De Gruyter

This paper argues that the concept of dignity should be understood as a concept that we use to describe an aggregate of values and qualities of a person or thing that deserves esteem and respect. The primary value that creates the right to have dignity is life. The degree of dignity a life form has depends on its place in the evolutionary scale. Human beings are the highest form of life so they possess the highest degree of dignity.

Background The objectives were to perform an observation of the administration of injectable drugs in three ICUs, to identify injectable drugs administered by Y-site infusion or mixed in the same container, to compare with physical compatibility data available in the literature and to test the physical compatibility for missing data. Methods An observational study was realised over two weeks and patients receiving more than one injectable drug in the same line simultaneously were included. Physical compatibilities were assessed in pairs by comparing with three databases. For some missing data, three tests were realised for pairs including an anti-infective drug. Visual and subvisual evaluations were performed after the preparation, 1 and a 4-hour storage. Results A total of 389 combinations between two injectable drugs was observed for Y-site infusions and 31 mixtures in the same container. According to the literature, 21.1 % associations were physically compatible, 1.8 % as physica...

Governments in some of the world’s richest nations appear to be caught in a double challenge of declining social budgets even as social needs are increasing. In this context, Outcomes Based Commissioning (OBC), has been suggested as one way in which ‘more’ social services can be provided for ‘less’ public resources. This form of commissioning is often linked with a new financing tool for social services, referred to in the US as ‘Pay for Success and Payment by Results in the UK or as a ‘Social Impact Bond’ (SIB). However, to date, this approach is under-theorised and this is a limiting factor both for shaping a research and evaluation agenda around SIBs and in understanding how such instruments might develop in future. Without a theoretical rationale for SIBs, it is not straightforward to assess whether, and how well, they have achieved their goals, and how they might be developed further. In this paper we consider two broad approaches to theorising SIBs. One draws on public adminis...

Numerous time series models are available for forecasting economic output. Autoregressive models were initially applied to US gross national product (GNP), and have been extended to nonlinear structures, such as the self-exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) and Markov-switching autoregressive (MS-AR) models. We show that while these nonlinear models fit the in-sample data better than linear models, the outof-sample forecast performance of extremely simple methods, such as the unconditional mean is competitive compared with both previously published linear and nonlinear models for GNP time series. Motivated by Occam′s razor and the forecasting competitiveness of the unconditional mean, we seek parsimonious models which are based on simple assumptions, incorporate few parameters, and can generate accurate forecasts. We propose nonlinear and nonparametric models based on nearest neighbor and kernel regression by forming a state-space of time delayed GNP observations. The rationale of the proposed methodology lies in identification of local regions of state-space known as nearest neighbor sub-spaces, whereby we utilize future trajectories of the neighboring states and weight them using a double kernel estimator to generate density forecasts. The models proposed in this work incorporate only one or two parameters, and the model estimation framework relies on optimizing the performance of in-sample density forecasts. The proposed modeling approach does not require prior assumptions regarding the form of the error distribution, and can provide transition between regimes of growth and contraction. We compare the forecasts from proposed models with classical time series models for GNP and a range of benchmarks, and validate our results on two postwar GNP time series using different performance scores, such as the root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and the continuous ranked probability score (CRPS). We find that proposed models consistently outperformed previously published models for point and density forecasts of GNP at varying horizons.

When persecuting those accused of some kind of witchcraft and magic in the Nordic countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the crime they allegedly had committed was labelled trolldom (sorcery). The correct historical legal term for the criminal was therefore trollkvinne (sorceress) and trollmann (sorcerer) respectively-trollfolk (sorcerers) in the plural. The modern German umbrella term hexe (witch) was first introduced in Denmark-Norway, Iceland and Sweden-Finland towards the very end of the seventeenth century and is thus not used in any legislation against sorcery-related practices, and very seldom used in the trial accounts. The Nordic distinction between trolldom and hekseri can in other words be compared to the English distinction between sorcery and witchcraft. However, in all the Nordic countries they continued using the old word for the crime instead of adapting the modern word of witchcraft even during the early modern period. In German speaking countries the new word for the crime was Hexerei, which gradually, but not entirely, replaced the old word of Zauberei and focused on the devil's pact: "…einem Pakt mit dem Teufel". 1 In old legal documents from the Nordic countries, sorcerers, or trolls as they are popularly referred to, are described as beings that people should not get in touch with. For example, the ancient Norwegian Christian statutes from the eleventh and twelfth centuries contain a clear ban on consulting such trolls or seeking knowledge from them. Furthermore, in Norway's and Iceland's first land laws from 1274 and 1281 respectively such encounter was perceived as a very serious breach of law that carried the strictest penalty. The law forbids anyone to, "sit outside to wake up trolls". 2 In the text below, I am, however, comfortable by using the words

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) continue to gain important recognition from disaster practitioners and academic researchers during what is arguably the most publicly visible disaster management phase – disaster response. The broader world of GIS academic research and industry practice for disaster response continues to change. This review article inventories the current state-of-the-art in GIS for disaster response and demonstrates progress in the data and people aspects of GIS for disaster response since previous literature reviews. The review is structured to serve as a metaphorical bridge between two reader groups – disaster management practitioners interested in understanding developing trends in GIS for disaster response and academic researchers with minimal to no understanding of GIS and/or mapping concepts within the disaster response context. With this readership in mind, we outline definitions of GIS, disaster response and the need for GIS in disaster response, review ...

Because of the advent of GPS techniques, a wide range of scientific literature on Sport Science is nowadays devoted to the analysis of players’ movement in relation to team performance in the context of big data analytics. A specific research question regards whether certain patterns of space among players affect team performance, from both an offensive and a defensive perspective. Using a time series of basketball players’ coordinates, we focus on the dynamics of the surface area of the five players on the court with a two-fold purpose: (i) to give tools allowing a detailed description and analysis of a game with respect to surface areas dynamics and (ii) to investigate its influence on the points made by both the team and the opponent. We propose a three-step procedure integrating different statistical modelling approaches. Specifically, we first employ a Markov Switching Model (MSM) to detect structural changes in the surface area. Then, we perform descriptive analyses in order t...

Mauritian Creole displays an alternation between a short and a long form of the verb, which is reminiscent of the conjoint–disjoint alternation found in some eastern Bantu languages. Based on comparison with other French-based creoles and socio-historical evidence, we conclude that the Bantu substrate must have had an impact on the grammatical system of Mauritian Creole. We compare the synchronic properties of the alternations in Mauritian Creole and the most likely substrate Bantu languages of northern Mozambique and examine two possible scenarios for the influence of Bantu on the Mauritian verbal alternation, concluding that probably only the (syntactic) basics of the Bantu alternation motivated the persistence of the alternation in Mauritian Creole.

In zes hoofdstukken en twee aanhangsels bespreekt Jan N. Bremmer inwijding in antieke mysteriën. In het eerste hoofdstuk en appendix 1 worden de Eleusinische Mysteriën besproken. Eleusis was een plaats in Attica, gelegen op ongeveer twintig kilometer ten noordwesten van Athene en deel uitmakend van de Atheense staat. Mythische overleveringen vertellen van oorlogen tussen Athene en Eleusis, die werden gevoerd ten tijde van koning Erechtheus en Theseus. Het heiligdom van Eleusis is een van de zeer zeldzame gewijde plaatsen, waarvan men met vrij grote zekerheid mag aannemen dat er reeds in de Myceense tijd erediensten werden gehouden. Niets bewijst echter dat in de Myceense tijd soortgelijke erediensten werden gehouden als in de Archaïsche en Klassieke tijd. Uit de documentatie die wij bezitten, blijkt dat de erediensten in Eleusis deel uitmaakten van de Atheense feestkalender. De vieringen van deze feesten waren zowel gebaseerd op het feit dat Eleusis deel uitmaakte van de Atheense staat, als op het feit dat deze plaats zich wezenlijk van Athene onderscheidde. De mysteriecultus van de graangodin Demeter ging uit van de gedachte dat een gelukzalig voortbestaan na de dood mogelijk was, althans voor ingewijden. Verder geven zij aan dat deze mysteriën zich richtten rond de mythe van Perséphoné, de dochter van Demeter (voorheen Korè), die eenderde deel van het jaar bij Hades in de onderwereld moest verblijven en tweederde deel op aarde. Haar oprijzen uit de onderwereld symboliseerde het ontkiemen van de korenhalm uit de stervende graankorrel. De cultus mogelijk dateert mogelijk uit het 2e millennium v.Chr. Zo als eerder opgemerkt vonden deze Eleusinische Mysteriën plaats in de maand Boèdromion. Het grote feest vond plaats in de herfst en het kleine feest (de terugkeer) in de lente. In de maand Boèdromion werden door Atheense jongelingen bepaalde 'heilige voorwerpen' (hiera) van Eleusis naar Athene gebracht. Nadat allerlei rituele handelingen waren verricht, trok daarna een processie naar Eleusis en bracht de heilige voorwerpen weer terug. Naast het beeld van de processie komen daarbij nog elementen als het baden in zee, offers van gewijde varkens waarvan het bloed als reinigingsmiddel werd gebruikt, vasten, fakkeldansen, het zingen van liederen en een geheime feestviering in de tempel van Demeter. Het doel van de mysteriën bij de inwijding van de aspirant-mysten was om hen met gewijde woorden inzicht en begrip te geven in de geheimen van de natuur en in de samenstelling van de kosmos. Een dramatische handeling waarin een priesteres de verdwijnende Korè voorstelde, maakte deel uit van de inwijding. Er werden klaagliederen voor Demeter en Perséphoné gezongen, en er werden heilige voorwerpen aan de in te wijden persoon getoond. Het aantal deelnemers was naar schatting tienduizend. De kleine mysteriën waren een voorbereiding op de grote en duurden drie dagen. Zij werden gevierd in Agrae, een kleine voorstad van Athene. Een bad in de rivier de Hissos en een reiniging met water maakten er deel van uit. Er waren na voldoende onderwijs door de mystagoog (de bewaarder van de geheimen) drie graden van inwijding. De eerste was

Cr catalysts supported on silica, zeolite NaY, and charcoal were prepared with two different methods. They were characterized and examined in the polymerization of ethene. Cyclic voltammetry, electron spin resonance, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and silicon-29 magic-angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy were used to characterize them, demonstrating that Cr is not in a single oxidation state, that the distribution among the various oxidation states depends on the history of the sample, and that even for a single oxidation state a variety of different environments can occur. In the polymerization of ethene, the supported Cr catalysts exhibited activity values varying from 10 3 to 10 5 gPE ⅐ molCr Ϫ1 ⅐ [M] Ϫ1 ⅐ h Ϫ1 , depending on the choice of the support and on the method by which the Cr is placed on it. Silica seemed to be the most efficient support for Cr for this reaction. However, the zeolite-supported catalysts also showed reasonable activity values (A p Х 10 4 units) and presented the advantage of having a strong interaction between the Cr and the support, which may prevent leaching of the cation into the surrounding environment.

The Art Market Dictionary is the first comprehensive scholarly guide to art market galleries, auction houses, agents, etc. from multiple national and historical contexts.
Each entry lists historical information, eminent artists represented, outstanding transactions as well as important exhibitions and publications; when available, an entry will also point to surviving archival material.
It will comprise three volumes with ca. 2,000 entries, and an additional ca. 3,000 online entries
The AMD is for all who take an interest in the art market: scholars, museum staff, art market professionals, collectors, provenance researchers, etc.

Editor in Chief: Johannes Nathan
Managing Editor: Sarah Goodrum

This work offers a theoretically informed analysis of the characterization of maternity in religion using a spatial lens. The maternal body as a space is used as an analytical framework to discuss how Mary’s pregnancy is located and spatialized in Christianity. Through examining selected medieval Marian iconography, this work discusses what kind of space Mary’s body represents in the Christian doctrine. Analysis shows three central themes on the characterization of the maternal body as a space: (1) as a transitional space, (2) as a landmark, and (3) as a liminal space. The images of Marian pregnancy show that the maternal body is beyond its biological purpose in the Bible, but serves as a space that enables various interactions and spiritual events. The examination of Mary’s maternal body as a space offers an alternative perspective to discuss Mary’s character as a point of interface for Christian doctrines, biblical periods, and the Scriptures. In many ways, understanding Mary’s ma...

Corsi di Cultura sull'Arte Ravennate e Bizantina. Ravenna . CIL Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum. Berolini . CHLA Chartae Latinae antiquiores, XXIX (= Italy, I). Dietikon-Zürich . CJ Corpus iuris civilis, II, Codex Iustinianus, recensuit P. Krüger. Dublin-Zürich   (editio stereotypa). CTh Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, ediderunt Th. Mommsen et P. M. Meyer. Berolini . LPRa Agnelli Ravennatis Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, cura et studio Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, ), Turnhout ; other editions by Alessandro Testi Rasponi,

For this dating, see Forster 2006, 11-19. Even if we assume that the Rasāʼil Ikhwān al-ṣafāʼ should be seen as an early 10th century compilation (see de Callataÿ 2014, 262), this dating of the Sirr al-asrār remains valid. 2 See Forster 2006, 108-111. 3 Which one is older, whether one of them developed out of the other or whether they both stem from a common archetype, remains an open question at the moment,

Recent accounts on the typology of predicative possession, including those by Stassen, recognise a Topic Possessive type with the possessee coded like the figure in an existential predication, and the possessor coded as a topic that is not subcategorised by the predicate and is not related to any syntactic position in the comment, literally: As for Possessor, there is Possessee. The Asian region is explicitly singled out as being a Topic Possessive area. On the basis of a sample of 71 languages from the four main language families of continental East and Southeast Asia – Sino-Tibetan, Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic, contrary to these previous accounts of the distribution of the main types of predicative possession in the world’s languages, we argue that this area should rather be considered as showing a particularly high concentration of Have-Possessives, with the additional particularity that the verbs occurring in the Have-Possessive constructions in this linguistic area ...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued an online statement in February 2012 rejecting all racism, in any form. The statement followed nearly two centuries of tortured struggles with racism promulgated by church leaders, instituted in everyday practices, and integrated into Latter-day Saint scriptures. While rhetoric renouncing racism from the LDS Church is a welcome step, religions need to compliment language undoing racism with concrete actions. This article examines ways that the LDS Church may work towards actually ending various forms of racism. It focuses attention on the role of settler colonial grave robbery, the loot from which was used in the production of Mormon scriptures advocating white privilege. These acts of violence against Native people continue into the present, as illustrated by the recent occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge by Mormon militiamen, extensive trade networks in antiquities in Mormon communities, unethical uses of Native American...

The Greek lexicon is known for its significant proportion of words lacking a clear etymology. Previous attempts to explain these words range from the socalled “Pelasgian” hypotheses, which resort to an unattested satem Indo-European language, to Beekes’s (2010; 2014) non-Indo-European “Pre-Greek”. In this paper, we reconsider this long-disputed question, and adduce Latin and even Proto- Romance data to unveil a centum language which possibly served as the basis for borrowing in both Common Greek and, at a later date, Common Italic. We analyse several dozen difficult Greek and Italic words as borrowings from this newly identified language, for which we provide a set of phonetic laws that model its development from Proto-Indo-European. Important methodological strengths of our proposal include the systematic correspondence between Greek and Italic forms, the semantic plausibility of our etymologies, and their consistency with what is known about Proto-Indo-European word-formation patt...

, and has been generouslyf unded by the European Research Council (Seventh Framework programme [FP7/2013], grant agreement no. 295555). We would like to express our warm thanks to the support staff of the Max Weber Center (Max-Weber-Kolleg), in particular Ursula Birtel-Koltes and Doreen Hochberg, whose assistance in the organisation of the event was invaluable. We are alsograteful to five of the original participants, FrancescoC amia, Françoise VanH aeperen, Paraskevi Martzavou, Ivana and Andrej Petrovic, for their oral contributions,a lthough their papers are not included here. The editorial board of Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten has kindlyagreed to include this volume in the series, while the de Gruyter editorial team has,asalways,been extremelysupportive duringthe production of the volume. Finally, we would like to thank NannetteW ürbach for her assistance with the formattingo ft his volume.

This study investigated effects of pretreatments on rehydration characteristics of solar-dried carrot slices. Blanching at 55, 65 and 75°C for 45 minutes and osmotic dewatering in 5%, 10% and 15% salt solutions for 5 h were used as pretreatments. Rehydration capacity of the dried carrots was determined by soaking 20 g sample in hot water at 95°C for 10 min and rehydration kinetics was carried out by soaking 5 g samples at 75, 85 and 95°C. All the treatment conditions separately and in combination influenced the rehydration characteristics of the carrot slices. High values of rehydration capacity and low lixiviated soluble solids, which indicates better quality, were obtained for samples treated at the lower blanching temperature. Similarly the lower salt concentration resulted in higher rehydration capacity and lower lixiviated soluble solids. The interaction of the lower level of both pretreatments produced higher rehydration capacity and lower soluble solid losses. A first-order k...

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

Note thataccordingtoour proposal the number after SH indicatest he volume number (tomus)ofthe Quaracchi edition-and not the book (liber)ofthe Summa Halensis. Hence SH Irefers to Book 1, SH II to Book 2.1, SH III to Book 2.2, and SH IV to Book 3, respectively.The unedited Book 4, which is not part of the Quaracchi edition, will be cited, with referencet ot he respective edition, as SH Bk IV. Where it would not lead to confusion, as horthand could be used for furthercitations:

Schneider, Jost. Sozialgeschichte des Lesens: Zur historischen Entwicklung und sozialen Differenzierung der literarischen Kommunikation in Deutschland. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. 483 pp. euro49.95 hardcover. Schneiders ehrgeiziges Unternehmen ist eine Sozialgeschichte literarischer Kommunikation, die sich als Antwort auf bzw. Absage an die traditionelle Literaturgeschichtsschreibung versteht. Ausgangs- und Angriffspunkt des Autors ist derselbe, der kulturhistorische und feministische Forschung inspiriert: die unzureichende Verfahrensweise einer Literaturwissenschaft, die lediglich eine chronologisch-teleologisch angeordnete Abfolge von Standardinterpretationen zu den bekanntesten Werken der Bildungselite liefert, den Literaturbegriff auf das Wenige einengt, was in traditionelle Epochenbegriffe passt, und diese selektive (und ideologisch determinierte) Textauswahl und -interpretation als "Literaturgeschichte" verkauft. Schneider antwortet auf diesen unbefriedigenden Z...

A short piece about a letter by Jacob Taubes (sent to Michael Theunissen on September 23, 1969) as contribution to the international research project “1968: Conflicts of Ideas in Global Archives” at Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (“German Literature Archive”).

The present work aims at establishing a typology of spatial interrogatives (SIs) in comparison to their declarative counterparts (SDDs) in the three basic spatial relations Place, Goal, and Source. In a functionally motivated typological approach, equivalents of the Early Modern English SIs WHERE – WHITHER – WHENCE, near deictic (ND) SDDs HERE – HITHER – HENCE, and far deictic (FD) SDDs THERE – THITHER – THENCE are identified across a sample of 250 languages from all macro-areas. The expressions are both qualitatively and quantitatively assessed to extrapolate areal and global trends of coding patterns. The formal relationships between spatial interrogative and spatial declarative paradigms are analyzed with a focus on the syncretism of categories and of individual cells. Table 1 displays two languages with different coding patterns, viz. a maximally distinct coding pattern (Finnish) and a maximally indistinct coding pattern (Bambara).

Von der ›Macht‹, die Bildwerke innehaben, ist in der Archäologie und der Kunstgeschichte seit langem die Rede 1. Die modernen Medien haben seit der 2. Hälfte des 20. Jhs. die Grundlage für eine Renaissance des Bild-Begriffes gelegt, wobei vor allem der Einsatz von Bildern durch oder für die Politik den kritischen Blick der Forschung schärfte 2. Auch die Politik selbst ist sich der Wirkung, die Bilder ausüben können, zunehmend bewusst. So wurde das Bild des im April 2011 getöteten Terroristen Bin Laden durch die US-Regierung gezielt zurückgehalten, was ex negativo die diesem Bild zugemessene Macht belegte. Am vorläufigen Ende des »Weltkriegs der Bilder«, den die Ereignisse des 11. September 2001 ausgelöst hatten, stand damit zugleich ein zwar besonnener Akt, in dem sich letzten Endes aber doch der Anspruch der überlegenen Supermacht inszenierte 3. Denn die Medien erhielten einen höchst bezeichnenden Ersatz für das Bild des Toten: eine sofort weithin verbreitete Photographie, die den amerikanischen Präsidenten und seine engsten Berater ihrerseits als Zuschauer der aus der Ferne übertragenen Live-Bilder der Tötung zeigten-ein Bild also, in dem sich das eigentliche, zurückgehaltene Bild und die mit ihm verbundene Beweiskraft spiegelten, ohne dessen vermeintlich negative Wirkmächtigkeit freizusetzen (Abb. 1). Die Diskussion über solche gegenwärtigen Bilder prägt zunehmend auch die historischen Bildwissenschaften, als die sich die Archäologie und die Kunstwissenschaft inzwischen verstehen. Sie suchen nach Möglichkeiten der kulturgeschichtlichen Einordnung: Wie charakterisiert sich und in welcher Weise entstand die Wirkungsmacht vergangener Bilder? Die Kluft zu den Erkenntnismöglichkeiten bei der Erforschung zeitgenössischer Bilder mit ihrer Suggestionskraft, aber auch ihrer Verbreitung im Internet und Fernsehen in Sekundenbruchteilen um die ganze Welt ist dabei für Studien zu antiken oder gar prähistorischen Bildwerken gewaltig. Dennoch ist es notwendig, die genannten Fragen auch für vergangene Kontexte systematisch anzugehen, da auch sie erhebliches Potential für eine bildwissenschaftliche Analyse bieten. Der vorliegende Band wagt eine solche Annäherung. Die hier vereinten Beiträge zu Bild, Raum und Handlung gehen auf die gleichnamige Tagung des Exzellenzclusters Topoi im Oktober 2009 zurück. Die Kooperation zwischen den zwei Cluster-Forschergruppen »Images« (C-II) und »Acts« (C-III) ermöglichte die Einladung von Forscherinnen und Forschern verschiedener archäologischer 1 Vgl. den Titel von Freedbergs Studie »The

Titles play an important role in genre analysis. Cross-genre studies show that research paper and thesis titles have distinctive features. However, thesis and dissertation titles in the field of dentistry have thus far received little attention. Objective: To analyze the syntactic structures and their functions in English-language thesis and dissertation titles in dentistry. Methodology: We randomly chose 413 titles of English-language dentistry theses or dissertations presented at universities in 12 countries between January 2000 and June 2019. The resulting corpus of 5,540 running words was then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, the two complementary focuses being grammatical structures and their functions. Results: The average title length was 13.4 words. Over half of the titles did not include any punctuation marks. For compound titles, we found that colons, dashes, commas, and question marks were used to separate the different components, colons being the most fre...

The research behind this book and the two others making up this mini-series was funded by the Norwegian Research Council (RCN, project no. 240448/F10). The three books trace the reception of Jerusalem and the Holy Land in Scandinavia through a millienium. The geographical term Scandinavia originates from the classical Roman author Pliny (Naturalis historia, book IV), who applied it to an island beyond the Baltic, probably identifiable with the peninsula of Sweden and Norway. In modern usage, the term is conventionally understood as the three kingdoms Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; whereas the wider term Norden (the Nordic countries) also includes Finland, Iceland, the Faroes, Greenland, and the Baltic states. Historically, there are tight cultural connections between all these countries. Their borders and mutual political constellation have changed many times during the millennium that is covered by these three books. We therefore tend to have the horizon of Norden in mind, although most of the source material discussed is Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and we have chosen to apply the term Scandinavia consistently. For the Middle Ages (vol. 1), we have also chosen to include Iceland and Orkney in Scandinavia because of the very tight administrative, ecclesiastical, and cultural connections with Norway. The periodization of the three books is worth commenting on. The first volume covers the medieval period from the Christianization in the tenth and eleventh centuries, until the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century. In Scandinavian historiography, the reformation (1536-37 in Denmark-Norway and 1527-1600 in Sweden) marks the watershed between the medieval and early modern periods. We have chosen to stick to this conventional periodization, as the introduction of Lutheranism significantly affected the understanding of Jerusalem. The second volume, then, covers the early modern period from the Reformation until around 1750, when Enlightenment ideas became widespread among key figures. Although it is difficult to draw a sharp line between the early modern and modern periods, Enlightenment thought, and subsequently Romanticism, engendered a second transformation of Christian cultures in general and the understanding of Jerusalem in particular. This is investigated in the third volume, which covers the period from c.1750 to c.1920. These dates are approximations, and the delimitation is further explained in the introduction to volume 3. For references to the spoken and written vernacular of Scandinavia in the medieval period, we have chosen the term Old Norse, regardless of the authors' land of origin. Old Norse names appear slightly modernized, except from in chapters written from a philological point of view. A note about the Norwegian capital Oslo, which is referred to in all three volumes: The city was moved a little westwards and renamed in 1624 after a great fire, and for almost three centuries its name remained Christiania (or Kristiania) after the Danish king Christian IV (r. 1588-1648). In 1925 the city's medieval name Oslo was introduced again. To avoid anachronistic uses of the city's name, we refer to Open Access.

We live in times of zero trust [Western, 2013], a term stemming from computer security research, which is applied to all sectors and businesses. Most prominently zero trust is used in cryptoeconomic systems such as Bitcoin and other Blockchain-based technologies - describing the practice to ”never trust, always verify (ibid). This computational trust applies the human notion of trust to the digital world, that is seen as malicious rather than cooperative. The term "Faceless" describes different forms of praxes, which can be read in relationship to the accelerated technological change affecting authorship, agency and production in the 21st century. While the concept of anonymity (namelessness) refers to the unknown identity, facelessness also includes pseudonymity, a disguised or obfuscated entity which also points to leaderless organisation and non-human (AI) or distributed collective agency between humans and machines on the example of distributed autonomous organisations (DAOs). Technology-based and formerly called new media arts can act as a shield and as an encrypted (obfuscated) basis to test and deploy subversive or sub-versioned (critical) research and practice.

The top part of the famous basalt stele of Kubaba from Karkemish, made by Kamani around 790 BC, was discovered in 2015. This allows for a new discussion of the development of the iconography of the goddess. The stele completes the genealogy of the Karkemish rulers from the 9th century BC and includes the first mention of Sangara in hieroglyphic writing. Thanks to a study of archival materials in the British Museum and the rediscovery of additional stele fragments in the 1911-1920 dig house at the site, the later history of the monument now becomes better known.