Abstract This essay investigates the interplay between archaeology, memory, and architectural renewal, emphasizing the intrinsic connection between historical layers and contemporary design ambitions. Architecture, in its physical manifestation, inevitably transforms into ruins—monuments continuously reshaped by historical context and environmental factors, embedded within the institutions of their origin yet persistently altered by incremental deterioration. Within this perspective, the essay critically examines the influential interpretations by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, John Soane, and Karl Friedrich Schinkel during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Piranesi viewed ruins as catalysts for innovative spatial exploration; Soane embraced architectural fragments as elements of cultural excavation; Schinkel re-envisioned antiquity through integrating the archaeological heritage of Magna Graecia into Berlin's urban fabric, notably with the Altes Museum. Time’s effect on ruins—stripping away ornamental detail to reveal structural purity—further highlights architecture's inherent tectonic qualities. In the twentieth century, archaeological concepts were recontextualized into the internal spaces of architecture, as evidenced by the works of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Louis I. Kahn, who each uniquely engaged with historical traces. Subsequently, in the 1980s, architectural interventions drew explicitly from ancient urban archaeological configurations, notably in Rome’s central archaeological district and Athens’Acropolis. The essay ends with the competition for the Museum Island in Berlin, an iconic city of the twentieth century, where David Chipperfield Architects in 2009 carried out the innovative restoration of the Neues Museum and in 2018 completed the James-Simon-Galerie in the same area. In these interventions, memory is reconstructed, in a dimension that enhances remembrance, recomposes erasures, and opposes the oblivion of a history that has guided the future of our time.
The authors analyse a number of 61 Roman brooches from the Brâncovenești-Călugăreni sector of the Dacian limes, discovered mainly in the last 15 years. In order to paint a better picture, in our analyses 9 brooches discovered at Brâncovenești before 2010 were included as well, thus raising the number to 70 pieces. Chronologically they fall between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD.
FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) are well-known key genes for initiating flowering in plants. Delineating the evolutionary history and functional diversity of FT genes is important for understanding the diversification of flowering time and how plants adapt to the changing surroundings. We performed a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of FT genes in 47 sequenced flowering plants and the 1,000 Plant Transcriptomes (1KP) database with a focus on monocots, especially cereals. We revealed the evolutionary history of FT genes. The FT genes in monocots can be divided into three clades (I, II, and III), whereas only one monophyletic group was detected in early angiosperms, magnoliids, and eudicots. Multiple rounds of whole-genome duplications (WGD) events followed by gene retention contributed to the expansion and variation of FT genes in monocots. Amino acid sites in the clade II and III genes were preferentially under high positive selection, and some sites located in vital domain regions are known to change functions when mutated. Clade II and clade III genes exhibited high variability in important regions and functional divergence compared with clade I genes; thus, clade I is more conserved than clade II and III. Genes in clade I displayed higher expression levels in studied organs and tissues than the clade II and III genes. The co-expression modules showed that some of the FT genes might have experienced neofunctionalization and subfunctionalization, such as the acquisition of environmental resistance. Overall, FT genes in monocots might form three clades by the ancient gene duplication, and each clade was subsequently subjected to different selection pressures and amino acid substitutions, which eventually led to different expression patterns and functional diversification. Our study provides a global picture of FT genes’ evolution in monocots, paving a road for investigating FT genes’ function in future.
Stefania Sarno, Rosalba Petrilli, Paolo Abondio
et al.
Abstract Calabrian Greeks are an enigmatic population that have preserved and evolved a unique variety of language, Greco, survived in the isolated Aspromonte mountain area of Southern Italy. To understand their genetic ancestry and explore possible effects of geographic and cultural isolation, we genome-wide genotyped a large set of South Italian samples including both communities that still speak Greco nowadays and those that lost the use of this language earlier in time. Comparisons with modern and ancient populations highlighted ancient, long-lasting genetic links with Eastern Mediterranean and Caucasian/Near-Eastern groups as ancestral sources of Southern Italians. Our results suggest that the Aspromonte communities might be interpreted as genetically drifted remnants that departed from such ancient genetic background as a consequence of long-term isolation. Specific patterns of population structuring and higher levels of genetic drift were indeed observed in these populations, reflecting geographic isolation amplified by cultural differences in the groups that still conserve the Greco language. Isolation and drift also affected the current genetic differentiation at specific gene pathways, prompting for future genome-wide association studies aimed at exploring trait-related loci that have drifted up in frequency in these isolated groups.
This paper reports the results of the multidisciplinary study carried out in the SE area of Ceggia, in the eastern part of the Venetian Plain. The area has been characterized, since ancient times, by numerous morphological transformation, due to the presence of lagoon and marshes, and interested by repeated reclamation. Aerial and satellite images have identified many natural and anthropogenic traces. From a geophysical point of view, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) combined with frequency-domain electromagnetic measurements (FDEM) can help to discriminate the spatial distribution of different buried structures in conductive systems. The electrical conductivity is, in fact, directly related to the soil moisture content. The multidisciplinary approach adopted in this context, with the results obtained thanks to the contribution of aerial and satellite images, historical cartography, archaeological survey, geophysical measurements, geomorphological characterization, and <sup>14</sup>C dating, allow us to suggest a possible interpretation of the different traces highlighted in the studied area. This approach suggests a potentially useful and replicable methodology to study similar evidence, such as along the North Adriatic coast and in broad sectors of the Po Valley. The key issue, in this kind of system, lies, in fact, in the possibility to date and compare traces visible on the surface by remote sensing, establishing their interest from an archaeological and geomorphological point of view using an integration of field measurements. At the end of this research, the classification of the different anomalies found in this hydraulic variable context, thanks to the multidisciplinary approach here adopted, suggest new hypotheses for reading the complex history of this understudied area.
Kostas Ouranis (1890–1953), a Greek poet and essayist, lesser known abroad, was regarded as one of the first to introduce “travel writing” in Greece. As a correspondent of different newspapers, he travelled to many countries in Europe and abroad and recorded his impressions in travel books, of which the best known is his travelogue on Spain, Sol y sombra (1934). However, the book that is of special interest as regards the Greek perspective of the writer, is Travels in Greece (Ταξίδια στην Ελλάδα, 1949), where Ouranis describes impressions from his travels in his homeland which took place in 1930. In the present paper, basing on the brief chapter on Monemvasia from the above-mentioned book, I will shed some light on the reception of Byzantium in Ouranis’ view, trying to answer, among others, the question whether the writer conveys any specific knowledge of the subject. In my opinion, his view of Byzantine heritage deserves special attention as regards the broad framework of the European approach to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Firstly, because his impressions on this Byzantine town constitute a vivid example of a clearly Greek perspective in this regard, which is relatively poorly known. Secondly, his deeply personal account on Monemvasia reveals the general attitude of the Greeks to their legacy and as such it may be regarded as a characteristic miniature which, like a lens, focuses their approach to the past.
Ancient history, Greek language and literature. Latin language and literature
Oleg V. Kuznetsov, Konstantin A. Lotarev, Vasiliy V. Tarakanov
Introduction. The introduction identifies one of the most important problems in the political history of Russia – the problem of determining and choosing the path of the long-term civilizational development in the aspect of liberal and conservative paradigm.
Methods and materials. As the main methods the authors apply: the historical-comparative, systemic, typological and historical-political ones. The main sources are the following: ”Plan of State Transformation” by M.M. Speransky and “Note on Ancient and New Russia in Its Political and Civil Relations” by N.M. Karamzin.
Analysis. In the course of the comparative analysis the authors carry out the study of the plan of M.M. Speransky’s state reforms and N.M. Karamzin’s political program in the aspect of the liberal and conservative axiology. The authors conclude that there were two different models of civilizational development of the state. One of them, represented by M.M. Speransky, suggested radical changes in the political system, legislation, social relations and led Russia to the liberal Western path of development. N.M. Karamzin proceeded from the priority of national and state traditions and the perniciousness of transferring European political institutions, customs and practicies to the Russian soil.
Results. The result of the study is the conclusion that in the complete absence of a basis for the formation of liberalism in Russia, M.M. Speransky’s constitutional search was doomed to failure and resulted in the practice of building a system of the rational public administration within the framework of absolutism. Centuries-old historical traditions of Russia were much stronger than the desire of Alexander I to give the country a Constitution.
History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics, International relations
The purpose of this article is to reflect on women from the ancient society and their studies, especially from Britannia. This work is made up of Romans and Britons women, who composed different costumes, which interspersed, which lived there and which were in some way evidenced by written and/or material vestiges.
This was not a homogenous group, both for the population that had already lodged there and for the one that came later, there was a great variety of ideas about their status and how they should lead their lives.
Materials on Roman and Briton have already been found epigraphically, on altars, tombstones and burials. However, this work will compare these first sources with the work of Tacitus, Annals, since this author always seems to place women with pejorative characteristics, very different from the loving and amorous words given to them in these places of death.
Vine-growing and winemaking in the area of the Roman province of Upper Moesia
are looked at based on the information supplied by the ancient sources, and
the archaeological and epigraphic evidence (inscriptions, artistic
depictions, vinedressing and winemaking implements, drinking and transport
vessels). Viniculture is associated with the Greco-Roman cultural orbit,
while the native central-Balkan tribes typically consumed alcoholic beverages
made from cereals. Therefore the goal of the research is to shed as much
light as currently possible on the significance of vine-growing and wine in
the life of the inhabitants of Upper Moesia. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke
Republike Srbije, br. 177012: Society, spiritual and material culture and
communications in prehistory and early history of the Balkans]
The wide distribution and availability of German and other vernacular Bible translations in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with 22 printed full Bible translations into German/Low German/Netherlandish appearing before Luther’s famous Bible translation, has been known to scholars since at least the early eighteenth century, when various works on German Bibles before the Reformation began to appear. However, the existence of such translations did not guarantee that scholars, especially church historians and historians of the Reformation took such Bible translations seriously. Luther himself had claimed (polemically) that the Bible had been entirely unknown and unavailable when he was a young man. The rather dispassionate scholarship of the eighteenth century, which included important works on pre-Reformation German Bibles by orthodox Lutheran divines, gave way in the second half of the nineteenth century to a rather bitter polemical discourse in the context of the Kulturkampf in Germany. Luther the linguistic genius and Luther the theological hero were the protagonists on one side; the late medieval Bible, on which Luther drew heavily for his own translation, was on the other. Not so much a Catholic-Lutheran debate as an ideological one about the place, value and influence of medieval piety and culture (and their relation to German national culture) was played out by prominent church historians. By the eve of WWII, German Bible scholarship had become a more clear-eyed exercise in historical evaluation--yet immediately after the war, in the context of the Cold War and the construction of a lineage of democratic and liberty-oriented values for Christian western Europe, the Luther Bible began to loom ever larger, especially in textbooks and general surveys, as a turning point in the history of western culture. Since the 1990s, more specialized and careful assessments of the importance of pre-Reformation German Bibles have prevailed, perhaps as part of a general re-evaluation of medieval culture and piety from perspectives informed more by anthropology and literary theory than by ideological polemic. These findings might shed light on the modes of history-writing in the contexts of both myth-making and source analysis.