Multi-isotope analysis reveals that feasts in the Stonehenge environs and across Wessex drew people and animals from throughout Britain.

The great henge complexes of southern Britain are iconic monuments of the third millennium BCE, representing great feats of engineering and labor mobilization that hosted feasting events on a previously unparalleled scale. The scale of movement and the catchments that the complexes served, however, have thus far eluded understanding. Presenting the largest five-isotope system archeological dataset (87Sr/86Sr, δ34S, δ18O, δ13C, and δ15N) yet fully published, we analyze 131 pigs, the prime feasting animals, from four Late Neolithic (approximately 2800 to 2400 BCE) complexes to explore the networks that the feasts served. Because archeological evidence excludes continental contact, sources are considered only in the context of the British Isles. This analysis reveals wide-ranging origins across Britain, with few pigs raised locally. This finding demonstrates great investment of effort in transporting pigs raised elsewhere over vast distances to supply feasts and evidences the very first phase of pan-British connectivity.

Origen del síndrome de la clase turista: John Homans / The origin of «economy class syndrome»: John Homans

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Hospitals of Rome in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Apostolic Visit of 1825.

Pope Leo XII marked the 1825 Jubilee by visiting the hospitals of Rome. Italy was recovering from the French invasion that had disrupted social and religious structures. The Visitors investigated conditions, and recommended changes. By 1826, eight large hospitals were ordered to unite, but, three years later, the order was rescinded. Based on the Visit's mostly unexamined records in the Vatican Secret Archives, hospital registers, and minutes of the governing council held in the Archivio di Stato di Roma, this paper reconstructs the network of Rome's hospitals in the early 19th century. It also compares Roman hospitals to its Parisian counterparts, especially with respect to governance and education. Finally, it examines the merger as an early example of a practice that remains vibrant (if controversial) today.

["They are enjoying their first holiday ever"--working with the elderly, from the post-war years up to the early 1970s]. / "Sie geniessen den ersten Urlaub ihres Lebens"--Entwicklung der offenen Altenhilfe von der Nachkriegszeit bis zum Beginn der 1970er Jahre.

While, in the post-war years and into the 1950s, the building of old people's and care homes and the allocation of home places in those homes was seen as the main task of municipal care institutions for the elderly in Frankfurt am Main, in the decade that followed their main task shifted towards increasing the possibilities of providing care in people's own homes, delaying the move into old people's homes and breaking through the loneliness that elderly people were presumed to experience. Supported by the state, community housing was provided with flats for elderly people and with carers to look after their needs. The "warm rooms" of the post-war period changed into clubs, where members met and received guidance. In the late 1960s the clubs were extended into day-care centres, offering a range of consultation services, organized day trips and recreational holidays for the elderly. It was hoped that "meals-on-wheels" in combination with age-appropriate living conditions would delay the move into a home. But these plans were not adequately developed in the 1960s and often it was not clear who would pay the bills. The same was true of outpatient medical care which had traditionally been the task of community nurses, but was now increasingly carried out by local authority carers, who also provided household assistance. This kind of care could only ever be given for a limited period of time and, while it was able to delay the move into an old people's home, it could not replace it.

[Ether Day--no laughing matter. The birth of modern anaesthesia]. / Ether Day--no laughing matter--Die Geburtsstunde der modernen Anästhesie.

Since centuries the first public demonstration of the anaesthetic properties of ether by William Thomas Green Morton at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on October 16th 1846 is celebrated as "Ether Day" world-wide. The news of the beneficial effects, primarily disposed as a "Yankee Invention", spread over all continents quickly. This was the result of an article, published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on November 18th, 1846. It is mentioning worth that this article was written when Morton had disclosed that the used "preparation", later named as "Nostrum" or "Letheon", was sulphuric ether. The important discovery later became a patent case and was overshadowed by a long lasting priority claim. Nevertheless the readers of the New England Journal of Medicine voted in a survey that this article was the most important publication in the 200 years journals history ever.

Science, providence, and progress at the Great Exhibition.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 is generally interpreted as a thoroughly secular event that celebrated progress in science, technology, and industry. In contrast to this perception, however, the exhibition was viewed by many contemporaries as a religious event of considerable importance. Although some religious commentators were highly critical of the exhibition and condemned the display of artifacts in the Crystal Palace as giving succor to materialism, others incorporated science and technology into their religious frameworks. Drawing on sermons, tracts, and the religious periodical press, this essay pays close attention to the ways in which science and technology were endowed with providentialist significance and particularly examines the notion of human progress used by a number of Christian writers, especially Congregationalists, who set scientific and technological progress within a teleological religious perspective. This discussion sheds fresh light not only on the Great Exhibition itself but also on the deployment of natural theology in mid-nineteenth-century Britain.

Rites of passage in Italy.

Unlike the vast number of public celebrations in Italy that are almost always associated with specific foods, rites of passage in that country are focused on pivotal private moments after the ceremonial crossing of a threshold; and food may or may not be a primary focus of the event. Recognition of birth, marriage, and death­the three major turning points in the intimate life of a family­may still be observed with dishes or ingredients traceable to the Renaissance, but many older traditions have been modified or forgotten entirely in the last thirty years. Financial constraints once preserved many customs, especially in the south, but regional borders have become porous, and new food trends may no longer reflect the authentic tradition. Can new movements, such as Slow Food, promote ancient values as the form and food of traditional events continue to change?

Conviviality in Catalonia.

Food, essential to social interaction everywhere, has particular importance in the regeneration of this rural community in Catalonia. The misery of the Civil War in Spain was followed by three decades of rural depopulation and economic decline, but a gradual return to the countryside since the 1980s has encouraged the revival of villages like Mieres. Food and drink play a fundamental role in the fiestas, fairs, and other celebrations that pack the public calendar, creating and sustaining social interaction and rebuilding a sense of community.

Marcos Zapata's "Last Supper": a feast of European religion and Andean culture.

In Marcos Zapata's 1753 painting of the Last Supper in Cuzco, Peru, Christian symbolism is filtered through Andean cultural tradition. Zapata was a late member of the Cuzco School of Painting, a group comprised of few European immigrants and handfuls of mestizo and Indian artists. The painters in Cuzco learned mostly from prints of European paintings, and their style tends to blend local culture into the traditional painting of their conquistadors. Imagery was the most successful tool used by the Spaniards in their quest to Christianize the Andean population. By teaching locals to paint Christian subjects, they were able to infuse Christianity into Andean traditions. Zapata's rendering of the Last Supper utilizes this cultural blending while staying true to the Christian symbolism within the subject. Instead of the traditional lamb, Zapata's Last Supper features a platter of cuy, or guinea pig, an Andean delicacy stocked with protein as well as cultural significance. Cuy was traditionally a sacrificial animal at Inca agricultural festivals and in this way it offers poignant parallel to the lamb, as a traditional Christian sacrificial animal.