Unusual Roman Iron Age burials on the Links of Pierowall, Westray, Orkney

Antiquarian accounts and surviving finds allow two Iron Age cist-burials found in the late 18th century on the Links of Pierowall on Westray, Orkney, to be reconstructed, although no details of the bodies survive (but both were most probably inhumations); the unusual finds have not previously received full attention. One burial contained a polished stone disc, used as a palette for grinding some valued substance, probably cosmetic, medical or narcotic. A review of the type emphasises its particular prevalence in northern Scotland, and places it within the wider context of an increase in artefacts linked to personal appearance and behaviour in the Roman Iron Age. The other burial contained a well-known Roman glass cup and a hitherto ignored ‘metal spoon’ which can reasonably be identified as a Roman import as well, plausibly of silver. Such spoons are rare import goods, known from rich burials beyond the frontier on continental Europe in the late 2nd and 3rd century AD. This suggests that the Roman world adopted similar approaches to its varied neighbours in terms of the goods offered in (most likely) political or diplomatic connections.

Judeo-Spanish (Judezmo, Ladino)

The Ibero-Romance-speaking Jews of medieval Christian Iberia were linguistically distinct from their non-Jewish neighbors primarily as a result of their language’s unique Hebrew-Aramaic component; preservations from older Jewish Greek, Latin, and Arabic; a tradition of translating sacred Hebrew and Aramaic texts into their language using archaisms and Hebrew-Aramaic rather than Hispanic syntax; and their Hebrew-letter writing system. With the expulsions from Iberia in the late 15th century, most of the Sephardim who continued to maintain their Iberian-origin language resettled in the Ottoman Empire, with smaller numbers in North Africa and Italy. Their forced migration, and perhaps a conscious choice, essentially disconnected the Sephardim from the Spanish language as it developed in Iberia and Latin America, causing their language—which they came to call laðino ‘Romance’, ʤuðezmo or ʤuðjó ‘Jewish, Judezmo’, and more recently (ʤudeo)espaɲol ‘Judeo-Spanish’—to appear archaic when compared with modern Spanish. In their new locales the Sephardim developed the Hispanic component of their language along independent lines, resulting in further differentiation from Spanish. Divergence was intensified through borrowing from contact languages of the Ottoman Empire such as Turkish, Greek, and South Slavic. Especially from the late 18th century, factors such as the colonializing interests of France, Italy, and Austro-Hungary in the region led to considerable influence of their languages on Judezmo. In the 19th century, the dismemberment of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires and their replacement by highly nationalistic states resulted in a massive language shift to the local languages; that factor, followed by large speech-population losses during World War II and immigration to countries stressing linguistic homogeneity, have in recent years made Judezmo an endangered language.

the sentimental lives of international lawyers

If, to adapt a well-known international legal aphorism, international law is what international lawyers are, what, then, is an international lawyer? This chapter stages an answer to this question in three acts. In the first, it considers the absence of ‘life’ in the writing of international law and especially the way in which most international lawyers position themselves as a ‘person from nowhere’. In the second act, it documents and re-describes a recent move towards biography or micro-history or ‘life’ in the field of international law. In the final section, it describes four sentimental vices found in international legal work and reads these vices alongside the sentimentality of the late 18th-century ‘sentimental’ English novel before suggesting that there is a sentimental life available to international lawyers, through which they might weave a path between teariness (with the attendant risks of cheap sentimentality) and a too-cool dispassion (that is in danger of lapsing into an alienated technocracy).

Location of Tatar Settlements in the Middle and Lower Tara Region According to 18th Century Maps

Тhis article discusses the location of Tatar settlements in the lower and middle reaches of the Tara on maps of the Tarsky Uyezd (1784 and 1798) and on topographic plan of the Kartashevskago and Bergamotskaya districts of the Tarsky Uyezd (1798). These maps had not been previously used for reconstructing the history of the region. To test their accuracy, other sources are used, including the Inventory Book of the Tarsky Uyezd, Gerhard Miller’s itineraries, etc., as well as the results of archaeological and ethnographic studies. Based on the analysis of maps, patterns in the locations of Tatar settlements are reconstructed. They were situated between the mouth of Tara and its confl uence with the Chertalinka River on the right bank, and between the Chertalinka and Kalinka rivers on the left bank. The reliability of the late 18th century maps as sources of information about the winter and summer settlements of the Tatars of the Middle and Lower Tara is assessed. These maps do not suggest that the settlements were still seasonal rather than permanent at that time. The winter camps were situated on the Tara high terrace, away from the valley, and summer camps were on the fl ood plain, close to the villages. The general pattern was that people settled along the river, often close to the places where the Tara tributaries fl owed into it. Place names are suggestive of seasonal settlements. Comparison with modern maps suggests that the current settlements pattern on the Lower and Middle Tara emerged in the late 18th century.

Market development, state formation, and the historical abolition of the debtors’ prison

In the late 18th century, lenders’ right to imprison borrowers for defaulting on debts was taken for granted. By the mid-19th century, this power was widely and permanently revoked. Using a variety of archival evidence, this study explains the historical demise of the debtors’ prison in New York State, the first Western jurisdiction to permanently abolish imprisonment for debt. Tracing seven decades of contestation over moral aspects of credit exchange and incarceration, it shows that the development of capitalist markets, including their cultural and technological consequences, was necessary but not sufficient to render the debtor's prison obsolete. Rather, the development of a liberal polity and a penal state institutionalized new moral views about the use of force in economic exchange, consolidating the legitimacy of bodily detention around the punishment of crimes rather than the coercion of private agreements. The analysis has implications for theories of states, markets, and violence, as well as for recent trends in penal debt, debt resistance, and prison abolition.

Forests Without Frugivores and Frugivores Without Forests – An Investigation Into the Causes of a Paradox in One of the Last Archipelagos Colonized by Humans

The Mascarenes are sadly famous worldwide for the massive extinction of their native vertebrates since recent human colonization. However, extinction patterns show astonishing disparities between the two main islands and between lineages of forest vertebrates. On Réunion (2,512 km2, 3,070 m) where about a third of native habitats remains, most large-bodied vertebrates, especially frugivores, collapsed by the first half of the 18th century, while several have survived longer and some still exist on Mauritius (1,865 km2, 828 m) where more than 95% of native habitats have been transformed. Considering lineages of forest vertebrates shared by both islands (23 genera, 53 species), we test the hypothesis that differing patterns of lowland suitable habitat destruction is the main cause behind this paradox. Before that, we assess the potential impact of other major drivers of extinctions since first contact with humans. Firstly, Mauritius shows earlier and more numerous introductions of mammal predators known for their devastating impact (except northern islets which have thus become important sanctuaries for several squamates). Secondly, settlers were inveterate hunters on both islands, but while Réunion was overhunted before Mauritius, the burst of human population in the latter in late 18th century has not led to the rapid extinction of all large native vertebrates. These two factors alone therefore cannot explain the observed paradox. Rather, the early destruction of lowland habitats (<400 m) on Réunion is concomitant with most extinctions of forest vertebrate, notably frugivores that rapidly lost most lowland habitats dominated by large fleshy-fruited plants. Moreover, landform-induced fragmentation has likely decreased the ability of adjacent habitats to act as effective refuges. Conversely, Mauritius retained suitable low-fragmented habitats until the late 19th which probably allowed, at least for a time, several native vertebrates to escape from multiple human-induced disturbances. Despite the almost total destruction of native habitats since then on Mauritius, conservation actions have saved several threatened vertebrate species that play a fundamental role in the functioning of native ecosystems. The fact that there are now more favorable habitats on Réunion than on Mauritius argues for the rewilding of Réunion with these extant large vertebrates.

Особенности иконографии в калмыцкой вышивке: традиционные и современные практики

Introduction. The Kalmyks are a Mongolic Buddhist people that arrived in the Volga region in the 17th century. The specific ethnic features of Buddhism professed by the Kalmyks took shape over centuries of Russian suzerainty and were determined by various historical factors, including prolonged remoteness from Buddhist centers, the total eradication of Buddhist monasteries and centuries-long ban on spiritual guidance experienced in the 20th century, and the official Buddhist restoration by the early 21st century. Goals. The work aims at identifying and comparing traditional and contemporary Buddhist thangka patterns as elements to mirror particular features of Kalmyk iconography, as essential objects of religious cult and cultural heritage at large. Results. The paper shows that in the pre-20th century period Kalmyks used different techniques for producing thangkas — painting, embroidery, and applique ones. In the late 18th century onwards, imports of religious attributes from Tibet and Mongolia were restricted, and the role of art workshops affiliated to local Buddhist temples increased. That resulted in further development of thangka painting schools and the shaping of somewhat ethnic style in depicting Buddhist deities characterized by certain differences from canonical images. The old thangkas from private and public collections have served a basis for the restoration of ethnic painting traditions integral to Kalmykia’s Buddhism proper. The contemporary practices of producing divine images are closely related to stages in the regional development of Buddhism from the late 20th century to the present, lay Buddhist experiences, women’s leisure-time activities, and ethnic entrepreneurship. The study concludes contemporary Kalmyk needlewomen are guided by traditional rules of religious craftsmanship.