The primary purpose of this article is to comprehensively survey the research on excavated Confucian texts from the past 30 years. Newly excavated Confucian manuscripts are seen in such collections ...as those from Guodian 郭店, Shangbo 上博, Tsinghua 清華, Anda 安大, and Haihun 海昏. In terms of their content, they each have their own focus and characteristics. Among these bamboo manuscripts there is a large number dedicated to the Shijing 詩經, the Shujing 書經, the Liji 禮記, the Yijing 易經, and to Kongzi 孔子 making them of great importance. At present, research on the Guodian and the Shangbo manuscripts is mostly completed and that into the Tsinghua collection is making large strides while research into the Anda collection is just beginning to develop. Among all this research, one of the weakest areas revolves around the explanation and discussion of Confucian thought and related problems. This includes textual evidence in the form of excavated Confucian texts that provide a foundation for “leaving behind the age of doubting antiquity” (zouchu yigu shidai 走出疑古時代) and the related debates carried out by scholars are beneficial to transmitting and revising this theory.
This article traces the formalisation of anthropology in Australia from 1880 to 1920, during which time the 'discipline' shifted from a framework of developmental evolution to one of structural ...functionalism. It argues that this paradigm shift necessitated an elimination of anthropology's once-foundational logic of Aboriginal antiquity: severed, first, from a paired notion of human primitivity, then removed altogether. While historians acknowledge functionalist anthropology's rationale of 'time-less' Aboriginality, this article unpacks how it was uniquely created, tracing antiquity's erasure across the texts central to anthropology's formalisation in Australia. Doing so reveals that the elimination of Aboriginal antiquity was not just part of anthropology's development in Australia but a crucial functioning aspect of it.
The present contribution explores how the field of Roman History has formalized and justified the absence of “belief”—and religious belief in particular—as part of its standard research programme. In ...positing an unbridgeable gap between ancient Romans and modern human beings mainly based on the idea that “belief” and “faith” are modern Protestant concepts, Roman History inadvertently transmogrified its subjects of study into a legion of zombies incapable of holding meta-representations of their own religious (and non-religious) beliefs. While Roman History might have been an outlier in its staunch commitment to this exclusionary approach, the post-1970s move towards the abandonment of “belief” insofar as the study of ancient religion(s) is concerned was part of a widespread paradigm shift within the Humanities, which only very recently has been questioned. The history of the concept of “belief” in both Roman History and anthropology, as well as its rejection from the former’s disciplinary toolbox, are tackled, while the peculiar disciplinary concepts of Roman “orthopraxy” and “demythicization” (sometimes hailed as explananda or replacements for the absence of “belief” in Roman antiquity) are also explained. Finally, a cognitive rebuttal of this absence is provided through a reappraisal of David Chalmers’ “philosophical zombies” mental experiment.
These essays examine how various communities remembered and commemorated their shared past through the lens of utopia and its corollary, dystopia, providing a framework for the reinterpretation of ...rapidly changing religious, cultural, and political realities of the turbulent period from 300 to 750 CE. The common theme of the chapters is the utopian ideals of religious groups, whether these are inscribed on the body, on the landscape, in texts, or on other cultural objects. The volume is the first to apply this conceptual framework to Late Antiquity, when historically significant conflicts arose between the adherents of four major religious identities: Greaco-Roman 'pagans', newly dominant Christians; diaspora Jews, who were more or less persecuted, depending on the current regime; and the emerging religion and power of Islam. Late Antiquity was thus a period when dystopian realities competed with memories of a mythical Golden Age, variously conceived according to the religious identity of the group. The contributors come from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious studies, ancient history, and art history, and employ both theoretical and empirical approaches. This volume is unique in the range of evidence it draws upon, both visual and textual, to support the basic argument that utopia in Late Antiquity, whether conceived spiritually, artistically, or politically, was a place of the past but also of the future, even of the afterlife. Memories of Utopia will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, and art historians of the later Roman Empire, and those working on religion in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.
Since Theocharis Detorakis’ History of Crete (1994), a new macro-history has not been written about Crete from antiquity to the present in English—until now. Moorey mainly employs English-language ...texts as his primary and secondary sources, which is a limitation for scholarly readers. ...instead of providing a complete bibliography, Moorey cites his sources in notes on each chapter at the end of the book. Not all direct quotations or numerical data—such as statistics and census counts—have source attributions, so the reader sometimes needs either to accept the author’s information at face value or to substantiate it independently. ...Chris Moorey’s A History of Crete effectively traces the history of Crete from antiquity to the present for a general audience.
Review of MONTEL, S.; POLLINI, A (eds.). (2018) La question de l’espace au IVe siècle Avant J-C. dans le mondes grec et étrusco-italique: continuité, ruptures, reprises. Strasbourg, Presses ...Universitaires de Franche-Comté.
Since antiquity, the importance and versatility of deception as a key military stratagem is demonstrated by military commanders' reliance on an array of subterfuges encompassing disinformation, ...covert or clandestine actions, false flags, ruses, and feints designed to deceive an adversary and degrade situational awareness of genuine intent. In parallel, commanders attempt to use intelligence for determining a potential opponent's capabilities and getting indicators and warnings of an adversary's intent. Better understanding of the interconnectedness between waging and countering deception provides insights into the dynamic relationship between deception and intelligence in warfare.
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