The relationship between science and civil society is essential to our understanding of cultural change during the Victorian era. Science was frequently packaged as an appropriate form of civic culture, inculcating virtues necessary for civic progress. In turn, civic culture was presented as an appropriate context for enabling and supporting scientific progress. Finnegan's study looks at the shifting nature of this process during the nineteenth century, using Scotland as the focus for his argument. Considerations of class, religion and gender are explored, illuminating changing social identities as public interest in science was allowed—even encouraged—beyond the environs of universities and elite metropolitan societies.

There's nothing like putting one foot in front of the other, day after day, in all weathers, for getting you in touch with the things that really matter. St Cuthbert's Way runs from Melrose in the Scottish Borders to Lindisfarne, Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland. This book, designed as a Pilgrims' companion, presents Information essential for walking the Way- A field guide to places of interest along the route- An introduction to St Cuthbert and his world- Songs, meditations and stories- Ideas and resources for a contemporary pilgrimage experience

"Excavations and surveys adjacent to Hirsel House, Coldstream, have revealed a remarkably detailed history of a proprietory church and its cemetery for a period when the parochial structure in Scotland was in course of development, and when very little is known about the fate of estate churches after they were donated to support the newly founded monasteries of the 12th century. The church is set in a landscape with evidence for settlement from the Neolithic to the establishment of Hirsel House, the seat of the Earl of Home. Here, in an estate the boundaries of which has changed very little since the Middle Ages, a small unicellular drystone structure developed into a well-built Romanesque church with a rare example of its bell founding structure intact. The subsequent history when the church was burnt, robbed of stone and used for domestic purposes, then finally destroyed and covered over in the late Middle Ages is graphically illustrated by the wealth of artefacts from the site. There are traces of other medieval buildings to the north of the site and the cemetery-one of the largest rural cemeteries in Scotland- provides an interesting range of burial modes, as well as, together with the environmental evidence from the site, an insight into the community which the church and cemetery served."

The forms by which a deceased person may be brought to rest are as many as there are causes of death. In most societies the disposal of the corpse is accompanied by some form of celebration or ritual which may range from a simple act of deportment in solitude to the engagement of large masses of people in laborious and creative festivities. In a funerary context the term ritual may be taken to represent a process that incorporates all the actions performed and thoughts expressed in connection with a dying and dead person, from the preparatory pre-death stages to the final deposition of the corpse and the post-mortem stages of grief and commemoration. The contributions presented here are focused not on the examination of different funerary practices, their function and meaning, but on the changes of such rituals – how and when they occurred and how they may be explained. Based on case studies from a range of geographical regions and from different prehistoric and historical periods, a range of key themes are examined concerning belief and ritual, body and deposition, place, performance and commemoration, exploring a complex web of practices.

The Emergent Past approaches archaeological research as an engagement within an assemblage - a particular configuration of materials, things, places, humans, animals, plants, techniques, technologies, forces, and ideas. Fowler develops a new interpretative method for that engagement, exploring how archaeological research can, and does, reconfigure each assemblage. Recognising the successive relationships that give rise to and reshaped assemblages over time, he proposes a relational realist understanding of archaeological evidence based on a reading of relational and non-representational theories, such as those presented by Karen Barad, Tim Ingold, and Bruno Latour. The volume explores this new approach through the first ever synthesis of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in Northeast England (c.2500-1500 BC), taking into account how different concepts and practices have changed the assemblage of Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in the past 200 years. Fowler argues that it is vital to retain the most valuable archaeological tools, such as typology, while developing an approach that focuses on the contingent, specific, and historical emergence of past phenomena. His study moves from analyses of changing types of mortuary practices and associated things and places, to a vivid discussion of how past relationships unfolded over time and gave rise to specific patterns in the material remains we have today.

Vol. 25: The distribution of Hepaticæ in Scotland, by S.M. Macvicar.