6. Under a cloak of terror: violence and armed conflict in Europe. - History Lab

Topographic map of the Porto Lines

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

Topographic map of the Porto Lines / created and published by Coronel Moreira.

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“New” Soviet Bomb

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

Extract from a report by Foreign Office officials in Moscow concerning an alleged new kind of nuclear weapon developed by the USSR in 1964.

The post “New” Soviet Bomb first appeared on History Lab.

Italian American Oral History

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

This diverse collection of more than 40 audio interviews features the stories of gentlemen who served during World War II in the United States Army, Navy, Air Corps, and Coast Guard in the European and Pacific theaters. Ciotola developed a specialized questionnaire to assure that veterans were thoughtfully interviewed about their lives and wartime experiences; along with documenting World War II recollections, the questions investigated how Italian American identify informed their service. Themes explored in the collection include: childhood in Italy and Western Pennsylvania, civilian life prior to entering the armed forces, the call to duty, military training and deployment, overseas experiences, daily life in the military, stories from the front lines and combat, release from service, homecoming, and life after the war.

The post Italian American Oral History first appeared on History Lab.

30 Voices from the Armenian Genocide

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

The testimony clip series “30 Voices from the Armenian Genocide”, was produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the first integration of full-length Armenian Genocide testimonies into the Visual History Archive. To help put the testimony clips into perspective, each one is introduced by experts in the field of the Armenian Genocide.

The post 30 Voices from the Armenian Genocide first appeared on History Lab.

The Declaration of War against Cleopatra

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

The War of Actium (32–30 BC) was the last civil war of the Roman Republic, fought between Mark Antony (assisted by Cleopatra and by extension Ptolemaic Egypt) and Octavian. In 32 BC, Octavian convinced the Roman Senate to declare war on the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

The post The Declaration of War against Cleopatra first appeared on History Lab.

Colonial War in 1st Person

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

The Municipality of Chamusca presents the first episode of the project “Guerra Colonial na Primeira Pessoa”, a documentary series that records on video the stories and memories of former combatants in the Colonial War (1961-1974) in the municipality of Chamusca.

The first episode features the testimonies of Augusto Zibreira, Emídio Cegonho, Manuel José Aranha, Sérgio Carrinho, Manuel João Serrasqueiro and António José Costa, as well as the wives of former combatants Guilhermina Correia and Helena Queimado.

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Sword

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

Bronze; leaf-shaped; imperfect at point; three rivet holes in each wing, four with rivets; two rivet holes in the hilt plate also with rivets; two rivet holes in the extremity of hilt plate which is doubly hooked.

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The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

Since the 1970s, most archaeologists working on hunters and gatherers have moved beyond ethnographic analogies for making inferential statements about the nature of hunting and gathering societies. However, the realm of warfare is the one glaring exception to this understanding of a major disconnect between past and present hunters and gatherers. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists studying the origins of warfare have found the archaeological record somehow lacking in their efforts to understand the beginnings of warfare in the ancient past. To fill in the perceived gaps, they have turned to the historic record of hunters and gatherers, and in doing so have fallen into the trap of ethnographic tyranny. This chapter argues that the biggest problem with using historical ethnographies to make inferences about patterns of past human behavior is that they burden us with pictures only painted in the light of the modern, dense, colonial world of nation states. Another problem with the major studies based on ethnographies is that lots of other scholars take them as gospel. Declaring that warfare is rampant amongst almost all hunters and gatherers fits well with a common public perception of the deep historical and biological roots of warfare. The fact that there is extremely limited empirical evidence of any warfare among past hunters and gatherers is pushed to the wayside as an intellectual inconvenience.

The post The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography first appeared on History Lab.

The Battle of Aljubarrota

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

Detail of a miniature of the King of Portugal fighting at Juberotes.

The post The Battle of Aljubarrota first appeared on History Lab.

War Lesions From the Famous Portuguese Medieval Battle of Aljubarrota

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:48:38 +0000

The corpses of the warriors of the famous battle of Aljubarrota, 1385, were laid in disorder in a common burial ground at the battlefield. The material was excavated in 1958 and then transferred, at least partly, to the Department of Anthropology of the Coimbra University (Portugal). The sample consists of 400 individuals represented mainly by their long bone fragments. Complete bones are an exception which implies that it is not possible with this material to reconstruct the different skeletons.

In the preliminary anthropological analysis of these individuals, the majority of them males who died between 20 and 60 years old, the bone injuries were the most relevant observation.

In this paper we refer to the most striking lesions due to violent and aggressive actions during fighting such as cuts, fractures, infections and eventual amputations. The probable causes of those wounds are also approached.

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