“Papal Rome” is an idea constructed through Rome’s physical topography and the built environment that enabled popes to govern Rome and its environs, and to project power outward. Rome cannot be called a papal city until the eighth century, but throughout the Middle Ages, the papacy’s control was regularly challenged and marginalized. The idea of Rome, its ideological, political, and religious significance, central to papal authority, was intertwined with Rome’s shifting and refashioned topography. Papal authority relied on a history invented in the early Middle Ages, and re-invented in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. To create “papal Rome,” popes rebuilt portions of Rome, and reshaped and reimagined Roman topography, the physical reality of Rome, and that idea, in turn, reshaped Europe and the Mediterranean. The Roman aristocracy and communal movement would draw from and attempt to redirect that symbolic topography as they challenged papal authority for control of the city.

Alberti was possibly in Rome by 1431; Mancini speculates by 1428. The Curia employed composers and authors and editors of papal bulls, and Alberti was employed as such. Recreated in visual topography by Poggio and Flavio, Rome’s surviving monuments would advance Alberti’s dynamic visual encounters. Giotto’s and Cavallini’s formative works in Rome further endowed the spatial avant-garde in the city of Gentile, Pisano, Masaccio, Masolino, Ghiberti, and Donatello. The textual and visual gifts gleaned from Padua, Bologna, and northern Europe would evolve into Rome’s validation of all prescriptions in De pictura.

The chief interest of the antiquarian in Rome’s ruins was topographical, identifying them if possible with structures known and described in Latin literature. Attempts to picture the layout of the ancient city generated numerous maps and disquisitions, which gradually morphed into guidebooks for tourists, many of which focussed on only the ancient remains to the exclusion of the modern city. The development of tourism is one of the capital outcomes of the fascination with the ruins of Rome. There does not seem to have been any other city or site in the world that was visited for the sake of its ruins. Topographical studies were, however, hampered by their reliance on more (or in one case, less) ancient texts in which buildings and their locations were mentioned, not always reliably. It became clear in due course that the only way forward lay in archaeological excavation.

Now capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, and playing a leading role in Europe and the wider world, Berlin has risen from insignificant origins in two small medieval trading centres on swampy soil at the confluence of two rivers, the Spree and the Havel, in the Brandenburg marches (or Mark) in the centre of Europe. This chapter introduces the notion of a key moment, and outlines the three elements guiding the book: people, or changing demographic profiles; place, or the ways in which the size, shape, and principal functions of the city changed over time; and identity, or the ways in which Berliners and others imagined the city and constructed an ever-changing present in light of selected aspects of the past and contested aspirations for the future.

The inclination to withdraw himself from the public as far as possible is regarded as one of Virgil’s most salient characteristics: this at least is the impression given by the few testimonia and numerous anecdotes of his life. The guiding principle of Virgil’s life as a poet of the res publica Romana could be described as an ‘art of disappearing’, which becomes evident in different ways. By means of this Virgil sometimes succeeds in withdrawing himself spatially even from Augustus, the mightiest designer of space, and in establishing certain limits to his ‘topotactic’ power. To present the ‘withdrawing technique’ practised by Virgil, this chapter draws on information gathered from biographical texts on Virgil as well as on relevant passages of Virgil’s work, naturally without ignoring the documentary fragility of the texts considered. Nevertheless there are conspicuous correspondences between the texts about Virgil and the poetological messages within his literary works, which give an impression at least of his effective seclusion. His reception by his contemporaries and immediate successors proves his greatest success in this respect.

This chapter sets out some of the key frameworks within which southern African archaeology operates. It first establishes the boundaries of ‘southern Africa’ for the purposes of this book and then examines the region’s physical geography. The climate and topography described frame southern Africa’s present-day ecology, which is discussed using the biome divisions of Mucina and Rutherford (2006). The chapter then considers how environmental change affected southern Africa during the Quaternary (using the well-known Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) system), the data that archaeologists and others use to reconstruct past environments, and the principal climatic mechanisms at work in the region. It concludes by outlining and assessing the major chronometric and other dating methods employed to build the chronological framework of southern Africa’s past.

Long was committed to a depiction of Jamaica as a successful ‘commercial society’ where white people could live comfortably on the labour of the enslaved. He mapped the island for his readers in such a way as to reassure them that the boundaries between the free and the unfree were secure. His picture provided a full account of island defences, against both external and internal enemies. He drew on his favourite English poets and writers to inspire poetic renditions of the beauties of this tropical paradise in which art and nature combined their glories. The island’s fecundity was there to be harnessed for profit. His racialized cartography utilized maps, engravings, tables and listings of commodities to illustrate boundless potential. Nature could be improved, tamed and catalogued, as people were. Alarming tales of colonists’ mortality could be challenged, mosquitoes kept at bay. White settlers could live a healthy life if only they would embrace moderation in all things. As an Enlightenment man and an enthusiastic reader of natural histories, Long was keen to represent the island as en route to a more civilized and ordered state, with more roads, more maps, more barracks, more settlements. But, he had to admit, it was a society sorely in need of more public virtue.

Introduction to Spartan society and commemoration. A discussion of terms, methods, and themes. An introduction to memory studies. A look at the topography of ancient Sparta.

This considers Gibraltar as a special case in the history of Britains developing empire. Captured by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1704, assigned to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, the rock was devoid of the resources and potential for agricultural development that might justify the violence entailed in its conquest. This was a problem for an early observer (the poet John Breval, who described the place in Calpe, 1717), but the development of a taste for unimproved and mountainous landscapes, and a more confident sense of British power as civilizing, made it easier for later observers to justify British possession. The great siege of Gibraltar (1779-1783) cemented the rocks status as British: its bare features acquired an iconic status as a symbol of British independence and freedom, a reference point that could be evoked in the context of other imperial conquests.

Alpine grassland and nival zones are characterized by variable environmental conditions, compressed breeding seasons, and limited resources such as food and nest site availability. As a result, high elevation habitats around the world contain an impressive diversity of unique bird species, highly specialized to thrive in challenging environmental conditions with limited breeding opportunities. In this chapter, we highlight the global diversity of alpine habitats and avifaunal communities. We first define general features of alpine and nival zones, before providing an overview of these habitats across 10 major regions around the world. Assembling a global list of alpine breeding birds, we then summarize what makes alpine avifauna unique and how communities vary regionally. Specifically, we focus on traits that characterize how species interact with their environment: i) alpine specialization and endemism, ii) nesting strategies, and iii) migration behaviour. Finally, we address some of the main eco-evolutionary drivers that shape these alpine communities, including climate, vegetation structure, food availability, and species interactions. We conclude by discussing the critical role snow dynamics play in maintaining many alpine bird communities and highlight the concerning trends associated with a rapidly changing climate that are putting pressure on alpine birds.

Since the work of Maurice Halbwachs, the spatial dimension and conditionality of memory – its connectedness and links to space and place – have been well known.1 Halbwachs asserts that collective memory is only possible if it is ‘localized’.2 Hence, the trope of a city or town as a landscape of memory has become fixed in memory studies and has even given rise to the term ‘urban memory’.3 Urban memory can refer to anthropomorphic phenomena (as when the city is said to have a memory of its own). More commonly, however, it points to the city’s status as a physical place and an ensemble of objects and practices which enables recollections of the past and embodies it through traces of successive building and rebuilding.4 The inhabitants of a city thus draw upon its image to identify with its past and present as a political, cultural, and social entity. In that sense, the urban landscape of Republican and Imperial Rome has thoroughly been investigated and reconstructed as a landscape of memory.

Conservation strategies for pileated gibbons (Hylobates pileatus) in Thailand have included protection, community-based initiatives and reintroductions. Besides conservation interventions, we also believe that topographic characters (i.e. elevation, slope and distance from forest border) should be considered when reducing hunting pressures on gibbons in Ta-riu Tributary, Khao Soi Dao Wildlife Sanctuary (KSD). However, limited access of poachers to the area occupied by pileated gibbons also limits rangers’ ability to patrol at the same time. In this case, community-based conservation strategies should be considered. However, for areas close to the forest border without gibbon populations, reintroduction strategies should be considered. Therefore, in order to select the most suitable conservation strategy for each area, correlation and linear regression between the number of pileated gibbon groups and topographic characters were analysed. Distance from the forest border significantly affects the number of pileated gibbon groups. Thus, this factor was used to select the suitable conservation strategy in both Ta-riu Tributary and the wildlife sanctuary. Community-based conservation strategies should benefit 6 per cent of the wildlife sanctuary forested area, whilst protection and reintroduction strategies would benefit 58 and 36 per cent, respectively. We recommend that Ta-riu Tributary should be the priority area for pileated gibbon conservation in KSD.

Sand seas and dune fields are comprised of dunes of different morphological types and sizes, areas of sand sheets, interdune deposits (including non-aeolian sediments), as well as extra-dune fluvial, lacustrine, and marine sediments. They represent the primary depositional sink of aeolian sand-transport systems. The greatest concentrations of desert sand seas and dune fields occur in mid-latitude arid regions, and the subtropical deserts and contain considerable volumes of aeolian sand. Sand seas and dune fields are generally located in topographic lows and in areas where wind energy and sand-transport rates are lower than those in adjacent sand source areas.

The first chapter describes the rough and tumble of Coleridge’s rambles between 1794 and 1804. The chapter opens by placing these excursions within a culture of walking. It depicts his propensity to be his own path-maker rather than follow either the directives of the picturesque guides or the assigned routes of maps. Entries in his pocket notebooks reveal Coleridge’s understanding of a landscape based both upon what his eyes could see and what his feet could register. In many respects, he becomes a surveyor who measures the terrain with his boots. Often modeling his understanding of a landscape on the spirit of geometric exercises, Coleridge measured and counted his paces over a portion of ground in order to observe its lines and angles.

This book, having concentrated on Coleridge’s prose, now wonders what remnants of Coleridge’s sensitivity to the rhythm of his steps as well as to his lineal and geometric orientation exist in his nature poetry. To begin with, this chapter focuses on how the imprint of his feet moving through a landscape significantly contributed to the ways in which he shaped the contour of his nature poems and bestowed on them a feeling of immediacy. These poems also demonstrate his keen sensitivity to the lines of motion that run through and diagram the landscape he describes in his notebooks. Also Coleridge often paid attention to his understanding of the geometric figure. This chapter turns to “Frost at Midnight” and to “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” to illustrate how the circular and triangular forms ultimately shape and unite what initially seem disconnected to create a sense of the whole. The chapter ends by recognizing, however, that the topography of Coleridge’s nature poetry is not just determined by the geometric outline of its structure but rather finds its vibrancy in the selection of sensual details. Though alert to abstract geometric figures, Coleridge’s nature poetry primarily grounds itself within the realm of his physical contact with the earth.

Hal Incandenza, early in Infinite Jest, has a dream of a tennis court that is dauntingly “complex,” with “lines going every which way, and they run oblique or meet and form relationships and boxes and rivers and tributaries and systems inside systems.” Among other meanings, this court is an image of Wallace’s complex narratives themselves, landscapes that juxtapose the regulating and other effects of systems of information, computing, government, ecology and more. This essay attempts to ground Wallace’s corpus in the systems novel, a category applied by critic Tom LeClair to the postmodern novelists that most inspired him, including Thomas Pynchon, Joseph McElroy and William Gaddis. The essay will focus its readings on Wallace’s last two novels, Infinite Jest and The Pale King, and draw briefly on archival evidence at the Ransom Center that Wallace learned much about the systems novel’s grand ambitions from not just Don DeLillo’s works but the discussion of Gregory Bateson and other systems theorists in LeClair’s In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel.