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This is a study of the history, archaeology, and numismatics of Central Asia, an area of great significance for our understanding of the ancient and early medieval world. This vast, land-locked region, with its extreme continental climate, was a centre of civilization with great metropolises. Its cosmopolitan population followed different religions (Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Buddhism), and traded extensively with China, India, the Middle East, and Europe. The millennium from the overthrow of the first world empire of Achaemenian Persians by Alexander the Great to the arrival of the Arabs and Islam was a period of considerable change and conflict. The book focuses on investigations in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, providing a complex analysis of the symbiosis between the city life based on oases, and the nomadic peoples grazing their animals in the surrounding semi-deserts. Other topics include the influence of the Greek colonists on military architecture, and the major impact of the Great Kushans on the spread of Buddhism and on the development of the Central Asian metropolis. Although written documents rarely survive, coinage has provided essential evidence for the political and cultural history of the region.

This book provides the historical background to the rise of the Big Society, surveying the history of voluntarism over the last century. Politicians and commentators have long bemoaned the supposed decline of civic life, fretting about its health and its future. In fact, the real story of voluntarism over the last hundred years has not been decline, but constant evolution and change. Whether we use the terms charity, philanthropy, civil society, non-governmental organisations, the third sector or the Big Society, voluntary endeavour is one of the most vibrant and dynamic areas of British public life. The scholars featured in this collection show how the voluntary sector's role in society, and its relationship with the state, has constantly adapted to its surroundings. Volumtary groups have raised new agendas, tackled old problems in new ways, acted as alternatives to statutory provision and as catalysts for further government action. They have emerged out of citizens' concerns, independent of government, and yet have remained willing to work with politicians of all persuasions. By surveying the sheer extent and diversity of the sector since the start of the First World War, the book demonstrates that voluntarism not only continues to thrive, but is also far larger than any political agenda that may be imposed upon it.

This book reviews the numerous developments in the theoretical framework of interpretation that have taken place over recent years. The application of more theoretically informed approaches to the ancient literary corpus, and a more detailed analysis of context, form, and reception, have fundamentally challenged the interpretative paradigms that formerly held sway. No consensus on interpretative stance has yet emerged, and in this volume many of the foremost researchers in the field examine the overall state of work on the subject. The chapters in the present volume are intended to contribute to this development of different approaches in their application to real Egyptian texts. No single overarching theoretical framework underlies these contributions; instead they represent a multiplicity of perspectives. The range of chapters includes textual criticism; literary criticism; the social role of literature; reception theory; and the treatment of newly discovered literary texts. All contributions centre on the problems and potentials of studying Egyptian literature in a theoretically informed manner. Although major difficulties remain in interpreting a literature preserved only fragmentarily, this volume demonstrates the ongoing vitality of current Egyptological approaches to this problem. This volume also incorporates a broader cross-cultural and comparative element, providing overviews of connections and discontinuities with biblical, Classical, and Mesopotamian literatures, in order to address the comparative contexts of Ancient Egyptian literature.

Although there has been much recent interest in the interaction of England and Ireland in the Viking Age, the links between the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish in the period before 800 have been much less studied. This book provides an interdisciplinary assessment of these connections. The chapters range widely in their scope. Seven chapters look at issues of language and literature, legal traditions, and ecclesiastical history; a further ten consider the evidence of material culture, through art history and archaeology. This overview of the field of Anglo-Saxon/Irish relations will be of use to people interested in early medieval studies.

The Union of the Crowns in 1603 is the cornerstone of the modern British state, but relations between England and Scotland did not always run smoothly in the following centuries. This volume examines how the neighbouring British nations regarded each other from 1603 to 1900. Why did this union last when many others in Europe fell apart? How close did it come to unravelling? What were the strengths and tricks that preserved it? As aggregations of individuals, as economies, or as systems of law and politics, how did England and Scotland mesh? Political, economic, legal, intellectual and literary historians examine the first three centuries of Union, including the reception of James in the south, the Civil Wars, the background to parliamentary union in 1707, the spoils of Empire, and the Victorian climax. Together with its companion Anglo-Scottish Relations, from 1900 to Devolution and Beyond, the volume provides a vivid account of two nations, which have often differed, remained very distinct, yet achieved endurance in European terms.

The chapters in this book trace the changing relationship between Scotland and England following the unifying reign of Queen Victoria, through the debates over devolution, and into a future where the Union will be under continuing pressure to evolve. Historians, social scientists and lawyers investigate the personal, social, financial and constitutional tensions between the Scots and the English, both before and after devolution, and ask have the Scots and the English been driven apart, or brought more closely together by this reconstruction of the Union?

What is the nature of knowledge? Anthropology imagines it possible to divide or separate social and analytical relations, whereby knowledge travels between persons as a thing. And yet, Bolivip imagines knowledge as the bodily resources or parts of a person that can be extended or combined with others. This methodological exchange is modelled on a moment from Bolivip – an exchange of skin whereby knowledge is returned in respect of prior nurture and care given, and two people become encompassed by one skin. The Min area of Papua New Guinea has proven to be one of the most enigmatic cultures in anthropological experience. But rather than accept this resistance to analysis as a problem of Melanesian secrecy, this book suggests that archaic notions of anthropological knowledge have been the problem all along. Taking up the ‘Min problem’ head on, it suggests a solution to the impasse. The argument works through alternating chapters: an imagistic ethnography of Bolivip describes how arboreal and horticultural metaphors motivate the growth of persons and plants by circulating bodily resources through others. Knowledge here comes from those who contribute to conception, and is withheld until a person is capable of bearing it. These images are used to provide new readings of classic Melanesianist texts – Mead, Bateson, and Fortune – substituting theoretical ideas for intimate relations; Weiner and Strathern's own experiments with anthropology modelled on Melanesia; and Barth's reading of secrecy amongst the Min.

The Andes are of unquestioned significance to the human story: a cradle of agriculture and of ‘pristine’ civilisation with a pedigree of millennia. The Incas were but the culmination of a succession of civilisations that rose and fell to leave one of the richest archaeological records on Earth. By no coincidence, the Andes are home also to our greatest surviving link to the speech of the New World before European conquest: the Quechua language family. For linguists, the native tongues of the Andes make for another rich seam of data on origins, expansions, and reversals throughout prehistory. Historians and anthropologists, meanwhile, negotiate many pitfalls to interpret the conflicting mytho-histories of the Andes, recorded for us only through the distorting prism of the conquistadors' world-view. Each of these disciplines opens up its own partial window on the past: very different perspectives, to be sure, but all the more complementary for it. Frustratingly though, specialists in each field have all too long proceeded largely in ignorance of great strides being taken in the others. This book brings together a cast of scholars from each discipline, converging their disparate perspectives into a true cross-disciplinary focus, to weave together a coherent account of what was, after all, one and the same prehistory. The result, instructive also far beyond the Andes, is a case-study in the pursuit of a more holistic vision of the human past.

This volume investigates the relationship between archives and information in the early modern world. It explores how the physical documentation that proliferated on an unprecedented scale between the 16th and 18th centuries was managed in the context of wider innovations in the sphere of communication and of significant upheaval and change. The chapters assess how archives were implicated in patterns of statecraft and scrutinise critical issues of secrecy and publicity, access and concealment. They analyse the interconnections between documentation and geographical distance, probing the part played by record-keeping in administration, governance, and justice, as well as its links with trade, commerce, education, evangelism, and piety. Alive to how the contents of archives were organised and filed, the contributors place paper technologies and physical repositories under the microscope. Extending beyond the framework of formal institutions to the family, household, and sect, this volume offers fresh insight into the possibilities and constraints of political participation and the nature of human agency. It deepens our understanding of the role of archives in the construction and preservation of knowledge and the exercise of power in its broadest sense. Above all, it calls for greater dialogue and creative collaboration to breach the lingering disciplinary divide between historians and archival scientists.

These nine chapters, commissioned on the initiative of the Philosophy section of the British Academy, address fundamental questions about time in philosophy, physics, linguistics, and psychology. Are there facts about the future? Could we affect the past? Physics, general relativity and quantum theory give contradictory treatments of time. So in the search for a theory of quantum gravity, which should give way: general relativity or quantum theory? In linguistics and psychology, how does our language represent time, and how do our minds keep track of it?

The volume assesses the changing impact on English culture over 500 years of Ariosto’s poem, the Orlando Furioso, first published in Italy in 1516, and subsequently in an expanded version in 1532. Individual chapters address the recurring presence of Ariosto’s poem in English literature, but also the multimedial nature of the transmission of the Furioso into English culture: through the visual arts, theatre, music and spectacle to video games and the internet, as well as through often heated critical debates. The introduction provides an overview of the history of criticism and interpretation of the Furioso in England. Within the four main sections – entitled: Before reading – the image; From the Elizabethans to the Enlightenment; Gothic and Romantic Ariosto; Text and translation in the modern era – individual studies explore key moments in the reception of the poem into English culture: the adaptation and translation of the poem among the Elizabethans; Milton’s detailed appreciation of the work; and the ambivalent attitudes of eighteenth-century writers and critics; the influence of illustrations to the poem; and its transformation into opera for the English stage. Emphasis is also placed on: the dynamic responses of Romantic writers to Ariosto; the crucial work of editors and translators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the stimulating adaptations and rewritings by modern authors. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.

This volume explores how rulers in medieval Iberia and the Maghrib presented their rule and what strategies they adopted to persuade their subjects of their legitimacy. It focuses on the Naṣrids of Granada and the Marīnids of Morocco who both ruled from the mid-thirteenth to the later fifteenth century. One of the book's main arguments is that the legitimating strategies of these monarchs developed out of a common political culture that straddled the straits of Gibraltar. This culture was mediated by constant transfers of people, ideas and commodities across the straits and a political historiography in which deliberate parallels and comparisons were drawn between Iberia and North Africa. The book challenges a tendency to see the Iberian and North African cultural and political spheres as inherently different and, implicitly, as precursors to later European and African identities. While several chapters in the volume do flag up contrasts in practice, they also highlight the structural similarities in the Naṣrid and Marīnid approach to legitimation in this period. The volume is divided into several sections, each of which approaches the theme of legitimation from a separate angle. The first section contains an introduction to the theme as well as analyses of the material and intellectual background to discourses of legitimation. The next section focuses on rhetorical bids for legitimacy such as the deployment of prestigious genealogies, the use of religiopolitical titles, and other forms of propaganda. That is followed by a detailed look at ceremonial and the calculated patronage of religious festivals by rulers. A final section grapples with the problem of legitimation outside the environs of the city, among illiterate and frequently armed populations.

Twenty chapters from two often-dissociated areas of Latin studies, classical and medieval Latin, examine continuities and developments in the language of Latin prose from its emergence to the twelfth century. Language is not understood in a narrowly philological or linguistic sense, but as encompassing the literary exploitation of linguistic effects and the influence of formal rhetoric on prose. Key themes explored throughout this book are the use of poetic diction in prose, archaism, sentence structure, and bilingualism. Chapters cover a comprehensive range of material including studies of individual works, groups of authors such as the Republican historians, prose genres such as the ancient novel or medieval biography, and linguistic topics such as the use of connectives in archaic Latin or prose rhythm in medieval Latin.

Bayes' theorem is a tool for assessing how probable evidence makes some hypothesis. The papers in this book consider the worth and applicability of the theorem. The book sets out the philosophical issues: Elliott Sober argues that there are other criteria for assessing hypotheses; Colin Howson, Philip Dawid, and John Earman consider how the theorem can be used in statistical science, in weighing evidence in criminal trials, and in assessing evidence for the occurrence of miracles; and David Miller argues for the worth of the probability calculus as a tool for measuring propensities in nature rather than the strength of evidence. The book ends with the original paper containing the theorem, presented to the Royal Society in 1763.

This book looks at the Muslims in Mainland Tanzania, as well as what people in Southeast Tanzania understood by Islam, or by being Muslim, and what they sought to attain by becoming Muslim. This question may seem contrived: the personal reasons why a set of people, most of whom are now dead, changed their religious allegiance are unrecoverable. The most fundamental problem lies with the timing of the expansion of Islam. It is clearly shown that certain challenges and processes recurred over time in different guises.

This book addresses two of the most important questions in modern African history: the causes of rapid population growth, and the origins of the AIDS pandemic. It examines three societies on the Uganda–Tanzania border whose distinctive histories shed new light on both of these phenomena. This was the region where HIV in Africa first became a mass rural epidemic, and also where HIV infection rates first began to decline significantly. The book argues that only by analysing the long history of changes in sexual behaviour and attitudes can the shape of Africa's regional epidemics be fully understood. It traces the emergence of the sexual culture which permitted HIV to spread so quickly during the late 1970s and 1980s back to the middle decades of the twentieth century, a period when new patterns of socialization and sexual networking became established. The case studies examined in this book also provide new insights into the relationship between economic and social development and trends in fertility and mortality during the twentieth century. These three societies experienced the onset of rapid demographic growth at different moments and for different reasons, but in each case study area the key mechanisms appear to have been a decline in child mortality, a shortening of birth intervals, and a marked decline in primary and secondary infertility.

Since independence in 1948, Burma has suffered from many internal conflicts. One of the longest of these has been in the Kachin State, in the north of the country where Burma has borders with India to the west and China to the east. This book explores the origins of the armed movement that started in 1961 and considers why it has continued for so long. The book places the problems that have led to hostilities between the political heartland of Burma and one of its most important peripheries in a longer perspective than usual. It explains how the experience of globalisation and international geopolitics from the late eighteenth century onwards produced the local politics of exclusion and resistance. It also uses detailed ethnographic research to explore the social and cultural dynamics of Kachin ethno-nationalism, providing a rich analysis that goes beyond the purely political. This analysis also provides new insights on the work of Edmund Leach and recent representations of Zomia proposed by James C. Scott. The research draws upon an extensive range of sources, including archival materials in Jinghpaw and an extensive study of ritual and ritual language. Making a wide variety of cross-disciplinary observations, it explains in depth and breadth how a region such as the Kachin State came into being. When combined with detailed local insights into how these experiences contributed to the historical development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism, the book encourages new ways of thinking about the Kachin region and its history of armed resistance.

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of women's involvement in British political culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is based on extensive archival research, but also engages with recent feminist theories in the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology. The volume looks at both rural and urban experiences of politics. The author throws new light on women's political activities and challenges many traditional assumptions about contemporary politics. The book gives fresh insights into the Reform Act of 1832, pays attention to continuities in political practice and ideas, and brings focus to the primary significance of parish politics within the day-to-day activities of the middling and gentry classes.

British pensions are in crisis. Yet in all the discussion of what exactly the crisis consists of, and how it might be addressed, attention to the history of how the crisis has come about is surprisingly lacking. History has much to tell us about how pensions have developed in Britain, how that development has shaped the crisis that we now face, and how decisions taken in the past constrain our options for the future. In this book, leading experts on the past and present of pensions in Britain debate the present crisis, and the lessons of history for those seeking to craft solutions to it that are both effective and enduring. The volume also contains a number of chapters that draw important lessons from the experience of European and North American countries over the past few decades. The book contains reactions to the second report of the Pensions Commission and the government's response to it.