In this text chapter for OUP's recent edited volume, The Tiny and the Fragmented Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World (Edited be S. Rebecca Martin and Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper), Bailey examined the excavation of Neolithic pit-houses in Southeastern Europe. His conclusion is that we need to step back from our search for functional explanations of use or abandonment and filling. The alternative proposed is that we look at the process, definition, and consequences of digging holes, particularly as defined by "breaking the surface". Interested readers are directed to the publisher's website to purchase the book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-tiny-and-the-fragmented-9780190614812?cc=us&lang=en&

The identity of ‘ecclesia anglicana’ has, broadly speaking, three major phases of meaning. The first phase, traceable back to the earliest years of Christianity in Britain, employs the term in a neutral geographical sense; at the time of the Reformation a second phase emerges with the sense of provincial autonomy; a third phase associated with the mid-nineteenth century expansion of the global Anglican communion identifies the term “Anglican” with a distinctive ecclesiology. After an exploration of these three senses of the term the essay explores the ecclesiology of the Church of England in light of the ancient creeds, the reception of Augustinian hermeneutics, the traditional formularies of Faith, Order, and Worship--the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, and concludes with a consideration of the claim that the C of E is simultaneously and comprehensively "Catholic and Reformed".

This chapter aims to analyze the Jesuit missionaries and their missions in colonial America (sixteenth through eighteenth centuries) based on the categories of globalness (the global) and mundanity (the local) through three historical frameworks: first, the missionary expansion of the Society of Jesus from the viceroyalty of Peru and its ties to Rome and the Iberian monarchy in the sixteenth century; second, presenting the defensive war project implemented on Chile’s southern border between 1612 and 1626 as a missionary and political mechanism of territorial and spiritual “reduction”; and third, changes in missionary identity in the eighteenth century. The first two frameworks are based on case studies that give a view of the local dimension while at the same time allowing one to understand the global dynamics of the Society of Jesus in other colonial spaces. The third framework is based on broader geographical travel.

When many people think of African music, the first ideas that come to mind are often of rhythm, drums, and dancing. These perceptions are rooted in emblematic African and African-derived genres such as West African drumming, funk, salsa, or samba and, more importantly, essentialized notions about Africa which have been fueled over centuries of contact between the "West," Africa, and the African diaspora. These notions, of course, tend to reduce and often portray Africa and the diaspora as primitive, exotic, and monolithic. In Africanness in Action, author Juan Diego Díaz explores this dynamic through the perspectives of Black musicians in Bahia, Brazil, a site imagined by many as a diasporic epicenter of African survivals and purity. Black musicians from Bahia, Díaz argues, assert Afro-Brazilian identities, promote social change, and critique racial inequality by creatively engaging essentialized tropes about African music and culture. Instead of reproducing these notions, musicians demonstrate agency by strategically emphasizing or downplaying them.

This paper examines the Vaiṣṇava Vedānta theologian Madhva's statements on the agency of the individual self. Going against the grain of much of the Indian philosophical discourse on the topic, Madhva asserts that the self has agency despite being dependent on the will of God. As an aspect of this dependence, Madhva describes a deterministic heirarchy of selves. The eternal inherent nature of each self is determined by God. Finally, the paper considers claims made by earlier scholars that Madhva's system offers a satisfactory theodicy, and considers the influence that Madhva may have had on later Indian thinkers.

The Jewish culture of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods established a basis for all monotheistic religions, but its main sources have been preserved to a great degree through Christian transmission. This Guide is devoted to problems of preservation, reception, and transformation of Jewish texts and traditions of the Second Temple period in the many Christian milieus from the ancient world to the late medieval era. It approaches this corpus not as an artificial collection of reconstructed texts—a body of hypothetical originals—but rather from the perspective of the preserved materials, examined in their religious, social, and political contexts. It also considers the other, non-Christian, channels of the survival of early Jewish materials, including Rabbinic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic. This unique project brings together scholars from many different fields in order to map the trajectories of early Jewish texts and traditions among diverse later cultures. It also provides a comprehensive and comparative introduction to this new field of study while bridging the gap between scholars of early Judaism and of medieval Christianity.