Castration has a long temporal and geographical span. Its origins are unclear, but likely lie in the Ancient Near East around the time of the Secondary Products Revolution and the increase in social complexity of proto-urban societies. Due to the unique social and gender roles created by castrates’ ambiguous sexual state, human castrates were used heavily in strongly hierarchical social structures such as imperial and religious institutions, and were often close to the ruler of an imperial society. This privileged position, though often occupied by slaves, gave castrates enormous power to affect governmental decisions. This often aroused the jealousy and hatred of intact elite males, who were not afforded as open access to the ruler and virulently condemned castrates in historical documents. These attitudes were passed down to the scholars and doctors who began to study castration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, affecting the manner in which castration was studied. Osteometric and anthropometric examinations of castrates were carried out during this period, but the two World Wars and a shift in focus meant that castrate bodies were not studied for nearly eighty years. Recent interest in gender and sexuality in the past has revived interest in castration as a topic, but few studies of castrate remains have occurred. As large numbers of castrates are referenced in historical documents, the lack of castrate skeletons may be due to a lack of recognition of the physical effects of castration on the skeleton. The synthesis and generation of methods for more accurate identification of castrate skeletons was undertaken and the results are presented here to improve the ability to identify castrate skeletons within the archaeological record.

Cette thèse envisage les liens entre la ville de Bruxelles et ses campagnes, dans leurs aspects économiques et sociaux. Elle étudie l'impact de l'espace régional (partie de l'ancien pagus de Brabant) sur les conditions d'émergence de la ville et l'impact, ensuite, de la ville sur les structures régionales, en particulier aristocratiques. <p>Une première partie fait le point sur la croissance rurale et urbaine, sur ses protagonistes, ses modalités et sa chronologie. Que sait-on de l’espace régional avant l’an mil ?Comment se mettent en place les nouvelles structures seigneuriales laïques et ecclésiastiques attestées dans la région à partir du XIe siècle ?Comment se produisent les débuts du développement urbain pour la même époque ?Une deuxième partie tente de faire le point sur le rôle dans la région du prince territorial. Originaire de Louvain, mais implanté dans la région de Bruxelles dès le XIe siècle, quelle assise foncière y détenait-il ?Quelle politique monastique y a-t-il menée ?Quelle stratégie féodale et clientélaire a-t-il adoptée face à la société régionale en vue de construire et de développer son autorité seigneuriale ?Ce volet se consacre spécialement à l’étude et à l’évolution du groupe aristocratique traditionnel, notamment son rapport au prince et à la ville, de même qu’à l’émergence des nouveaux acteurs sociaux et à leur confrontation avec le prince et la société seigneuriale/The Ph.D Thesis considers the links between the city of Brussels and its countryside, in their economic and social aspects. It studies the impact of the regional space (part of the former pagus of Brabant) on the conditions for urbanisation and the impact of the city on regional structures, particularly aristocratic / Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation histoire / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The aim of this thesis is to arrive at a characterisation of twentieth century poetry and science by means of a detailed study of the work of four poets who engaged extensively with science and whose writing lives spanned the greater part of the period. The study of science in the work of the four chosen poets, Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 – 1978), Judith Wright (1915 – 2000), Edwin Morgan (1920 – 2010), and Miroslav Holub (1923 – 1998), is preceded by a literature survey and an initial theoretical chapter. This initial part of the thesis outlines the interdisciplinary history of the academic subject of poetry and science, addressing, amongst other things, the challenges presented by the episodes known as the ‘two cultures' and the ‘science wars'. Seeking to offer a perspective on poetry and science more aligned to scientific materialism than is typical in the interdiscipline, a systemic challenge to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is put forward in the first chapter. Additionally, the founding work of poetry and science, I. A. Richards's Science and Poetry (1926), is assessed both in the context in which it was written, and from a contemporary viewpoint; and, as one way to understand science in poetry, a theory of the creative misreading of science is developed, loosely based on Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (1973). The detailed study of science in poetry commences in Chapter II with Hugh MacDiarmid's late work in English, dating from his period on the Shetland Island of Whalsay (1933 – 1941). The thesis in this chapter is that this work can be seen as a radical integration of poetry and science; this concept is considered in a variety of ways including through a computational model, originally suggested by Robert Crawford. The Australian poet Judith Wright, the subject of Chapter III, is less well known to poetry and science, but a detailed engagement with physics can be identified, including her use of four-dimensional imagery, which has considerable support from background evidence. Biology in her poetry is also studied in the light of recent work by John Holmes. In Chapter IV, science in the poetry of Edwin Morgan is discussed in terms of its origin and development, from the perspective of the mythologised science in his science fiction poetry, and from the ‘hard' technological perspective of his computer poems. Morgan's work is cast in relief by readings which are against the grain of some but not all of his published comments. The thesis rounds on its theme of materialism with the fifth and final chapter which studies the work of Miroslav Holub, a poet and practising scientist in communist-era Prague. Holub's work, it is argued, represents a rare and important literary expression of scientific materialism. The focus on materialism in the thesis is not mechanistic, nor exclusive of the domain of the imagination; instead it frames the contrast between the original science and the transformed poetic version. The thesis is drawn together in a short conclusion.