Editorial for Rosetta Journal issue 17.
Articles
There are different schools of thought about the origin of the Yoruba people but all relate to the same ancestor ‘Oduduwa’. One story goes that he migrated from Mecca because of his belief in deities and came to settle in Ile-Ife and start a dynasty, which was further expanded by his sons. Another school of thought believes that he was an ordinary Yoruba man who came to power by overthrowing the existing ruling class while other stories tells us that he descended from heaven and landed at Ile-Ife with a handful of sand and a cock in his hands, he spread the sand over the earth, which was covered with water, and the cock spread the sand all over the earth and created land. Most of these uncoordinated conflicting stories are very difficult to prove. Despite efforts by scholars of Yoruba tradition to produce facts with absolute certainty and accurate analysis of the origin of the Yoruba, little had been discovered. Since history should not depend only on myths and legends as determinants but on reality; using historical analytical methodology, this paper plunges into variances of stories of origin and state formation in Yorubaland so as to give new interpretations to themes treated previously from mythological perspectives in order to arrive at new conclusions.
Keywords: Migration; State formation; Yorubaland; Myth; Legend; Creation
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The House of the Faun is one of the most intriguing buildings in Pompeii. Its striking feature is the presence of several mosaics decorating the whole house, the most representative of which is perhaps the well-known Alexander Mosaic. This new study analyses the interpretation not only of the Alexander Mosaic, but of the whole set decorating the House of the Faun, by considering and comparing with the possible esoteric creeds of the late Hellenism. In the study I suggest that instead of being simply decorative features of a wealthy Samnite, the mosaics are actually linked to each other by a philosophical pattern linked with an unclear esoteric circle, related with either the Heracliteans or the Hermetics.
The sudden ‘disappearance’ of Nubian ‘A-Groups’ and the subsequent ‘hiatus’ are topics researched by specialists in Lower Nubia. However, no consensus has yet been achieved to propose a feasible explanation of these topics. In this article, I propose that both the ‘disappearance’ and the ‘hiatus’ should be questioned because other explanations based on the archaeological and written evidence are also plausible. These alternative explanations focus on processes of identity change.
Keywords: Lower Nubia; ‘A-Groups’; Ethnogenesis; Identity
The aim of this paper is to test the current narrative models on shipbuilding construction in the Mediterranean through a series of statistical analyses, in order to see if the evolution from lashed to pegged mortice-and-tenon really fits the evolutionary model that dominates the field today. Based on a traditional view that technology gets more complex through time, and that the transition from lashed to pegged mortice-and-tenon happened in the eighth century BCE, current research on the topic has been more centred in creating a timeline of this technological evolution than in explaining the non technological reasons that could have motivated this change.
The results of this study propose a revision of the traditional chronology of the transition from lashed to pegged mortice-and-tenon, as well as well as some theoretical, non technological scenarios that explain better the correlation and development of these techniques. The statistical results indicate that the development of warfare in the Eastern Mediterranean was the main driving force in the adoption of the pegged mortice-and-tenon as the main shipbuilding technique of the period.
Book Reviews
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Other Reviews
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