In the judgment Lameck Bazil v. United Republic of Tanzania, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR) dealt with the application of the death penalty in Tanzania.1

In her latest book, Sally Sedgwick raises two essential questions. The first will be of interest to all philosophers: why do most of Hegel’s texts take the form of ‘progressive narratives’? Why does Hegel give the form of a narrative to some of his philosophical texts, in a relatively unusual way? The second will be of particular interest to the Hegelian community: to what extent is Hegel’s conception of reason itself historical? Does it make sense to anchor in historical experience the rational instruments that enable us to give meaning to experience?

Smith’s “luxury hypothesis” seems to assert that the endless violence of the feudal era ended with the appearance of luxury goods. This view holds that feudal lords had nothing to do with their wealth but to wage war—no other markets were available to them. As luxury goods became available, the lords dropped their weapons and disbanded their armies so that they could buy more luxury goods. The traditional account has causality going from the appearance of luxury goods to the lords disbanding their armies. On my approach, ubiquitous violence under feudalism implies that the causal logic in this account goes from the logic of violence to the gradual and sequential appearance of luxury goods to ending violence near the towns and cities, but not in the agrarian hinterland.

Chronic otitis and mastoiditis are inflammatory processes that can lead to deafness and disability if left untreated, especially in the pre-antibiotic era and in fishing communities with high exposure to infection. This study describes lesions on temporal bones found in Tzintzuntzan, a prehispanic city located near Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, in western Mexico. A multidisciplinary team analyzed a sample (N = 96) of temporal bones using morphoscopic analysis, multidetector CT scanning, and 2D and 3D virtual reconstruction. All evaluations were double-blinded using a previously standardized process and a validated questionnaire. The combination of multiple methodologies and a multidisciplinary team of evaluators improved the likelihood of classifying lesions. Nearly one-third of the lesions (31.25%) are compatible with the diagnoses of chronic otitis and mastoiditis. The frequency of these lesions is high in fishing communities such as in the city of Tzintzuntzan, possibly leading to significant hearing impairment among the population and affecting individuals’ abilities to perform essential aquatic activities.

This contribution presents a tight body of evidence – hoards of medieval coins found during archaeological investigations in churches in a confined area of southern Albania in close proximity to Phoinike – whose formations and abandonments date to within a decade or so of one another in the central years of the fourteenth century. A detailed numismatic analysis of the represented coin issues, principally deniers tournois of Arta and soldini of Venice, and of the hoards themselves, allows the authors to draw monetary and historical conclusions. One of the hoards defines in a decisive manner the pattern of coin production at Arta for about a decade after 1323. The presented evidence highlights the administration and the commerce of the territory, and its geo-strategic fate in the face of serious pressures which came to bear on it from all sides during the 1330s and 1340s. The main protagonists in this story are the lords and despots in Epiros of the house of Kephallenia, Zakynthos, Leukas, and Ithaka; the Angevins of southern Italy who had important holdings in the area, especially the island of Kerkyra; and the Byzantine and Serbian empires which took control respectively in the fourth and fifth decades of the fourteenth century.