The International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP), co-directed by Alice Gorman and me, is the first full-scale, systematic archaeological investigation of the material culture from a site of human activity in space. We started in late 2015, in response to a number of phenomena, including a growing desire to move the focus of space…[Read more]

This study identified the icon of Virgin Moscovita and the icon of the Holy Mandylion, described in Konstantinos Dapontes’ writings, with the icon of the Virgin and the icon of the Holy Mandylion preserved in his family monastery Evangelistria in Skopelos island. We can now retrace the “biography”of these two artefacts, the history of their creat…[Read more]

La découverte d’une inscription slavonne dans le narthex de l’église du monastère de Râmeț (comté d’Alba) en 1966, sa relecture avec des moyens techniques spéciaux en 1978 et sa publication officielle en 1985 ont porté à l’attention des historiens le nom du peintre (Mihul du Criș-Blanc), le nom de l’évêque fondateur (archevêque Gélase),…[Read more]

En cada una de estas [identidades] hay almacenado un conocimiento implícito y arraigado sobre valores y comportamientos apropiados, gustos y disgustos, formas de ser.
R. Se identifican tres formas principales de autorregulación automática: un efecto automático de la percepción sobre la acción, la búsqueda automática de una meta y una evaluac…[Read more]

In each of these [identities-roles] there is stored implicit and ingrained knowledge about appropriate values and behaviors, likes and dislikes, ways of being.
A. Three main forms of automatic self-regulation are identified: an automatic effect of perception on action, the automatic pursuit of a goal and a continuous automatic evaluation of one’s…[Read more]

Correspondences can be identified between (on the one hand) androcentric cosmogonies, ancestral misogyny and tribal blood rituals, and (on the other) the classical paradigm of vampirism, especially in its literary and on-screen flowering. Specifically, the initiatory culture-hero and the archetypal vampire both confer a haematologically-mediated…[Read more]

This blog post tells the story of an embroidered silk postcard sent by an Australian soldier to his sister Millie in Camden, NSW, for Christmas 1916.
The post gives a short account of the history of postcards and, in particular, the millions of embroidered silk postcards made in France between 1915 and 1919.

This blog post tells the story of an embroidered silk handkerchief sent to an Australian soldier on the frontline in 1916 at Christmas.

This newspaper article tells the story of a First World War patriotic fund, the Princess Mary Christmas Fund, launched in 1914. Princess Mary, the daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, aimed to raise enough funds to ensure that ‘every Sailor afloat and every Soldier at the front’ received a Christmas present in the form of a small keepsake…[Read more]

This essay shows that physicians of early Āyurveda adopted a pragmatic approach to the challenges dharma imposed on them. While the concept and its importance is generally accepted in the medical compendia, various passages stress the fact that good health is an indispensable precondition to pursue dharma and other goals of life. In the interests…[Read more]

This blog post details two public artworks at the Camden Civic Centre that won awards at the Camden Art Prize.
The artworks are ‘Crossroads’ by Diego Latella (1977) and ‘Space’ by Irene Carroll (1994)

This blog post tells the story behind the Camden Teamsters Memorial in John Street, Camden, NSW.
The memorial is a tribute to the teamsters, bullockies and carriage drivers who travelled the Yerranderie Road between the mining town of Yerranderie and Camden through the Burragorang Valley.
The memorial has a rear wheel from a flat-top wagon, a…[Read more]

Revista RELACIONES, nº 470 – Julio de 2023 / Montevideo (Uruguay).
On the formation of the Christ myth and the ideologies that led to the birth of Christianity.
Sobre la formación del mito de Cristo y las ideologías que propiciaron el nacimiento del del cristianismo.

This text consists of the ‘lectio praecursoria’ given at the defense of my doctoral dissertation “The Good Noblemen Who Conquered the Kingdom: Islam, Historiography, and Aristocratic Legitimation in Late-Medieval Portugal”. This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late…[Read more]

This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā…[Read more]

article + 6 photographs from the Manuscriptistan Project

Four intense pages (Revista RELACIONES, Montevideo) in which an atheist materialist speaks in depth about Christianity, religion and the anthropological phenomenon of the sacred.

Entrevista a ELISEO FERRER, autor de SACRIFICIO Y DRAMA DEL REY SAGRADO.
A propósito del largo itinerario temporal de «la genealogía, la antropología y la his…[Read more]