archaeologists-from-the-united-kingdom

"Be companions for your sons and daughters if you would stop the tide of immorality. A young girl has no business out to a party or church or picnic without some older member of her family or woman friend. Teach the boys to come home at night. Teach them the sin of ruining some man’s daughter. These lessons can be taught around the fireside at night, from the pulpit, in the school room, in mothers’ meetings; and there should be a mothers’ meeting in every community. They can be instilled in many ways. Help secure a minister and teacher who will take an interest in the physical and moral improvement of our families, and together with what we women can do and our ministers and teachers, we shall be able to make some progress in the coming ten or fifteen years which will prove to our enemies that our condition physically and morally is nothing inherent or peculiar to race, but rather the outcome of circumstances over which we can and will become masters. In this way and only in this way will [we] satisfy the men and women, both North and South, who still have faith in us. Let us teach our boys and girls some useful occupations, let us insist upon an intelligent and moral ministry, let us employ teachers only who are above reproach, and above all let those of us who have had an opportunity, who have educational advantages, modify our cause lines stoop down now and then and lift up others."

"You are not, I know, surprised to hear me say that the women, young and older, among us, who most need to take caution in the matter of health and character, are the last to take any personal hold. It is no longer a compliment to a girl or woman to be of a frail and delicate mold. It is no longer an indication of refinement in woman to possess a weak and fastidious stomach. It was the great French Emperor who declared that the greatest need of France was mothers. And to day all who are willing to study facts with reference to our growth and strength in this country declare also that the most serious drawback to the race is its lack of a careful, moral and healthy motherhood. You have already noticed that I speak of health, then morals; morals, then health; my sisters, these two things go hand in hand, they are interdependent. They must go thus. They must be studied together at this time. They must be corrected at the same time."

"No nation or race has ever come up by entirely overlooking its members who are less fortunate, less ambitious, less sound in body and hence in soul, and we cannot do it. We must not do it. There are too many of us down. The condition of our race, brought about by slavery, the ignorance, poverty, intemperance, ought to make us women know that in half a century we cannot afford to lose sight of the large majority of the race who have not, as yet, thrown off the badge of the evils which I have just mentioned."

"Plain talk will not hurt us. It will lead each woman to study her own condition, that of her own family and so that of her neighbor’s family. If I can do anything to hasten this study, I shall feel repaid for any effort I may put forth. In consenting to come before you women to day I am influenced by this thought more than anything else: We need, as a race, a good, strong public sentiment in favor of a sounder, healthier body, and a cleaner and highertoned morality. There is no use arguing; we do not think enough of these two conditions; we are too indifferent; too ready to say: ‘O, well, I keep well, my girls and boys behave themselves, and I have nothing to do with the rest of the race!’"

"I want to say in the beginning that I do not come before you to criticize or find fault especially, but you know that a great deal of harm has been done us as a race by those who have told us of our strong points, of our wonderful advancement, and have neglected to tell us at the same time of our weak points, of our lack of taking hold of the opportunities about us. Praise a child always and he soon gets to the point where he thinks it impossible for him to make mistakes. If we wish to help each other let us not only praise ourselves, but also criticize."

"The Esbat differed from the Sabbat by being primarily for business...very often the Esbat was for sheer enjoyment only."

"We eat too little or too poor food. We are ready to buy showy clothing, but we stint our stomachs too often. They call us great eaters. Let us eat more and better food. There is very little vitality in grits and gravy. Get fresh women, but to their offspring. Keep regular hours. Do not stay in church till 12 and 1 o’clock at night. Go to bed at 10, especially if you labor through the day. When you get up in the mornings air the bedding, open up things for a while and let the sunshine in. When the little child comes do not have an ignorant granny, secure a good physician in addition to at least a clean nurse. Apply your lessons of bathing, feeding, sleeping to these little ones, remembering, of course, their age. Teach the boys as well as the girls respect for the marriage tie and home."

"The average colored person dislikes water, and he won’t keep himself clean. He bathes, if at all, once a week Saturday night and changes his clothes in the same indifferent way. He seldom uses a tooth brush. He often even neglects to comb his hair, except on Sunday. There is no excuse for this. Bathe at least twice a week, and change the clothes as often, and be sure to clean the teeth at least once a day, and do not forget to comb the hair each day."

"The majority of cases of consumption are not inherent, but are contracted through lack of thought and interest in one’s own self. How many of our women during their pregnancy make nothing of lifting from one bench to another heavy tubs of clothes, drawing buckets of water, lift great sticks of wood, run up and down stairs, and a dozen other similar things entirely against them. They do not know the laws of health, and they will not learn them. No, I do not say do not work during the months of unborn motherhood; work, even hard work, is good for one, but the manner in which labor is performed is what I criticize. As women can we not do something to correct our condition physically and morally? I think we can"

"Go North or South, East or West, and the numbers of the dens of abandoned women, of profligate men is too large. These are the breeders of disease and the millstone of the race. You say there are causes for all these, causes for which we are not responsible. I admit this much, but there are also causes for which we are responsible. And the fact that there are causes ought to make us hopeful, because we have it in our power to remove these causes. It will take time, however, and it will take wise and consecrated women to effect a change along these lines. Not only are poverty, ignorance and intemperance the cause of all this misery, but downright negligence, too, plays a large part in these matters. Colored men drive, cut wood, unload ships, etc., all day in the pouring rain, at night they throw themselves onto a bed and sleep without removing their wet clothes. Our women are little or no better. What is a better feeder for pneumonia and all forms of tuberculosis? The men clean streets, sweep and dust great buildings, with no effort to keep the throat clear of dust and dirt."

"In a certain Northern city only 2 per cent of the people are colored, yet we furnish 16 per cent of male prisoners and 34 per cent [of] female criminals. In another Northern or Northwestern city we make up 1 1/3 per cent of the whole city, and yet 10 per cent of the arrests fall on us. Immorality is directly responsible for these crimes, and hence punishment. Immorality is also directly responsible for physical inability to resist crime."

"We have got to change this state of things. Our educated women will not or do not become mothers and our less intelligent mothers let their little ones die, and thus our numbers are each year growing less and less. In every city in the country where you observe it you find that we are losing by death more than we are gaining by birth. Immorality, as well as poverty and ignorance, bears its share of the blame for this low state of vitality. It makes us susceptible to all forms of disease and death. We must have a cleaner ‘social morality.’ A man who has given thought to the moral life of the race claims that over 25 per cent of the colored children born in one city alone are admittedly illegitimate. In a certain locality, in a certain State, another man states that there were during one year 300 marriage licenses taken out by white men. According to the population 1,200 licenses should have been bought by colored men. How many do you suppose were in reality taken out? Twelve hundred should have been secured and only 3 per cent were taken out. Twelve hundred colored men and women, for whom there is no excuse, living immoral lives, handing down to their offspring disease and crime, and only three living in such a way as to advance the race. No spectacle can be more appalling."

"We are very often inclined to treat this subject lightly by saying that we are a great reducing race, but I have no patience with this indifference, for it is simply impossible for any race to balance any such loss at this. And now, more than this, women, wee are not so productive as we used to be. I do not know why, I wish I did. I would count no sacrifice too great to bring about a change in this respect. My grandmother had thirteen sons and daughters, every one of whom lived to rear large families. My mother had ten, most of whom have lived long enough, but they have no children. In the whole ten of us, all grown, there are only two children, and they are the children of the youngest girl, who is now 27 years of age, and there has never been more than these, and what is worse, there never will be. Study this race question, this phase of it, and you will find what I say to be true."

"The death rate of our children is something to make us tremble. As long as it is so high we cannot hope for much. Numbers count for a great deal is this country. For five years, in one of our largest Southern cities alone, the excess in death rate among colored children under 5 years of age was 163 per cent, while that of the whites was only 32 per cent and a fraction over. In another large Southern city the death rate per cent in excess for colored children over whites is 883.4 per cent. The diseases which are undermining the life of our babies and robbing the race of its future men and women are, cholera infantum, convulsions and still born. There is an excess in this last disease, still born, of colored infants over white of 149 per cent per thousand. What a terrible tribute to our womanhood and to our motherhood this is. In another Southern city, not a thousand miles from here, over half the colored children die before they are 12 months old."

"I give you now these facts for five of our large Southern cities: these relate especially to the death rate of colored people in excess of white people: Rate per thousand in city No. 1, colored 36, white 19; city No. 2, colored 36, white 22; city No. 3, colored 37, white 22; city No. 4, colored 32, white 18; city No. 5, colored 35, white 17. This gives us a decrease in race by death rate in these five cities, in excess of the white people, who already so far outnumber us, respectively 100, of a fraction, 68 and over, 77 and over, and 106 per cent. In one of the large Western cities, and this is not Chicago, either, the death rate of colored people is more than twice that of the white people. Pneumonia and consumption are our most deadly foes. They are not standing still, but are on the increase in every city I have mentioned. In one Northern city alone, in one year, out of ten thousand, there was an excess of deaths, caused by pneumonia and consumption, of 135 percent of colored people over whites; colored dying, 225, and whites, 126."

"I do not mean to tell you, or leave the impression, that all of the disease and immorality in the race are confined to what we are pleased to call our poorer classes or second class folks. There is too much in our higher classes, especially in the case of too many men who as fathers of the girls and boys who, in their turn, will be fathers and mothers of other girls and boys. And does hereditary influence count for nothing? Study your own family as far back as your great grandparents and you will agree with me when I say hereditary influence is a mighty power in the formation of character, physical, as well as moral."

"It is not an easy thing to secure accurate data with reference to the race in these particulars, for, in making up the statistics, especially in Southern localities, the health boards have entirely ignored us; of course many places in the South have had health boards only recently. However, we have evidence sufficient on each of these subjects to condemn us, to make us feel that something must be done; that some step, and that quick, must be made to stay the awful death rate and the alarmingly increasing illegitimate birth rate among our women and girls. This may not apply to a single woman under the sound of my voice, but it does apply to the race, and so far it comes home to you and to me. We cannot separate ourselves from our people, no matter how much we try; for one, I have no desire to do so."

"To be a stronger race physically we have got to be a more moral one. We do not want to lose our tempers when we discuss these conditions either. Now that, as women, we may be able to make a move in the direction of improving the race, we have got to take certain facts regarding our health and morals. They are not all from the standpoint of the Southern white man, either, nor are they all from the Northern white man with a Southern soul. You know that we often feel that every white man and woman south of the Mason and Dixon line is a real devil. It is pretty bad down here, I will admit, but there are many very fine and noble Southern white people, women as well as men. It is a Southern man, an Alabama man, at that, who, in part at least, makes it possible for us to be here together to day to study our own shortcomings and to try to find a way out of them. I say it is not Southern whites alone who have felt that we should make a move upward, who feel that we are weak in these directions; nor is it the white man alone at all, but our own medical men, our own educators, who also feel and know that there is too great a laxity amongst us."

"English Quotation"

"Meantime they are more open to the reception of Christianity, the surest road to civilization, than any other section of the population. They would then prove the most assured supporters of the present state of things."

"S. Piggott established the presence of a sophisticated type of vehicle with “one or two pairs of wheels with their axles... from the Rhine to the Indus by around 3000” (1992: 18)."

"These dates Mueller later insisted were minimum dates only, and latterly there has been a sort of tacit agreement... to date the composition of the Rigveda somewhere about 1400-1500 BC, but without any absolutely conclusive evidence."

"The method has its dangers—the great Sanskrit scholar A. B. Keith once remarked that by taking the linguistic evidence too literally, one could conclude that the original Indo-European speakers knew butter, but not milk; snow and feet, but not rain and hands!"

"In sum, however, the evidence from Baluchistan and from Sind and the Punjab is reasonably consistent in implying that at some period likely to have been before 1500 BCE (to use a convenient round figure), the long-established cultural traditions of North-Western India were rudely and ruthlessly interrupted by the arrival of a new people from the west. The burning of Baluchi villages and the equipment of the graves at Sahi Tump suggest that these new arrivals were predominantly conquerors who traveled light and adopted the pottery of the region in which they established themselves. In Sind, at Chanhudaro, a barbarian settlement appears [evidently the reference is to the Jhukar Culture] in the deserted ruins of the Harappan town, and here some local craftsmen may have remained to work for their alien masters, while the pottery suggests a resurgence of local, non-Harappan elements. At Mohenjo-daro, it seems clear that the civilization that had survived so long was already effete and on the wane when the raiders came, and at Harappa we know from the evidence of the rebuilding of the Citadel walls that the inhabitants were on the defensive in the last days of the city, though, these precautionary measures did not suffice to keep away the intruders, wherever they came from, who afterwards settled on the ruins and buried their dead in Cemetery H for generations."

"Neanderthals knew all sorts of landscapes and climates and different geographies. There is so much more to Neanderthals than the popular image of them ... I wanted to really try to share the way that archaeology is like a multi-disciplinary discipline and a lot of what we do actually is about world-building and how we look at the Neanderthals ... recreating the contextual world."

"... Where do the Neanderthals fit in? They take us way back beyond fingers tracing beasts on stone walls. While it's impossible to pinpoint the 'first' of their kind, they became a distinct population 450 to 400 thousand years ago (ka). The night sky then hanging over earth's many hominid populations would have been alien, our solar system light years away from its current position in a never-ending galactic waltz. Pause halfway through the Neanderthals' temporal dominion at around 120 ka, and while the land and rivers are mostly recognisable, the world feels different. It's warmer and ice melt-swollen oceans have flooded the land, shoving beaches many metres higher. Startlingly tropical beast roam even the great valleys of Northern Europe. In total, the Neanderthals endured for an astonishing 350,000 years, until we lose sight of them — or, at least their fossils and artifacts — somewhere around 40 ka."

"Neanderthals went through repeated cycles of cold conditions and then warm conditions where there were forests developing. ... When musk oxen turn up in the archaeological record, most of the time there are not Neanderthals."

"But the one remarkable achievement was the mixing of races that set the example for the cosmopolitan civilization of the near East after the conquest by Alexander. What resulted from the ‘Pax Persica’ was syncretism and cultural assimilation on a scale that had not previously been thinkable."

"From the Greek writers we get some idea of Persian education; but it applies only to the nobility, and there was no place for what we should call intellectual pursuits. From what we can gather, the sons of Persians of note were weaned from the ‘harem at the age of five (when for the first time they were allowed in the presence of the father) and until they were twenty or more they were brought up at the royal court (or in the provinces at the satraps’ court) Emphasis was laid on speaking the truth and learning the examples that the legends provided; older children might listen to the judgements of the royal justices. Herodotus says that among the Persians the thing most prized after valour in battle was to be the father of many children, we can understand that he aim was to contribute the maximum to Persian military strength, and the result must have been a population explosion at the higher social level."

"[The milieu of the Persian court was one in which intellectual and artistic intercourse between representatives of the various satrapies flourished. The Persians themselves] “clearly … were not a people that we should call intellectual. They do not themselves seem to have had an inclination towards literature, medicine, or philosophical and scientific speculation.” Still, they provided a setting in which such speculation could be freely pursued... “what resulted from the ‘Pax Persica,’” says Cook, “was syncretism and cultural assimilation on a scale that had not previously been thinkable.”"

"As regards the qualities of the Persians we are in the main dependent on Greek sources. Clearly they were not a people that we should call intellectual. They do not themselves seem to have had an inclination towards literature, medicine, or philosophical and scientific speculation. They were probably most at ease when living as country gentlemen. Despite the uncompromising black and white of their religious creed as expressed by Darius, there is no trace of fanaticism in them, and in general they would seem to have been tolerant. They liked to live in pleasant surroundings; coming from a country in which cultivation is restricted to fertile patches of watered land they may have been rather narrowly ‘oasis-minded’. Luxury appealed to them."

"Close to the foot of the southern extremity of the hill is a rock which has from ancient times received worship as an embodiment of Ganesa... From regard for the pious king the god is said to have then turned his face from west to east so as to behold the new city. ... In fact, if we are to believe Jonariija, the rock-image has changed its position yet a second time. This Chronicler relates that Bhimasvamin from disgust at the iconoclasm of Sikandar Butshikast has finally turned his back on the city."

"‘levels between the sand ridges of the Cholistan which unmistakably represent an ancient winding bed of the Sutlej, that once joined the Hakra between Walar and Binjor’."

"A ‘popular tradition [that] recognizes the place where a ferry service is supposed to have crossed the river to Mathula on the opposite bank, a distance of more than 3 miles’—or 5 km, but of course without a drop of water between the two banks! ‘Still more striking, perhaps,’ he continued, ‘is the name of Pattan-munara, the “Minar of the ferry”, borne by an old site in Bahawalpur territory which is similarly believed to mark a ferrying place across the Hakra, the bed of which is here, if anything, still wider.’"

"In at least three passages of the Rigveda mentioning the Sarasvatī, a river corresponding to the present Sarsuti and Ghaggar is meant. For this we have conclusive evidence in the famous hymn, the ‘Praise of the rivers’ (Nadistuti) which, with a precision unfortunately quite exceptional in Vedic texts, enumerates the Sarasvati correctly between the Yamuna (Jumna) in the east and the Sutudri or Sutlej in the west... ‘of old sites on its banks’ would ‘be helpful to the student of early Indian history, still so much obscured by the want of reliable records and the inadequacy of archaeological evidence.’"

"On my return to India . . . a survey of any remains of ancient occupations along the dry river-bed of the Ghaggar or Hakra, which passes from the easternmost Panjab through the States of Bikaner and Bahawalpur down to Sind, seemed attractive. Traditional Indian belief recognizes in this well-marked bed the course of the sacred Sarasvatī, once carrying its abundant waters down to the ocean and since antiquity ‘lost’ in desert sands... the Ghaggar was ‘still known as the Sarsuti (the Hindi derivative of Sarasvatī) [which] passes the sacred sites of Kurukshetra near Thanesar, a place of Hindu pilgrimage’... ‘the width of its dry bed within Bikaner territory [that is, downstream of Hanumangarh]; over more than 100 miles [160 km], it is nowhere less than 2 miles [3.2 km] and in places 4 miles [6.4 km] or more’... ‘The large number of these ancient sites contrasts strikingly with the very few small villages still on the same ground.’..."

"Describing the Tirtha of Vijayeshvara, Stein gives this detail: The ancient town which once stood in the position indicated, was evidently succeeded by Vijayeshwara, the present Vijbror. The latter place situated less than two miles above Chakradhara, received its name from the ancient shrine of Shiva Vijayeshwara (Vijyesha, Vijayeshana ), the present Vijbror. This deity is worshipped to the present day at Vijbror. The site has evidently from early times been one of the most famous Tirthas of Kashmir. It is mentioned as such in the Rajaratangini and many old Kashmrian texts....The old Linga of Shiva Vijyeshwara seems to have been destroyed by Sikandar Butshikan."

"‘The identity of the first four rivers here enumerated . . . is subject to no doubt. They correspond to the present Ganges, Jumna, Sarsuti, Sutlej . . . The order in which the first four are mentioned exactly agrees with their geographical sequence from east to west.’"

"Stein was essentially a geographer and an explorer and is to be admired for his indomitable courage and spirit of adventure in undertaking hazardous journeys through difficult terrain. He discovered a large number of Chalcolithic and related sites in the Great Indian Desert and the entire reach of the Indo-Iranian borderlands, covering Northern and Southern Baluchistan and a good part of Iran. He was a pioneer and a pathfinder and was to Indian protohistoric archaeology what Alexander Cunningham was to Indian historical archaeology."

"The name Martanda, in the form of Mnrtand or Matan, still attaches to the ruins though they have long ago ceaaed to be an object of religious interest. King Kalasa had sought this great fane at the approach of death, and expired at the feet of the sacred image (a.d. 1089). Harsa, his son, respected this temple in the course of the ruthless confiscations to which he subjected the other rich shrines of the country. Subsequently, in Kalhaua's time the great quadrangular courtyard of the temple, with its lofty walls and colonnades, was used as a fortification. The destruction of the sacred image is ascribed to Sikandar Butshikast."

"Blocks measuring up to sixteen feet in length, with a width and thickness equally imposing, were no convenient materials for the builders of Muhammadan Ziarats, Hammams, etc., who have otherwise done so much to efface the remains of ancient structures in Srinagar."

"In the 1990s and early 2000s we have heard a lot about so-called revisionism especially with reference to the promotion up the agenda of the display and status aspects of fortification as well as the importance of settlement and landscape context. Without any doubt at all this increased emphasis has enriched the subject enormously. But it has led, I think, to two problems. First, in the minds of some writers … it has led to an assumption that political and military motives for castle-building can safely be demoted. This is surely an error. What we have done is to have enlarged the repertoire of castle-building motives, not substituted some new repertoire items for old ones. Second, in the minds of some writers there seems to be an assumption that everything written up to the 1980s was the product of an “early” mind-set whereas everything written later has been the product of a “modern” mindset. This, too, is an error. A reading of early castle “classics” from around 1900 reveals their authors knew how important castles were to the builders’ self-image and how important they could be as centres of rural estates."

"[Philip Barker] demanded high standards in all things but was never elitist or exclusive."

"My introduction to castles occurred as a schoolboy, visiting Edward I’s castles in North Wales over several summers in the early 1960s: it was a favoured holiday area of my parents."

"David Cathcart King is well known to all students of the castle: the stocky figure with a slightly aggressive manner, a regular attender for over forty years at the outings of the Cambrians and at one time its President, the lister of Welsh castle with Dr Hogg and of ringworks with Professor Alcock, and compiler of the invaluable list of castles in England and Wales, Castellarium Anglicanum"

"Not many authors of general books about the Romans feel bound to discuss the alleged Trojan ancestry of their subject. In sharp contrast, hardly anyone outside the inner circle of tecnici seems able to write about the Etruscans without reflecting at length on the supposed mystery of their origins and on the solution that may or (as has long been beyond all doubt) may not lie in the East, specifically in Lydia. The reason for this is the erroneous but still widely held conviction that' the authority of Herodotus is involved."

"When we link things metaphorically we recognise similarity in difference, we think one thing in terms of attributes of another."

"Metaphors are thus the very medium and outcome of our analysis."

"To be human is to think through metaphors."

"Discourse occurs at the silent level of the artefact and is continuously presenced in the world as such. It is a discourse which is not, and cannot be, articulated in speech."