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Flemming, Rebecca Elizabeth. "Woman as an object of medical knowledge in the Roman Empire, from Celsus to Galen." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.268302.
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Crystal, Ian Mark. "Subject and object in intellection as a basis for a theory of self-intellection in Ancient Greek thought." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 1996. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/subject-and-object-in-intellection-as-a-basis-for-a-theory-of-selfintellection-in-ancient-greek-thought(4f4f6b93-dd6f-40e5-8996-e1d02fa86018).html.
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Taylor, Barnaby. "Word and object in Lucretius : Epicurean linguistics in theory and practice." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c0ed507b-6436-4c84-8457-34fa707af79a.
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This thesis combines a philosophical interpretation of Epicurean attitudes to language with literary analysis of the language of DRN. Chapters 1-2 describe Epicurean attitudes to diachronic and synchronic linguistic phenomena. In the first chapter I claim that the Epicurean account of the first stage of the development of language involves pre-rational humans acting under a ‘strong’ form of compulsion. The analogies with which Lucretius describes this process were motivated by a structural similarity between the Epicurean accounts of phylogenetic and ontogenetic psychology. Chapter 2 explores the Epicurean account of word use and recognition, central to which are ‘conceptions’. These are attitudes which express propositions; they are not mental images. Προλήψεις, a special class of conception, are self-evidently true basic beliefs about how objects in the world are categorized which, alongside the non-doxastic criteria of perceptions and feelings, play a foundational role in enquiry. Chapter 3 offers a reconstruction of an Epicurean theory of metaphor. Metaphor, for Epicureans, involves the subordination of additional conceptions to words to create secondary meanings. Secondary meanings are to be understood by referring back to primary meanings. Accordingly, Lucretius’ use of metaphor regularly involves the juxtaposition in the text of primary and secondary uses of terms. An account of conceptual metaphor in DRN is given in which the various conceptual domains from which Lucretius draws his metaphorical language are mapped and explored. Chapter 4 presents a new argument against ‘atomological’ readings of Lucretius’ atoms/letters analogies. Lucretian implicit etymologies involve the illustration, via juxtaposition, of language change across time. This is fully in keeping with the Epicurean account of language development. Chapter 5 describes Lucretius’ reflections on and interactions with the Greek language. I suggest that the study of lexical Hellenisms in DRN must be sensitive to the distinction between lexical borrowing and linguistic code-switching. I then give an account of morphological calquing in the poem, presenting it as a significant but overlooked strategy for Lucretian vocabulary-formation.
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Kim, Ju-Young. "L'objet ancien dans sa forme et son essence : entre passé et modernité, familiarité et étrangeté." Thesis, Paris 1, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017PA01H322.
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Un objet ancien dont on ne se sert plus aujourd’hui continue cependant de vivre dans notre vie contemporaine. Il se présente à nous avec un autre fonctionnement et souvent avec une autre définition : ce n’est plus l’objet utile ni l’outil pratique qu’il a été. Dans cette thèse, la valeur de l’objet ancien est étudiée dans sa dimension immatérielle et spirituelle. Ainsi nous renouvellerons sa définition en réfléchissant sur son essence et sa forme d’un point du vue contemporain. La première partie de cette thèse présente les concepts de la valeur de l’objet ancien de nos jours sous un angle sociologique. Ensuite, nous proposons une approche du concept de l’objet ancien comme une chose mi-humaine mi-objet. Puisqu’un objet ancien d’une autre époque possède toujours en lui cette vie de l’époque révolue, est-ce que cet objet peut vivre comme s’il était une chose animée ? Dans la seconde partie, nous avons recherché quelles caractéristiques pouvaient donner à l’objet ancien cette sensation de vie humaine ? Peut-être tout d’abord les traces des gens qui se sont accumulées sur lui visiblement et invisiblement ? La notion coréenne de « sonté » nous a permis de traduire et d’exprimer ces traces visibles et invisibles sur l’objet ancien. Dans la dernière partie, l’objet ancien est étudié dans le domaine de l’art contemporain. Les artistes contemporains voient l’objet ancien comme un nouvel objet et lui donne une autre forme et une autre essence qui, bien souvent, est une allégorie de la destinée humaineAn ancient object that is no longer in use today continues however to survive in our contemporary life. It is presented to us with another function and often with another definition: it is no longer the useful object nor the practical tool that it used to be. In this dissertation, the value of the ancient object is studied in its immaterial and spiritual dimensions. We will thus renew its definition by reflecting on its essence and form from a contemporary viewpoint. The first part of the dissertation presents the concepts around the value of the ancient object in our time from a sociological angle. Next, we propose an approach to the concept of the ancient object as half-human and half-object. Since an ancient object from another era always keeps within itself its life in the period gone by, could this object exist as if it were an animated entity? In the second part, we have sought what characteristics could offer the ancient object this sensation of human life. Perhaps, first of all, the traces of people that it has accumulated visibly and invisibly? The Korean notion of “sonté” allows us to translate and express these visible and invisible traces on the ancient object. In the last part, the ancient object is studied in the field of contemporary art. Contemporary artists see the ancient object as a new object and give it another form and another essence which often is an allegory of human destiny
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Fechik, Jennifer R. "Interaction in the Symposion: An Experiential Approach to Attic Black-Figured Eye Cups." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1363802054.
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Moore, Cathie A. "Eternal Gaze: Third Intermediate Period Non-Royal Female Egyptian Coffins." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1401301633.
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Schuetter, Jared Michael. "Cairn Detection in Southern Arabia Using a Supervised Automatic Detection Algorithm and Multiple Sample Data Spectroscopic Clustering." The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1269567071.
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Weber, Felicitas. "The Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project." Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 2016. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-201806.
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“The Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project: Second Millennium BCE” was intended and funded as a three-year project (2013-2016) to explore the world of Ancient Egyptian demons in the 2nd millennium BC. It intends to create a classification and ontology of benevolent and malevolent demons. Whereas ancient Egyptians did not use a specific term denoting “demons”, liminal beings known from various other cultures such as δαίμονες, ghosts, angels, Mischwesen, genies, etc., were nevertheless described in texts and illustrations. The project aims to collect philological, iconographical and archaeological evidence to understand the religious beliefs, practices, interactions and knowledge not only of the ancient Egyptians’ daily life but also their perception of the afterlife. Till today scholars, as well as interested laymen, have had no resource to consult for specific examples of those beings, except for rather general encyclopaedias that include all kinds of divine beings or the Iconography of Deities and Demons (IDD) project that is ongoing. Neither provides, however, a searchable platform for both texts and images. The database created by the Demonology Project: 2K is designed to remedy this gap. The idea is to provide scholars and the public with a database that allows statistical analyses and innovative data visualisation, accessible and augmentable from all over the world to stimulate the dialogue and open communication not only within Egyptology but also with neighbouring disciplines. For the time-span of the three year project a pilot database was planned as a foundation for further data-collection and analysis. The data that were chosen date to the 2nd Millennium BCE and originate from objects of daily life (headrests and ivory wands), as well as from objects related to the afterlife, (coffins and ‘Book of the Dead’ manuscripts). This material, connected by its religious purposes, nevertheless provides a cross-section through ancient Egyptian religious practice. The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and includes Kasia Szpakowska (director) who supervises the work of the two participating PhD students in Egyptology. The project does not include funds for computer scientists or specialists in digital humanities. Therefore, the database is designed, developed and input by the members of the team only. The focus of my presentation will be the structure of the database that faces the challenge to include both textual and iconographical evidence. I will explain the organisation of the data, search patterns and the opportunities of their visualisation and possible research outcome. Furthermore, I will discuss the potentials the database already possesses and might generate in the future for scholars and the public likewise. Since the evidence belongs to numerous collections from all over the world, I would like to address the problems of intellectual property and copyright with the solution we pursue for releasing the database for registered usage onto the internet.
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Clo, Magdeleine. "Les objets dans le roman grec." Thesis, Grenoble, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014GRENL024.
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La lecture de cinq romans grecs conservés, les histoires d'amour et d'aventures qui forment un corpus romanesque homogène (Leucippé et Clitophon d'Achille Tatius, Chéréas et Callirhoé de Chariton, Les Éthiopiques d'Héliodore, Daphnis et Chloé de Longus et Les Éphésiaques de Xénophon d'Éphèse), ne laisse pas présager de l'abondance des objets matériels que l'on peut y trouver. Nous répertorions exactement 710 termes qui désignent 426 objets différents, apparaissant à 4752 reprises dans l'ensemble des œuvres. Nous pouvons organiser ces objets et occurrences dans onze catégories fonctionnelles, qui sont plus ou moins représentées dans les romans : les biens et avoirs, les ustensiles, les armes, le mobilier, les vêtements, les accessoires, les soins corporels, les objets de la scène, les supports de l'écrit, les objets décoratifs et la vaisselle. Cette organisation permet de mieux appréhender l'ensemble des objets du corpus pour révéler l'utilisation littéraire que peuvent en faire les auteurs. En effet, l'objet accompagne avant tout le personnage au cours des péripéties : il est son attribut, l'élément qui permet de l'identifier sans doute possible dans le récit. L'objet donne des informations au lecteur sur l'histoire de ce personnage : témoin des événements qui ont marqué sa vie, il devient alors emblématique de l'individu. Cette relation est resserrée dans le cas des objets de reconnaissance dont font mention les romans de notre corpus. L'objet est signifiant lorsqu'il accompagne les protagonistes et ces derniers peuvent les utiliser pour indiquer leurs intentions ou essayer de les dissimuler. Les personnages tirent profit de l'objet pour le mettre en scène. L'objet leur est un adjuvant essentiel au cours des intrigues. L'objet fait pleinement partie du décor romanesque car il est un élément matériel qui peut être un repère spatial pour les personnages des romans comme pour le lecteur. L'objet, attaché à un lieu, donne également des indications symboliques aux personnages, les aiguillant dans leur voyage dans l'espace méditerranéen. Par conséquent, ces objets peuvent aussi être des obstacles à cette progression. L'objet est un opposant aux personnages, ce qui nourrit les intrigues romanesques. Parmi tous ces objets marqués par l'ambiguïté, le pharmakon se distingue par sa double fonction, déjà présente dans le mot grec, d'adjuvant et d'opposant. Les objets ne sont pas de simples éléments de décor, ils participent pleinement à l'action, au même titre que les personnages. L'objet, lorsqu'il est mentionné, n'est donc jamais anodin. Il peut également être emblématique de la relation entretenue par deux individus : l'objet est le support des relations, et devient symbolique de celles-ci. Effectivement, dans l'objet se cristallisent les sentiments des protagonistes, et l'objet permet leur union, métaphorique, à distance. De nombreux types d'objets participent de cette mise en relation des personnages : les coupes lors des banquets, les lettres échangées, les cadeaux offerts. L'objet est le signe de la relation elle-même. L'objet peut aussi être décoratif et orne dès lors le récit, lorsque les auteurs le mettent en avant dans de longues descriptions, notamment dans de longues ekphraseis qui enrichissent les textes. L'objet n'apparaît parfois pas pour les personnages des romans, néanmoins, il est bien utilisé par les auteurs, notamment pour concrétiser des expressions abstraites : de nombreuses comparaisons et métaphores mentionnent des objets, ce qui « matérialise » le texte. D'ailleurs, c'est dans les discours des personnages que l'objet occupe une place symbolique. Le symbole confère au texte une dimension interprétative qui enrichit encore la lecture des intrigues romanesques. Le discours symbolique éclaire le système des représentations.Ainsi l'objet, support du discours, est capital pour les œuvres romanesques car il permet au texte littéraire de se déployer dans toutes ses dimensionsThe five ideal Greek novels, nearly complete (Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon, Chariton's Callirhoe, Heliodorus' Aethiopics, Longus' Daphnis and Chloe and Xenophon of Ephesus' An Ephesian Tale) constitute a genre that can fruitfully be studied as a unit. In these novels, the abundance of concrete objects is staggering. 426 distinct objects are described with 710 various lexemes and this group of words occurs 4752 times throughout the corpus under consideration. To organize and better understand the function of these objects and the language used to describe them, they can be meaningfully placed into eleven functional categories: property and assets, utensils, weapons, furniture, clothing, accessories, objects related to personal care, stage props, writing tools, decorative objects, and finally dishes. This organization allows the reader to have a better view of all the objects and enlightens each author's literary uses of them. Indeed, objects accompany characters throughout these narratives, can function as an attribute, that is the object that identifies them without any doubt. An object provides the reader with pertinent information about a character's personal history, since the object witnesses the events that have marked his or her life. The object becomes emblematic of the individuals. In the case of objects of recognition throughout corpus, the relationship between the identity of a character and his or her objects is even tighter. The object is significant when accompanying the protagonists, who can also use them to indicate their intentions or in turn try to hide them. The characters benefit from the object when used to manipulate a narrative situation. They often play the role of an essential tool without which the narrative could not progress. The object is an integral part of the scenery in that it is a material thing that embodies a spatial reference for characters as well as readers. This aspect of an object can work on both an intra- and extra-textual level providing characters within a novel or the work's readers with fundamental information. Imbued with spatial significance, an object can provide an impediment to a character's journey or, even more strongly, pose as an opponent that complicates a given plot's forward movement. Among the objects marked by this ambiguity of helping or hindering narrative, the pharmakon plays a distinguished role serving either as a poison or medicine. Accordingly, objects cannot be thought of as merely decorative elements in the novel, rather they must be thought of as things intimately involved in the action itself. The object, when mentioned, is never insignificant. Alongside its function as an agent, an object can also serve as a symbol for a relationship between individual characters. Indeed, the feelings of the protagonists crystallize themselves in the object, and the object allows for their metaphorical union, even when separated by distance. Many types of objects put the characters into a relationship: banqueters' cups, letters, and gifts all have these sorts of functions. In these instances, an object becomes a sign of a relationship itself. The object can also be a decorative ornament in the scenery but also of the text itself, when authors feature them in long descriptions, for instance in long ekphraseis that enrich the text. Objects, however, are not always a visible aspect of the scenery, but can serve as metaphors or illustrations for abstract concepts. Not only do the novelists use objects in this way to explicate an idea for the reader, but characters do so as well in their speeches. The symbol gives the text a dimension of significance that enriches more and more the reading of the romantic plots. The symbolic system highlights the cultural representations. In a word, the object is far from secondary or subsidiary, but is fundamental to these fictions, since it allows the novel to develop and flourish in all of its dimensions
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Jacks, Xavier. "Méthodes de datation des objets anciens." Paris 5, 1994. http://www.theses.fr/1994PA05P089.
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Gühler, Janine. "Aristotle on mathematical objects." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6864.
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My thesis is an exposition and defence of Aristotle's philosophy of mathematics. The first part of my thesis is an exposition of Aristotle's cryptic and challenging view on mathematics and is based on remarks scattered all over the corpus aristotelicum. The thesis' central focus is on Aristotle's view on numbers rather than on geometrical figures. In particular, number is understood as a countable plurality and is always a number of something. I show that as a consequence the related concept of counting is based on units. In the second part of my thesis, I verify Aristotle's view on number by applying it to his account of time. Time presents itself as a perfect test case for this project because Aristotle defines time as a kind of number but also considers it as a continuum. Since numbers and continuous things are mutually exclusive this observation seems to lead to an apparent contradiction. I show why a contradiction does not arise when we understand Aristotle properly. In the third part, I argue that the ontological status of mathematical objects, dubbed as materially [hulekos, ÍlekÀc] by Aristotle, can only be defended as an alternative to Platonism if mathematical objects exist potentially enmattered in physical objects. In the fourth part, I compare Aristotle's and Plato's views on how we obtain knowledge of mathematical objects. The fifth part is an extension of my comparison between Aristotle's and Plato's epistemological views to their respective ontological views regarding mathematics. In the last part of my thesis I bring Frege's view on numbers into play and engage with Plato, Aristotle and Frege equally while exploring their ontological commitments to mathematical objects. Specifically, I argue that Frege should not be mistaken for a historical Platonist and that we find surprisingly many similarities between Frege and Aristotle. After having acknowledged commonalities between Aristotle and Frege, I turn to the most significant differences in their views. Finally, I defend Aristotle's abstractionism in mathematics against Frege's counting block argument. This whole project sheds more light on Aristotle's view on mathematical objects and explains why it remains an attractive view in the philosophy of mathematics.
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Aiewsakun, Pakorn. "Paleovirology : connecting recent and ancient viral evolution." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:370e0a28-ee67-441f-bce6-42ad4cdf9365.
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Endogenous viral elements, or viral genomic fossils, have proven extremely valuable in the study of the macroevolution of viruses, providing important, and otherwise unobtainable, insights into the ancient origin of viruses, and how their ancestors might have co-evolved with their hosts in the distant past. This type of investigation falls within the realm of paleovirologyâthe study of ancient viruses. Investigations of extant viruses and paleovirological analyses, however, often give conflicting results, especially those concerning viral evolutionary rates and timescales. Reconciling these two types of analyses is a necessary step towards a better understanding of the overall long-term evolutionary dynamics of viruses. The main study system of this thesis is foamy viruses (FVs). FVs are characterised by their stable co-speciation history with their hosts, allowing their evolutionary dynamics to be modelled and investigated over various timescales. This unique evolutionary feature makes FVs one of the best subjects for connecting recent and ancient viral evolution. The work here reports the discovery of several endogenous mammalian FVs, and examines how mammalian FVs co-evolve with their hosts. Analyses reveal a co-diversifying history of the two that could be dated back to the basal radiation of eutherians more than 100 million years ago. However, a small number of ancient FV cross-species transmissions could still be found, mostly involving New World monkey FVs. Based on this extended FV-mammal co-speciation pattern, this thesis investigates the long-term evolutionary rate dynamics of FVs, and shows that the rate estimates of FV evolution appear to decrease continuously as the rate measurement timescale increases, following a power-law decay function. The work presented here also shows that this so-called 'time-dependent rate phenomenon' is in fact a pervasive evolutionary feature of all viruses, and surprisingly, the rate estimates of evolution of all viruses seem to decay at the same speed, decreasing by approximately half for every 3-fold increase in the measurement timescale. Based on this power-law rate-decay pattern, we could infer evolutionary timescales of modern-day lentiviruses that are consistent with paleovirological analyses for the first time. Finally, this thesis reports the discovery of basal FV-like endogenous retroviruses (FLERVs) in amphibian and fish genomes. Phylogenetic analyses reveal that the progenitors of ray-finned fish FLERVs co-diversify broadly with their fish hosts, but also suggest that there might have been several ancient viral cross-class transmissions, involving lobe-finned fish, shark, and frog FLERVs. Again, by using the power-law rate-decay model, analyses in this thesis suggest that this major retroviral clade has an ancient Ordovician marine origin, originating together with their jawed vertebrate hosts more than 450 million years ago. This finding implies that the origin of retroviruses as a whole must be in the early Paleozoic Era, if not earlier. The results presented here bridge ancient and recent viral evolution.
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Haile, James Seymour. "Ancient DNA from sediments and associated remains." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2008. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8012c839-6a9c-47f9-83a6-b4a0f1d23b93.
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This thesis explores the potential of new substrates for ancient DNA studies and addresses novel questions that can now be asked. It also highlights an additional use of ancient DNA extracted from a traditional source.
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Zerdin, Jason R. "Studies in the ancient Greek verbs in -skō." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a605e950-4db8-4355-8a7f-2404056fcadb.
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Friedman, David A. "Josephus on the servile origins of the Jews in Egypt." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:313b7cfc-8abb-4bcf-b7d8-4a0131fab691.
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The Exodus story of the Israelites' slavery in Egypt and subsequent redemption was central to Jewish accounts of their national origins and was an important component of Jewish self-identification in antiquity. Although Greek and Latin sources appear ignorant of the Exodus story, ancient ethnographies of the Jews in non-Jewish sources claim that the Jews were originally Egyptian. This thesis examines how Josephus presents the Exodus story of the Jews' servile national origins in Egypt to a Roman audience who had biases against slaves, freedmen, and Egyptians, and little knowledge of Jewish origins apart from reports that they were Egyptian by origin. Josephus's first work Jewish War, a politico-military history, includes tangential remarks about Jewish origins, but implies in the proem that the Jews were originally Egyptian. Jewish Antiquities, which rewrites the biblical account of Jewish origins, explicitly denies that the Jews were originally Egyptian and deliberately omits mention of the Jews' servitude in Egypt at important points in the narrative where it would have been expected. In Against Apion, an apologia, Josephus subtly uses keywords and the rhetorical technique of insinuatio to prove that the Jews were not originally Egyptian without stating openly that this is a goal of the work. Several factors explain these results. Aristotle's theory of natural slavery, which posits that slaves are innately defective, was part of the ideological assumptions of first century CE Roman elites. Romans were also ambivalent about their own partly-servile origins in Romulus's asylum. Influenced by Augustan propaganda about Actium, first-century Roman sources deride Egyptians with a range of negative stereotypes. Josephus denies that the Jews were Egyptian and omits their servile origins at important points in the narrative where the Bible mentions it in order to portray the Jews as favorably as possible.
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Ross, Iain Alexander. "The New Hellenism : Oscar Wilde and ancient Greece." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2008. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:574a4841-5fb9-4b1f-bd09-6965c9ecef1c.
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I examine Wilde’s Hellenism in terms of the specific texts, editions and institutions through which he encountered ancient Greece. The late-nineteenth-century professionalisation of classical scholarship and the rise of the new science of archaeology from the 1870s onwards endangered the status of antiquity as a textual source of ideal fictions rather than a material object of positivist study. The major theme of my thesis is Wilde’s relationship with archaeology and his efforts to preserve Greece as an imaginative resource and a model for right conduct. From his childhood Wilde had accompanied his father Sir William Wilde on digs around Ireland. Sir William’s ethnological interests led him to posit a common racial origin for Celts and Greeks; thus, for Wilde, to read a Greek text was to intuit native affinity. Chapters 1–3 trace his education, his travels in Greece, his involvement with the founding of the Hellenic Society, and his defence of the archaeologically accurate stage spectaculars of the 1880s, arguing that in his close association with supporters of archaeology such as J.P. Mahaffy and George Macmillan Wilde exemplifies the new kind of Hellenist opposed by Benjamin Jowett and R.C. Jebb. Chapter 4 makes a case for Wilde’s final repudiation of archaeology and his return to the textual remains of Greek antiquity, present as an intertexual resource in his mature works. Thus I examine the role of Aristotle’s Ethics in ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’ and of Platonism in the critical dialogues, The Picture of Dorian Gray and ‘The Portrait of Mr W.H.’ I present The Importance of Being Earnest as a self-conscious exercise in the New Comedy of Menander, concluding that Wilde ultimately returned to the anachronistic eclecticism of the Renaissance attitude to ancient texts.
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McClelland, Harry-Luke Oliver. "Carbon dioxide and coccolithophore physiology in ancient oceans." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8a787b15-54cc-4a4e-8350-879a912cfe22.
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Coccolithophores form an important and dynamically evolving component of the carbon cycle. These ubiquitous single-celled marine calcifying phytoplankton are re- sponsible for half of the calcium carbonate production in the modern surface ocean, and their adorning calcite plates (coccoliths), produced intracellularly, have con- tributed to sedimentary carbonate for over 200 million years. They constitute a significant control on the partitioning of carbon between the atmosphere, ocean and sedimentary reservoirs on timescales from the instantaneous to the geological. Coc- colithophores are also uniquely placed to record aspects of the carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean, because the carbon isotopic composition of the organic matter (d13Corg) and calcite (d13Ccal) that they produce is a function of many parameters, including ambient aqueous carbon dioxide concentration [CO2]. This thesis addresses the bidirectional interaction between coccolithophores and the carbon cycle in the geological past, by asking how cellular carbon fluxes relate to physical evidence that is preserved throughout geological time. First, I present and calibrate a novel rationale for size-normalising coccolith mass, and show that over two glacial-interglacial cycles, coccolithophores appear to calcify more under high [CO2] conditions; a result that is manifest on evolutionary timescales, and is necessarily elusive to experiments. Second, I investigate the parameters controlling d13Ccal and d13Corg in coccolithophores through in vivo experimentation, and devel- opment of a model of cellular isotopic fluxes. I show that so called "vital effects" in coccolithophores arise as a result of differences in calcification to photosynthesis ratios. Third, using a combination of novel and established protocols for extraction and isotopic analysis of specific organic molecules from fossils taxonomically separated by size, I show the very first size-specific geologic time series of coccolith-associated d13Corg, and the first time-series of size-separated coccolith d13Ccal over a glacial cycle. A novel means of inferring past carbon dioxide concentrations, based on an iterative inverse modelling approach, is presented and tested.
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Ovenden, Christine Ann. "Towards understanding the experiential meanings of primary school childrens encounters with ancient Egyptian objects." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2004. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020475/.
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This inquiry seeks an understanding of the experiential meanings of primary school children's encounters with ancient Egyptian objects by using a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology. To demonstrate how this methodology is practised, adult experiences of an exhibition of ancient Egyptian sculpture and contemporary art are analyzed and interpreted. A survey of ideas from theoretical and phenomenological literature follows, focusing on the visual, tactile and verbal dimensions of children's awareness, {itself a problematic term). The physical and social aspects of the teaching and researching context are then investigated, to discover how they impinge upon the children's experience as a whole. To consider the philosophical ideas which underpin hermeneutic phenomenology along with their application to educational research, the ideas of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Gadamer, van Manen, Bolinow and Vandenberg are discussed; with particular reference to bracketing prejudices; collecting and analyzing observational and interview data; and interpreting the children's experience through writing and rewriting. A narrative description which aims to recreate the immediacy and complexity of the experience is then included, using composite verbal statements from the children's letters and interviews, as well as insights from my own teaching experience. The four phenomenological existentials of lived-space, lived-body, livedtime and lived-human relations are then utilized to create a structure for interpreting the common themes of this experience. These comprise the fear of disorientation, entrapment, death, 'real' objects, being under surveillance, and experiencing alternate feelings of fear and excitement; wonder, stunned amazement and curiosity; being imaginatively transported to an ancient time; and empathic/empathetic feelings of being 'in touch' with the ancient Egyptians. Findings suggest that children's embodied responses which emanate from their visual and tactile experiences, can inform not only a deeper understanding of how their feelings, imagination and memories interact, but also how this interaction has relevance for primary pedagogy, primary history and museum education.
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Ozarowska, Lidia. "Healing sanctuaries : between science and religion." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b0cdbe4c-7d43-43a5-ab5f-a108707028f8.
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Divine healing has been often seen in opposition to human healing. The two spheres, have been considered as separate, both in space and in terms of elements involved. Asclepian sanctuaries have been mostly presented as domains of exclusively divine intervention, without any involvement of the human factor, possibly with the sole exception of dream interpretation. However, the written testimonies of temple cures, both those in the form of cure inscriptions dedicated in sanctuaries and the literary accounts of the incubation experience, give us reasons to suppose that the practical side of the functioning of the asklepieia could have assumed the involvement of human medicine, with the extent of this involvement differing in various epochs. Regardless of physicians' participation or its lack in the procedure, the methods applied in sanctuary healing appear to have evolved in parallel to the developments in medicine and their popular perception. Archaeological finds as well as the image of Asclepius as the god of medicine itself seem to confirm this. Nevertheless, by no means should these connections between the two spheres be treated as transforming the space of religious meaning into hospitals functioning under the auspices of a powerful god. Although acknowledging them does entail inclusion of human medicine within the space dedicated to Asclepius, it does not thereby deny the procedure of incubation its religious and metaphysical dimension. On the contrary, it shows that to the Greek mind divine and human healing were not mutually exclusive, but overlapped and coincided with each other, proving that the Greek sense of rationality was quite different from the modern and could comprise far more than what we call today "scientific thinking".
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Kasseri, Alexandra. "Archaic trade in the northern Aegean : the case of Methone in Pieria, Greece." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:48f2cf91-f266-4d32-9521-680da39f0acd.
Full textAbstract:
Recent discoveries near the village of Nea Agathoupoli, in Pieria, Greece have revealed the remains of an ancient town, identifiable with the ancient town of Methone, a putative Eretrian colony founded, according to Plutarch, in ca. 733 BC. From the material excavated so far, the town’s zenith was in the Late Geometric and Archaic periods, well documented by the high amounts of imports from all regions of the ancient world, especially by imported transport vessels. The significant percentage of transport amphorae in comparison to that of fine pottery strongly indicates the settlement's commercial character and suggests that Methone was operating as a redistribution centre which supplied Macedonia's hinterland with goods. This study is based on unpublished pottery analyzed here, for the first time. Among the regions, whose products are most popular in Methone are Chios and Athens, although more Eastern Greek towns such as Samos and Miletus had trading relations with Methone, too. Settlers from the these regions may have established themselves in Methone, but the initiative for the foundation of the town was, most probably, taken by Euboeans, whose activity in the Northern Aegean, in the Geometric period, was strong. Alongside the abundant imported vessels, a large amount of locally made transport vessels was unearthed. These early archaic amphora types (early 6th century BC), which have also been found in other sites in the Northern Aegean and possibly Northern Ionia, have been known in literature by my study. The discovery of these local transport vessels reveals participation by the local population in trading transactions and manufacture of a product which was packaged and circulated among the Northern Aegean towns. A mixed cultural environment starts to form in archaic Methone and includes Euboeans, Eastern Greeks, local Thracians and others, including Macedonian neighbours. Having emerged as the most powerful military force of the area, the Macedonians residing in nearby Bottiaia, constantly expanding, were, arguably, involved in the commercial activities at Methone. This study suggests that because of Methone's geographical location and proximity to the capital of the Macedonian kingdom, Aigai (modern Vergina), Methone functioned as the capital's face to the sea, as the royal harbour of Macedonia, until it was destroyed by Philip II, in 354 BC when all activities related to trade moved to neighbouring Pydna. Methone's finds together with other Northern Aegean settlements mentioned in this study reveal how important, even indispensable, this part of the ancient world was to the commercial networks of the archaic Mediterranean. The Northern Aegean is, therefore, not only well integrated into networks connecting southern and Eastern Greece, Egypt and the Levantine coast, but constitutes a vital part of them from the 8th century BC, onwards.
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DeWitt, Helen Marsh. "Quo virtus? : the concept of propriety in ancient literary criticism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8001826b-03c5-4a37-a2e2-8f7966f5f375.
Full textAbstract:
The standard of propriety is frequently appealed to in ancient literary discourse, most notably in discussions of poetics, criticism of literary works and precepts for composition. Its importance derives from the audience orientation of most ancient discussions of literature: writers were interested in the ways various forms of speech and writing had to be accommodated to their audience in order to achieve particular effects. Discussion of the representation of character, for instance, explored the ways that fictional persons or oratorical speakers could be made moving and convincing: they must conform to common preconceptions about the behviour and language suitable to their rank, sex, age, nationality, education. This raises important questions about the concept of propriety. First, is it coherent? It seems to depend heavily on the assumption that audiences are homogeneous; in practice, however, ancient writers recognise wide disparities in readers and spectators, and are often ready to accuse certain types of audience of bad taste. The concept is thus embroiled in the general aesthetic problem of the nature of taste: can criteria for artistic excellence be found which are independent of what people happen to like, and which can therefore justify claims about what they should like? Second, where does use of the concept place ancient literary discussion in relation to various forms of modern literary theory and criticism? A large number of modern movements have held it as axiomatic that the excellence of art lies in defeating the preconceptions of the audience; does ancient criticism have any defence against such a position? Both of these points touch on further issues: the place of literature and oratory in Greek and Roman societies, and the connection between literary discourse and other types of intellectual activity, most notably philosophy (propriety is equally important in most ancient moral philosophy). I consider these points in connection with major poetic genres, rhetoric, and the question of linguistic purity.
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Roued-Cunliffe, Henriette. "A decision support system for the reading of ancient documents." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9d547661-4dea-4c54-832b-b2f862ec7b25.
Full textAbstract:
The research presented in this thesis is based in the Humanities discipline of Ancient History and begins by attempting to understand the interpretation process involved in reading ancient documents and how this process can be aided by computer systems such as Decision Support Systems (DSS). The thesis balances between the use of IT tools to aid Humanities research and the understanding that Humanities research must involve human beings. It does not attempt to develop a system that can automate the reading of ancient documents. Instead it seeks to demonstrate and develop tools that can support this process in the five areas: remembering complex reasoning, searching huge datasets, international collaboration, publishing editions, and image enhancement. This research contains a large practical element involving the development of a DSS prototype. The prototype is used to illustrate how a DSS, by remembering complex reasoning, can aid the process of interpretation that is reading ancient documents. It is based on the idea that the interpretation process goes through a network of interpretation. The network of interpretation illustrates a recursive process where scholars move between reading levels such as ‘these strokes look like the letter c’ or ‘these five letters must be the word primo’. Furthermore, the thesis demonstrates how technology such as Web Services and XML can be used to make a DSS even more powerful through the development of the APPELLO word search Web Service. Finally, the conclusion includes a suggestion for a future development of a working DSS that incorporates the idea of a layer-based system and focuses strongly on user interaction.
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Murgatroyd, Jennifer Leigh. "Ancient mortar production in Ostia, Italy : builders and their choices." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:358de9ea-d89b-4053-84c7-0fdc29340bb2.
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The main objective of the research discussed in this thesis was to evaluate the methods and materials used by builders in ancient Ostia to produce mortar for masonry structures. The work was conducted with an eye toward understanding why the ancient builders selected specific materials and employed specific techniques. The research design included scientific investigations of mortar samples from selected structures in Ostia, all dated from brick stamp evidence to the 2nd century CE. The methods employed for this study included thin section petrography, modal analysis via point counting, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and image analysis. Results concluded the samples comprised lime binder and primarily volcanic tuff aggregates derived from the Colli Albani and Monti Sabatini volcanic districts. The selection of these aggregates was integral to mortar performance, as they contained alteration products that would have facilitated pozzolanic reactions during the production phase, greatly improving long term mortar performance and durability. Three distinct types of mortar representing unique mix designs were identified based on the material properties of the mortar samples and the dominant aggregate types. Unique mixes may have been proprietary to specific groups of builders in Ostia, which had been identified by other researchers comparing the architectural features and construction styles of various structures. The results of material analyses showed that the builders from 2nd century Ostia were highly skilled, used sophisticated techniques to produce high quality mortar, and that separate groups of builders employed unique mix designs to achieve similar results.
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Marsden, James. "Ancient history in British universities and public life, 1715-1810." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:27429822-4a59-4608-ad69-4e6b1c9c4570.
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Over the eighteenth century, ancient history was increasingly read in English, appearing in new forms and interpretations. This reflected the development of history in universities as a subject not merely read, but taught. This teaching took on many forms: serving as a predecessor to other studies, building a knowledge base of case studies for 'higher' subjects, or (increasingly) an independent subject. What ancient history was taught, how was it taught, why was it taught, and what did students go on to use it for? Ancient history as an independent subject had a limited role in the curriculum despite the foundation of Chairs of History in most universities. When it was taught as such, the focus was on explaining modern institutions via ancient comparisons; on the training of statesmen by classical examples; or, more rarely, on demonstrating a particular conception of social development. These uses of history could be seen across both national and subject boundaries. Whilst differences between universities are evident, evidence in the teaching of history suggests the absolute dichotomy between the English and Scottish systems has been overstated. The interesting case of Trinity College Dublin suggests common features across Britain in how 'liberal education' was conceived of and how history fit into it. The practical application of ancient history to the education of statesmen may be seen in the variety of ways it was used in political discourse. This is explored mainly in Parliament, the ultimate destination of the "statesmen" in whose training history was supposed to play a large part, via debates over questions of empire and imperial rights in the second half of the eighteenth century. Superior knowledge of ancient history constituted a rhetorical claim to the twin statuses of gentleman, being classically-educated, and statesman - showing understanding of historical context and precedent.
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King, Daniel A. "Painful stories : the experience of pain and its narration in the Greek literature of the Imperial period (100-250)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c5509a42-cd3f-4e11-b9a1-8a3b6fa84101.
Full textAbstract:
This research project investigates the relationship between pain and the practices of explaining and narrating it to others. Current scholarship argues that the representation of suffering became, during the Imperial period, an increasingly effective and popular strategy for cultivating authority and that this explains the success of Christian culture’s representation of itself as a community of sufferers. One criticism of this approach is that the experience of pain has often been assumed, rather than analysed. Here, I investigate the nature of pain by attending to its intimate relationship with language; pain was connected to the strategies used to communicate that experience to others. I will show that writers throughout the Imperial period were concerned with questions about how to communicate pain and how that act of communication shaped, managed, and alleviated the experience. I investigate this culture along three axes. Part 1, ‘The Sublime Representation of Pain’, investigates the way different authors thought about the capacity of sublime language and rhetorical techniques such as enargeia to effectively communicate pain. I argue that for writers such as Longinus, the sublime offers an opportunity to replicate the traumatic experience of the pain sufferer in the audience or listener—pain is narrated to the audience through a traumatic communicative mode. Contrarily, I show how authors such as Plutarch and Galen were particularly concerned to desublimate the representation of pain, reducing the affective power of images of pain by promoting the audience’s conscious engagement with the text or representational medium. Part 2, ‘Medical Narratives’, examines a conflict between Galen and Aristides over the way language and narrative signified or referred to painful experiences. I show how both writers negotiate the way pain destroys and transcends ordered, structured, narrative by engaging in a process of narrative translation. I will illuminate the difference between scientific, diagnostic narratives which explain and rationalise pain experiences (in the case of Galen) and those which attempt to give witness to the nebulous, ineffable qualities of pain. In Part 3, ‘Narrating Cures’ I investigate ancient practices of psychotherapy. I show how various philosophical consolations were underpinned by an understanding of the power of pain to continually return and overwhelm the individual. I show further that the Greek romances engage in a type of talking cure: the novels use narration and story-telling to help assert the protagonists’ distance from their past traumatic experiences and, thus, allow the individual to overcome their painful past.
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Fukaya, Masashi. "Socio-religious functions of three Theban festivals in the New Kingdom : the festivals of Opet, the Valley, and the New Year." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a9eebe42-68d3-42dd-adcd-d1a3da145f0b.
Full textAbstract:
In addition to temple rituals performed for the god by the king, festivals incorporated a broader domain, where a wider public had access to the divine. The participants in feasts ranged from the royal, officials and priests to the non-elite and the dead. Theoretically and ideologically, individuals would have received fruits of the divine power through the king by taking part in celebrations to variable extent. This functioned a vehicle for the god and the king to maintain their authoritative credibility and, by extension, the world order. The circulation of the divine force formed a different appearance at each festival, such as material supplies, promotions, and juridical decrees. These divine conveyances would have more or less met people’s social and religious needs. By embracing modality, periodicity, and publicness, festivals provided participants and audiences with a public setting and a formal means, whereby they were able to seek their identity as part of society. This may or may not have been relevant to personal piety, allegiance, responsibilities, and goodness, but public celebrations at least brought the king’s subjects together to common grounds for official beliefs and social decorum. In order to demonstrate such socio-religious functions of festivals, I will attempt to focus on and examine three Theban celebrations in the New Kingdom, namely, the Festivals of Opet, the Valley, and the New Year, about which a wealth of information has survived. The examination can hardly be possible without exploring the history of these feasts because their development from earlier times, to which part of this thesis is also devoted, shows the continuity of elements essential to Egyptian cult practices, particularly those associated with the mortuary cult.
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Votruba, Gregory Francis. "Iron anchors and mooring in the ancient Mediterranean (until ca. 1500 CE)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:71d97932-c014-4e94-8305-add589758fd0.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation examines ancient anchoring practice in the Mediterranean through ca. 1500 CE, as well as the history and technological developments of iron anchors, which are among the most important tools inherited from the ancient world. The methodology employed is holistic in synthesizing archaeological finds, textual, and iconographic evidence, and includes statistical and geographical analysis based on a substantial catalogue of ancient anchor finds. An experimental project is also included where anchor reconstructions were used in the sea and their utility tested. Mooring is one of the least studied aspects of everyday life for the people of the ancient Mediterranean. It has been elucidated that in most circumstances beaching would not have been a practical option, even for warships and the smallest cargo vessels. Rather, vessels were equipped with specialized gear for mooring off or near undeveloped shores. This included ship's boats enabling access to the shore. Lower draft vessels, particularly galleys, could approach unbuilt shores and employ mooring stakes and cables, and the ship's landing-ladder would be deployed into shallow water. Where available, however, ships would benefit from built quays which facilitated goods transport. The iron stock-anchor displays the greatest longevity of any anchoring tool, evinced as early as the 5th c. BCE, and appears to have achieved dominance over wooden types by the 3rd c. CE. From its conception the iron-stock anchor undergoes a broad range of gradual changes to its form and features. The earliest known finds take a 'V' form in the bulk-arms and gradually develop through rounded to 'T' and 'Y' forms in the Byzantine Period. The stocks evolve from removable iron types, to permanent forms entirely of wood. Reintroduction of upward-oriented arm designs from northern Europe around the 13th c. CE, and incorporation of hydraulic mechanized smithing developments, heralded a revolution of anchoring technology. Larger, stronger and more efficient anchors were being produced to standardized dimensions and quality, promoting larger ships, and ultimately resulting in novel characteristics of navigation.
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Gray, Benjamin D. "Exile and the political cultures of the Greek polis, c. 404-146 BC." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a6032897-65a4-4180-a17e-7372069e27c5.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis uses the evidence for a wide range of phenomena relating to the exile of citizens, by judicial decision or through stasis, to investigate the political cultures of Greek poleis in the period c. 404-146 BC: the fundamental ideas about citizenship which were in circulation in poleis in that period. Political communication in the context of exile phenomena forced citizens to make explicit their fundamental assumptions about the criteria for civic inclusion and exclusion and about the extent and basis of civic obligation. Analysis of surviving evidence for that communication thus offers unique insights into prominent Greek ideas about citizenship. This method is applied, in chapters 1 and 2, to laws and discussions relating to, first, lawful expulsion and exclusion and, second, civic reconciliation and the reintegration of exiles; and, in chapters 3 and 4, to the political rhetoric, organisation and ideas of participants in exclusionary stasis and of exiled citizens. Wherever possible, ancient Greek philosophers’ arguments, rhetoric and assumptions are compared with those of non-philosophers. Study of the four different bodies of evidence suggests that most poleis’ political cultures were distinguished by their extremes, paradoxes, indeterminacies and contradictions. In particular, many poleis’ political cultures included very significant, radical norms of civic voluntarism, encouraging citizens to exercise extensive voluntary initiative in political contexts. Moreover, most poleis political cultures were dominated by two coexisting, radically opposed basic paradigms of the good polis and of good citizenship: these are defined in the introduction and chapter 1 as a ‘unitarian teleological communitarian’ paradigm and a ‘libertarian contractarian’ paradigm. In addition to revealing fundamental ideas of citizenship, some of the exile evidence enables study of the effects of those ideas in practice in this period: citizens’ political choices, claims and behaviour in relevant periods of stress, such as a bout of exclusionary stasis or a spell of political agitation while in exile, represent a well-defined and revealing case-study of the multiple, competing effects of those ideas on political interaction. It is argued that the exile evidence suggests that the same fundamental ideas of citizenship were conducive both to civic stability and flourishing and to destructive civic unrest.
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Edwards, Hannah Elizabeth. "Exploring the fold space preferences of ancient and newborn protein superfamilies." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4a619051-db24-4a4c-bdad-61899bc1de03.
Full textAbstract:
Protein evolution is a complex and diverse process, yielding an incredible assortment of biological functions and pathways occurring in the cells of living organisms. The way in which a protein's structure is constrained by its functional role and its notable conservation across even distant evolutionary relationships highlight structure as an important unit when considering the evolutionary dynamics of proteins. This thesis attempts to place the structural landscape of the protein universe within an evolutionary framework. We investigate potential evolutionary histories of protein superfamilies by introducing an age, which estimates when the ancestor of that superfamily first evolved. The range of ages of known protein superfamilies goes right back to those which evolved before the diversification of life into three major superkingdoms. The structures of these proteins are varied but those which have evolved more recently tend to be shorter and have a less elaborate globular packing. Protein structures sit within a complex global landscape of three-dimensional folds and we attempt to model the dynamics of this space using networks of folds. These networks consist of a structurally diverse core of folds with older ages, and neighbouring folds tend to be of similar ages. Moreover, there are a few pivotal folds which appear repeatedly as central in the landscapes, connecting together otherwise disparate portions of the space. Sequence profiles which capture patterns of conservation and variation amongst naturally occurring proteins within a superfamily can be compared to identify distant evolutionary relationships. The power of these profiles to detect such relationships is improved by seeding them with structural alignments. A landscape of evolutionary links crossing between different protein folds is presented.
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Rowan, Yorke M. "Ancient distribution and deposition of prestige objects : basalt vessels during late prehistory in the southern Levant /." Digital version accessible at:, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.
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Shaheen, Islam. "Study of the most effective analysis procedures using multispectral imaging techniques on ancient egyptian painted objects." Master's thesis, Universidade de Évora, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10174/29337.
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Multispectral imaging (MSI) used as Initial studies to identify and study painted layers as a
non-destructive method. The use of MSI to tentatively identify pigments has an important
advantage justifying its application the rapid and low-cost survey of large areas.it is possible to
tentatively identify some historical pigments and discover the invisible layers, painting and
writing. By means of MSI performed with simplified equipment and without the aid of imaging
analysis software.
The two selected objects from the Grand Egyptian Museum collection were rich in
pigments, first object is polychrome anthropoid wooden coffin lid (GEM No. 22452) the date
back to 21st Dynasty (c. 1070 - 945 B.c.) Late period, which belong to the collection of Bab el-
Gusus tomb and the second is a Cartonnage mummy trappings on linen (GEM No. 8615) date
back to27th dynasty, late period.
Different imaging techniques of multispectral imaging like ultraviolet methods (UVF, UVR,
and UVRFC) and Infrared methods (IRF, IR, IRFC and IRT) will be studied and evaluated
regarding to the efficiency and effectively. Mixing between multispectral imaging and
Reflectance transformation imaging will be applied and tested by mix and match between these
two techniques we can add value for the results we can get. Several methods will be applied
practically to have the required results for evaluating these methods. X-ray fluorescence (XRF)
spectrometry was used as a complementary analysis for the identification of the pigments.
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Adamo, Mario. "Sedes et rura : landownership and the Roman peasantry in the Late Republic." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0ebb3b79-9299-467c-ae10-8b700c24b8ef.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis reconsiders the cultural and economic relevance of landownership for the Roman republican peasants. In the Introduction, I define direct agricultural producers (hereafter 'peasants') as the object of my investigation. In Chapter 1, I argue that throughout the republic peasants owned little or no land, and private landholdings had a marginal role in peasants' production strategies. The frequent land schemes did not make the distribution of property more egalitarian, because they were not designed for that purpose, and due to their poverty peasants were unable to maintain control of the allotments. In Chapter 2, I explain that in ancient literature peasants were idealized as symbols of complete independence and self-sufficiency, and in political reflection they were considered the most perfect citizens. In accordance with the widespread view that Roman power had peaked and was now declining, already by the time of Fabius Pictor early and middle republican Rome was idealized as a society of peasants, whose supposed decline was threatening the republic. I conclude that in the Gracchan period peasants' discontent may have been a consequence of growing inequality, rather than utter impoverishment. In Chapter 3, I argue that in order to understand whether the free peasantry was actually declining we should consider variations in peasants' opportunities for dependent labour on the one hand, marketing on the other. Therefore, I reconsider the available data on the demography of Roman Italy and on commercial agriculture. I conclude that, while peasants could profit from increased access to markets, there is no conclusive evidence that competition for labour grew. In Chapter 4 I explain that the late republican peasants were perfectly aware that land had an economic value, and were even able to carry out evaluations. I suggest that this was a consequence of census procedures.
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Gilbert, Marcus Thomas Pius. "An assessment of the use of human samples in ancient DNA studies." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:434e285b-bf62-41fe-8250-5f4273f38152.
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This thesis addresses gaps that exist in the theory and knowledge of ancient DNA (aDNA). Much of the underlying basis of the field has been neglected in the excitement that followed the first aDNA studies. Therefore the results of many studies have been based on untested assumptions about the nature of post mortem DNA damage, sample preservation, contamination, and the efficacy of sample decontamination techniques. The validity of such results is questionable if the assumptions prove false. Hydrolytic post mortem DNA damage may modify recovered aDNA sequences. This thesis reports new insights into the biochemical basis of, predisposition of certain sequences and nucleotide positions towards, and subsequent effects of, such damage. Parallels of post mortem damage with in vivo mutation also enable insights into DNA sequence evolution. The long-term survival of DNA, and contamination of samples with exogenous DNA are two related problems characteristic to aDNA. The survival of endogenous DNA within bone, teeth and hair samples, the susceptibility of such samples to contamination, and the efficacy of decontamination techniques used to remedy such problems are investigated. The results highlight serious flaws in using bone and teeth as a DNA source. In contrast, the results demonstrate that hair may present a valuable DNA source for future studies. Numerous studies have reported the retrieval of ancient pathogen DNA from human samples. Analyses of the DNA content within teeth extracted from putative victims of the 2nd plague argue that such studies are at great risk from DNA degradation, and contamination arising due to environmental microorganisms. An extrapolation of these results using basic physical and chemical theory is used to evaluate the potential survival of aDNA in ancient Egyptian remains. This suggests that positive results from such samples are unlikely.
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Minot, Véronique Delmas Jean-François. "Concevoir un outil de gestion et de valorisation des collections muséales de bibliothèque." [S.l.] : [s.n.], 2009. http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/document-2063.
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Maneta, Christina. "Developing a strategy for desalination treatments for large collections of ancient ceramic objects from Greek archaeological contexts." Thesis, University of Lincoln, 2014. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.740997.
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Hoogervorst, Tom Gunnar. "Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean world : combining historical linguistic and archaeological approaches." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b8b47816-7184-42ab-958e-026bc3431ea3.
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This thesis casts a new light on the role of Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean World. It brings together data and approaches from archaeology and historical linguistics to examine cultural and language contact between Southeast Asia and South Asia, East Africa and the Middle East. The interdisciplinary approach employed in this study reveals that insular Southeast Asian seafarers, traders and settlers had impacted on these parts of the world in pre-modern times through the transmission of numerous biological and cultural items. It is further demonstrated that the words used for these commodities often contain clues about the precise ethno-linguistic communities involved in their transoceanic dispersal. The Methodology chapter introduces some common linguistic strategies to examine language contact and lexical borrowing, to determine the directionality of loanwords and to circumvent the main caveats of such an approach. The study then proceeds to delve deeper into the socio-cultural background of interethnic contact in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as a whole, focusing on the oft-neglected Southeast Asian contributions to the cultural landscape of this region and addressing the nature of pre-modern contact between Southeast Asia and the different parts of the Indian Ocean Word. Following from that, the last three chapters look in-depth at the dispersal of respectively Southeast Asian plants, spices and maritime technology into the wider Indian Ocean World. Although concepts and their names do not always neatly travel together across ethno-linguistic boundaries, these chapters demonstrate how a closer examination of lexical data offers supportive evidence and new perspectives on events of cultural contact not otherwise documented. Cumulatively, this study underlines that the analysis of lexical data is a strong tool to examine interethnic contact, particularly in pre-literate societies. Throughout the Indian Ocean World, Southeast Asian products and concepts were mainly dispersed by Malay-speaking communities, although others played a role as well.
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Polyakov, Maxim. "The power of time : old age and old men in ancient Greek drama." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2d238e6d-e040-479a-ae8f-dcf5ecd7e838.
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The study of old age in the humanities has developed significantly in the last few decades, but there is still much scope for progress. This thesis, therefore, seeks to contribute to the growing academic discourse in this area by considering ageing as it is represented in ancient Greek theatre. At the same time, it seeks to take its place within Classical Studies by developing new readings of the plays. To develop a context for its analysis, this study begins with consideration of the contemporary demographics, social position, and stage portrayal of old age, and following this dedicates a chapter to each of the four surviving fifth century dramatists. In Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon, old age emerges as a crucial element in choral self-identity, and an important component of the authority that they display. Following this, the thesis considers the chorus of Euripides’ Herakles, in particular its use of metadramatic language, and the impact this has on plot-development and the representation of their age. The next chapter, on Oidipous Koloneus, shifts to consideration of the protagonist. The old age of Oidipous emerges as a powerful driver of his mental and spiritual power, and forms a striking background to the exploration of his character. The final chapter of the thesis examines how mechanisms of renewal that old men undergo in Aristophanes’ comedies (Knights, Akharnians, Peace, Wasps, Birds) differ across the dramas, and the impact this difference has on their interpretations. Such reassessments of ancient dramatic texts through the lens of old age can provide significant insight into the complexity of old men’s characterisations and of their involvement in the dramas. At the same time (from a gerontological perspective), this thesis’ analysis contributes to the developing discussion of the history of ageing, and highlights the differences between the ancient and modern worlds in this respect.
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Bennett, Robert George. "Local elites and local coinage : elite self-representation on the provincial coinage of Asia 31 BC- AD 275." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9e9c0f53-a961-4644-b30c-716bd8395f2e.
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The focus of this thesis is the nature of the interaction between the civic elites and the civic coinage for which they were responsible. The Roman Province of Asia provides the ideal context for the study of local elites and their coinage because of the prevalence and prominence of the names of individual local notables, henceforth known as eponyms, recorded in civic coin legends. By combining the study of the function of coin eponyms and the prosopographical analysis of individual eponyms in the epigraphic record, it is possible to identify and explain the profound changes that affected civic coin production in the first three centuries AD. Local elites perceived coinage not only in terms of a functional means of exchange, but as a medium for personal and civic display. In this way the local elites exploited coin iconography in ways that paralleled other media of monumental display. New coin legends were developed, which identified explicitly the dedicatory nature of the coinage and the iconographic repertoire of coin types was radically expanded to express the cultural agendas and priorities of the civic elites. The first half of the thesis is devoted to the study of the relationship between office holding and coinage and the development of coin legend formulae during the first three centuries AD. The pattern and distribution of the various legend formulae is analysed in order to determine the extent of the eponym’s involvement in the production of coinage. In particular, this section intends to establish the extent to which coinage production was funded privately. The fourth chapter is arranged into a series of case studies discussing individual cases of personalized coin iconography. The final chapter of the thesis outlines how the civic elite’s conceptualization of coinage changed over the course of this period. It is argued that contact with the Roman monetary tradition affected civic elites’ attitude to coinage and that this manifested itself in the iconography and the fabric of the coins themselves.
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Campbell, Celia Mitchell. "A space for song : Ovid's metapoetic landscapes." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e6361617-1b25-4339-a6f0-5487ff127818.
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This study seeks to renew interest in the poetically constructed landscapes of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Far from existing as mere background to the epic, close investigation and analysis reveals the reflective relationship and mutually exerted force between landscape and narrative. Detailed readings show how the landscapes are created in order to reveal Ovid’s poetic programme, especially as concerns the intersection of genre; landscape descriptions are read as interpretive strategies for understanding the crossing of genres that comprise Ovid’s hyper-Alexandrian epic. I argue for this interest as indicated to the reader by three points of departure made by the poet that show up against the background of his interconnected patterning of narrations. These are choices demanding exegesis beyond mere recognition, and are designed to reveal a purposeful agenda that focuses attention upon the descriptions of the natural world. The first chapter explores the construction of Thessalian Tempe in Book 1, made prominent by Ovid’s mythological placement of Daphne as a Thessalian nymph. Tempe represents a landscape consequentially shaped by the narrative of Apollo and Daphne, memorialising topographically the intersection of the ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres of epic and elegy exemplified in their interaction. This narrative influence over the landscape is explored in this programmatic tale, and Tempe’s metapoetic construction is argued for using Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos as a poetic model, focusing on the figure of the Peneus common to both texts. The second chapter focuses on Helicon in Book 5, and examines the finely-drawn relationship between the contest songs and Helicon’s position as the contest prize across the complex layers of narrative space, demonstrating how the inspiratory springs of Helicon provide the narrative motivation for the contest songs and tracing the generic topography of Calliope’s song. The third chapter offers a new interpretation of Orpheus’ grove as an atmospheric doublet of the Underworld, examined through the patterning of meaning imposed by the dual meaning of umbra, and identifies Ovid’s transformation of a literary topos.
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Low, Katherine Anna. "The mirror of Tacitus? : selves and others in the Tiberian books of the 'Annals'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7de32c12-0935-4024-a607-a50877c38062.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis considers the geographical and chronological forms of ‘mirroring’ that offer a way of reading 'Annals' 1-6. It looks at how Tacitus’ depictions of non-Romans reflect back on Rome, and at the echoes of Rome’s past and future that can be discerned within his description of Tiberius’ principate. After an introduction that discusses key thematic and methodological questions, Chapter 1 shows that Tiberius’ accession and the Pannonian and German mutinies described in 'Annals' 1 echo Tacitus’ account in 'Histories' 1 of events of AD 69. Moreover, when the Romans attempt to conquer Germany, the Germans’ resistance to this and to other efforts to rule them shows up Roman responses to civil war and autocracy. Chapter 2 begins by examining potential similarities between Roman and both Parthian and Armenian history, and then focuses on Germanicus’ voyage in the east, recounted in 'Annals' 2. His actions associate him with many late republican and early imperial Roman figures, which suggests that there are continuities between those two eras. Chapter 3 extends this theme by discussing the echoes of Sallust and Caesar in the central books of the Tiberian hexad. Intertexts with Sallust’s 'Bellum Catilinae' especially hint that earlier civil conflicts are about to be replayed in some form, as the appearance of Sejanus, the ‘new Catiline’, confirms. Chapter 4 further considers Tacitus’ inferences about the overlap between republican and imperial history, and then examines anti-Roman revolts in 'Annals' 2, 3 and 4. Foreign rebels’ relative success in attempting to reclaim their freedom correlates with their distance from Rome, and this has clear implications for the status of Roman 'libertas' under Tiberius. Finally, the outbreak of ‘civil war within the principate’, and indeed within the imperial house, is analysed. Chapter 5 traces the continuation of this ‘civil war’, and proposes that the last book of the Tiberian hexad again looks directly to 69, as well as to the excesses of other Julio-Claudians. It also considers Tacitus’ account of Roman intervention in Parthia: this episode confirms imperial Rome’s propensity for autocracy and civil war. There follows a short conclusion in which some speculation is offered about how some of the themes discussed in this thesis with reference to the Tiberian hexad may have been represented in the lost central books of the 'Annals'.
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Belekdanian, Arto Onnig Arto Onnig. "The coronation ceremony during the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt : an analysis of three "coronation" inscriptions." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4b606eb6-dd7e-4a7e-adf8-2234e11b01ef.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis provides a detailed interpretation of three key texts described in Egyptological research as "coronation inscriptions:" the Historical Inscription of Hatshepsut, Thutmose III's Texte de la jeunesse, and Horemheb's Turin inscription. Similarities and differences between these texts, as well as other sources, both textual and pictorial, are discussed. A clear terminology is laid out, distinguishing between accession (the royal heir becoming king at the death of their predecessor), crowning (the action of placing the crowns on the new king's head), and coronation ceremony (following the accession by some time on which occasion the new ruler would have been bestowed with the crowns and regalia of his office, perhaps for the first time). The main aim of this thesis is to determine whether it would be accurate to label the discussed texts as coronation inscriptions and, if not, how they can best be described. It is determined that the evidence supports the earlier conclusion reached by Redford, that it would be incorrect to speak of a âcoronation ceremonyâ in the dynastic period, for new kings would have been crowned at their accessions in a palace setting, soon after the death of their predecessors, this followed some time later by a public âappearance ceremonyâ in a temple festival setting. While it is determined that Thutmose III's inscription describes the time when kingship was predicted to him, it is concluded that the Hatshepsut and Horemheb texts narrate exceptional events on which occasion their accessions in a palace and public "appearance ceremonies" intersected.
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Lopez, Noelle Regina. "The art of Platonic love." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e9b2d70-49d9-4e75-b445-fcb0bfecdcef.
Full textAbstract:
This is a study of love (erōs) in Plato’s Symposium. It’s a study undertaken over three chapters, each of which serves as a stepping stone for the following and addresses one of three primary aims. First: to provide an interpretation of Plato’s favored theory of erōs in the Symposium, or as it’s referred to here, a theory of Platonic love. This theory is understood to be ultimately concerned with a practice of living which, if developed correctly, may come to constitute the life most worth living for a human being. On this interpretation, Platonic love is the desire for Beauty, ultimately for the sake of eudaimonic immortality, manifested through productive activity. Second: to offer a reading of the Symposium which attends to the work’s literary elements, especially characterization and narrative structure, as partially constitutive of Plato’s philosophical thought on erōs. Here it’s suggested that Platonic love is concerned with seeking and producing truly virtuous action and true poetry. This reading positions us to see that a correctly progressing and well-practiced Platonic love is illustrated in the character of the philosopher Socrates, who is known and followed for his bizarre displays of virtue and whom Alcibiades crowns over either Aristophanes or Agathon as the wisest and most beautiful poet at the Symposium. Third: to account for how to love a person Platonically. Contra Gregory Vlastos’ influential critical interpretation, it’s here argued that the Platonic lover is able to really love a person: to really love a person Platonically is to seek jointly for Beauty; it is to work together as co-practitioners in the art of love. The art of Platonic love is set up in this way to be explored as a practice potentially constitutive of the life most worth living for a human being.
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Andrews, Matthew Paul. "Durham University : last of the ancient universities and first of the new (1831-1871)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:52d639b8-a555-48ce-8226-af71d19cb346.
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This thesis is a study of Durham University, from its inception in 1831 to the opening of the College of Physical Science in Newcastle in 1871. It considers the foundation and early years of the University in the light of local and national developments, including movements for reform in the church and higher education. The approach is holistic, with the thesis based on extensive use of archival sources, parliamentary reports, local and national newspapers, and other primary printed sources as well as a newly-created and entirely unique database of Durham students. The argument advanced in this thesis is that the desire of the Durham authorities was to establish a modern university that would be useful to northern interests, and that their clear failure to achieve this reflected the general issues of the developing higher education sector at least as much as it did internal mismanagement. This places Durham in a different position relative to the traditional understanding of how universities and colleges developed in England and therefore broadens and deepens the quality of that narrative. In the light of the University's swift decline, and poor reputation, from the mid-1850s what were the ambitions of the founders and how did this deterioration occur? Were the critics' accusations against the University - principally that it was a theologically-dominated, inadequate imitation of Oxford, bound to the Chapter of Durham and ruled autocratically by its Warden - based on fact or prejudice? And if the critics were wrong, what were the factors that lead to the University's failings?
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Tam, Ho Yuen. "LRL genes are ancient regulators of tip-growing rooting cell development in land plants." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7bdf64dc-a00e-48e0-8343-c2d1469119c4.
Full textAbstract:
Evolution of developmental genes is an important mechanism for plant morphological evolution. The LRL genes are an ancient group of bHLH transcription factors that positively regulate root hair development in angiosperms. Here I show that, in the moss Physcomitrella patens, two LRL genes are present and they positively regulate rhizoid and caulonema (a rhizoid-like cell type) development. GUS-transcriptional reporter plants show that both PpLRL1 and PpLRL2 are expressed in tissues giving rise to caulonemata. Loss-of-function mutants in either PpLRL1 or PpLRL2 led to defective rhizoid and caulonema development, and the Pplrl1 Pplrl2 double loss-of-function mutants completely lack rhizoids and caulonemata. Consistent with this, gain-of-function mutants show enhanced rhizoid and caulonema development. In addition, I show that the stimulatory effects of auxin and low phosphate on the development of rhizoids and/or caulonemata required PpLRL gene function. Together, these results show that LRL genes are conserved, positive regulators in tip-growing rooting cell development in land plants. To elucidate whether LRL genes belong to part of a conserved gene network, I use qRT-PCR to determine the transcriptional interaction between LRL genes and the Class I RSL genes, which is another group of conserved regulators of rhizoids and root hairs. Comparing the LRL-RSL network between P. patens and A. thaliana reveals that LRL and Class I RSL genes are transcriptionally independent of each other in P. patens but one LRL gene is transcriptionally downstream of Class I RSL genes in A. thaliana. This suggests that the gene network controlling tip-growing rooting cell development has changed since mosses and angiosperms last shared a common ancestor.
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Sekita, Karolina. "The figure of Hades/Plouton in Greek beliefs of the archaic and classical periods." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:010c9cbb-349f-4acb-a687-1fce01c62bc4.
Full textAbstract:
The main aim of this work is the presentation, characterisation and review of the image of the Greek underworld deity, Hades/Plouton in Greek beliefs of the Archaic and Classical periods, on the basis of comparison of the preserved literary and epigraphic testimonies with the remains of material culture, and the reconstruction of the most coherent possible image of the god, claimed by scholars to be of little importance to Greek beliefs and to have no cult. The present dissertation liberates the god from long-standing scholarly misconceptions and returns him to his proper place within the Greek pantheon. Its main scholarly contribution and originality can be summarised as follows: (i) Hades is mainly an agricultural deity with a clear cult environment and has more in common with the world of the living than that of the dead; (ii) Hades influenced the representation of other male deities connected with earth: his main attribute, paradoxically the cornucopia or 'horn of plenty', appears for the first time in Greek art in the 6th century BC as exclusively his, and is later ascribed to other deities; (iii) Hades and Plouton were the same deity (Plouton - an Attic instantiation - spread throughout Greece with Attic literature and the Eleusinian cult of Demeter and Kore), sharing the same myths, and both, through the properties inscribed in their names (invisibility in Hades' and corn in Plouton's), referring to the earth; both names are products of the conceptualisation of the world of the dead; (iv) contrary to the prevailing scholarly view, the multiplicity of Hades' names is not exclusively the result of euphemism (which I propose to see rather as a by- product): the nomenclature is more complex and depends principally on cultic or mythological contexts and local tradition. My work not only reconstructs the repertoire of Greek ideas and opinions on Hades and the character of his cult, but also advocates a new understanding of the notion of Greek deity, as metonymy: Hades is representative of a wider class of deities who are concrete and abstract at the same time (like Gaia [the Earth], Uranos [the Sky], Okeanos [the Sea]): they denote a place, a god, a property of something, a form of matter.
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Chrubasik, Boris. "The men who would be king : kings and usurpers in the Seleukid Empire." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:82c05a7a-831d-4f10-9fb0-1221ffc81c3f.
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This thesis examines usurpation in the Seleukid empire between the third and second centuries BCE. Since the title ‘usurper’ was attributed by ancient authors to defeated opponents of the Seleukid king, this study is essentially a study of constructed historical narratives. If usurpers are placed in their historical context, however, the histories of their claims to the diadem can be reconstructed. By analysing the literary and documentary evidence, chapters 2 and 3 assess the interaction between kings, usurpers and the groups within the kingdom (such as cities, dynasts and the army). More precisely, an investigation of usurpers’ strategies and the royal images they employed in their interactions with the groups within the kingdom is undertaken, and, wherever possible, the groups’ perception of and reaction to usurpers is examined. By focussing on usurpation, conclusions regarding the possibilities and limits of monarchic rule in the Seleukid kingdom, the kingship of the Seleukid rulers and the structure of the Seleukid empire can be drawn. This study argues that the Seleukid kings were in constant competition with other internal power holders, illustrating the precarious position of the Seleukid kings to sustain the monopoly of power in the empire. The dynamics between the Seleukid king and different power holders within the kingdom are demonstrated in chapter 4 in two case-studies on the Attalids of Pergamon and the Baktrian kings. Chapter 5 reviews the possibilities of usurping the diadem as well as Seleukid reaction to usurpers. The concluding section fundamentally challenges scholarship’s reassessments of the ‘strength’ of Seleukid kingdom. It is argued that it was a kingThis thesis examines usurpation in the Seleukid empire between the third and second centuries BCE. Since the title ‘usurper’ was attributed by ancient authors to defeated opponents of the Seleukid king, this study is essentially a study of constructed historical narratives. If usurpers are placed in their historical context, however, the histories of their claims to the diadem can be reconstructed. By analysing the literary and documentary evidence, chapters 2 and 3 assess the interaction between kings, usurpers and the groups within the kingdom (such as cities, dynasts and the army). More precisely, an investigation of usurpers’ strategies and the royal images they employed in their interactions with the groups within the kingdom is undertaken, and, wherever possible, the groups’ perception of and reaction to usurpers is examined. By focussing on usurpation, conclusions regarding the possibilities and limits of monarchic rule in the Seleukid kingdom, the kingship of the Seleukid rulers and the structure of the Seleukid empire can be drawn. This study argues that the Seleukid kings were in constant competition with other internal power holders, illustrating the precarious position of the Seleukid kings to sustain the monopoly of power in the empire. The dynamics between the Seleukid king and different power holders within the kingdom are demonstrated in chapter 4 in two case-studies on the Attalids of Pergamon and the Baktrian kings. Chapter 5 reviews the possibilities of usurping the diadem as well as Seleukid reaction to usurpers. The concluding section fundamentally challenges scholarship’s reassessments of the ‘strength’ of Seleukid kingdom. It is argued that it was a kingship without a strong dynasty and supporting aristocracy which formed the basis of a weak empire.ship without a strong dynasty and supporting aristocracy which formed the basis of a weak empire.
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Oki, Takashi. "Aristotle on teleology, chance, and necessity." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9f6e9f40-eb61-43a8-92d6-b3749820e738.
Full textAbstract:
In this doctoral thesis, I address questions concerning teleology, chance, and necessity in Aristotle's philosophy. These three concepts are closely related. Aristotle considers chance in relation to teleology, and contrasts his conception of teleology with his own and his predecessors' views of necessity. He explains accidental causation on the basis of the absurdity of necessitarianism. In Chapter I, I clarify Aristotle's definitions of chance events and chance in Physics B 4-6 on the basis of a detailed examination of 'coming to be accidentally' (196b23), 'for the sake of something' (196b21), 'might be done by thought or by nature' (196b22). I analyze accidental and non-accidental relations involved in the marketplace example. In Chapter II, I argue that Aristotle accepts that the regularly beneficial winter rainfall is for the sake of the crops in Physics B 8. I scrutinize Empedocles’ view as described by Aristotle and show that it is not a theory of natural selection. I seek to show that the rival view against which Aristotle argues is an amalgam of reductionism and eliminativism. In Chapter III, I analyze what Aristotle means by 'simple necessity' and 'necessity on a hypothesis' (199b34-35), and argue that, in Physics B 9, he only acknowledges hypothetical necessity. Scrutinizing the wall example and Aristotle’s reply to it, I clarify his view of the relation between teleological causation and material necessity. In Chapter IV, I clarify Aristotle's conception of accidental causes, while taking his presentation of the necessitarian argument in Metaphysics E 3 as a reductio ad absurdum. I criticize the view that Aristotle himself accepts necessitation in this chapter. In doing so, I argue that, although this point is not explicitly stated in Physics B, Aristotle thinks that what is accidental is not necessary prior to its occurrence.
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Sienkiewicz, Stefan Fareed Abbas. "Five modes of scepticism : an analysis of the Agrippan modes in Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2f49a75d-164c-4534-aa9e-9579d55be086.
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This thesis has as its focus five argumentative modes that lie at the heart of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism. They are the modes of disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity and relativity. They are analysed, individually, in the first five chapters of the thesis (one mode per chapter) and, collectively, in the sixth. The first four chapters deal, respectively, with the modes of disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression and reciprocity. They distinguish between two versions of these modes: “dogmatic versions”, on the basis of which a dogmatic philosopher, who holds some theoretical beliefs, might reach a sceptical conclusion; and “sceptical versions”, on the basis of which a sceptical philosopher, who lacks all theoretical beliefs, might do so. It is argued that scholars such as Jonathan Barnes have offered reconstructions of these modes which are dogmatic in the sense just described, and alternative sceptical versions of the modes are presented. A stand-alone fifth chapter offers an analysis of a stand-alone mode - the mode of relativity. It argues that there are in fact three different modes of relativity at play in the Outlines, that only one of them is non-trivial, and that the non-trivial version is incompatible with the mode of disagreement. The sixth and final chapter offers an analysis of how the modes (excluding relativity) are meant to work in combination with one another. Four different combinations are presented and it is argued that all of them are underscored by a variety of theoretical assumptions, which a sceptic, who lacks all theoretical beliefs, cannot make. The ultimate conclusion of the thesis is that, though the sceptic can deploy the various modes individually (by means of exercising his particular sceptical ability), he is not able to systematise them into a net by means of which he might trap his dogmatic opponent. Unless specified otherwise, translations are based on Annas, J., and Barnes, J., Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
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Sellier, Maryline. "L'albâtre en Egypte ancienne. La production des objets en calcite de l’Ancien au Moyen Empire." Thesis, Paris 4, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016PA040226.
Full textAbstract:
Ce travail de recherches, qui n’a pas pour objectif de résoudre le problème de terminologie actuel lié à la désignation de cette roche que les Anciens Égyptiens appelaient bjt ou Ss, se propose d’étudier la production des objets réalisés dans cette pierre composée de calcite. Elle se caractérise par une teinte blanche ou jaune pâle, parfois ornée de rubans colorés, un éclat gras et une relative translucidité. Étant donné qu’une étude de la production sur l’ensemble de la période pharaonique n’était pas envisageable dans le cadre d’une thèse, une limitation chronologique a permis de restreindre le corpus aux objets fabriqués entre le début de l’Ancien à la fin du Moyen Empire, soit de 2700 à 1700 av. J.-C. environ. Ce corpus de documents (volume 2) regroupe l’analyse des objets qui ont été classés de manière typologique, puis chronologique au sein de chaque catégorie : statuaire, tables d’offrandes, plaquettes « aux sept huiles saintes », chevets, sarcophages, réceptacles à viscères, vases, figurines du Moyen Empire et « autres ». La synthèse (volume 1) est, quant à elle, composée de trois chapitres, le premier étant consacré à l’étude de la chaîne de production de l’albâtre. Il comprend une description des carrières connues, des outils et des techniques d’extraction de la pierre, ainsi qu’une étude des ateliers de sculpteurs et des principales techniques de fabrication des objets. Les deux chapitres suivants explorent les différentes utilisations de l’albâtre, envisagées d’un point de vue typologique et chronologiqueThis research work, which isn’t aimed at solving the current problem of terminology linked to the designation of this rock called bjt or Ss by Ancient Egyptians, intends to study the production of artefacts made in this stone composed of calcite. It is characterized by its white or yellow pale hue and it is shiny, almost translucent and sometimes color-banded. Given that a study on the entire production through the Pharaonic period wasn’t conceivable within a thesis, a chronological limitation helped to narrow the corpus to the artefacts made between the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the end of the Middle Kingdom, that is to say from around 2700 to 1700 B. C. This corpus (volume 2) gathers the analysis of the objects classified typologically then chronologically within each category: statues, offering tables, tablets for the seven sacred oils, headrests, sarcophagi, canopic equipment, vessels, Middle Kingdom figurines and “others”. As for the synthesis, it is composed of three chapters, the first one being centered on the study of the manufacturing process of calcite. It includes a description of the attested quarries, tools and quarrying techniques, as well as a study of the sculpturing workshops and the main manufacturing techniques. The following two chapters focused on the different uses of calcite, taken from a typological and chronological point of view
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Linden, David Edmund Johannes. "Medicine and morality in the ancient world : an analysis of Galen's medical and philosophical writings." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:986686c2-8397-43ae-9b61-44ffdf85770a.
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The great power of the medical profession over the lives of men entails a wealth of moral problems in medical practice and lends particular importance to questions of the responsibility of the physician. We investigate the solutions offered by Galen, the most prolific medical author of classical Antiquity, in his medical and philosophical writings. Issues of ethics and moral psychology are discussed in numerous passages of Galen's works, and he even devoted a number of treatises exclusively to ethics. The main results of our analysis of these treatises and passages can be summarized as follows. Starting with his interpretation of a prominent Hippocratic maxim, we discuss possible motivations for Galen's re-definition of the relationship between physician and patient. For Galen, it was the physician, not the patient, who led the fight against the disease. This prominent position of the Galenic physician entailed particular obligations and responsibilities. But Galen also took the view that certain responsibilities resided with the patient, particularly that of selecting the right physician and keeping the prescribed diets. Moreover Galen thought that everybody ought to pursue the systematic liberation of the soul from passions and errors, guided by his ethical methodology. Galen gave disciplined care for one's health and acquisition of medical knowledge the status of moral duties for every educated person. For physicians, he provided a wealth of additional principles and rules of conduct, covering areas as diverse as experimentation with drugs, surgical risks, promulgation of knowledge on poisons, remuneration and other social impacts of medicine, and medical education, all of them inspired by respect for the health of man, the animal who topped the teleological hierarchy of creation, and medicine, the art whose task it was to preserve and restore man's health. Galen held medicine in exceptionally high esteem, even by the standards of physicians. His view of medicine as the divine art kat 'exochen is considered in the context of his high valuation of human life and health. Health assumed a high rank in the hierarchy of goods, for it provided the basis for all the other goods and virtues. For Galen, preservation and restoration of health could be attained only on the basis of a sound scientific methodology. He was reluctant to apply criteria external to medicine proper to its practice, and mostly judged the morality of medical activities by the adherence to the principles of a well-founded therapy and avoidance of undue harm.