Galilee Blooming: First Palynological and Archaeological Data from an Early Byzantine Cistern at Horvat Kur

Preliminary archaeological and palynological results are presented from an early Byzantine cistern of the village Horvat Kur in eastern Lower Galilee/Israel. The rural site was settled from the Hellenistic until the Early Arab period, its synagogue was constructed shortly after 425 AD and renovated sometimes during the 2nd half of the 6th century AD. It was abandoned probably as a consequence of the earthquake of 749 AD. The intact and properly sealed cistern contained complete or fully restorable pottery. Two cooking pots from the early 5th century AD comprised sediments which was sampled for palynological purposes. Both samples, as well as a sample from the soil beneath one of the pots and a modern surface sample from the site, revealed well preserved palynomorphs in comparably high concentration showing a great potential of the cistern as a pollen archive. The pollen content points to an open, grassy semiarid landscape with an apparent scarcity of cultivars and trees in the vicinity of the site and an abundance of herbs, especially Asteraceae, which are still commonly found in modern regional vegetation.

The Kinneret Regional Project Excavations of a Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee, 2010-2013: A Preliminary Report

The article presents the preliminary results from four seasons of excavations at Horvat Kur in the Galilee. The excavations conducted by the Kinneret Regional Project have exposed the remains of a broad-house synagogue from the Byzantine period. The most important finds include an elevated platform (i. e., a bemah) that supported a chest holding Torah scrolls, an ornamented limestone seat that was probably used by the leader of the congregation, and a basalt stone table that features geometric figures on three sides and figurative representations on one side. The Horvat Kur synagogue represents a valuable example of the diversity of Galilean synagogues that were built or renovated between the 5th and the 7th centuries C.E.

Post-Empire Imaginaries? Anglophone Literature, History, and the Demise of Empires

Empires as political entities may be a thing of the past, but as a concept, empire is alive and kicking. From heritage tourism and costume dramas to theories of the imperial idea(l): empire sells. Post-Empire Imaginaries? Anglophone Literature, History, and the Demise of Empires presents innovative scholarship on the lives and legacies of empires in diverse media such as literature, film, advertising, and the visual arts. Though rooted in real space and history, the post-empire and its twin, the post-imperial, emerge as ungraspable ideational constructs. The volume convincingly establishes empire as welcoming resistance and affirmation, introducing post-empire imaginaries as figurations that connect the archives and repertoires of colonial nostalgia, postcolonial critique, post-imperial dreaming.

“Delendum est Imperium Ottomanorum“: War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and the End of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire’s status as a full member of the international community of civilized states, which was bound by the rules of international law, had been challenged again and again during the formative period of the international law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. When the First World War began, it was the first global military conflict, in which these rules of international law were put to the test. In the case of the Ottoman Empire quite a few questions were not yet settled, not least because the country was still bound by unequal treaties and because it had never ratified the renewed Hague Rules of Land Warfare of 1907, which it had only signed under reservations. Against this background the contribution will therefore focus on the debate amongst legal scholars on violations of the laws of war (and humanity) in regard to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

The Madras Presidency’s Prisons and the British Empire, 1820s–1850s

This paper is based on the observation that projects to reform prisons in British India in the first half of the 19th century were remarkably parallel to those in Britain and other colonies of the British Empire. Therefore, it will be asked to what extent local discussions about imprisonment in India were connected to developments in the metropole, in other parts of the empire, and elsewhere in the colony and how such imperial connections influenced local practices. Recent studies on colonial India’s prisons have focused on the British possessions in north India, whereas the Madras Presidency’s penal history is as of yet mostly unstudied. The paper will look on two initiatives of prison reform undertaken by the Madras Government; firstly, an inquiry made in the 1820s to combat the high mortality in the jails, and secondly, attempts throughout the 1840s and 1850s to construct a penitentiary along the lines of penal systems in other parts of India and the British Empire. The two case studies promise insights into the body of knowledge about punishment that was accumulated in British India, its entanglement with debates in other parts of the empire, and the emergence of ‘imperial standards’ of imprisonment in the course of the 19th century.