Plough Back The Fruits

2016

IWMpost , 2018

Article on visual activism in the wake of the Marikana Massacre published in the IWMpost.

Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2014

When we think of Marikana we think of the infamous event that took place on 16 August 2012, leading to the death of 34 striking miners. Scholarly analysis takes this further than the event to broader labour–capital relations. While useful, the examination of Marikana through this lens tends to privilege the production sphere and lends itself mainly to the exploration of the workplace; the workers, their employers and the union. In this article, the author argues that exclusive reliance on this lens is inadequate and inevitably results in many silences, one of which is the silencing of the reproduction sphere and, by extension, women. To fully understand Marikana the event, one has to understand Marikana the location, and hence realities and conditions on the ground. Such an analysis of Marikana is not only useful because it sheds light on the reproduction space, but also because it allows us to look at women who are usually ignored when talking about mines.

Academia Letters, 2021

Geological Society of America Bulletin, 2024

In current geological studies, intensified investigations have been directed toward oceanic back-arc basins, with deep examination of their mechanisms of genesis, magmatic evolution from inception to maturation, and the temporal dynamics governing the transition from basin opening to back-arc spreading. Surprisingly, scarce attention has been devoted to their continental counterparts. The Late Cretaceous Sabzevar ophiolite in northeastern Iran presents a great opportunity to explore the geological, geochemical, and geodynamic evolutionary patterns of a fossil back-arc basin crust. The Sabzevar back-arc seems to have opened from the middle Cretaceous and evolved until the latest Cretaceous, with different magmatic expressions. By examining the variable mineral compositions of olivine, spinel, clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene, and amphibole in the mafic-ultramafic rocks of the Sabzevar back-arc basin, we found that the observed compositional differences in these minerals resulted from fractionation trends of magmas and interactions between different melt pulses within crustal magma chambers. Fractionation of basaltic magmas in an open chamber system produced compositionally variable cumulus minerals. High-clinopyroxene TiO2 contents and intra-crystalline variations in clinopyroxene compositions in some rock samples indicate multiple injections of different pulses of magmas during the evolution of the Sabzevar oceanic crust. Wet gabbros exhibit significant geochemical variabilities in their minerals, which suggests the influence of both water-poor and water-rich magmas during their formation. Melt compositions in equilibrium with clinopyroxenes in ultramafic cumulates reveal two distinct types of melts: island-arc tholeiitic melts, and melts originating from a highly depleted mantle affected by slab-derived fluids. Our study reveals diverse compositional variations within the crustal sections of the Sabzevar ophiolites. Notably, we observe abundant occurrences of back-arc basin basalt–type igneous rocks, both Nb-depleted and Nb-enriched varieties, alongside island arc tholeiite–type magmatic rocks. Enriched mid-oceanic-ridge basalt (E-MORB)-, oceanic-island basalt (OIB)-, and depleted MORB–like magmatic rocks are also present. Elemental ratios such as the Nb/Yb and Nd isotopic composition of magmatic rocks show variations, which indicates that both depleted and enriched mantle have been responsible for the formation of these rocks. Various subduction components, mainly slab fluids and melts, have also generated rocks with different enrichment and depletion in some elements such as Th, U, K, and Sr, and the light rare earth elements. The enriched MORB- and OIB-like magmatic rocks could have resulted from the melting of a trapped, enriched sub-arc mantle, or the melting of an enriched asthenosphere during plume-ridge interaction, or the melting of enriched components dispersed in the depleted upper mantle. The tectonic significance of the Sabzevar ophiolite is closely tied to the timing of the continental back-arc basin opening and the relationship of this basin’s development to the initiation of the Zagros subduction zone within the Neotethyan oceanic realm.

A chronological approach to the Book of Judges by Steven Jamison, with a present truth application by Theodore Turner.

2023

EGYPTOMANIA. For the 200th Anniversary of the Decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion. EXHIBITION CATALOGUE. Ed. by Andrey Bolshakov & Andrey Nilkolaev. 664 pp. St. Petersburg, 2023. The year 2022 marks the two hundredth anniversary of Egyptology, which was born on 14 September 1822, the day when Jean-François Champollion found a clue to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The State Hermitage Museum celebrates this jubilee with an exhibition paying tribute to Egyptomania and the dawn of Egyptology. Egyptomania is commonly described as the use of Egyptian elements in arts, a phenomenon akin to an abundance of numerous examples of historicism, but definitely broader and more profound. Already considered to be ancient as early as the lifetime of Herodotus, Egyptian culture never stopped amazing the Greeks, sparking a myth about its mysterious sapience. This was what actually gave rise to beliefs about Hermes Trismegistus, which paved the way for Hermeticism and left their mark on the philosophy of Neoplatonism. With Egypt’s incorporation, the Roman Empire saw the spread of Egyptian cults in its territory, the inflow of Egyptian antiquities to Rome and creation of monuments in Egyptian style. For a long time, Europe had very little understanding of what Egypt had actually been like. It was for that reason that any respective representations of Egypt would show the few known typical attributes, such as pyramids, obelisks or sphinxes. All of this is discussed in the first section of this catalogue. The following part features works in which Egyptian heritage is reinterpreted by Western European culture through the prism of Classical Antiquity. Also included are biblical episodes related to Egypt. When the Dark Ages gave way to the Renaissance, the discovery of classical texts as well as Egyptian and Egyptising artefacts in Rome brought Egyptomania to one of its peaks, in the realm of both arts and philosophy. That period was marked by endeavours to interpret hieroglyphs, still bound to fail as, not surprisingly for the symbolism-laden Renaissance epoch, they were seen as nothing but symbols. The age of Enlightenment engendered a scholar approach to Egypt, but it continued to be routinely viewed as a source of exotic motifs. The way Egypt was interpreted by the art of the Renaissance and early modern period until the late eighteenth century is showcased by yet another section of the exhibition. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign in 17981801 became Europe’s first discovery of Egypt due to the efforts of the scholars involved in his expedition, who copied and then published a whole host of ancient monuments. One of them was the legendary Rosetta Stone with bilingual text in Egyptian and Greek, which predetermined the eventual decipherment of hieroglyphs. A corresponding part of the exhibition shows materials associated with both military and scholarly aspects of this campaign. Inviting new research, inscriptions that were now available and the Rosetta Stone in particular spawned a number of attempts to crack the Egyptian writing in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. A clear triumph was the undertaking of Jean-François Champollion, who did not only manage to unveil the phonetic nature of this script, but also created the first Egyptian grammar, pioneering Egyptology as a whole. The fascinating story of this decipherment, with its failures and advances, is narrated by one of the central sections, which comprises a diversity of materials from the publication of a treatise by Horapollo, who was active in the fifth century AD and tried to explain the meaning of many hieroglyphs, to attempts to read the text on the Rosetta Stone and Champollion’s letters and books. Champollion’s breakthrough and the rise of Egyptology took the study of Egypt and reflections upon it in divergent directions. Starting from the mid-nineteenth century Egypt became accessible to a plenitude of European artists, who produced realistic visualisations of its monuments, albeit with an exotic touch and emphasised Oriental qualities. This distinctive Orientalism, not a case of Egyptomania per se, is displayed too. The largest sections are devoted to Egyptomania in applied arts, covering a span of the late eighteenth, entire nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the highlights is the monumental Egyptian service produced by the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory and presented by Napoleon to Alexander I. Its design draws upon the materials published by the members of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Egypt took centre stage in theatre performances, including drama, opera and ballet. The display puts on view a whole panoply of sketches of costumes and sets, librettos, photographs of actors and scenes as well as various stage accessories. The exhibition is brought to a close by a selection of contemporary photographs illustrating Egyptian motifs in the architecture of St Petersburg.

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 511, 2018

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