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This paper identifies documented collections of red-sulphur gem casts by Christian Dehn (1696–1770) that have survived unrecognized in three British country houses: Burton Constable in Yorkshire, Burghley House in Lincolnshire, and Mountstuart on the Isle of Bute in Scotland. All three collections resulted from Grand Tours to Italy, where, in Rome, Dehn's workshop supplied bespoke collections of casts representing engraved gemstones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the interest of Charles IV of Luxembourg (1316–1378), King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, in collecting gemstones, which has hitherto been little studied. It analyses this interest in connection with the fourteenth-century French royal court, and especially with the collecting activities of Charles V of Valois (1338–1380), King of France. Both of these sovereigns had an interest in ancient gems and they used them in the same manner; their practices prove to have been inspired by the reinvented traditions of the saintly Capetian monarch Louis IX, King of France, and of the ancient Roman Empire. This study shows how Charles of Luxembourg and Charles of Valois sought out and used precious and semi-precious stones as instruments of their royal self-images and claims to power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genus Barbaria , recently established to accommodate the former Echiniscus bigranulatus group, is a tardigrade group emblematic for the South American tardigrade fauna. This unappendaged echiniscid lineage is widely recognized for the so-called 'double' sculpturing composed of endocuticular pillars and pseudopores or pores in the dorsal cuticle. The phylogenetic relationships in the genus have so far been completely unknown, but the discovery of two new species (B. paucigranulata sp. nov. and B. weglarskae sp. nov.), together with new genetic data for further six species (B. bigranulata , B. charrua comb. nov. , B. danieli , B. jenningsi , B. madonnae and B. ollantaytamboensis), create an opportunity not only to uncover phyletic relationships, but also to reconstruct morphological evolution in the genus. To achieve this, we sequenced five genetic markers (18S rRNA, 28S rRNA, ITS1, ITS2, COI) for multiple populations of eight species of Barbaria (two-thirds of all known species) collected in Alabama (USA), Argentina and the Antarctic, and we analysed them in tandem with detailed morphological data. Our phylogentic analysis and the reconstruction of evolution of morphological traits suggests that the ancestor of the genus inhabited the Neotropics, and it was morphologically most similar to B. bigranulata. We also analyse literature records of Barbaria and conclude that the genus is most likely limited to the Neotropics, Antarctica and southern parts of the Nearctic. The findings are discussed in the context of the phylogeny of the Echiniscus evolutionary line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agate was highly regarded in antiquity and through the early modern period; when sliced, images seemingly inscribed by nature could be identified on its surfaces, and its layered colours were exploited for cameo carving. However, agate is also widely recorded in the rough in contemporaneous natural history collections where the 'eye' that could be cut from the core was valued in Aristotelian medicine. Taking as its starting point the hitherto neglected 1622 correspondence about a piece of agate between Peter Paul Rubens and the French humanist Nicholas‐Claude Fabri de Peiresc, this essay brings together collecting, friendship and artistic production within a context of early mineralogy. Through an investigation of the material, tactile, aesthetic and para‐scientific attributes of agate, and drawing on further evidence from Rubens's life, I propose a sensibility shaped by a predilection for the lithic whose influence is discernible in the artist's work as more widely understood.

Why do some rebel groups resort to terrorism tactics while others refrain from doing so? How rebel organizations finance their rebellion creates variation in the extent to which terrorism undermines their legitimacy. Rebel organizations pay attention to the legitimacy costs associated with terrorism. Organizations that rely primarily on civilian support, and to a lesser extent on foreign support, exercise more restraint in their use of terrorism. Rebels who finance their fight with lootable resources such as gems or drugs are least vulnerable to the costs of alienating domestic supporters. Thus, they are more likely to resort to terrorism and to employ more of it. The article elaborates this legitimacy-cost theory and tests it using new data on Terrorism in Armed Conflict from 1970 to 2007. We find robust support for the hypothesis that groups who finance their fight with natural resources are significantly more likely to employ terrorism (though not necessarily to conduct more deadly attacks) relative to those who rely on local civilian support. Groups with external sources of financing, such as foreign state support, may be more likely to engage in terrorism than those who rely on local civilians, but not significantly so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing availability of event data has led to a surge in micro-level research investigating civil war violence. Event data, however, introduces bias due to systemic underreporting of events. This study introduces a method that accounts for this bias by making a spatial prediction of unreported events based on the known locations of rebels and their preferences for local-level factors estimated using habitat analysis. I then combine this prediction with known locations of rebel activity and use it to predict rebel territory and relocation patterns. I next perform a regression analysis on 119 African rebel groups that links preferences to conflict behavior. Preferences for gold, petroleum, gemstones, and cobalt are associated with civilian victimization, whereas rebels who prefer steeper slopes are more successful in battles with government forces. Further, government forces tend to be successful when battling rebels with preferences for petroleum and international borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has brought back to prominence a remarkable collection of glyptic objects housed in the National Museum in Krakow. It was assembled by Constantine Schmidt-Ciążyński (1818-1889) in the second half of the nineteenth century, but has been little known since that time and remains largely unpublished. This extensive collection (over 2,500 pieces) sheds light in a unique manner on the European gem trade and on gem collecting in the mid-to late-1800s. The gems were engraved in a variety of minerals; only one object is made from an artificial material, namely glass paste. The collection offers an opportunity to investigate the collector's aims for his collection and the circumstances that shaped its special character. It seems very likely that the entire set was designed to have particular socio-cultural and educational functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]