Accounting for labor time was part of the quantification effort characterizing Western society since the fourteenth century, if not before. But if the characteristics of work time have been repeatedly studied in England in relation to the Industrial Revolution, the situation is much more contrasted on the continent for which no synthesis of existing research exists on this topic. The aim of this article is to present new results concerning the length of the work day and the number of workdays in a year, based on business accounts in particular. But considerations about the length of work time have no meaning if the content of this time is not taken into account. The quantification of the worker’s labor in the nineteenth century was not new in and of itself. The formalization of the relationship between work time and the quantity to be produced emerged and spread to a growing number of activities and businesses in the seventeenth century, no doubt based on earlier attempts. It introduced a relatively new form into the language of wage-earning during this period, the specificity of which was to link work time and work quantity in a relatively formal way.

Using $L^2$-methods, we prove a vanishing theorem for tame harmonic bundles over quasi-compact Kähler manifolds in a very general setting. As a special case, we give a completely new proof of the Kodaira-type vanishing theorems for Higgs bundles due to Arapura. To prove our vanishing theorem, we construct a fine resolution of the Dolbeault complex for tame harmonic bundles via the complex of sheaves of $L^2$-forms, and we establish the Hörmander $L^2$-estimate and solve $(\bar {\partial }_E+\theta )$-equations for Higgs bundles $(E,\theta )$.

In the summer of 2022, renewed excavations were conducted at the site of Gird-i Begum in the Shahrizor Plain, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The project aims to examine patterns of mobility, exchange, and resource acquisition practiced by the inhabitants of Gird-i Begum over time. To do so we re-examine the stratigraphic sequence, with a focus on continuities and breaks in site occupation. While the earliest occupation of the site dates to the Halaf period, with limited occupation traces attested during the Ubaid period, the settlement appears to have reached its largest extent during the Late Chalcolithic, which was one of the main foci of this year’s investigations. Our excavations confirmed the presence of Late Chalcolithic levels on the Upper Mound, with an analysis of the pottery as well as 14C dates indicating a chronological span from LC 3 to early LC 4. Work on the Lower Mound brought to light a substantial and previously undocumented Early Bronze Age occupation phase in the early third millennium B.C.E. The massive presence of snails characterizing layers of both periods additionally raised intriguing questions about subsistence strategies and potential crisis at the site.

A 1st-c. CE lamp from Cyprus, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, features a discus design of a satyr on a base before an enclosure. Formerly identified as a nude silenus, the design on this lamp and others with the same decoration in fact illustrates a motif after the Forum Marsyas statue from the Forum Romanum. The statue is typically understood as a symbol of civic libertas, and copies were erected in provincial fora and depicted on civic coinage in the 2nd and 3rd c. CE. This note argues that the lamps enhance our understanding of the Forum Marsyas in two respects. First, the lamps demonstrate that the motif was in provincial circulation ahead of the sculptural and numismatic trend. Second, it is now clear that the Forum Marsyas was used in private contexts, and potentially with a non-civic meaning, more extensively than previously understood. The lamps are therefore significant for understanding the provincial spread and legibility of this important but still enigmatic motif.

This re-evaluation of the Thetford hoard proposes a new date for its burial in the 5th c. CE (ca. 420s–40s), significantly later than the established date of the 380s–90s. The redating is based on comparative material from context-dated grave and hoard finds from across the western Roman Empire. At least 17 hoard artifacts are argued to have been made within the 5th c. The Thetford treasure is a key point of reference in dating artifacts, and therefore a new date, if accepted, will prompt further re-evaluation of material and significantly change our understanding of this key transition period.

The interpretation of the hoard is also revisited. The wide cultural connections that can be demonstrated in the jewelry reflect its assembly in a period of migration and displacement, and there is evidence that its economic value may have become paramount in the latest phase of the assemblage's use. Moreover, the revised date sets a new context for the hoard burial, after economic collapse and political breakdown in Britain. The article advocates for the potential role of wealthy religious sites like Thetford in filling the vacuum left by the collapse of Roman state authority in Britain.

President for 2024/25, Claire Mazer, talks to LIM about her career as an academic law librarian, the challenges facing both BIALL and the profession, and how she's enjoying her time at the head of the organisation

Sound and new media arts appear to be both historical and contemporary means to invest in the notion of more-than-human. Although the concept was formulated in the late 1990s (Abram 1996), certain related practices in art works exploring machine or animal agency have existed since the 1960s, especially in new media arts using sound, video, and electronic and computational technologies.