The 1st-c. CE Roman siege system of Masada exhibits a high degree of preservation due to its remote location and the arid climate. However, unlike the thoroughly excavated Masada fortress, the siege system has not received due attention. This article is part of a research project aimed at advancing our understanding of the conflict landscape around Masada using contemporary archaeological methods. Following a comprehensive surface survey and photogrammetric 3D modelling, we show that the circumvallation wall stood to a height of 2–2.5 m and served several functions – as an obstacle, a means of psychological warfare, and a platform from which to mount counterattacks. Based on our measurements and workload estimations, we argue that the construction of the siege wall and the camps around Masada occurred fairly quickly.

A change is more often than not faced with resistance from thinking minds before it is welcomed. This paper emphasizes the urgent need to scrutinize the proposed changes to the age-old Indian Penal Code to be brought about by the enactment of the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS). It critically evaluates every such new change to resolve all doubts and apprehensions, in delving particularly into the inspection of the BNS, in a theoretical study comparing with the Indian Penal Code. The paper discusses the “legislative intent and colonial continuities”, “anti-democratic tendencies” and “general critiques” addressing the debates over “patriarchal biases, problems laden within a false promise to marriage in the BNS, linguistic imperialist connotations, and the ambiguities over punishments”. This paper aims to evaluate the premise for an overhaul of the existing penal code and to identify and correspond substantial changes suggested in the new act in light of a promised wave of decolonization.

The automatic graphitization system (AGE3) by IonPlus is very popular among radiocarbon dating laboratories. Usually, solid samples are burnt in an elemental analyzer (EA), and the gaseous CO2 is transferred for graphitization. Our system is coupled also with an isotope ratio mass spectrometer (IRMS), which measures the δ13C and δ15N of that gas. Some less routine pretreatment protocols require the production of gaseous samples and prevent the possibility of using the EA-AGE3 system, as the EA is used for solid samples only. In order to use that system, including the measurements of stable isotopes, we developed a glass tube cracker that connects to the EA. The device is routinely used in our laboratory and is mainly built from Swaglok catalog parts. We show that the background (blank) levels of a marble standard are indistinguishable between using the cracker and burning solid marble using the EA. We further demonstrate that the δ13C values are consistent and that the extraction efficiency when using the device is above 93%. Full descriptions, drawings, and working protocol are supplied.

Andrea Riccio was renowned for making bronze statuettes of classical subjects, especially satyrs. His sculptures have long been associated with humanist culture in Padua, where he worked, but this article reveals how they also engaged regional vernacular traditions in the aftermath of the War of the League of Cambrai. An impactful source was Ruzante's plurilingual comedy “La Pastoral.” Confronting Venetian hegemony, Riccio and Ruzante revitalized Padua's ancient legacy by molding the pastoral around popular concerns. While Renaissance bronze casting and dialect literature have been analyzed independently, their local interchange demonstrates sculpture's potency in addressing interests shared among artisans and writers.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Protestant internationalism and missions turned their attention to social and economic matters. The 1920/30s saw an agricultural turn that was paralleled by a global discourse on the “improvement” of the rural. While the transformations in Protestant internationalism have been addressed in view of theological, ecumenical, and geopolitical changes, historians have yet to acknowledge the complex interplay of their local and global effects. By focusing on the work of a particular agent in agricultural missions, the International Missionary Council and its rural expert Kenyon L. Butterfield, and their engagement with rural reconstruction in India, China, and Japan, this article argues that impactful schemes necessitated the cooperation of a wide array of actors, from private to state, from foreign missionaries to local Christian and non-Christian communities and activists. Missionary and Christian rural reconstruction in Asia in the interwar period was shaped by forces of nationalism, (anti-)colonialism, and secularization that could benefit, halt, and transform comprehensive schemes. While the impact of missionary rural reconstruction was eventually hampered by its inherently universalist and invasive nature, its drive for professionalization led to manifold cooperations and careers that transitioned well into and in many ways anticipated and prepared a post-World War II development discourse.

The end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) on May 11, 2023, marked a pivotal shift in the landscape of telehealth regulation in the US. Kwan, Jolin, and Shachar analyze the implications of this transition by exposing inconsistencies in access to care. We agree that we now face a “convoluted patchwork of permanent and temporary changes to telehealth law and policy.”1

Judith Shklar once remarked that the mere presence of ideology is not objectionable but that pretended immunity to ideology is. I scrutinize this suggestion and Shklar’s subsequent view that social theorists should acknowledge that their ideological impulses influence both their methods of study and the questions they pursue. I begin by focusing on the different ways that Shklar characterizes ideology before turning to her critique of legalism. I then chart various ways that Shklar’s call for ideologically self-aware political theorizing feeds into her later work. I conclude by examining what ideological self-consciousness implies for our understanding of the purpose and limits of political theory.