The Byzantine Church of the Nutrition in Nazareth rediscovered

Although Nazareth has usually been seen by scholars as a relatively minor Byzantine pilgrimage centre, it contained perhaps the most important ‘lost’ Byzantine church in the Holy Land, the Church of the Nutrition ‐ according to De Locis Sanctis built over the house where it was believed that Jesus Christ had been a child. This article, part of a series of final interim reports of the PEF-funded ‘Nazareth Archaeological Project’, presents evidence that this church has been discovered at the present Sisters of Nazareth convent in central Nazareth. The scale of the church and its surrounding structures suggests that Nazareth was a much larger, and more important, centre for Byzantine-period pilgrimage than previously supposed. The church was used in the Crusader period, after a phase of desertion, prior to destruction by fire, probably in the 13th century.

Death has a touch of class: society and space in Brookwood Cemetery, 1853-1903

Changes in the cultures and spaces of death during the Victorian era reveal the shifting conceptualisations and mobilisations of class in this period. Using the example of Brookwood Necropolis, established 1852 in response to the contemporary burial reform debate, the paper explores tensions within the sanitary reform movement, 1853–1903. Whilst reformist ideology grounded the cemetery's practices in a discourse of inclusion, one of the consequences of reform was to reinforce class distinctions. Combined with commercial imperatives and the modern impulse towards separation of living and dead, this aspect of reform enacted a counter-discourse of alienation. The presence of these conflicting strands in the spaces and practices of the Necropolis and their changes during the time period reflect wider urban trends.

Monastic and church archaeology

Major advances in church and monastic archaeology are discussed in terms of two distinct waves, ca. 1970–1995 and 1995 to the time of writing (2014). The first wave was influenced by landscape history and processual archaeology; scholarship focused principally on historical, economic, and technological questions and targeted individual sites and monuments for study. The second wave has been informed by postprocessual approaches and considers change and complexity in religious landscapes and perspectives on religious space, embodiment, and agency. In conclusion, this article calls for a more holistic approach to the archaeology of medieval Christian belief, one which moves beyond the focus on institutions and monuments that has characterized monastic and church archaeology and extends archaeological study to include the performative rituals of Christian life and death in the Middle Ages.

Dating the dead: a high-resolution radiocarbon chronology of burial Within an Early Bronze Age barrow cemetery at Over, Cambridgeshire

This paper outlines the results of a programme of radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling relating to an Early Bronze Age barrow cemetery at Over, Cambridgeshire. In total, 43 dates were obtained, enabling the first high-resolution independent chronology (relating to both burial and architectural events) to be constructed for a site of this kind. The results suggest that the three main turf-mound barrows were probably constructed and used successively rather than simultaneously, that the shift from inhumation to cremation seen on the site was not a straightforward progression, and that the four main ‘types’ of cremation burial in evidence were used throughout the life of the site. Overall, variability in terms of burial practice appears to have been a key feature of the site. The paper also considers the light that the fine-grained chronology developed can shed on recent much wider discussions of memory and time within Early Bronze Age barrows

Graceful remedies: understanding grace in the Catholic Church's treatment of clerical child sexual abuse

This article examines advocacy of Catholic restorative justice for clerical child sexual abuse from the standpoint of feminist criminological critiques of the use of restorative mediation in sexual offence cases. In particular, it questions the Catholic invocation of grace and forgiveness of survivors of abuse in light of critical feminist concerns about the exploitation of emotions in restorative practices, especially in regard to sexual and other gender-based offences. In the context of sexual abuse, the Catholic appeal to grace has the potential for turning into an extraordinary demand made of victims not only to rehabilitate offenders and the church in the eyes of the community, but also to work towards the spiritual absolution of the abuser. This unique feature of Catholic-oriented restorative justice raises important concerns in terms of feminist critiques of the risk of abuses of power within mediation, and is also incompatible with orthodox restorative justice theory, which, although it advocates a ‘spiritual’ response to crime, is concerned foremost with the rights, needs and experiences of victims.

High Royds: an integrated, analytical approach for mapping the unmarked burials of a pauper cemetery

Applying geophysical techniques to detect and map the physical extent of individual unmarked graves proves difficult in many cases. The success of individual geophysical techniques for detecting unmarked graves may be due to a poor understanding of the nature of the graves themselves, the context in which they lie in, and temporal changes to the burial state. Given the unpredictability of these variables, it is surprising that grave prospection is often undertaken using only a single method. This paper presents a multi-methodological survey strategy for detecting unmarked burials and utilises an analytical approach for visualising and evaluating survey results.

Sine ira et studio : En kvalitativ analys av institutionaliseringsprocessens konsekvenser inom den nypaganistiska rörelsen Church of All Worlds

Uppsatsen har för avsikt att undersöka hur den nypaganistiska, och i första hand nordamerikanska, rörelsen Church of All Worlds reagerar mot förändring och institutionalisering. För att förstå institutionaliseringsprocessens bakomliggande krafter och identifiera dess konsekvenser, är det övergripande syftet med uppsatsen att utifrån en fallstudie av Church of All Worlds undersöka hur organisationen under sina verksamhetsår förändrats i fråga om (1) förhållande till samhället, (2) ideologi, (3) organisatorisk struktur och (4) ledarskap. Utgångspunkten är att betrakta rörelsen som dels religiös och spirituell, dels organisatorisk och ekonomisk, varför uppsatsen lutar sin teoribildning mot både religions- och samhällsvetenskapen och mot organisationsteorin. Som samhälleliga samt organisatoriska faktorer till Church of All Worlds institutionalisering finner vi den postmoderna motreaktionen mot industrisamhällets missförhållanden samt kritiken mot existensen av den objektiva sanningen. Institutionaliseringens följder är emellertid att rörelsen slutligen upptas som en del av det sen-moderna samhällssystemet. Förändringen märks i första hand då rörelsen under 80-talet förvandlas till en ekonomiskt intresserad organisation med tjänstehierarkier och reglerat ansvar som påföljder. Den byråkratiska arbetsordningen urlakar inte bara rörelsens ideologi, utan tvingar också den nu demokratiskt tillsatte ledaren till radikala åtgärder för att återfå sin makt, något som når sin kulmen i en konflikt med ledarens sorti som yttersta konsekvens.