Everything but the Squeal: The Politics of Porcinity in the Livre des Propriétés des Choses

Mediaeval encyclopaedias described nonhuman animals in terms of their corporeality and cosmic significance by combining zoological and theological knowledge. Such descriptions were therefore prescriptions of normative parameters for how animals were supposed to function within Christian society, rather than objective observations. As mediaeval conceptualisations of species were highly malleable, particular animals that shared no biological relation could be considered kin, and animals who behaved against their prescribed nature could become a different animal altogether. This paper investigates how several species were implicated in the mediaeval invention of what it meant to be (like) a pig. My counter-hegemonic reading of the Livre des propriétés des choses, a fifteenth-century French encyclopaedia, draws attention to how late mediaeval Christian scripts of porcinity simultaneously defined the nonhumanity of pigs and of ‘other’ humans. These render the idea of the pig inseparable from what it meant to be human. I contend that the Livre des propriétés des choses employs discourses of porcinity to self-define and -stabilise particular notions of human identity by debasing and othering human and nonhuman animals with seemingly porcine traits. Additionally, I underline how such fabrications of humanity are often mired in practices that devaluate and harm real animals, including other humans. Mediaeval studies need to further address the crucial roles of animal suffering in human history. This way, historians can add valuable insights to present debates about anthropocentrism and its devastating socio-ecological consequences.

Monboddo, Lord (James Burnett) (1714–99)

In speculating that orang-utans’ vocal organs must have been designed for speech, Monboddo was convinced that these creatures were primitive humans who had not yet entered society. His chief contribution to the history of linguistics and anthropology turns upon two propositions: that language is not natural to man, and that close physical resemblance between species is evidence of biological relation.

Vascular complications of dysglycaemia

The dysglycaemic cardiovascular continuum is defined as a state of long-lasting insulin resistance, compensatory hyperinsulinaemia, and early glucometabolic impairment clustering with concomitant cardiovascular risk and the development of macrovascular disease prior to the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. There is indeed a strong biological relation between hyperglycaemia, insulin resistance, and vascular disease.

A Multidimensional Investigation of Biocultural Relationships among Three Late Prehistoric Societies in Tennessee

Interrelations among three roughly contemporaneous late prehistoric Mississippian societies in Middle and East Tennessee are reexamined in terms of currently available biological, archaeological, and ethnohistoric data. Previous researchers have suggested a close relation between two of those cultures—Mouse Creek and Middle Cumberland—to the exclusion of the third, Dallas. However, multivariate analyses of craniofacial and mandibular dimensions of individuals from the three groups suggest a greater biological relation between Dallas and Mouse Creek than between Mouse Creek and Middle Cumberland. In addition, a comparison of intrasite settlement patterning, ceramic and mortuary variability, and ethnohistoric data across the three groups support the skeletal analysis. Relations between Dallas and Mouse Creek may mirror similar processes of sociopolitical reorganization occurring throughout the Southeast in the late prehistoric period.