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Landscapes of Movement and Predation is a global study of times and places, in the colonial and precolonial eras, where people were subject to brutality, displacement, and loss of life, liberty, livelihood, and possessions. The book provides a startling new perspective on an aspect of the past that is often overlooked: the role of violence in shaping where, how, and with whom people lived.
Old Norse literature abounds with descriptions of magic acts that allow ritual specialists of various kinds to manipulate the world around them, see into the future or the distant past, change weather conditions, influence the outcomes of battles, and more. While magic practitioners are known under myriad terms, the most iconic of them is the völva. As the central figure of the famous mythological poem Völuspá (The Prophecy of the Völva), the völva commands both respect and fear. In non-mythological texts similar women are portrayed as crucial albeit somewhat peculiar members of society. Always veiled in mystery, the völur and their kind have captured the academic and popular imaginati...
The Vikings continue to fascinate us because their compelling stories connect with universal human desires for exploration and adventure. In Age of Wolf and Wind: Voyages through the Viking World, author Davide Zori argues that recent advances in excavation and archaeological science, coupled with a re-evaluation of oral traditions and written sources, inspire the telling of new and engaging stories that further our understanding of the Viking Age. Drawing upon his fieldwork experience across the Viking world, he proposes that the best method for weaving together these narratives is a balanced, interdisciplinary approach that integrates history, archaeology, and new scientific techniques. Th...
This book offers a culture-by-culture account of various unique restrictions placed on warfare over time, in a bid to demonstrate the underlying humanity often accompanying the horrors of war. It offers the first systematic exploration of Indigenous Australian laws of war, relaying decades of experience in communities. Containing essays by a range of laws of war academics and practitioners, this volume is a starting point in a new debate on the question: how international is international humanitarian law? See also its companion volume The Laws of Yesterday's Wars 2: From Ancient India to East Africa
This book is the coming together of several disciplines under the thematic umbrella of Viking Camps and provides the very latest research presented by the leading researchers in the field, making it the most comprehensive compilation of the phenomenon of Viking camps to date. Compiling the current state of research on encampments across the Viking world and their impact on their surroundings, this volume provides an all-encompassing analysis of their characteristics—functions, form, inner workings, and interaction with the landscape and the local population. It initiates a wider discussion on the features and functions that define them, making it possible to identify and understand new sit...
This book argues that tribal Scandinavia was set on the route to kingship by the arrival in the AD 180s–90s of warrior groups that were dismissed from the Roman army after defeating the Marcomanni by the Danube. Using a range of evidence, this book details how well-equipped and battle-seasoned warriors, familiar with Roman institutions and practices, seized land and established lordly centres. It shows how these new lords acquired wealth by stimulating the production of commodities for trade with peers and Continental associates, Romans included, to reward retainers and bestow on partners. In these transcultural circumstances, lords and their retainers nurtured artisanal production of exqu...
Slavery is one of humanity’s most ancient and persistent inequities. It predates the rise of civilization, played a key role in the growth of Western and Islamic cultures and was an integral part of the emergence and global spread of capitalism. Given its historical significance, it is not surprising that the problem of slavery is still passionately debated today and that modern-day trafficking and forced servitude remain key issues of public concern. In Enslavement: Past and Present, historical sociologist Orlando Patterson casts a wide net to examine the social, political, and economic complexities of slavery across different eras and societies. Patterson examines slavery at several leve...
A history of racism and segregation in twentieth-century Houston and beyond.
Let's travel in time together, a thousand or so years back, and meet Viking women in their hearth-lit world. How did these medieval viragoes live, love and die? How can we encounter them as flesh-and-blood beings with fears and feelings - not just as names in sagas or runes carved into stone? In this groundbreaking work, Lisa Hannett lifts the veil on the untold stories of wives and mothers, girls and slaves, widows and witches who sailed, settled, suffered, survived - and thrived - in a society that largely catered to and memorialised men. Hannett presents the everyday experiences of a compelling cast of women, all of whom are resourceful and petty, hopeful and jealous, and as fabulous and flawed as we are today. Lisa Hannett is an award-winning Canadian-Australian writer and academic.
Empire, Kinship and Violence traces the history of three linked imperial families in Britain and across contested colonial borderlands from 1770 to 1842. Elizabeth Elbourne tracks the Haudenosaunee Brants of northeastern North America from the American Revolution to exile in Canada; the Bannisters, a British family of colonial administrators, whistleblowers and entrepreneurs who operated across Australia, Canada and southern Africa; and the Buxtons, a family of British abolitionists who publicized information about what might now be termed genocide towards Indigenous peoples while also pioneering humanitarian colonialism. By recounting the conflicts that these interlinked families were involved in she tells a larger story about the development of British and American settler colonialism and the betrayal of Indigenous peoples. Through an analysis of the changing politics of kinship and violence, Elizabeth Elbourne sheds new light on transnational debates about issues such as Indigenous sovereignty claims, British subjecthood, violence, land rights and cultural assimilation.