Early Modern Provincial Identity in the Border Area between the Venetian Republic and the Hereditary Lands of the Austrian Branch of the House of Habsburg

This article focuses on some problematics regarding the early modern provincial identity in the area along the border between the Venetian Republic and the hereditary lands of the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg. The Friulian provincial identity is studied in the context of the internal conflicts in the Friulian society and the conflict between the Venetian Republic and the House of Habsburg (for example anti-Venetian sentiment of the Friulian feudal nobility, which was expressed mostly in indirect ways, but the most revealing are private historiographical documents)

The medieval population of Leopoli-Cencelle (Viterbo, Latium) : dietary reconstruction through stable isotope analysis from bone proteins

The Medieval period in Europe was a time of unprecedented social complexity and significant social and political change that had an impact on human diets. The present study aims to use stable isotope analysis from bone proteins to explore the diets of humans (n = 76) and fauna (n = 5) from the Medieval town of Leopoli-Cencelle (VT, Italy). The town was occupied between the 9th–15th centuries CE, however, the analysed remains date to the Late Medieval period (12th–15th centuries CE). Historical sources provide some information about the inhabitants of this community: the majority of the population was represented by craftsmen and traders, but farmers and shepherds were also present. To date, no biomolecular data regarding this community have been published. The results indicated an increase of 3–5‰ in δ15N values of humans compared to animals, reflecting a high trophic-level. The δ13C results indicated that animal and human diet was mainly based on C3 terrestrial resources, although three humans possessed an isotopic signature indicative of C4 plant consumption. No statistically significant differences between sexes or age groups (adults vs juveniles) were detected. The isotopic results were further placed in their regional and chronological context, adding valuable data to our understanding of diet and food distribution during the Medieval period in Italy

Social and Semantic Contexts in Tourist Mobile Applications

The ongoing growth of the World Wide Web along with the increase possibility of access information through a variety of devices in mobility, has defi nitely changed the way users acquire, create, and personalize information, pushing innovative strategies for annotating and organizing it. In this scenario, Social Annotation Systems have quickly gained a huge popularity, introducing millions of metadata on di fferent Web resources following a bottom-up approach, generating free and democratic mechanisms of classi cation, namely folksonomies. Moving away from hierarchical classi cation schemas, folksonomies represent also a meaningful mean for identifying similarities among users, resources and tags. At any rate, they suff er from several limitations, such as the lack of specialized tools devoted to manage, modify, customize and visualize them as well as the lack of an explicit semantic, making di fficult for users to bene fit from them eff ectively. Despite appealing promises of Semantic Web technologies, which were intended to explicitly formalize the knowledge within a particular domain in a top-down manner, in order to perform intelligent integration and reasoning on it, they are still far from reach their objectives, due to di fficulties in knowledge acquisition and annotation bottleneck. The main contribution of this dissertation consists in modeling a novel conceptual framework that exploits both social and semantic contextual dimensions, focusing on the domain of tourism and cultural heritage. The primary aim of our assessment is to evaluate the overall user satisfaction and the perceived quality in use thanks to two concrete case studies. Firstly, we concentrate our attention on contextual information and navigation, and on authoring tool; secondly, we provide a semantic mapping of tags of the system folksonomy, contrasted and compared to the expert users' classi cation, allowing a bridge between social and semantic knowledge according to its constantly mutual growth. The performed user evaluations analyses results are promising, reporting a high level of agreement on the perceived quality in use of both the applications and of the speci c analyzed features, demonstrating that a social-semantic contextual model improves the general users' satisfactio

568 — A historical date and its archaeological consequences

Written sources reveal that a political power shift and an excessive change of population took place in Pannonia in 568. Archaeological data suggest, however, coexsistence between communities different origins despite the community level realignment of society. The author would like to highlight some neglected examples that could provide details of vital importance for the topic and connect it to well known sites, all too often having complex and unclear interpretations. Continuity is analysed through the last phase of Langobard Period cemeteries, presuming that they were still in use during the last third of the 6th century, and through the early phase of Avar Period cemeteries, as their connection networks are the same: an intensive interaction with the western Merovingian and the Mediterranean world. This connection is evident in certain arte fact types (belts, weapons, brooches) and in attireas a whole as well

Stari Tar/Tarovec (St. Blek, Tar) – attempt at a typological and functional interpretation of the sacral complex within the medieval settlement

Arheološka istraživanja na lokalitetu kod stancije Blek (općina Tar – Vabriga/Torre – Abrega, Istra), kojega je moguće poistovjetiti sa „Starim Tarom” iz povijesnih izvora, utvrdila su niz faza koje obilježavaju preobražaj ranorimskoga ruralnog naselja (vile) u srednjovjekovno utvrđeno naselje. Uz ranosrednjovjekovnu fazu lokaliteta veže se sakralni sklop nastao istočno od središnjega arhitektonskog sklopa naselja, moguće kule. U radu se donose nove spoznaje o crkvi i sepulkralnome aneksu čiji se karakter i dataciju nastoji definirati pomoću strukturnih karakteristika i analogija te ih se potom smješta u kontekst organizacije naselja.Archaeological excavations at the stanzia Blek site (Tar – Vabriga/Torre – Abrega municipality, Istria county), which is probably to be identified with “Stari Tar” mentioned by historic sources, evidenced several phases which saw the transformations of a roman rural settlement (villa) into a medieval fortified one. A sacral complex, located to the east of the central nucleus of the settlement, probably a tower, can be linked to the early Medieval phase. In the paper new data on the church and the sepulchral annex is brought forth, allowing to define their character and dating on the bases of structural features and analogies. They are then discussed within the context of the wider organization of the settlement

An Ottonian sacramentary in Oxford

A reconsideration of Oxford’s most important Ottonian illuminated manuscript seems appropriate in a volume dedicated to Henry Mayr-Harting, whose ground-breaking contextual study of Ottonian illuminated manuscripts reminded the scholarly world that Ottonian books were made by and for real people in particular religious and political situations, people who may even have gone so far on occasion as to talk to one another. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Liturg. 319, a sacramentary,2 was first described in detail in the early twentieth century, and was subjected to close examination in the mid-1960s by two liturgical scholars, who reached markedly different conclusions as to its origins (pls. 8-ro, 12, 14, 16, and 18). Since then considerable progress has been made by palaeographers and art historians in the study of Ottonian manuscript production, much of which has implications for our understanding of the Oxford sacramentary