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An illustrated booklet dedicated to Prof. Martin Harrison's archaeological work on the Byzantine monuments of Istanbul (Byzantine Constantinople).

Summary of the content and conclusions of the conference Dining&Death;: interdisciplinary perspectives on the 'Funerary Banquet' in ancient art, burial and belief

All art history involves inherent tensions between the materiality of the works of art - their rootedness in time and space - and the mobility of the ideas and imagery that they embody. The tension is all the more striking in the study of ancient art. On the one hand, classical art history, with its traditional dependence on archaeology, deals with perishable, intractable objects dug up in particular places. On the other hand, it has always been concerned with the intangible spread of Graeco-Roman styles and iconography, with abstract typologies, material and visual cultures and how they transcend material constraints. This paper explores some of the forms of material resistance which have filtered our experience of ancient art, including the accidents of archaeological survival. But such limitations affect not only the objects that we study, but also the processes of studying them. Our construction of the past, the books and articles we read and write, the photographs we reproduce or view, the dissemination of ideas on paper or on the web... These too have their hidden material constraints, which are explored in the paper.

The Mapping Crime project sought to enhance crime material available via the online digital resource The John Johnson Collection: an Archive of Printed Ephemera through the creation of direct links to related material in a number of external online resources, thereby enabling those studying crime history in particular, and social history in general, to more easily explore themes and narratives by building connections between different sources. This paper describes the context of the project and its outcomes, before exploring aspects of the project methodology, particularly with regard to its manual approach to gathering information and establishing links. It then considers the potential for future developments.

The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner spent a fortnight in Oxford in the summer of 1922. Of his five visits to Britain in the years from 1922 to 1924, it was the Oxford Conference, ‘Spiritual Values in Education & Social Life’ (15-29 August), that is arguably the most important. It was this Conference that attracted the greatest media attention and it was widely reported. The Oxford Conference introduced Waldorf schooling to an English-speaking audience. Rudolf Steiner spoke in German and George Adams Kaufmann translated. The conference was organised by Professor Millicent Mackenzie. There were 230 attendees. Steiner presented twelve morning lectures at Manchester College (now Harris Manchester College), and fourteen conference speakers presented at nearby Keble College in the afternoons. Four Eurythmy performances, the first in Britain, were presented at Keble College by performers from the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland and local school children from the Oxford Central School. An enduring legacy has been the proliferation of Waldorf schools in Britain and throughout the Anglophone world.

Ancient mathematical texts and artefacts, if we are to understand them fully, must be viewed in the light of their mathematico-historical context, and not treated as artificial, self-contained creations in the style of detective stories. I take as a dramatic case study the famous cuneiform tablet Plimpton 322. I show that the popular view of it as some sort of trigonometric table cannot be correct, given what is now known of the concept of angle in the Old Babylonian period. Neither is the equally widespread theory of generating functions likely to be correct. I provide supporting evidence in a strong theoretical framework for an alternative interpretation, first published half a century ago in a different guise. I recast it using regular reciprocal pairs, Høyrup's analysis of contemporaneous “naı̈ve geometry,” and a new reading of the table's headings. In contextualising Plimpton 322 (and perhaps thereby knocking it off its pedestal), I argue that cuneiform culture produced many dozens, if not hundreds, of other mathematical texts which are equally worthy of the modern mathematical community's attention. Wir müssen frühe mathematische Texte und Objekte im Hinblick auf ihre mathematisch-historische Umgebung betrachten und sie nicht als künstliche, vollständige Schöpfungen im Stile von Detektivgeschichten behandeln, wollen wir sie verstehen. Als dramatische Fallstudies dient mir die Keilschrifttafel Plimpton 322. Ich zeige auf, dass die weitverbreitete Ansicht, so etwas wie eine trigonometrische Tabelle vor uns zu haben, nicht richtig sein kann, und zwar aufgrund unseres Wissens über die Vorstellung des Winkels in altbabylonischer Zeit. In gleiche Weise ist die gängige Theorie über erzeugende Funktionen wahrscheinlich falsch. Ich kann meine Neuinterpretation, die in einen stark theoretischen Rahmen eingebettet wird, mit Texten belegen. Hinter meiner Neuinterpretation liegt eine fünfzigjährige Theorie, die auf Bruins zurückgeht. Sie fundiert auf den Gebrauch von regelmassigen, reziproken Paaren, auf Høyrups Analyse der naiven Geometrie und auf eine neue Lesung der Überschriften der Tabelle. Indem ich die Keilschrifttafel Plimpton 322 in ihren historischen Kontext stelle, plädiere ich dafür, dass viele andere mathematische Texte mesopotamischen Ursprungs es ebenso verdienen, von uns beachtet zu werden. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

At the height of his powers, the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner presented a two-week conference at Oxford. The ‘Oxford Holiday Conference’ was titled ‘Spiritual Values in Education & Social Life’, and it was this conference, in the summer 1922 (15-29 August), that laid the foundations for establishing Waldorf education in Britain, and from there the rest of the Anglophone world. There were 230 attendees. All of the 12 morning lectures were presented by Steiner in the Arlosh Hall of Manchester College, Oxford. The reception was held in the Manchester College Library with the welcome by the College principal, Professor L P Jacks. On the Sunday, Steiner preached in the Manchester College Chapel. Afternoon lectures were presented by 14 speakers at the nearby Keble College.

From its inception the Soil Association was linked with emerging organic thinking in Australia and New Zealand. When the Association was formed in 1946 two of its founder members were residents of Australia and New Zealand, there were already three like minded associations in the region, and the first issue of ‘Mother Earth’ included three articles from antipodean sources. Given this influence it is perhaps no surprise that in the late fifties the Association’s founder, Eve Balfour, spent a year visiting Australia and New Zealand – arriving an ambassador of the Soil Association, and leaving an ambassador for Australia.