Past Imperfect (Journal)
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Texts and Artifacts: A Spatial Analysis of Papyri at Karanis
No full textThis paper takes a quantitative and spatial analytical approach to the papyri excavated from the Graco-Roman Egyptian town of Karanis. It attempts to accomplish two things. Firstly, it breaks down the descriptive attributes of the papyrological assemblage as a whole, giving a sense of the types of texts, authors, dates and languages involved. The goal of this part of the paper is to overcome the past tendency of publishing individual texts or small archives without their larger context. Secondly, the paper plots the proveniences of papyri from Karanis using a Geographic Information System or GIS. Papyri are used as proxies for socio-economic status and literacy. Plotting the proveniences shows a distinct lack of a single cluster of papyri, revealing instead either several clusters or an even distribution. This suggests the lack of a single wealth or literate center within the town of Karanis. Future studies hope to include both archaeological artifacts and more stratigraphic layers in the GIS spatial analysis
“It Depends on Where You Look”: The Unusual Presentation of Scurvy and Smallpox Among Klondike Gold Rushers as Revealed Through Qualitative Data Sources
No full textHealth in the context of frontier boomtown communities represents an underdeveloped topic of research both within the social sciences and beyond. Studies of such historic communities offer insight into the human condition in past populations. They provide valuable observations with far-reaching modern-day applications, as many of the issues faced by the Klondike Gold Rushers are similarly experienced by those residing in single-industry and resource communities experiencing fast change in the remote wilderness. These communities present a unique biosocial context for the experience of disease and disorders, as is evident in the case of both scurvy and smallpox when they erupted in the Klondike gold fields. Yet, for various reasons, these diseases remained invisible when quantitative data sources only were used. The important implications that these sicknesses held for the health status of the gold rushers would thus have been undetected had analysis focused solely upon the customary morbidity and mortality data sources, resulting in a distorted view of the human condition in the context of this celebrated event in Canadian history. Only when qualitative materials are also explored does the full picture of the health in this historic population come into focus, while also revealing much more about life in this particular time and place than simply what illnesses the Klondikers suffered and died from
The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1948
No full textThis essay discusses the Yugoslav-Soviet relations from the end of the Second World War until early 1948, when Stalin expelled Tito from the international communist movement. The primary focus is on the interaction of Moscow and Belgrade’s policies towards Albania, which until the middle of 1947 revealed the strength of the Yugoslav-Soviet relationship. Likewise, Stalin chose Albania to be the main frontline of the conflict when he turned against Tito. The demise of the Yugoslav-Soviet alliance, however, was not caused by the competition between Tito and Stalin for influence in Albania. Although Belgrade placed Moscow in the centre of its foreign policy by seeking the latter’s approval and support for its expansionism, Kremlin’s policies were dictated by considerations far greater than the bilateral ties between the two countries. When Soviet policy makers became convinced that the American commitment to Western Europe was permanent in the wake of the Marshall Plan, Kremlin decided to Stalinize the nascent communist bloc. In view of its popularity at home and assertiveness abroad, the Titoist regime was bound to be the primary victim of the Stalinization drive
