̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - culture

Cinema has helped 'entrench' gender inequality in AI

fpjl2 — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 10:17:06 +0000

Study finds that just 8% of all depictions of AI professionals from a century of film are women – and half of these are shown as subordinate to men.

Ukraine’s cultural heritage faces destruction

fpjl2 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:55:11 +0000

Ukraine has a cultural inheritance that has outlasted atrocities and Soviet oppression, writes Dr Olenka Pevny. We must ensure it survives Russia's brutal invasion.

State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature, and Dissent After Stalin

sjr81 — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 08:02:57 +0000

Towards the end of the 1960s, rumours began to spread that nonconformist citizens of the USSR were being diagnosed with mental illnesses and confined to psychiatric hospitals.

Earliest-known children’s adaptation of Japanese literary classic discovered in British Library

sjr81 — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 09:38:47 +0000

Dr Laura Moretti, from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge, came across an unknown children’s picture-book, dating from 1766, under the title of Ise fūryū: Utagaruta no hajimari ( ̽��ֱ��Fashionable Ise: ̽��ֱ��Origins of Utagaruta) while on a study trip with her students.

̽��ֱ��British Library copy, part of the collection belonging to Sir Ernest Satow, a 19th century British scholar and diplomat, is a picture-book adaptation of Ise Monogatari. Translated into English as ̽��ֱ��Tales of Ise, it is one of the most important works in Japanese literature and was originally composed probably in the late 9th century following the protagonist, Ariwara no Narihira, through his many romances, friendships and travels.

̽��ֱ��Tales of Ise has since been adapted and reinterpreted continually down the centuries as part of the canon of Japanese literature.

“If we were to hazard a comparison, ̽��ֱ��Tales of Ise could be seen as the equivalent of the works of Shakespeare in terms of canonical status in Japan but I had never heard of or seen a children’s adaptation before – no-one knew of this book,” said Moretti. “This is a missing piece of the jigsaw. No one ever knew if it had been rewritten for children – but now we know. And it was sitting in the British Library all along.”

Dr Moretti’s new book, Recasting the Past (Brill, 2016), presents a full-colour reproduction of the 18th century edition, alongside a transcription in modern Japanese, an English translation, and textual analysis. ̽��ֱ��publication of the 1766 adaptation of the Tales of Ise fills a gap in scholars’ understanding of the work’s history. Although much scholarship has taken place on the reception of Tales of Ise and its target audiences in different epochs, no one has previously explored the age of its readership.

̽��ֱ��1766 introduction by the publisher shows that the book was intended to be read by children and there are various clues to support this view. ̽��ֱ��main character Narihira first appears as a young boy at school, a portrayal which encourages young people to identify with him. ̽��ֱ��whole text is also written using mainly the phonetic syllabary which could be understood by readers with only two years of schooling. ̽��ֱ��story was also abbreviated to include only 13 of the original 125 episodes – making it easily accessible to a broad readership and was useful for introducing those with basic literacy to Japan’s cultural heritage. ̽��ֱ��book would have educated children in the narrative of ̽��ֱ��Tales of Ise as well as the aesthetic quality of the poetry.

Moretti, though, counters the notion that only children would have read Utagaruta no hajimari, and argues that the text could also work as a substitute of the ̽��ֱ��Tales of Ise for those adults with limited linguistic and cultural literacy.

Now, after several years of negotiating the necessary permissions to use the two complete extant copies (one held at the National Institute of Japanese Literature and the other at the Gotoh Museum, both in Tokyo; alas the British Library copy has only one volume of three) and to finish the transcription, translation and textual analysis, Utagaruta is available again for readers to enjoy – more than 250 years after it was first printed.

While graphic novels and comic books such as manga remain hugely popular in Japan and across the world today, instances of books where images and text are interdependent abound in pre-modern and early-modern Japanese literature. In this specific case, Moretti shows that the primary function of images was to complement the prose by filling in the gaps left by the narrative. Images set the scene for the story and helped to characterize the protagonists by depicting their dress and physical appearance.

Moretti believes that studying this children’s adaptation can give a contribution to the study of children’s literature in general, discovering aspects that might not be apparent in other cultures.

“Utagaruta no hajimari, for example, is trying to draw children into the world of the adult, rather than shield them from it by introducing children to sex and appropriate romantic behaviour,” she said.

“A vast number of early-modern Japanese picture-books that adapt canonical literature awaits to be studied. This research is the first step in the foundation of this field of study. If appropriately developed, it has the potential to shed light onto new sides of children’s literature as well as to advance in the understanding of how early-modern Japanese graphic prose functioned.”

A chance discovery in the British Library has led to the discovery and reproduction of the earliest-known children’s adaptation of one of Japan’s greatest works of literature.

This is a missing piece of the jigsaw. And it was sitting in the British Library all along.

Laura Moretti

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Man v fish in the Amazon rainforest

amb206 — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Hunting brings us close to our prey but the blood of a dying animal, spilling on to our hands, reminds us of our own mortality. Trapping, the use of technology to entice and capture, distances us from the act of killing. But, in their making and their function, traps connect our minds and bodies to the animals we pursue.

Each year, the Enawenê-nawê, an indigenous community in the Amazon, construct monumental fishing dams to harvest migrating fish vital to their diet. Social anthropologist Dr Chloe Nahum-Claudel carried out her PhD fieldwork with this community, learning a dialect spoken by fewer than 1,000 people. She spent six weeks living alongside a group of 12 men as they constructed a dam.

She says: “I’m interested in the relationship between people’s practical economic lives and how they see the universe. My research with the Enawenê-nawê suggests that their dams are much more than a means to obtain food. ̽��ֱ��process shapes their minds, bodies and relationships with one another, with their prey, and with spirits and ancestors. My research was timely because these technologies are threatened by the construction of hydroelectric dams in many of the Amazon’s tributaries.”

̽��ֱ��process of making traps became a particular focus for Nahum-Claudel when, as she explains, she realised that we touch on our own vulnerability every time we catch another living creature and subject it to our wishes. She recently convened a conference to consider trap-making and how these activities can be used to approach the relationship between humans and other species.

“To trap an animal you have to be very knowledgeable about its habits, its preferences and its weaknesses, and then you have to put all this knowledge into the making of an effective trap, and the placement and disguise of your equipment. That’s why traps offer an interesting way to approach practical encounters between ourselves and other species,” she says.

“I also realised that this was a neglected field of research. There’s been a lot written about hunting – and trapping is one method of catching prey. But unlike hunting, trapping doesn’t have to be fatal; ornithologists studying bird migrations have to trap birds and camera-traps are used to monitor tigers in India. I was interested in bringing people together to see if there were overlaps in the practice of trapping in such diverse contexts.”

Nahum-Claudel’s conference paper, which will form the first chapter of her forthcoming book, describes the Enawenê-nawê’s fishing technology and how it shapes them. ̽��ֱ��Enawenê-nawê are pescatarians who employ a variety of fishing techniques depending on the seasonal opportunities.

̽��ֱ��most impressive and unusual of these technologies are fishing dams built to coincide with the downstream migration of shoal-living fish, which spawn in the flooded forest during the rainy season. Each year teams of fishermen leave their large village while the fish are busy feasting and spawning and set to work building dams to trap the fish as they try to return downstream, once the river levels start to fall.

These dams are two-part technologies. In the first week or so, the men make a weir across the river using timber, bark and lianas from the surrounding forest. Men float the logs downriver and then dive into the fast flowing water to anchor them in the river bed. Frail, elder men later make nets to catch jumping fish. Ideally, the weir closes off the entire river so that not one fish can escape.

Once the weir is complete, the team turn their attention to making 100 or so man-sized traps which are crafted from cylinders of bark and basketry woven from the ribs of palm fronds. ̽��ֱ��special bark cylinders, which are said to resemble men’s thorax are prised off of tree trunks like waist coats, and must not snap. ̽��ֱ��completed trap is man-sized and phallic-looking.

In her paper, Nahum-Claudel explains that the activities of weir-building and trap-making demand different kinds of effort and imply contrasting kinds of sociability for the community. As the men construct the weir, moving vigorously between the forest and the water, they liken themselves to the creator deity who built the first dam as he made the world. Like him, they are masters of the boundary between land and water, which, as fisher people, is the crucial one in their universe.

She says: “What I mean by mastery is clear in the expression men use to describe the fish’s demise. They say that the fish ‘drown in the traps’. Men create the conditions in which the fish drown in their own watery dominion and, what’s more, the fish bring about their downfall by entering the traps out of their own curiosity and desire. When the men make traps, the seated handiwork makes them more contemplative. As anyone who does craftwork knows, the activity of making something with your hands encourages a mood of reflection and brings about identification with the object crafted.”

While weir-building is physically demanding and highly organised, tending the traps is more restful and is described by the Enawenê-nawê themselves as ‘lying down to rest’. Camped downstream of the dam, the men may be physically absent but their thoughts and actions are understood to have an impact on their traps’ ability to capture fish – precisely because the trap never loses its bond with the man who has crafted it.

“ ̽��ֱ��men live for the traps, devoting themselves to animating them so that they will catch plenty of fish,” says Nahum-Claudel. “They whisper to their traps and utter magical incantations. Sweet-smelling leaves are rubbed on the mouths of the traps to make them enticing to the fish. ̽��ֱ��team self-consciously strives to create a joyful atmosphere which the traps ‘desire’. There is much sexual banter – it’s locker-room talk all the time – and I was constantly reminded that I should not be grumpy, argumentative or stingy so as not to sour the mood.”

These practices seem to be about ensuring the traps’ efficacy and protecting the men themselves. Both of these aspects are thought of in terms of fertility. ̽��ֱ��traps are said to enter the weir ‘like a penis penetrating for the first time’ and the fish are seduced into entering their fragrant openings. As soon as they set the traps in place, the fishermen say that they become like virgins who have had sex for the first time.

“It is as if the traps were their own penises,” Nahum-Claudel says, “because their insertion thrusts men into the same state of vulnerability as teenage boys experience after they have had sex for their first time and their partner bleeds”. Through sex, men become open to the blood of women and they must exercise care in what they eat and in the activities they undertake when their wives menstruate or give birth. ̽��ֱ��first time this happens to a teenage boy, the restrictions to his activity and diet are strict – he lies down to rest and fast in his hammock for several days.

When the traps enter the weir the team of fishermen act in a very similar way, they fast and they say that they are now ‘lying down to rest’. This suggests that men are open to the blood of the fish caught in the traps – traps which are connected to their own bodies – just as they are open to the blood of women. Nahum-Claudel suggest that the dam fishing endeavour is about mitigating the risks involved in shedding blood while, at the same time, using the channel that exists between traps and men to promote the traps’ fertility. A theme that crops up repeatedly in Enawenê-nawê mythology is that the tables can easily turn and predator can become prey.

“Traps are all about hubris,” says Nahum-Claudel, “men build a deadly dam and drown fish in their own dominion. This activity is playing God, but everything about the men’s behaviour suggests that they are acutely aware of how risky this is, that it could – like a tragic play – end in their own downfall. What they stress as they trap the fish is not their Deity-like mastery but rather the subjection it implies. This feeling fits with the experiences of hunters and fishermen around the world. ̽��ֱ��proximity of life and death brings into focus human vulnerability so that hunting is rarely a question of unalloyed heroism. Enawenê-nawê dam fishing takes this to extremes because it is based on a monumental technology and entails intensive subjective and social involvement by the fishermen.”

Inset images from top: men harvest fish from their traps at Olowina River’s dam; the traps are ready to be inserted into the upriver face of a dam at Maxikywina River; a man dives down to pull up his trap from its position near the river bed. All photos: Chloe Nahum-Claudel, 2009. Nahum-Claudel's book is now available.

̽��ֱ��Enawenê-nawê people of the Amazon rainforest make beautifully engineered fishing dams. Living alongside this indigenous community, Dr Chloe Nahum-Claudel observed how the act of trapping fish shapes their minds, bodies and relationships. ̽��ֱ��proximity of life and death brings human vulnerability sharply into focus.

̽��ֱ��men live for the traps, devoting themselves to animating them so that they will catch plenty of fish.

Chloe Nahum-Claudel

Enawenê-nawê men check basket and bark traps for fish before reinserting them into the weir’s upriver face

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Flamenco: what happens when a grassroots musical genre becomes a marker of culture

amb206 — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 09:03:16 +0000

For audiences around the world, flamenco symbolises the colour and romance of southern Spain. An energetic blend of song, guitar and dance, it is most strongly associated with Andalusia, one of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions. With historic connections to Islamic North Africa, Andalusia stands at a geographical crossroads and its culture is rich with influences from far beyond its shores.

̽��ֱ��government of Andalusia has long supported flamenco as an important element of regional identity and a magnet for tourism. In 2010 flamenco was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (ICH), a designation that signals its contribution to culture worldwide. It was a seminal moment in the history of flamenco which has progressed from a tradition embedded in gypsy and working class communities to a genre taught in conservatoires alongside more classical styles.

̽��ֱ��listing of flamenco as an ICH raises important questions about culture and identity: how best to keep regional art forms alive and flourishing in an increasingly globalised world and, most specifically, how musical forms intersect with politics. Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth (Faculty of Music) addresses these topics and more in his book Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain, a detailed study of the ways in which an iconic performative tradition contributes to the formation of identity at local, regional, national and international levels.

Machin-Autenrieth comes to his subject matter as an ethnomusicologist and classical guitar player interested in the shifting politics of a ‘grassroots’ art form that has been packaged both as a global commodity and as a symbol of regional identity. His understanding of the guitar and grasp of colloquial Spanish, together with his deep interest in the relationship between music and politics, qualify him for the task of unravelling the ways in which music is grounded not just in place but in notions of place which contribute to powerful ‘landscapes’ of belonging.

Much has been written, and contested, about the origins of flamenco which emerged as a genre only in the mid-19th century when it was ‘discovered’ by middle class audiences searching for the exoticism and romanticism of folk traditions. Its deeper roots are entwined with the music of gypsies and other marginalised groups. Its themes play on the highs and lows of human experience – love and loss, death and sorrow – reflecting the suffering of a population living in a region scarred by centuries of feudalism.

Flamenco is not universally popular in its country of origin where some see it as a relic of a more ‘backward’ Spain and ‘not really European’. Machin-Autenrieth writes in his introduction: “Many Spaniards I have met (from outside Andalusia) disregard and even detest the conflation of flamenco with Spanish-ness, viewing it as nothing more than an Andalusian-Gypsy tradition. Arguably, a similar process of appropriation is occurring within Andalusia, the tradition being developed by institutions and in the popular media as a definitive symbol of regional identity.”

In setting the context for his discussion, Machin-Autenrieth traces the recent history of flamenco which was repressed and then appropriated by the Franco regime. When the regime ended in the mid-1970s, Spain underwent a process of democratisation and decentralisation in which flamenco was a political tool, becoming a potent marker of the culture of Andalusia. Its popularity may not be universal across the region but, by virtue of educational initiatives and a programme of festivals, all Andalusians are familiar with its distinctive style.

Music has a powerful cohesive effect on communities, and orally-based traditions in particular offer a voice to groups who might remain unheard. But when music is appropriated by institutions, its authenticity and relevance for local communities may be under threat. Concerns about the alleged commercialisation of flamenco are nothing new. Early in the 20th century, the poet Federico García Lorca and composer Manuel de Falla, both Andalusians themselves, emerged as champions for an art form which had gained negative stereotypes, and was under attack by antiflamenquistas intent on depicting flamenco as an outdated cultural phenomenon out of step with Spain’s European ambitions.

In recent years, however, flamenco has seen an increase in institutional support in a country where regional identity is high on the agenda. But institutional involvement in the arts can be counter-reproductive. Making a point that could apply equally to other art forms, Machin-Autenrieth quotes the Spanish sociologist, Aix Gracia, who argues that “the affability with which the administrations treat flamenco in Andalusia, through ‘festivalisation’ and its preservation as a representation of identity, is also its biggest threat… I cannot resist the question: could this art die of success? Or more specifically, could it lose its autonomy?”

In exploring the question of artistic freedom, Machin-Autenrieth attended dozens of flamenco performances and interviewed many of those involved as artists and promoters. He describes the tensions that exist between the styles of flamenco approved by the heritage industry and forms out of favour with the dominant institutions. Strength of feeling against the institutional development of flamenco led to the emergence of Flamenco es un derecho (Flamenco is a right), a protest movement that claims flamenco is a gift to humanity – but one over which Andalusians have a right.

Much scholarly research on flamenco in Andalusia has focused on the role of three cities (Seville, Cadiz and Jerez) as the defining ‘golden triangle’ for its performance. As well as exploring the regional politics behind flamenco, Machin-Autenrieth looks beyond the ‘golden triangle’ to focus on flamenco in Granada, a city famous for its stunning Moorish architecture. Focusing on specific case studies, he explores the relevance of flamenco for local identity in Granada beyond its regional associations. ̽��ֱ��book provides an insight into the range of distinct contexts and styles in Granada that speak to a vibrant and historically-significant flamenco community.

Spanish identity, by virtue of the country’s history, is strongly local. To be Andalusian is to feel a strong sense of regional belonging, to be granadino or granadina (from Granada) is to have even stronger allegiance to a city with its own sense of history and tradition. With flamenco, a sense of locality splits even further into the competing styles performed in different clubs and venues. It is this richness of diversity, rather than adherence to proscribed authenticity, that will keep the genre moving forward.

Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain is published by Routledge.

Inset images: Flamenco (Paolo Signorini); Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain front cover (Routledge).

What happens when a musical genre becomes an identifier for a region? In his book Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain, Matthew Machin-Autenrieth unravels the cultural complexity and contested politics of an iconic art form.

In 2010 flamenco was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (ICH). It was a seminal moment in the history of flamenco which has progressed from a tradition embedded in gypsy and working class communities to a genre taught in conservatoires.

Flickr Creative Commons (Veyis Polat)

Flamenco by Veyis Polat (cropped)

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Beyond the harem: ways to be a woman during the Ottoman Empire

amb206 — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 07:00:00 +0000

Ottoman women shopped. They didn’t just shop; they also ran businesses, owned property and, on occasion, stormed buildings to stage protest meetings. Not only did they flirt and dance – and infuriate their husbands with demands for the latest fashions – but they exerted genuine political and economic power. And they did all this much more visibly than is often assumed.

In Ottoman Women in Public Space, a group of scholars of the Middle East and the Islamic world turn their attention to a neglected topic: what life was actually like for women at the height of an empire that lasted for 600 years (right up until the turn of the 20th century) and, at its most powerful, stretched eastwards from present-day Hungary, southwards to the religious centre of Mecca, and westwards around the southern Mediterranean to the bustling port of Algiers.

Edited by Dr Kate Fleet and Ebru Boyar (Faculty of History and Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies at Newnham College), Ottoman Women in Public Space is a collection of essays by specialists based in five countries and from a range of academic disciplines. In drawing on sources that span from court records to poetry, the contributors challenge the notion that female life was confined to the sequestered spaces of the harem and the hamam (traditional Turkish bath).

̽��ֱ��conventional narrative places Ottoman women firmly in the domestic sphere and fails to see how visible they were outside the home, either in the mahalle (neighbourhood) or beyond. Female lives, viewed in modern western terms, were undoubtedly proscribed. But scholars are now exploring the extent to which women were publically visible, whether they were members of the elite sampling the delights of the pleasure gardens of great cities or peasants labouring in the fields.

Why have women been missing from histories of the Ottoman empire – and why have narratives about females centred on the seclusion of the harem? As Boyar and Fleet explain, women’s voices are absent in records which were almost exclusively produced by men. When female voices are heard, they are mediated through a male narrator. It’s a universal reality, they point out, that a large proportion of women – those who are older or of low status – have long been effectively ‘invisible’ in public.

How visible a woman was, where she was free to go and what she was able to do, depended largely on who she was. ̽��ֱ��mobility of noble women was more constricted than that of poor women. In the countryside, female labour was essential to agriculture. An 19th-century engraving of harvesting in Bulgaria shows two women at work. With a child on her lap and a whip in her hand, the younger woman drives a horse and threshing sledge over the crop to separate the grain from the chaff.

In cities the most visible of all women were the thousands of slaves who ranged from poor serving girls to powerful concubines. In a chapter devoted to the extremes of visibility, Fleet writes: “While women were positioned at various points along the trajectory of visibility … slave women moved through the whole gamut of visibility from physical invisibility and seclusion at one end of the spectrum to total exposure on the market place, a level of display unthinkable for any other Ottoman woman, at the other.”

Slaves crossed private/public boundaries. Vital to the smooth-running of the home behind closed doors, they were also a marker of public respectability. A hand-coloured portrait (late 16th century) of a lady walking to the baths accompanied by her slave shows both dressed to impress. ̽��ֱ��slave’s presence signalled that the lady being accompanied was legitimately out in public and under the close protection of her family.

As commodities, slaves were bought and sold, traded and transported. “ ̽��ֱ��visibility of slaves on the market varied from complete exposure in public slave markets to the more private display within a slave dealer’s house, or presentation of a slave dealer within the konak (residence) of a potential buyer,” writes Fleet. An English visitor to Istanbul at the end of the 16th century described its slave market: “They sell many Christian slaves of all sects and adge, in manner as they sell thier horses, looking them in the eyes, mouth, and all other parts.”

At the other end of the social spectrum, and with more agency at their disposal but less mobility in public spaces, wealthy women devised numerous ways to make their presence felt without jeopardising their reputations: they used perfumes; they appeared on balconies, briefly visible to passers-by; sweet sounds of their voices carried into the street. Their bodies may have been covered as they negotiated public spaces, but they walked with a sway of their hips and used tokens as a secret language to convey messages of love.

Male control of women was underpinned by notions of moral rectitude but women were out and about much more than has previously been thought. They were (at least sometimes) visible to the gaze of foreign observers, curious about a culture so seemingly exotic. In the collection of the Correr Museum in Venice is an illustrated travel manuscript showing scenes of Istanbul in the late 17th century. Among them is a delightful sketch of a group of women enjoying an outing in a boat rowed by three handsome oarsmen sporting splendid black moustaches.

Notions of honour ran deep in Ottoman society. Boyar writes: “ ̽��ֱ��desire to protect women’s honour had less to do with women than it did with concern with the well-being of society as a whole, for an immoral woman meant an immoral society.” Women could be seen in public but how they behaved, and how they were perceived, was of paramount importance. For women to be seen visiting the graves of their relatives, or shines of holy personages, was acceptable; for women visiting a cemetery to be seen drinking and eating with unrelated men was not.

Women’s lives were controlled not just by the state, argues Boyar, but also by “an imagined moral community” with the “power to label a woman as honourable or dishonourable as it thought fit, leaving the woman concerned with no recourse to this judgment”. However, social perceptions of respectability were fluid – and varied across time and space. An Anatolian visitor to Cairo was shocked to see the wives of high-ranking men riding on donkeys. His reaction was coloured by the practice elsewhere for prostitutes to be punished by being displayed on donkeys.

It was within the intimacy of the mahalle (neighbourhood) that the question of reputation was most potent. “For a woman to be labelled a prostitute had significant ramifications for it left her exposed without the protection of either family, society or the state,” writes Boyar. “She was seen as challenging the imagined moral community and as seeking to build a life outside its boundaries and control.” On one hand condemnation could mean ruin, on the other marginalisation could be empowering. Brothels were everywhere. Not only did prostitutes have access to public spaces but, as an integral part of society, they were sometimes invited to important celebrations and took part in street processions.

By the turn of the 20th century, the Ottoman empire was crumbling. Its demise had opened up new opportunities for women to enter public spheres. As Boyar writes: “Their progress and the speed of change in both the level of their participation and the acceptance of their new position owed much to the dire circumstances that the empire found itself in in that period and to certain changes, in particular the emergence of the press and the development of female education.”

Unsurprisingly, so profound a societal change was by no means unopposed. As late as 1915, a regional governor expressly forbad women discussing the government to “create demoralisation with their lying and inaccurate words and gossip”. But even this condemnation of female gossip shows how much women were present and how their voices were heard in the Ottoman public space.

With this new volume, Fleet and Boyar and their contributors lift the lid on many thousands of lives previously marginalised by academic histories.

Ottoman Women in Public Space is published by Brill.

A new volume of essays looks afresh at women’s lives during the 600 years of the Ottoman empire. ̽��ֱ��book challenges the stereotypes of female lives confined to the harem and hamam – and reveals how women were surprisingly visible in public spaces.

̽��ֱ��desire to protect women’s honour had less to do with women than it did with concern with the well-being of society as a whole, for an immoral woman meant an immoral society.

Ebru Boyar

History Library, Sofia ̽��ֱ��

Engraving of threshing near Ogosta, Bulgaria, second half of the 19th century

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Latest archaeological finds at Must Farm provide a vivid picture of everyday life in the Bronze Age

amb206 — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 09:10:34 +0000

Archaeologists have made remarkable discoveries about everyday life in the Bronze Age during their ten-month excavation of 3,000-year-old circular wooden houses at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire, a site that has been described as the 'Pompeii of the fens'.

Believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, the houses were destroyed by a fire that caused the settlement, which was built on stilts, to collapse into the shallow river beneath. ̽��ֱ��soft river silt encapsulated the remains of the charred dwellings and their contents, which survive in extraordinary detail.

̽��ֱ��range and quality of the many finds have astonished members of Cambridge Archaeological Unit and colleagues at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Division of Archaeology. ̽��ֱ��fire is thought to have happened soon after the construction of the roundhouses.

“ ̽��ֱ��excellent preservation of the site is due to deposition in a water-logged environment, the exclusion of air and the lack of disturbance to the site. ̽��ֱ��timber and artefacts fell into a partly infilled river channel where they were later buried by more than two metres of peat and silt,” said Professor Charles French from the Division of Archaeology. “Surface charring of the wood and other materials also helped to preserve them.”

Now the excavation is coming to an end, archaeologists are able to build a near complete picture of domestic life in a Bronze Age house: where activities happened, what the roof was made of, what people were wearing, and how their clothes were produced. ̽��ֱ��materials found provide evidence of farming, crafts and building technologies.

̽��ֱ��site has revealed the largest collections in Britain of Bronze Age textiles, beads, domestic wooden artefacts (including buckets, platters, troughs, shafts and handles) and domestic metalwork (axes, sickles, hammers, spears, gouges, razors, knives and awls). It has also yielded a wide range of household items; among them are several complete ‘sets’ of storage jars, cups and bowls, some with grain and food residues still inside. Most of the pots are unbroken and are made in the same style; this too is unprecedented.

“Perhaps uniquely, we are seeing the whole repertoire of living at Must Farm – from food procurement to cooking, eating and waste and the construction and shaping of building materials,” said Professor French. “We see the full tool and weapons kits – not just items that had been lost, thrown away or deposited in an act of veneration – all in one place.”

Finds of textiles and fibres illuminate the stages of textile production, and include hanks of prepared fibre, thread wound on wooden sticks or into balls, and finished fabrics of various qualities. “ ̽��ֱ��outstanding level of preservation means that we can use methods, such as scanning electron microscopy which magnifies more than 10,000 times, to look in detail at the fibre content and structure,” said Dr Margarita Gleba, an archaeologist specialising in textiles.

“All the textiles appear to have been made from plant fibres. ̽��ֱ��people at Must Farm used cultivated species, such as flax, as well as wild plants, such as nettle and perhaps trees, to obtain raw materials. Flax provided the finest fibres and was used to weave fine linen fabrics on a loom. ̽��ֱ��linen textiles found at Must Farm are among the finest from Bronze Age Europe. Wild fibres appear to have been used for coarser fabrics made in a different technique, known as twining.”

Two rare well-preserved Bronze Age tripartite wheels have been found on site. These attest to a world beyond the river and to the ongoing relationship between the wetland settlement and the adjacent managed and cultivated dry land. Despite the site’s situation in a wetland, the majority of the surviving material speaks of an economy based on dry land.

Several undergraduates on Cambridge’s archaeology course have had the chance to assist with the dig, working alongside Cambridge Archaeological Unit to gain first-hand experience of a water-logged site. Professor French said: “Four of our students were able to experience the challenge of digging organic remains in a matrix of organic silt – and dealing with the three-dimensional structures of the collapsed dwellings which require a particular way of thinking.”

Visits to the site by more than 2,000 members of the public have been led by Selina Davenport of Cambridge Archaeological Unit. “One of the things that people find most fascinating is the way in which the site questions the long-held view about life in the fens during the Bronze Age that communities used the resources of the watery environment but lived on dry land,” she said.

“ ̽��ֱ��finds at Must Farm reveal that some communities were living right in the heart of the fen – and that these people were connected to others by an active thoroughfare which linked them to the rest of Britain and to the North Sea.”

̽��ֱ��excavation is funded by Historic England and building products supplier Forterra. ̽��ֱ��work on the site has been carried out by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. Further work on the finds is taking place at the McDonald Institute, Division of Archaeology, and other centres.

More images (courtesy of Historic England) of some of the finds.

Excavation of a site in the Cambridgeshire fens reveals a Bronze Age settlement with connections far beyond its watery location. Over the past ten months, Must Farm has yielded Britain’s largest collections of Bronze Age textiles, beads and domestic artefacts. Together with timbers of several roundhouses, the finds provide a stunning snapshot of a community thriving 3,000 years ago.

Perhaps uniquely, we are seeing the whole repertoire of living at Must Farm – from food procurement to cooking, eating and waste and the construction and shaping of building materials.

Charles French

Must Farm

Stuffocation in the Bronze Age

David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Division of Archaeology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said that the exceptional site of Must Farm gives a picture, in exquisite detail, of everyday life in the Bronze Age.

He said: "Domestic activity within structures is demonstrated from clothing to household objects, to furniture and diet. These dwellings have it all, the complete set, it’s a 'full house'. 'Stuffocation', very much in vogue in today’s 21st century, may, given the sheer quantity of finds from the houses at Must Farm, have been a much earlier problem then we’d ever imagined.”

What did people wear 3,000 years ago?

̽��ֱ��community living in these roundhouses were making their own high quality textiles, like linen. Some of the woven linen fabrics are made with threads as thin as the diameter of a course human hair and are among the finest Bronze Age examples found in Europe.

Other fabrics and fibres found include balls of thread, twining, bundles of plant fibres and loom weights which were used to weave threads together. Textiles were common in the Bronze Age but it is very rare for them to survive today.

What did they eat?

Wild animal remains found in rubbish dumps outside the houses, show they were eating wild boar, red deer and freshwater fish such as pike. Inside the houses, the remains of young lambs and calves have been found, revealing a mixed diet. While it is common for Late Bronze Age settlements to include farm domestic animals, it is rare to find wild animals being an equally important part of their diet. Plants and cereals were also an important part of the Bronze Age diet and the charred remains of porridge type foods, emmer wheat and barley grains have been found preserved in amazing detail, sometimes still inside the bowls they were served in.

What household goods did they have?

Each of the houses was fully equipped with pots of different sizes, wooden buckets and platters, metal tools, saddle querns (stone tools for grinding grains), weapons, textiles, loom weights and glass beads. These finds suggest a materialism and sophistication never before seen in a British Bronze Age settlement. Even 3,000 years ago people seemed to have a lot of stuff.

Many of these objects are relatively pristine suggesting that they had only been used for a very short time before the settlement was engulfed by fire.

What did Bronze Age houses look like?

At least five houses have been found at the Must Farm settlement, each one built very closely together for a small community of people. Every house seems to have been planned in the same way, with an area for storing meat and another area for cooking or preparing food.

̽��ֱ��roundhouses were built on stilts above a small river. ̽��ֱ��conical roofs were built of long wooden rafters covered in turf, clay and thatch. ̽��ֱ��floors and walls were made of wickerwork, held firmly in place by the wooden frame.

What were they trading in?

Some 18 pale green and turquoise glass beads have been found which analysis has shown were probably made in the Mediterranean basin or the Middle East.

̽��ֱ��Q&A above is taken from a Historic England press release.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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