Bringing the Past to Life: Material Culture Production and Archaeological Practice

Performative methods in archaeology provide a valuable heuristic tool for investigating the many behaviours and interactions of both producers and consumers of material culture. Focusing on the potter’s wheel at Bronze Age Akrotiri as a socially embedded performance of technical know-how, this chapter outlines an integrated approach to material engagement across three arenas of archaeological action – experiment, analysis, and visualisation – connected by an explicit engagement with the chaîne opératoire approach. An innovative tool-kit is presented for the investigation of this technology by the wider archaeological community. Given the large-scale regional and diachronic questions that the adoption and adaptation of ancient technologies can raise, a collective approach is proposed for the interpretation of the potter’s wheel

Making Sound Present: Re-enactment and Reconstruction in Historical Organ Building Practices

Discussions regarding reconstruction, replication, or re-enactment in music can be fruitful only if musicians are experts in understanding the quality of the material with which they make their music: sounds. Such expertise can be acquired by analyzing and adapting the ways organists and organ builders deal with organ sounds, as each organ is an individual to a far greater extent than any other musical instrument. Organ builders discern how the thousands of pipes in an organ should sound and cooperate; organists have to able to understand the frames thus set. Generally speaking, it follows that composers’ intentions are subordinate to musicians’ and listeners’ ones: music is something that sounds

Reworking Recipes and Experiments in the Classroom

This chapter addresses the potential of reworking experiments or recipes in educational settings. We reflect on educational practice in several university settings, which span the Liberal Arts and Science Program in Utrecht and a course for historians of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University to physics teacher education at the Europa-Universität Flensburg. The classroom use of RRR methods serves to teach the exploratory nature of science, and focuses the attention of students on materials and the sensory dimensions of experiments. Together, the three cases argue that the use of RRR methods in the classroom allows teachers to engage students in new ways, and offers students the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in research into the history of science

A Walk as Act / Enact / Re-enactment: Performing Psychogeography and Anthropology

This book’s keywords of re-enactment, replication and reconstruction pose a distinction between an original on the one hand and some kind of copy on the other. The practice of walking and everyday life in general suggest alternatives. Using the series of terms ‘act’, ‘enact’ and ‘re-enactment’, the chapter investigates creativity in ways that cannot be reduced to the dichotomy of original and copy. It begins with an account of some pedagogical experiments into walking and psychogeography, and then explores the act of walking in psychogeography. It moves on to the enactment of shared practice between psychogeography and anthropology, and finally the re-enactment of psychogeography as anthropology, and vice versa

Science and the Knowing Body: Making Sense of Embodied Knowledge in Scientific Experiment

This chapter addresses the potential of reworking experiments or recipes in educational settings. We reflect on educational practice in several university settings, which span the Liberal Arts and Science Program in Utrecht and a course for historians of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University to physics teacher education at the Europa-Universität Flensburg. The classroom use of RRR methods serves to teach the exploratory nature of science, and focuses the attention of students on materials and the sensory dimensions of experiments. Together, the three cases argue that the use of RRR methods in the classroom allows teachers to engage students in new ways, and offers students the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in research into the history of science

Making Musicians Think: The Problem with Organs

Discussions regarding reconstruction, replication, or re-enactment in music can be fruitful only if musicians are experts in understanding the quality of the material with which they make their music: sounds. Such expertise can be acquired by analyzing and adapting the ways organists and organ builders deal with organ sounds, as each organ is an individual to a far greater extent than any other musical instrument. Organ builders discern how the thousands of pipes in an organ should sound and cooperate; organists have to able to understand the frames thus set. Generally speaking, it follows that composers’ intentions are subordinate to musicians’ and listeners’ ones: music is something that sounds

Reconstructions of Oil Painting Materials and Techniques: The HART Model for Approaching Historical Accuracy

The relationship between artists’ material choices, the preparation and application of materials, and the consequences – the appearance and material properties of the art-work – are studied using Historically Accurate Reconstructions Techniques (HART). This model provides a systematic means to evoke past practices. Reconstructions focus on a range of topics, from the flow properties of Van Gogh’s paint to the colour of natural chalk used in artists’ preparation layers. As the operator physically prepares and uses the materials, the steps towards the moment of painting are re-enacted. The products of the re-enactment, the documentation and the reconstruction itself, provide evidence – visual, physical and chemical ‒ for comparison with historic oil paintings

Imperfect Copies. Reconstructions in Conservation Research and Practice

In paintings conservation, reconstruction plays a role as a treatment, when it serves to complete the structural image of a lost or damaged area or object, and in research, where reconstructions are employed, for instance, to investigate the impact of conservation treatments or for their innovation. The conservation field has developed several strategies to deal with questions of validity, truthfulness and relevance. By example of a number of recent conservation and conservation research projects, this chapter discusses terminology adopted for reconstruction practices within the field, strategies developed by conservators to deal with ethical and practical issues surrounding the use of reconstructions, and relates these strategies to the ethical framework that guides conservators in their daily work

The FANCM:p.Arg658* truncating variant is associated with risk of triple-negative breast cancer

Abstract: Breast cancer is a common disease partially caused by genetic risk factors. Germline pathogenic variants in DNA repair genes BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, ATM, and CHEK2 are associated with breast cancer risk. FANCM, which encodes for a DNA translocase, has been proposed as a breast cancer predisposition gene, with greater effects for the ER-negative and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtypes. We tested the three recurrent protein-truncating variants FANCM:p.Arg658*, p.Gln1701*, and p.Arg1931* for association with breast cancer risk in 67,112 cases, 53,766 controls, and 26,662 carriers of pathogenic variants of BRCA1 or BRCA2. These three variants were also studied functionally by measuring survival and chromosome fragility in FANCM−/− patient-derived immortalized fibroblasts treated with diepoxybutane or olaparib. We observed that FANCM:p.Arg658* was associated with increased risk of ER-negative disease and TNBC (OR = 2.44, P = 0.034 and OR = 3.79; P = 0.009, respectively). In a country-restricted analysis, we confirmed the associations detected for FANCM:p.Arg658* and found that also FANCM:p.Arg1931* was associated with ER-negative breast cancer risk (OR = 1.96; P = 0.006). The functional results indicated that all three variants were deleterious affecting cell survival and chromosome stability with FANCM:p.Arg658* causing more severe phenotypes. In conclusion, we confirmed that the two rare FANCM deleterious variants p.Arg658* and p.Arg1931* are risk factors for ER-negative and TNBC subtypes. Overall our data suggest that the effect of truncating variants on breast cancer risk may depend on their position in the gene. Cell sensitivity to olaparib exposure, identifies a possible therapeutic option to treat FANCM-associated tumors

A case-only study to identify genetic modifiers of breast cancer risk for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation carriers

Abstract: Breast cancer (BC) risk for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers varies by genetic and familial factors. About 50 common variants have been shown to modify BC risk for mutation carriers. All but three, were identified in general population studies. Other mutation carrier-specific susceptibility variants may exist but studies of mutation carriers have so far been underpowered. We conduct a novel case-only genome-wide association study comparing genotype frequencies between 60,212 general population BC cases and 13,007 cases with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. We identify robust novel associations for 2 variants with BC for BRCA1 and 3 for BRCA2 mutation carriers, P < 10−8, at 5 loci, which are not associated with risk in the general population. They include rs60882887 at 11p11.2 where MADD, SP11 and EIF1, genes previously implicated in BC biology, are predicted as potential targets. These findings will contribute towards customising BC polygenic risk scores for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers