. Maria Stamatopoulou comments further on material presented at this meeting in her contribution to this year's AG below. In London, collaboration with colleagues in the British Museum's Department of Greece and Rome resulted in a very popular study day on Knossos: from Labyrinth to Laboratory in November 2012 (now published online at www.bsa.ac.uk). This will soon be followed (on 2 November 2013) by a further collaboration in a British Museum Classical Colloquium on Archaeology Behind the Battle Lines: Macedonia 1915–1919, also in partnership with the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.Among our ongoing field projects, I begin with discussion of the excavation at Koutroulou Magoula in Thessaly directed by Nina Kyparissi-Apostolika (Director Emerita, EPSNE) and Yannis Hamilakis (Southampton), which in 2012 sought to clarify activity in the area of two Neolithic buildings uncovered in 2011 (Fig. 2). One of these buildings had been mostly destroyed in later periods, although evidence of outdoor activity includes hearths and in situ deposits.



Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 315-318
Author(s):  
Jane Beal

Matthew Cheung Salisbury, a Lecturer in Music at University and Worcester College, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford, wrote this book for ARC Humanities Press’s Past Imperfect series (a series comparable to Oxford’s Very Short Introductions). Two of his recent, significant contributions to the field of medieval liturgical studies include The Secular Office in Late-Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) and, as editor and translator, Medieval Latin Liturgy in English Translation (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017). In keeping with the work of editors Thomas Heffernan and E. Ann Matter in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, 2nd ed. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005) and Richard W. Pfaff in The Liturgy of Medieval England: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2009), this most recent book provides a fascinating overview of the liturgy of the medieval church, specifically in England. Salisbury’s expertise is evident on every page.



Author(s):  
Robert Garner ◽  
Yewande Okuleye

This book is an account of the life and times of a loose friendship group (later christened the Oxford Group) of ten people, primarily postgraduate philosophy students, who attended the University of Oxford for a short period of time from the late 1960s. The Oxford Group, which included—most notably—Peter Singer and Richard Ryder, set about thinking about, talking about, and promoting the idea of animal rights and vegetarianism. The group therefore played a role, largely undocumented and unacknowledged, in the emergence of the animal rights movement and the discipline of animal ethics. Most notably, the group produced an edited collection of articles published as Animals, Men and Morals in 1971 that was instrumental in one of their number—Peter Singer—writing Animal Liberation in 1975, a book that has had an extraordinary influence in the intervening years. The book serves as a case study of how the emergence of important work and the development of new ideas can be explained, and, in particular, how far the intellectual development of individuals is influenced by their participation in a creative community.



Author(s):  
Johannes Zachhuber

This chapter reviews the book The Making of English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford (2014). by Dan Inman. The book offers an account of a fascinating and little known episode in the history of the University of Oxford. It examines the history of Oxford’s Faculty of Theology from the early nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. In particular, it revisits the various attempts to tinker with theology at Oxford during this period and considers the fierce resistance of conservatives. Inman argues that Oxford’s idiosyncratic development deserves to be taken more seriously than it often has been, at least by historians of theology.



Author(s):  
Rosamund Oates

This chapter explores the ideas at the heart of Puritanism, examining Tobie Matthew’s early radicalism. Using the controversies over vestments in 1564–6 and the visit of Elizabeth I to the University of Oxford in 1566, the chapter shows that the idea of ‘edification’ became a central principle of Puritanism. This chapter explores the spiritual demands of edifying reform and shows how it drove English Puritans into conflict with the monarch and the Established Church. It demonstrates that Matthew’s Puritanism was rooted in the experience of Marian exiles, and that he drew on their Calvinism and their resistance texts to justify his potentially seditious view of godly magistracy and rebellion.



Author(s):  
William Gibson

This chapter looks at Strenæ Natalitiæ, a volume of poems produced by the University of Oxford to celebrate the events of the birth of the Prince of Wales in 1688. The University of Oxford's Strenæ Natalitiæ was a volume of over a hundred poems, with an obligatory introductory poem contributed by vice-chancellor Gilbert Ironside. The contibutors to Strenæ Natalitiæ were not simply a cross-section of the university's membership and poetic talent, but also of its politics. In some respects, youthful naivety might have been a cause of some of the authors' willingness to embrace the birth of James Edward, despite the anxiety felt by some of their fellow authors. Some of the verse was simple, and naïve in tone. Other verses were marked by a more mystical and prophetic tone. Ultimately, the verses in Strenæ Natalitiæ were predictable in their expressions of congratulation and celebration, though some also contained carefully muted expressions of equivocation.



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