4. The hi-tech gift economy

OSMANLI TARİHİNDE KÖPRÜLÜLER DÖNEMİ (1656-1710) Yeni Kaynaklar, Yeni Yaklaşımlar, 2024

Reason and Revelation, 2024

Many scholars argue that the Exodus of the Bible never occurred. Among those who believe it did occur, scholars are divided about when it happened: "early" (1447/1446 B.C.) or "late" (ca. 1250 B.C.). A straightforward assessment of the textual evidence in Scripture leads to the early date of the Exodus, but some scholars believe the archaeological evidence does not support an early date. Instead, they argue it supports a late date of the Exodus and, subsequently, interpret key Bible passages in a way that supports the late date. A re-examination of the available evidence reveals that an early Exodus date is still not only tenable-it is preferable. Article In Brief... Article In Brief...

State and Society in the Balkans before and after Establishment of Ottoman Rule, (eds. Srđan Rudić – Selim Aslantaş), Yunus Emre Enstitüsü, Turkish Cultural Centre Belgrade – Institute of History Belgrade, Belgrade, 2017, 79-101.

Using available contemporary sources and previous research results, this paper deals with the way that the protracted Ottoman conquest of the Balkans affected the population of the Bosnian urban areas and countryside during the fifteenth century. The very first Ottoman incursions into Bosnia during the 1380’s were marked by people fleeing and running away from potential negative consequences of such military raids, and the process of depopulation continued, with varying intensity, even after the fall of the Bosnian Kingdom in 1463. Due to the very nature of preserved sources, this work is not an extensive statistical study or a detailed demographic overview of the period in question. That means that this analysis will not be able to provide an exact number or percentage of people who left Bosnia due to the Ottoman conquest, but it will focus on, present and highlight those sources which talk about the tendency of people to leave their homeland, run away and evade, either the Ottoman army, or the changes brought by Ottoman rule in general.

Guerra, violencia y muerte en la Colección Mariano Moret, 2016

Catálogo de la exposición Guerra, violencia y muerte en la Colección Mariano Moret. Sala Paraninfo de la Universidad de Cantabria. Santander, 21 Septiembre 2016 - 17 de Diciembre 2016. Figuras que mueren. Figuras que matan. Por amor, por odio, por justicia, por venganza, por defender un territorio o un ideal. La muerte, la amenaza sobre su poder y su triunfo sobre los hombres, es el tema común y el hilo conductor de las 68 obras pertenecientes a los fondos de la Colección Mariano Moret que se han seleccionado para esta exposición. Grabados alemanes, flamencos, holandeses, españoles e italianos que muestran la representación de la violencia, de la guerra y de la muerte a través de las obras de Aldegrever, Altdorfer, los hermanos Beham, Georg Pencz, Marcantonio Raimondi, Lucas van Leyden y de otros importantes grabadores de los siglos XV, XVI y XVII. Estampas en las que se aprecia la huella del Humanismo, de las ideas neoplatónicas, del nuevo universo estético que mira a la Antigüedad y gira en torno a la representación de lo humano. La violencia servida a través de la pasión y la belleza, del recuerdo del mundo antiguo, de las historias y personajes de la mitología. Imágenes que censuran actos pecaminosos y en ocasiones parecen una invitación al pecado. Seductores raptos, sensuales suicidios, atractivos cuerpos en combate, asesinos que aman o enamorados que matan. Grabados que nos trasladan a una época convulsa de conflictos irresolubles, de guerras y guerreros, de cismas religiosos, de dioses antiguos y extintos que son recuperados por el arte para transmitir mensajes o simplemente mostrar imágenes de una violencia casi pecaminosa. La emoción, la tensión, la intensidad dramática que llevan implícitos muchos de estos temas les confieren, además, fuerza, belleza y un singular atractivo. Guerra, violencia y muerte, juntas o por separado, están presentes en el hombre, en el arte y en los grabados de la Colección Mariano Moret.

Proceedings of the Danish Institute at Athens, 2017

The past 15 years have witnessed renewed and intensive archaeological fieldwork at the ancient Greek city of Kalydon in Aitolia. In the years 2001-5, Drs Søren Dietz and Maria Stavropoulou-Gatsi directed excavations in several areas of the city, and the results were published in two volumes in 2011. In the period 2011-6, Drs Rune Frederiksen and Søren Handberg carried out excavations in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Aetolia-Acarnania and Lefkada in Kalydon’s Theatre, and on the Lower Acropolis plateau. These renewed excavations have produced much new information about the ancient city, including its religious cults. The purpose of this article is to cast further light on the religious cults of the city and Kalydonian ritual behaviour. The renewed excavations have produced a substantial amount of miniature votive pottery, and in drawing attention to this hitherto rather overlooked aspect of material culture, I will argue that it must play an important role in our understanding of religious practice in ancient Kalydon. Within the last decade, miniature pottery has attracted considerable scholarly attention, which has produced insight that may be applied to the evidence from Kalydon. The author has been involved in the work at Kalydon since 2011 and has been able to study both published and unpublished miniature pottery found since 2001. Meticulous searches through the finds in the storerooms have led to the identification of more than 200 fragments of miniature pottery. Both published and unpublished miniature pottery is contextualized, and the cult related to the miniature votives is re-examined. Kalydon’s most famous cult is to Artemis Laphria, but two additional cults have been identified during the recent excavations: a shrine on the central Acropolis, and the cult in the Peristyle House in the Lower Town. Can also be downloaded here (as well as the rest of the articles in this volume): https://tidsskrift.dk/pdia/article/view/115341

I clarify and defend the hypothesis that human belief formation is sensitive to social rewards and punishments, such that beliefs are sometimes formed based on unconscious expectations of their likely effects on other agents - agents who frequently reward us when we hold ungrounded beliefs and punish us when we hold reasonable ones. After clarifying this phenomenon and distinguishing it from other sources of bias in the psychological literature, I argue that the hypothesis is plausible on theoretical grounds: in a species with substantial social scrutiny of beliefs, forming beliefs in a way that is sensitive to their likely effects on other agents leads to practical success. I then show how the hypothesis accommodates and unifies a range of psychological phenomena, including confabulation and rationalisation, positive illusions, and identity protective cognition.

Since the early 2000s, global, underground networks of insurrectionary anarchists have carried out thousands of acts of political violence. This book is an exploration of the ideas, strategies, and history of these political actors that engage in a confrontation with the oppressive powers of the state and capital. This book challenges the reader to consider the historically ignored articulations put forth by those who communicate through sometimes violent political acts-vandalism, sabotage, arson and occasional use of explosives. These small acts of violence are announced and contextualized through written communiqués, which are posted online, translated, and circulated globally. This book offers the first contemporary history of these digitally-mediated networks, and seeks to locate this tendency within anti-state struggles from the past.