The decline and collapse of the Kingdom of Aksum (6th-7th CE: an environmental disaster or the end of a political process?

The historical matter of the ‘end’ of the Kingdom of Aksum (6th-7th cent.) has been debated long by scholars in search of understanding for the ‘last days’ of the African state. Starting from the end of 20th cent., researches privileged the theory of the environmental degradation caused by the human exploitation of natural resources, associated to destructive phenomena such as famines, plague, locust infestations (and consequent migrations and social conflicts). In truth, none of these factors proves to be exclusive of the period between 6th and 7th cent., and recurrent episodes of that sort has occurred in ancient and modern history of the Ethio-Eritrean highlands. Rather, in the same ages the historical framework is characterized by the overthrow of the political balance on the regional scene. The ‘retreat’ of Byzantines and Persians, the rise of the Caliphate, the taking of control of the Reds Sea coasts by the Arabs, the decline of Adulis and the maritime trade route: the sum of these elements justifies the dramatic changes we call ‘decline and collapse’ of Aksum

The philological study of the Eritrean manuscripts in Gǝ‘ǝz: Methods and practices

There is still a considerable and largely unexplored amount of Gǝ‘ǝz manuscripts preserved in Eritrean libraries, particularly in churches and monasteries, and it is desirable that this documentation is made available to the scholarly attention, as it is being done for other areas. Yet, if the exploration, acquisition, and first scientific study of this material is challenging in itself, of no less importance are questions which still tend to remain in the background, but the importance of which can hardly be underestimated; among these, there are: the cataloguing of the codices, a delicate task which must be done according to the standard and universally applied criteria, involving the description of each and every object in its material constitution and the analytical illustration of its literary contents; the method of approach to the texts, particularly to their edition, which must be achieved following the principles of textual criticism, namely exploiting all the available witnesses of the literary works and reconstructing their mutual relations; the typological analysis of the codex illuminations – if there are – in order to highlight the artistic ‘schools’ and personalities and to reconstruct the influences coming from abroad, mainly the ‘Mediterranean’ milieus. Once these conditions are satisfied, the linguistic, historical, or anthropological use of the texts become possible, and the Gǝ‘ǝz manuscripts will prove to be a priceless source for knowing the Eritrean civilization as a whole

Dinamiche identitarie nell'Etiopia antica e medievale

Ethiopian literary tradition offers many opportunities to study how political and social identities developed and changed through the centuries, even though reading written documents entails the risk of being influenced by the ideology of the cultural centers that built up the different narratives. Among the possible examples, three case studies are herein presented: the social structure of the first dwellers of the Ethiopian highlands as it emerges from the inscriptions they left, the cultural identity of the kings of Aksum and of the Zagwe dynasty, the enigmatic ethnogenesis of the Amḥara. The analysis of the texts aims at giving interpretations based only upon philological evidence and not influenced by old and modern preconceptions

Lingua letteraria e lingua di corte: diglossia e insegnamento tradizionale in Etiopia fra Tardo Antico e Medio Evo

The Ethiopian literary tradition extends over a time frame beginning even before the christianization of the Country (first half of the 4th cent.) up to modern times. In this long period we frequently register phenomena of interference both among different languages (Greek, Gǝ‘ǝz, Arabic, Amharic, agaw languages and so on) and between various registers of the same language, produced or conditioned by specific cultural or religious contexts. Particularly, in the Middle Ages the differentiation between Gǝ‘ǝz as the language of the clergy and the written discourse, and Amharic as the language of the court and the verbal communication, had momentous reflexes on the traditional teaching, related to Gǝ‘ǝz liturgical texts, but orally transmitted in Amharic. This development proved to be crucial for the start of the literarization process of Amharic, to be dated back to the second half of the 16th cent., as an effect of the missionary propaganda of the Portuguese Jesuits and of their polemics against the Ethiopian Orthodox clergy

Fare storia attraverso gli archivi fotografici: le istituzioni culturali a Roma

Recensione di Barbara Fabjan (a cura di), Immagini e memoria. Gli archivi fotografici di Istituzioni culturali della città di Roma, atti del convegno (Roma 2012), Roma, Gangemi, 2014, pp. 192, ISBN 978884922896

Annales d’Éthiopie, XVII, 2001: Aksum, Éthiopie musulmane, Études

Review  

Yes-no question/marking in Italian dialects : a typological, theoretical and experimental approach

This dissertation provides an account of polar questions in Italian dialects from a typological, theoretical and empirical perspective. Both data from the existing literature and new data from the author’s fieldwork are included in this study. It is shown that Italian dialects display a relatively large number of typologically diverse yes/no question-marking strategies, as opposed to Standard Italian and Romance. The variation found in Italian dialects is surprising, given that they are closely related from a typological point of view. Furthermore, Several Tuscan, Central and Southern Italian dialects display a specific construction that poses a challenge for standard typological classifications of polar questions in the world’s languages. A theoretical analysis is proposed in order to account for the syntactic properties of this yes/no question-marking strategy. Although this construction includes two fully-inflected verbs, it is argued that it should be analyzed as a monoclausal utterance. A number of syntactic tests are developed to shed some light on its underlying structure. Further evidence for the proposed analysis comes from the results of empirical testing. A production experiment was carried out to investigate the phonetic realization of this construction. The results of the experiment show that this constructions patterns with specific phonetic cues, which unambiguously signal its monoclausal status. This study is of relevance to anyone interested in descriptive typology, theoretical syntax and experimental phonetics, as well as Italian dialectology.LEI Universiteit LeidenThe research leading to this dissertation was funded by the Lingua scholarship. This scholarship was paid for by Elsevier out of a substantial amount of the royalties for Lingua. As the recipient this scholarship, I also had to provide administrative assistance to the Executive Editor of Lingua, prof.dr. J.E.C.V. Rooryck.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Arnd Schneider, Expanded visions. A new anthropology of the moving image, London-New York, Routledge, 2021, pp. 212

Recensione di Arnd Schneider, Expanded visions. A new anthropology of the moving image, London-New York, Routledge, 2021, pp. 212

Comunità di mestiere: percorso etnografico sulle cave di travertino di Rapolano Terme

Building on ethnographic research, this article focuses on briefly presenting the history of social, economic and cultural changes of the sienese travertine extraction and transformation in the Rapolano Terme stoneworking district. The research is based on findings from interviews with quarrymen and stoneworkers, key photographs and documents contained in a variety of archives, which together provide an overall view of the narrative of this territorial identity. The aim of the text, as the author points out, is to look at how the craft continuity and transmission changes contribute to current processes of heritagisation built on the connections between economic potential, history, art, and skilled labour