The just war is an ethical notion justifying, under certain circumstances, participation in war. The just-war notion has been part of Western thought from the earliest times, and persists to this day in the writings of Michael Walzer and other philosophers. This dissertation explores the middle history of the just-war idea, the post-classical and pre-modern era--from the time of Christ to the rise of the Renaissance. I examine the origins and early development of this notion starting with an ideological analysis of the New Testament and Apocryphal Gospels. The scriptures indicate a diverse, multifaceted tableau of attitudes toward war, ranging from pacifism to acceptance and admiration for the Roman military. This diversity of attitude is corroborated by the surviving funeral inscriptions and papyri of casual correspondence between Christian soldiers and their families, which show no moral compunction about military service. I have concluded that the evidence for Christian participation in the Roman military in the century before Constantine is clear and convincing. The patristic literature before Constantine is divided; while some writers espoused pacifism, others were open to the ethical possibility of military service by Christians, thus preparing the groundwork for the articulation of the just war. The history of the idea of the just war can be pictured as a circular, revolving process, from an ideological preparation for military involvement in the earliest days of Christianity and gradual involvement and ultimately full participation in the Roman military under Constantine. Ambrose and Augustine provided the foundation for this process by Christianizing the Ciceronian concept of just war. However, the history of the just war is not a perfect circle. While Leo I, Gregory I and Isidore ignored Augustine's sanction of the just war, the canon lawyers of the eleventh century revived Augustine. Thomas Aquinas, with Aristotelian thoroughness, gave this concept free and unbridled power, only to have it revert to its origins in secular international law after the Council of Constance.

In the northeastern United States--as elsewhere--an overemphasis on cultural-historical ceramic typologies and ceramic decoration by archaeologists has stymied research along other axes of ceramic variation. For example, little attention has been paid to the sequence of choices made by potters during the production process. The goal of this study is to examine the complex relationships among technical choices, historical context, and society during the Late Woodland period (1000-1600 A.D.) in the middle or Massachusetts portion of the Connecticut Valley. Ceramic assemblages from two New England Algonquian sites and one Mohawk Iroquois site are examined using an attribute analysis of technical choice. The attributes selected for analysis reflect choices made by potters along the production sequence: paste characteristics, vessel morphology, construction techniques, surface treatments, and firing conditions. Differences between Algonquian and Iroquoian ceramic attributes are interpreted as embodiments of profound differences in technical systems, which include intended function, the context and scale of production, and stylistic signaling. Since the two groups were interacting and sharing information during the Late Woodland period, Connecticut Valley Algonquians had access to similar kinds of cultural knowledge and technologies. Nevertheless, rather than becoming sedentary farmers, forming extensive and rigid social structures, and producing large, thin-walled, cooking pots like the Iroquois, Connecticut Valley peoples maintained fluid and mutable subsistence, settlement, and social relationships that are reflected in the their diverse and flexible ceramic traditions. Instead of assuming that New England Algonquians were not as culturally or technologically advanced as the Iroquois, I suggest that they can be understood as active agents of their own social change. As such, they made decisions concerning subsistence, settlement, and social structure. As potters, they made choices in ceramic production that both reflected and affected these decisions.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.