History Commons^™

Confucius Institute Spring 2014 Publication (Report), Dr. Wei-Ping Pan Director

The Confucius Institute Publications

No abstract provided.

Notation And Memorandum: Special Artists And Their Portrayal Of The American Civil War, Bryan G. Caswell

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

As the first war to see the extensive use of photography, the American Civil War was brought home to civilians in hundreds of photographs portraying camp life or the aftermath of battles. Due to the nature of nineteenth century photography as well as safety concerns, however, photographers were not able to capture scenes of actual combat for their viewers. This task fell instead to men known as Special Artists or “Specials,” hired by the illustrated periodicals of the day to travel with the armies and sketch all manner of events associated with the military, including battles as they progressed. [ …

The Efficacy Of Mathematics Education, Eric Geimer

The STEAM Journal

Evidence supports the notion that mathematics education in the United States is inadequate. There is also evidence that mathematics education deficiencies extend internationally. The worldwide mathematics education deficit appears large enough that improving student performance in this educational problem area could yield great economic benefit. To improve the efficacy of mathematics education, education’s root problems must first be understood. Often supposed educational root problems are considered and contrasted against potential deficiencies of mathematics methodologies and curricula that are based on mainstream educational philosophies. The educational philosophies utilized to form early-grade mathematics methodologies and related curricula are judged to be the …

Satirizing Strife: Currier And Ives Political Cartoons, Megan A. Sutter

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Currier and Ives’ prints were a large part of the media during the Civil War era. Not only were Romantic prints sold and hung in people’s parlors, but cartoons were also very popular. It is important to remember that Currier and Ives’ goal was not to produce fine art, but to make a product that was attractive to middle-class consumers. Thus, political and social cartoons became a way to attract customers. They tried to stay away from controversial topics; however, their Darktown series was one of their best-selling series of the day. Today, the Darktown series is rarely displayed and …

A Living Image: Newspaper Sketches In The American Civil War, Bryan G. Caswell

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Photography: the ability to capture a moment in time exactly as it appeared, to then preserve it for posterity, even mass produce it for a wide viewership. A relatively new concept by the beginning of the American Civil War, photography quickly came into its own in the hands of such legends as Matthew Bray and Alexander Gardner as they sought to document the furious storm which had swept over the land. Photographs of the Civil War are prolific, and for many the memory of the conflict is intertwined with black-and-white photographs of unsmiling men and corpses bloating in the sun. …

For Those At Home: The Romantic Nature Of Civil War Lithography, Megan A. Sutter

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Lithography, the art of drawing on stone, was an important part of American Victorian culture during the Civil War. Not only did lithography provide news in pictorial form, but it also was widely displayed in the home. With the economic move from home to factory during the early 19th century, the home became more of a “sanctuary” in which women could decorate and display. [excerpt]

Maniera Devota/Mano Donnesca: Women, Virtue And Visual Imagery During The Counter-Reformation In The Papal States, 1575-1675, Patricia Rocco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The history of women's participation in religious movements during the Early Modern period in Europe has long been less commented upon in modern scholarship than that of their male counterparts. This project will enlarge our understanding of the participation of women in the visual program of the Counter-Reformation in the Papal State of Bologna. The study focuses on Bologna since the city had an unprecedented large group of active women artists as well as being a crucial site of Catholic reform. Knowledge of Bologna's women is still incomplete; therefore this dissertation is structured as a series of interlinked case studies, …

Living In The Past: Preservation, Interpretation, And Engagement, And The 19th – Early 20th Century Home, Kirsten Jarrett

Kirsten Jarrett

In recent years, boundaries between curated domestic space (typically open to the public, maintained by museum professionals, and supported by government or charitable funding), and privately occupied dwellings, have on occasion been eroded. Each year, usually as part of annual heritage events run by non-profit organisations, a small number of residents permit members of the public to view features of historic interest within their homes. Furthermore, extensive opportunities to share information, images, and data on-line allow residents to ‘virtually’ display historical features within otherwise closed domestic spaces. Adopting approaches from ‘Rescue’, Research, and Public Archaeology, the Living in the Past …

A Period Of Transition: Early Islamic And Umayyad Coinage, Anna Tiner

Featured Research

A study of four coins from 620 to 680 AD provides a meager yet insightful glimpse into the coinage minted by Islamic rulers during their conquest over the Holy Land and the transition of rule from the Byzantine Empire to the Islamic Caliphate. With the help of an innovative technology called Reflective Transference Image (RTI), on loan from USC, I created high-resolution images that can be adjusted with respect to light and reflectivity. Creating RTI images of the coins administers a deeper alternate perspective giving light to aspects of the coin that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Using …

Preliminary Report On The 2013 Field Season Of The American Excavations At Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (Cap), Alex Walthall, Randall Souza, Jared Benton, James F. Huemoeller

Art Faculty Publications

This article provides a preliminary report on the 2013 excavations carried out by the American Excavations at Morgantina (Sicily): Contrada Agnese Project (CAP). The 2013 season marked the start of this multiyear research and excavation project aimed at investigating both the urban planning of the city and the lives of its residents, with a specific focus on the periods of occupation and cultural transformation from the third to first century BCE. During the first season, three trenches were excavated in two parts of the ancient city. Their locations were chosen, in part, based on the results of a geophysical survey, …

Reading With The Grain: On Vin Nardizzi’S Wooden Os: Shakespeare’S Theatres And England’S Trees, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Editor's Introduction To Pandemic Disease In The Medieval World: Rethinking The Black Death, Monica H. Green

The Medieval Globe

Extraction of the genetic material of the causative organism of plague, Yersinia pestis, from the remains of persons who died during the Black Death has confirmed that pathogen’s role in one of the largest pandemics of human history. This then opens up historical research to investigations based on modern science, which has studied Yersinia pestis from a variety of perspectives, most importantly its evolutionary history and its complex ecology of transmission. The contributors to this special issue argue for the benefits of a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to the many remaining mysteries associated with the plague’s geographical extent, rapid transmission, …

New Science And Old Sources: Why The Ottoman Experience Of Plague Matters, Nükhet Varlık

The Medieval Globe

Reconstructing the Ottoman plague experience is vital to understanding the larger Afro-Eurasian disease zone during the Second Pandemic. This essay deals with two different aspects of this experience. On the one hand, it discusses the historical and historiographical problems that rendered this epidemiological experience mostly invisible to previous scholars of plague. On the other, it reconstructs the empire’s plague ecologies, with particular attention to plague’s persistence, focalization, and transmission. Further, it uses this epidemiological experience to offer new insights and complicate some commonly held assumptions about plague history and its relationship to plague science.

Plague Depopulation And Irrigation Decay In Medieval Egypt, Stuart Borsch

The Medieval Globe

Starting with the Black Death, and continuing over the century and a half that followed, plague depopulation brought about the ruin of Egypt’s irrigation system, the motor of its economy. For many generations, the Egyptians who survived the plague therefore faced a tragic new reality: a transformed landscape and way of life significantly worsened by plague, a situation very different from that of plague survivors in Europe. This article looks at the ways in which this transformation took place. It measures the scale and scope of rural depopulation and explains why it had such a significant impact on the agricultural …

Diagnosis Of A "Plague" Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale, Monica H. Green, Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Wolfgang P. Müller

The Medieval Globe

This brief study examines the genesis of the “misdiagnosis” of a fourteenth- century image that has become a frequently used representation of the Black Death on the Internet and in popular publications. The image in fact depicts another common disease in medieval Europe, leprosy, but was misinterpreted as “plague” because of a labeling error. The error was then magnified because of digital dissemination. This mistake is a reminder that interpretation of cultural products continues to demand the skills and expertise of humanists. Included is a full transcription and translation of the text which the image was originally meant to illustrate: …

Epilogue: A Hypothesis On The East Asian Beginnings Of The Yersinia Pestis Polytomy, Robert Hymes

The Medieval Globe

The work of Cui et al. (2013)—in both dating the polytomy that produced most existing strains of Yersinia pestis and locating its original home to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau—offers a genetically derived specific historical proposition for historians of East and Central Asia to investigate from their own sources. The present article offers the hypothesis that the polytomy manifests itself in the Mongol invasion of the Xia state in the Gansu corridor in the early thirteenth century and continues in the Mongols’ expansion into China and other parts of Eurasia. The hypothesis relies to a considerable extent on work of Cao Shuji …

The Black Death And Its Consequences For The Jewish Community In Tàrrega: Lessons From History And Archeology, Anna Colet, Josep Xavier Muntané I Santiveri, Jordi Ruíz Ventura, Oriol Saula, M. Eulàlia Subirà De Galdàcano, Clara Jáuregui

The Medieval Globe

In 2007, excavations in a suburb of the Catalan town of Tàrrega identified the possible location of the medieval Jewish cemetery. Subsequent excavations confirmed that multiple individuals buried in six communal graves had suffered violent deaths. The present study argues that these communal graves can be connected to a well-documented assault on the Jews of Tàrrega that occurred in 1348: long known as one of the earliest episodes of anti-Jewish violence related to the Black Death, but never before corroborated by physical remains. This study places textual sources, both Christian and Jewish, alongside the recently discovered archeological evidence of the …

The Medieval Globe 1 (2014) - Pandemic Disease In The Medieval World: Rethinking The Black Death, Monica H. Green, Carol Symes

The Medieval Globe

The plague organism (Yersinia pestis) killed an estimated 40% to 60% of all people when it spread rapidly through the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe in the fourteenth century: an event known as the Black Death. Previous research has shown, especially for Western Europe, how population losses then led to structural economic, political, and social changes. But why and how did the pandemic happen in the first place? When and where did it begin? How was it sustained? What was its full geographic extent? And when did it really end?

Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World is …

A Cultural Resources Survey For The Leon Valley Hike And Bike Trail Project, Bexar County, Texas, Herbert G. Uecker, Imogen R. Cooper

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

In early March, 2014, South Texas Archeological Research Services, LLC, conducted a cultural resources survey for the Leon Valley Hike and Bike Trail Project, Bexar County, Texas. The survey focused on discovery and preliminary assessment of archeological resources but also included an estimation of effect to the Huebner-Onion Homestead and Stage Coach Stop Site (41BX1429), which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Since the project area was owned by the City of Leon Valley and the project involved federal funding through the Texas Department of Transportation, compliance with the Antiquities Code of Texas and Section 106 of …

A Cultural Resources Survey For The City Of Temple’S Prairie View Road Expansion Project, Bell County, Texas, Herbert G. Uecker

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

In December, 2013, and January, 2014, South Texas Archeological Research Services, LLC, conducted a cultural resources survey for the City of Temple’s Prairie View Road Expansion Project, Bell County, Texas. The survey focused on discovery, identification, and preliminary assessment of archeological resources. The area surveyed was about 3,220 m of public road right-of-way about 30 m wide. It consisted of about 24 acres of land.

Because the survey area was owned or controlled by the City, a political subdivision of the State of Texas, compliance with the Antiquities Code of Texas was triggered for the project. Since there was no …

A Cultural Resources Survey For The Bell County Wcid No. 3 Lift Station Project, Nolanville, Bell County, Texas, Herbert G. Uecker

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

In December, 2013, and January, 2014, South Texas Archeological Research Services, LLC, conducted a cultural resources survey for the Bell County Water Control and Improvements District No. 3 Lift Station Project in Nolanville, Bell County, Texas. The survey focused on discovery, identification, and preliminary assessment of archeological resources. The area surveyed was about 250 m of utilities line right-of-way about 30 m wide and a circular lift station site about 40 m in diameter. It consisted of about two acres of land.

Because the survey area was owned or controlled by a political subdivision of the State of Texas, compliance …

Intensive Areal Survey With Deep Mechanical Testing: For The City Of Ballinger Waste Water Treatment Plant Expansion, Runnels County, Texas, Katherine Turner Pearson

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Archaeologists from Central Texas Archaeological Resources (CTAR), on behalf of the City of Ballinger, Runnels County, Texas, conducted an intensive areal archaeological survey with deep mechanical testing within the boundaries of a proposed Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) Expansion, located in Ballinger, Runnels County, Texas on August 24-25, 2014. The proposed WWTP expansion was funded by a Texas Community Development Block Grant (TxCDBG) and therefore, subject to the Antiquities Code of Texas. The city’s current treatment plant in Ballinger was nearing it capacity and was required by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to expand its capabilities in order …

Archaeological Data Recovery At The Fish Creek Slough Site (41dl436), Dallas County, Texas, James T. Abbott, W Nicholas Trierweiler

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The Fish Creek Slough site (41DL436) is a well stratified, multi-component, open campsite situated on an alluvial terrace on the west bank of Fish Creek in Dallas County, Texas. Discovered in 2005, the site contains an abundance of faunal material, charcoal, and burned clay within multiple, discrete stratified zones. The site was evaluated by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT ) as eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Because the site was within the right-of-way for a planned road and bridge construction project, and as directed by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, TxDOT elected …

An Intensive Archeological Survey For The Proposed Us 87 Reliever Route In The City Of Lamesa, Dawson County, Texas, Brandon S. Young, Joseph M. Sanchez

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

In November 2006 archeologists from Blanton & Associates, Inc. (Blanton & Associates) conducted an intensive archeological survey of the proposed six-mile US 87 Reliever Route in the City of Lamesa, Dawson County, Texas (CSJ: 0905-32-005). The survey was performed at the request of Parkhill, Smith, & Cooper, Inc. (PSC) on behalf of the Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) Lubbock District. The survey discovered one prehistoric archeological site (41DS12) within the APE. No artifacts were collected so curation was unnecessary.

Eligibility Testing At 41bu75, Burleson County, Texas, Jennifer K. Mcwilliams, Karl W. Kibler, John E. Dockall, Eloise Frances Gadus, Ross C. Fields

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Prewitt and Associates, Inc., conducted test excavations at site 41BU75 in Burleson County, Texas, to determine its eligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and designation as a State Antiquities Landmark. The work was performed in 2007 under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 4525 for the Texas Department of Transportation, Environmental Affairs Division, in conjunction with a planned widening of FM 60, which will require up to 45 m of new right of way. The excavations consisted of six Gradall trenches and five 1x1-m hand-dug test units totaling 6.9 m3 , all on stateowned land. Excavations yielded a …

Intensive Archeological Survey For The Proposed Widening Of Cr 110 From Us 79 To Sam Houston Avenue In Williamson County, Texas, Timothy B. Griffith, Joseph M. Sanchez

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Between July 21 and 25, 2014, Blanton & Associates, Inc. (B&A), at the request of Williamson County, conducted an intensive archeological survey (as per 13 TAC 26.20 and 26.5) of 6.5 miles of proposed improvements along County Road (CR) 110 near the City of Hutto in Williamson County, Texas. The 100 percent visual inspection, augmented by strategically placed shovel tests and backhoe trenches, was negative for cultural resources within the proposed project area. Based on these data, B&A recommends that the proposed improvements to County Road (CR) 110 in Williamson County, Texas, be allowed to proceed as planned without additional …

Cultural Resource Survey Of The South Texas Syngas Directional Drill Locations Negative Findings Phase I Survey Report Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area Brazoria County, Texas, Jeff Turpin

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

During October of 2014, Turpin and Sons Inc. (TAS) conducted a cultural resource assessment of two potential horizontal directional drill (HDD) locations and one additional baseline trench location along Jones Creek within the Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area managed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The area of interest is located along an existing pipeline corridor between the San Bernard and Brazos rivers in southwest Brazoria County, Texas. The project was sponsored by Gremminger and Associates Inc., acting as agents for Air Liquide Large Industries U.S. LP, and conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit Number 7029 issued to Dr. Jeff …

Documentation Of Unassociated Ceramic Vessel Funerary Objects In The Gregg County Historical Museum Collections From Sites In Gregg, Harrison, And Panola Counties In East Texas, Timothy K. Perttula, Robert Z. Selden Jr., Bo Nelson

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

This report is the latest in a series of reports that have been supported by the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, Cultural Preservation Program that concern the documentation of funerary objects in museum facilities that are subject to the provisions and regulations of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (Gonzalez et al. 2005; Cast et al. 2006; Perttula et al. 2007, 2009a, 2009b, 2010a, 2011). These documentation studies have been done either with grants from the National Park Service, or through funding provided by the museum facility that held NAGPRA funerary objects. In the case of the present …

The Caddo Archaeology Of The Musgano Site (41rk19) In The Sabine River Basin Of East Texas, Timothy K. Perttula

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The Musgano site (41RK19) is an important ancestral Caddo habitation site on Martin Creek in Rusk County in the Sabine River basin in the East Texas Pineywoods. The site was investigated by the Texas Archeological Survey at The University of Texas at Austin in 1972 and 1973 prior to the construction of Martin Creek Lake by Texas Utilities Services, Inc., and a Caddo house structure, midden deposits, features, and a large ceramic assemblage were documented from a component speculated to date between ca. A.D. 1400-1500 (Clark and Ivey 1974:14-41; McDonald 1972:10-11). Unfortunately, however, the results of the excavations and the …

The Hale And Keith Mounds In The Big Cypress Creek Basin In East Texas, Timothy K. Perttula

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The L. A. Hale (41TT12) and George L. Keith (41TT11) sites are two important ancestral Caddo mound centers in the Big Cypress Creek basin in the Post Oak Savanna of East Texas. Between them, they appear to have been occupied by Caddo peoples between ca. A.D. 1000-1400, although they may not have been occupied contemporaneously. Key questions that I hope to answer in this publication are: (1) when were the sites occupied and when were the mounds on them constructed, and (2) what were the mounds and the sites used for? These questions are challenging because both sites were excavated …