This volume presents the papers from the seventh North-European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles (NESAT), held in Edinburgh in 1999. The themes covered demonstrate a variety of scholarship that will encourage anyone working in this important and stimulating area of archaeology. From the golden robes of a Roman burial, to the fashionable Viking in Denmark, through to the early modern period and more technological aspects of textile-research, these twenty-four papers (five of which are in German) provide a wealth of new information on the study of ancient textiles in northern Europe.
Since its first appearance in 1901, John C. Van Dyke's The Desert has been considered one of the classics of American nature writing. Before its publication, Americans thought of deserts as scorpion-infested wastelands—with names like Devil's Domain and the Lands That God Forgot. All this changed as The Desert drew attention to the extraordinary beauty that existed in the American West: rolling sand dunes, golden vistas, vibrant sunsets, and remarkable plant and animal life. Van Dyke's book captured the nation's imagination at a time when attitudes about the land were changing. It provided a vocabulary that continues to be used as appreciation of deserts increases and ever greater pressures lead to new calls to protect these fragile environments. With a critical introduction by Peter Wild, this edition offers new insights—and reveals some surprising truths—about this legendary author and his best known work. Van Dyke was not, it seems, the "plaster saint of the desert." He was not entirely honest with his readers about the journeys that inspired the book, and his natural history includes serious errors. But in this more informed reading, Wild notes, Van Dyke "emerges as all the more fascinating a writer and his famous book becomes far more intriguing than most readers have imagined through the decades." As the centennial of its publication approaches and the complex story behind its long success is finally told, this new edition of The Desert reveals an equally complex and dramatic narrative: our changing relationship with the American landscape. "Van Dyke came at just the right time... No sooner had Americans conquered the wilderness, cut down the forests, and slaughtered the buffalo than the romantic nation began sentimentalizing the past, longing for what it had just destroyed."—from the Introduction
National parks have always been an emotive and iconic symbol, ever since the first parks of the modern era were created in the mid-nineteenth century. This book, based on original research, delves deeply into their character and significance, and the larger context in which they developed. The book celebrates the deserved attractiveness of the parks as wilderness or 'spectacle' to millions of visitors, but also emphasises how there was nothing inevitable, self-sustaining or without cost in their magnificence and accessibility. Those early parks were a powerful unifying force as national 'playgrounds', especially as motor transport democratised their use. However they also provoked bitter conflict in their dispossession of local communities and perhaps deliberate segregation of people from scenery and wildlife. That first century of national parks, which concluded with the significant break of the Second World War and the subsequent development of more international approaches to conservation, left an uncertain legacy. It was a fragile foundation from which to build what became an integral part of today's conservation movement.
This volume presents the papers from the seventh North-European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles (NESAT), held in Edinburgh in 1999. The themes covered demonstrate a variety of scholarship that will encourage anyone working in this important and stimulating area of archaeology. From the golden robes of a Roman burial, to the fashionable Viking in Denmark, through to the early modern period and more technological aspects of textile-research, these twenty-four papers (five of which are in German) provide a wealth of new information on the study of ancient textiles in northern Europe.
Nearly every aspect of daily life in the Mediterranean world and Europe during the florescence of the Greek and Roman cultures is relevant to the topics of engineering and technology. This volume highlights both the accomplishments of the ancient societies and the remaining research problems, and stimulates further progress in the history of ancient technology. The subject matter of the book is the technological framework of the Greek and Roman cultures from ca. 800 B.C. through ca. A.D. 500 in the circum-Mediterranean world and Northern Europe. Each chapter discusses a technology or family of technologies from an analytical rather than descriptive point of view, providing a critical summation of our present knowledge of the Greek and Roman accomplishments in the technology concerned and the evolution of their technical capabilities over the chronological period. Each presentation reviews the issues and recent contributions, and defines the capacities and accomplishments of the technology in the context of the society that used it, the available "technological shelf," and the resources consumed. These studies introduce and synthesize the results of excavation or specialized studies. The chapters are organized in sections progressing from sources (written and representational) to primary (e.g., mining, metallurgy, agriculture) and secondary (e.g., woodworking, glass production, food preparation, textile production and leather-working) production, to technologies of social organization and interaction (e.g., roads, bridges, ships, harbors, warfare and fortification), and finally to studies of general social issues (e.g., writing, timekeeping, measurement, scientific instruments, attitudes toward technology and innovation) and the relevance of ethnographic methods to the study of classical technology. The unrivalled breadth and depth of this volume make it the definitive reference work for students and academics across the spectrum of classical studies.
This edition of the text has been rewritten and re-illustrated to take account of the extensive new excavations and interpretations that have taken place since the book was first published twenty years ago. The central section of the text covers the origin, development, public and private buildings, fortifications, character and demise of each of the twenty-one major towns of the province: the provincial capital of London; the coloniae - Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester and York; the first civitas capitals - Canterbury, Verulamium and Chelmsford; from client kingdoms to civitas - Caister-by-Norwich, Chichester, Silchester and Winchester; Flavian expansion - Cirencester, Dorchester, Exeter, Leicester and Wroxeter; and Hadrianic stimulation - Caerwent, Carmarthen, Brough-on-Humber and Aldborough. The introductory chapters address the general questions of definition and urbanization, while the concluding chapter examines the reasons for the decay and final demise.
Using biographies of three natural scientists--geologist Clarence King, forester Robert Marshall, and biologist Rachel Carson--Science and the Social Good investigates the links between nature's scientific study and social improvement.
Why do so many different people with widely dissimilar ideas and customs get along as Americans? In American Beliefs, John McElroy identifies and explains those essential ideas that promote the unity of a vast nation and a diversified people--because they have been shared and acted upon by generations of Americans. Tracing these beliefs historically from their origins in the earliest experiences of the American colonists, Mr. McElroy shows how they became continuing convictions that together form a pattern distinct from those of other peoples. Work, he argues, shaped the primary beliefs of Americans, for the task of the early settlers was first of all to survive in a new wilderness. He then goes on to discuss beliefs that grew from the experiences of immigrants, from life on the frontier, and from the ideas that Americans developed about religion and morality, politics, human nature, and the workings of society. It is not birthplace or skin color that makes a person an American, Mr. McElroy observes, but a common behavior based upon principles of freedom and equality, individuality and responsibility, improvement and practicality. American Beliefs is a book greatly needed, a powerful antidote to decades of historical and political writings that have concentrated on the differences among Americans.
John R Leigh, born in Bolton, Lancashire, and educated in Cambridge, was musical, mathematical, scientific and literary. At school in the 1930s, his headmaster told him there would be no more wars and no need for more scientists. His life then ranged first from languages teacher, radar technician and RAF flight lieutenant in WWII, to marriage with a talented and literary American wife. After the war, John changed career to retrain in engineering—for a married man, a brave decision. Over the years, the keen theatre-going couple saw many diverse plays. Convinced that he had found an original approach to seeing Shakespearean dramas, he spent happy years describing and refining his thoughts: what ideas, prejudices and religious beliefs would surface in the minds of Shakespeare’s own audience, the groundlings and nobles? In our day, we cannot help but react with our own beliefs and social customs; yet in Globe Theatre, how would people have responded to seeing a ghost in the early sixteenth century? Rather differently than nowadays, John thought. (Hamlet studies form the greater part of his collected work.) Suppose you were seeing Hamlet for the first time: hence the title ‘The Naïve Shakespearean’.
American culture is on life-support. Beginning in the 1960s a generation of activists twisted and bent long-held American beliefs into an ideology of blame and political correctness-weakening and disrupting the nation. As John Harmon McElroy powerfully demonstrates, the counter-culture has become pervasive, with devastating results. He shows how we neglect to educate our children and call it "teaching self esteem;" how we assail the worth of America and call it respecting "diversity;" and how we refuse to take responsibility for our lives and call it "social justice." In tracing the roots and impact of the counter-culture's rejection of historical American beliefs, McElroy powerfully defends the bedrock principles of responsible individualism, practical improvement, and equal freedom under God.
Though the world created in this novel is strikingly familiar--children play, couples fall in love--something is slightly different. Orr has lost his memory and an eye. Where he travels, who he meets, and what he discovers in his quest for revenge will change this strange world forever.
This account of the drama in time that is Tucson begins not with the founding of the Presidio San Agustín on August 20, 1775, but with the emergence of Sentinel Peak in geologic deep time. It ends -- "To be continued"-- in 2014. It spans the periods of precontact with Europeans, Spanish colonization, Mexican nationhood, the territorial West, early and Depression era statehood, and the development of metropolitan Tucson after World War II. It offers not one definitive historical account but a collection of stories in which threads appear that may disappear beneath the surface for a while and reappear later, like some desert streams. It leaves spaces for, and invites the stories of, its readers. About the Author John Warnock was born in Tucson and graduated from Tucson High when it was one of the largest high schools in the nation. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, Oxford University in England, and the New York University School of Law. After teaching at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, he returned to Tucson in 1990 to join the English Department at the University of Arizona. He is now Professor Emeritus at UA and resides in Tucson.
An indispensable illustrated source of information for hundreds of species of North American trees This authoritative reference on native and non-native trees of North America, by Smithsonian veteran W. John Kress, provides an unprecedented appraisal of more than 325 common species. More than a field guide, it includes ● over 300 range maps and 3,000 photographs of leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, and bark; ● an in-depth introduction to the biology of trees, their value, structure, evolution, classification, ecology, and conservation; ● descriptions of each species, organized by genus and family; ● a reflection on the consequences of environmental change on the health of trees, now and in the future; ● a presentation, based on the latest technologies, of North American trees in a planetary and evolutionary perspective. Smithsonian Trees of North America, ten years in the making, marries science and art to provide an insightful and compassionate exploration of the diversity, structure, form, and beauty of trees.
Until now, the study of literary allusion has focused on allusions made by poets to other poets. In Tennyson Among the Novelists, John Morton presents the first book-length account of the presence of a poet's work in works of prose fiction. As well as shedding new light on the poems of Tennyson and their reception history, Morton covers a wide variety of novelists including Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh, and Andrew O'Hagan, offering a fresh look at their approach to writing. Morton shows how Tennyson's poetry, despite its frequent depreciation by critics, has survived as a vivifying presence in the novel from the Victorian period to the present day.
A pioneering study of the emergence of Buddhist art in southern India, featuring vibrant photography of rare works, many published here for the first time Named for two primary motifs in Buddhist art, the sacred bodhi tree and the protective snake, Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India is the first publication to foreground devotional works produced in the Deccan from 200 BCE to 400 CE. Unlike traditional narratives, which focus on northern India (where the Buddha was born, taught, and died), this groundbreaking book presents Buddhist art from monastic sites in the south. Long neglected, this is among the earliest surviving bodies of Buddhist art, and among the most sublimely beautiful. An international team of researchers contributes new scholarship on the sculptural and devotional art associated with Buddhism, and masterpieces from recently excavated Buddhist sites are published here for the first time—including Kanaganahalli and Phanigiri, the most important new discoveries in a generation. With its exploration of Buddhism’s emergence in southern India, as well as of India’s deep commercial and cultural engagement with the Hellenized and Roman worlds, this definitive study expands our understanding of the origins of Buddhist art itself.
This richly illustrated book celebrates the art of the miniature, but also looks beyond it at the many aspects of "small worlds"--in particular, their capacity to evoke responses that far exceed their physical dimensions. Mack explores the talismanic, religious, or magical properties with which miniatures are often imbued. Considering a wide range of objects, he examines the use of the miniature form in various cultural contexts.
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