scholarly journals A Study into the Pawprints of Urban Dogs

Lituanistica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Povilas Blaževičius

The aim of the article is to present a comprehensive study on specific paw parameters and features, movement peculiarities, leg injuries, hairiness, etc. of dogs that lived in the city of Vilnius and its surroundings and left their marks on clay ware made by local craftsmen. The study was based on 238 clay objects found in Vilnius and dating from the late thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Dogs were found to leave the highest number of pawprints on bricks (90.8%), with significantly lower numbers on floor tiles (8%) and roof tiles (1.2%). The apparent increase in the number of traces is recorded from approximately the fifteenth century due to the steady increase in the quantity of clay products and the accessibility of the production environment to domestic animals. More than 450 dog pawprints in clay were examined using a trasology technique. Most frequently, one, two, or three traces were found on an artefact, while four, five, or six traces on one object were much less frequent. The analysis of trace features showed that 179 of the traces were those of the forepaws and 112 of the hind paws. The assessment of the deformation of the clay articles during firing and the comparison of the data obtained with the parameters of the paws of current breeds of dogs suggest that about 2% of the pawprints were left by small or young dogs. Mediumsized dogs left 70.5% of the traces, 25.7% belonged to dogs resembling current breeds of Doberman or Labrador retriever, 4.7% dogs similar to Borzoi or German shepherd, and 0.9% to Akita or Bobtail. An additional comparison of the pawprints with those of the present-day Lithuanian hounds showed that this type of dog could have left about 22% of the total number of the paw prints studied. It can be concluded that the results of the tracing studies revealed a significantly broader picture than the zooarchaeological material. Pawprint studies show that 25% of the dogs in the city of Vilnius during the period in question were long-haired and 75% were short-haired. The recorded paw pathologies provided information on various nail and toe injuries, tendon pathologies, and one possible case of patella dislocation. Meanwhile, the analysis of the dogs’ speed of movement suggests that at least some of the dogs in Vilnius between the late thirteenth and the eighteenth century were not tied and moved freely in the environment of the craftsmen who manufactured clay ware. In summary, the preliminary results of the pawprint analysis make a significant contribution to the broader knowledge of the history of dogs and provide unique data on urban dogs, which are scarcely recorded in written and zooarchaeological sources.

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
Maria Trojanowska

W artykule zostały zebrane i opisane źródła ikonograficzne do dziejów herbu miasta Lublina z XV–XVIII w. przechowywane w zasobie Archiwum Państwowego w Lublinie. Wizerunki tego herbu podzielono na trzy grupy w zależności od rodzaju źródła i miejsca występowania znaku. Należą do nich: wyobrażenia na pieczęciach miasta, superekslibrisy na oprawach ksiąg miejskich i zdobienia malarskie o tematyce heraldycznej występujące na kartach tych ksiąg. Najstarsze wizerunki herbu Lublina zachowały się na pieczęciach z początku XV w., które z uwagi na swój urzędowy charakter są też najcenniejszym źródłem heraldycznym. Przedstawiony na nich herb, zarówno w swojej budowie, jak i stylistyce rysunku, był akceptowanym przez władze miejskie znakiem miasta. Z kolei pierwsze barwne wyobrażenia herbu Lublina, ważne dla poznania barw heraldycznych, pochodzą dopiero z pierwszej połowy XVII w. The Image of Lublin’s Coat of Arms in Archival Sources of 15th–18th Centuries The article has collects and described iconographic fifteenth-eighteenth century sources to the history of the Lublin coat of arm, which are kept in the State Archive in Lublin. The images of the coat of arms have been divided into three groups depending on the sort of the source and the place of its occurrence. They include: images on the seals of the town, super-bookplates on the bindings of city registers, and heraldic painting decorations present on the pages of these volumes. The oldest images of the Lublin coat of arms were preserved on seals from the beginning of the fifteenth century which, considering their official character, are also the most precious heraldic source. The coat of arms presented on them, both in its structure and the style of the drawing was the mark of the city, accepted by its authorities. However, the first color images of Lublin’s coat of arms, important for recognizing heraldic colors, come from the first half of the eighteenth century.


2013 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ramírez ◽  
William B. Taylor

Abstract Colonial inhabitants of Mexico City were accustomed to coping with natural disasters, including disease epidemics, droughts, floods, and earthquakes, which menaced rich and poor alike and stirred fervent devotion to miraculous images and their shrines. This article revisits the late colonial history of the shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, an image preserved miraculously on an adobe wall in the Indian quarter of Santiago Tlatelolco. The assumption has been that archiepiscopal authorities aiming to deflect public worship toward a more austere, interior spirituality suppressed activities there after 1745 because they saw the devotion as excessively Indian and Baroque. The shrine has served as a barometer of eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms even though its story has not been fully told. This article explores the politics of patronage in the years after the shrine’s closure and in the decades prior to the arrival on the scene of a new Spanish patron in 1776, revealing that Indian caretakers kept the faith well beyond the official intervention, with some help from well-placed Spanish devotees and officials. The efforts of the new patron, a Spanish tailor from the city center, to renovate the building and image and secure the necessary permissions and privileges helped transform the site into one of the most famous in the capital. Attention to earlier patterns of patronage and to the social response to a series of tremors that coincided with his promotional efforts helps to explain why a devotion so carefully managed for enlightened audiences was nevertheless cut from old cloth.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Key Fowden

What made Athens different from other multi-layered cities absorbed into the Ottoman Empire was the strength of its ancient reputation for learning that echoed across the Arabic and Ottoman worlds. But not only sages were remembered and Islamized in Athens; sometimes political figures were too. In the early eighteenth century a mufti of Athens, Mahmud Efendi, wrote a rarely studiedHistory of the City of Sages (Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema)in which he transformed Pericles into a wise leader on a par with the Qur'anic King Solomon and linked the Parthenon mosque to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.


1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. D. Newitt

The sultanate of Angoche on the Moçambique coast was founded probably towards the end of the fifteenth century by refugees from Kilwa. It became a base for Muslim traders who wanted to use the Zambezi route to the central African trading fairs and it enabled them to by-pass the Portuguese trade monopoly at Sofala. The Portuguese were not able to check this trade until they themselves set up bases on the Zambezi in the 1530s and 1540s, and from that time the sultanate began to decline. Internal dissensions among the ruling families led to the Portuguese obtaining control of the sultanate in the late sixteenth century, but this control was abandoned in the following century when the trade of the Angoche coast dwindled to insignificance. During the eighteenth century movements among the Macua peoples of the mainland and the development of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean laid the foundations for the revival of the sultanate in the nineteenth century.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-87
Author(s):  
Sverre Bagge

This article examines Machiavelli's understanding of the relationship between actors and structures in the history of Florence through a study of five selected episodes in the Istorie Fiorentine. Together, these episodes show the gradual decline of virtue in the city, from the relatively healthy conditions of the late thirteenth century to the pathetic incompetence of the Pazzi rebellion in 1478. These episodes also show that the main cause of this decline was not internal struggles, as stated in the preface, but the decline of military virtue which in turn was caused by changes in the class structure. In expressing these conclusions in the form of dramatic narrative and not only explicit reasoning, Machiavelli brings out tension between actors and structures, showing the limits the structural forces set to individual achievement as well as the possibilities for individuals to assert themselves under particular conditions. Generally, the scope for individual achievement increases as a result of the decline from the thirteenth-century republic, dominated by collective forces, to the fifteenth-century oligarchy dominated by the Medici family.


Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
David Do Paço

Abstract Studying the Ottoman subjects in eighteenth-century Vienna helps to understand better the process of integration of the different districts of the city in a fast-changing context, especially around its Danube port area. Despite the withdrawal of the Ottoman empire from central Europe after 1683, Ottomans were fully a part of the history of Vienna and their presence has to be explored within the specific urban dynamics of a city: the reconfiguration of its economic sectors and social places, the tensions at play between the socio-economic groups by which a city was made and the evolution of its urban planning. Focusing on the Ottoman merchants operating in Vienna allows us to identify and to analyse the workings of the port area of the fourth largest city in Europe and to explore the social spaces of Viennese markets, streets, courtyards and coffeehouses.


Hawwa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-250
Author(s):  
Hatoon Ajwad Al-Fassi

The history of women in Arabia is a relatively new and unexplored area of research and the place of women in Mecca (Makkah), Islam’s holiest city, is particularly shrouded in darkness. From the fifteenth century, however, there has been a stream of biographical works (tabaqat) that shed much light on the women of the city. This note turns scholarly attention on such fifteenth and sixteenth century works as Taqi al-Din al-Fassi’s (d. 1429) eight volume Al-‘Iqd al-Thamin fi Tarikh al-Balad al-Amin, which dedicates a volume to women, in an effort to continue the scholarly appraisal of women’s lives in Muslim societies. Reading such important sources shows how women actively participated in the public life of the city, including its intellectual circles, contrary to Orientalist stereotypes. By exploring the multiple roles of Meccan women in the fifteenth century, the hope is to prompt further study of their significance and its historical implications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-97
Author(s):  
GUIDO OLIVIERI

ABSTRACTThe analysis of a forgotten source sheds light on the early history of the cello in seventeenth-century Naples. The manuscript MS 2-D-13, held in the library of the Montecassino Abbey, dates from around 1699 and contains two unknown cello sonatas by Giovanni Bononcini, together with passacaglias, sonatas for two ‘violas’ and elaborations over antiphons by Gaetano Francone and Rocco Greco, two prominent string performers and teachers in Naples. A study of this remarkable source helps to clarify the nomenclature of the bass violins in use in the city and offers new evidence on the practice of continuo realization at the cello, as well as on the connections with partimento practice. This collection is thus of critical importance for a discussion of the technical achievements and developments of the cello repertory in Naples before the emergence of the celebrated generation of Neapolitan cello virtuosi in the early years of the eighteenth century.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Segre

A history of the Jewish presence in Venice and in the Serenissima Republic before the establishment of the Venice Ghetto had not yet been written, because there was no relevant investigation into the documentary sources of archives and libraries. On the occasion of the celebrations for the five hundred years of the Ghetto, it was still maintained that only from 1516 did the Jews settle in the city. This book, the result of twenty years of systematic research, intends to controvert that myth, which is an integral part of the larger myth of Venice. The documentary scope covers almost three hundred years (between the midthirteenth century and the second decade of the sixteenth century), that is, from the first ascertained presence of Jews to their definitive settlement in the urban area called the Ghetto, in a particularly troubled period of Venetian history. In this historical context, Mestre had special importance, becoming, close to the fifteenth century, the capital of Venetian Judaism: not only did the loan banks operate there, but there were also the only official synagogue (with relative cult and rabbinate), the hostel for those who had business to see to in the capital, and the cemetery. Unfortunately, none of these testimonies was preserved, and the very memory of that community was soon erased. A very similar story took place in Treviso, a primary Ashkenazi centre, which disappeared at the end of the fifteenth century, unlike Padua that was the only one, among the largest and oldest Jewish communities, to overcome the centuries, without ever being able to contend for primacy with the Venice Ghetto.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (special issue) ◽  
pp. 173-198

Costabili Palace, also known as Ludovico “il Moro” (Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan) Palace, is located in Ferrara on the ancient Ghiara road, occupying the corner that it forms with via Porta d'Amore, in the south-eastern area of the city. Attributed to the architect Biagio Rossetti (1447-1516) it represents, by size and formal wealth, begun but never completed, the most ambitious palace of the Renaissance in Ferrara. Commissioned by Count Antonio Costabili (1450-1527) at the end of the Fifteenth century, the construction was interrupted in 1503. Of four sides of its court only two were built in their rich and cultured architectural language, and only half of the main façade was sketched. Through the unpublished archival research carried out, crossed with the direct study of the building by surveying the relevant stylistic elements, helped by a proportional analysis and the reading of the stratigraphic masonry units, this doctoral research retraces the history of the construction. This work has clarified the role of the artists involved and their relationship with the strong personality of the client Antonio Costabili, ambassador in Milan of the Duke of Ferrara (Ercole I d’Este) from the year 1496 until the year 1499, one of the most representative intellectuals of his time thanks to a solid humanistic and artistic education. From a systematic study of an unfinished building site the precise design of the Costabili Palace will emerge as expression of a clear linguistic and lexical intention, called “all’antica”, inspired to the Roman classical architecture. The proposed research is wondering about the real contribution that the architectural culture in Ferrara at the end of the Fifteenth century, highly represented by the Costabili Palace, offers to the broader context of the Renaissance courts.


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