Studies of the metrology of the Ancient Near East usually focus on reconstructing relative values between units in each measurement system and identifying absolute values by converting ancient standards into modern ones. However, recent research aims to reinterpret these ancient units in the context...
Mesopotamian scholarly sources reveal a variety of attitudes towards the quantification of ingredients in cuneiform medical prescriptions. This article explores dosage practices as brought to light by BAM 579, a document from the royal library of Nineveh, which provides a record of the therapeutic k...
Using iconographic sources drawn from a 13th century moral treatise, this article examines representations of measurement instruments and the gestures of those who measured or weighed. Around 1270, The Italian Dominican Jacobus de Cessolis wrote the Liber de ludo scacchorum, translated into English...
If we define archaeology as a particular sort of enquiry about singular objects (aggregates including buried artefacts) which focuses on the question of proof, and if we agree that it can be extended to more recent periods, then we must rethink the initial objective of systematizing ancient “culture...
Witold Kula defined On Weights and Measures (Peri metrōn kai stathmōn) by Epiphanius of Cyprus as the “forerunner of traders’ manuals”. This article aims to demonstrate that while the text was used for practical purposes over the centuries, its purpose was to make Bible passages containing technical...
In Mesopotamian ceramic studies, the metrological approach is still rare and focuses mainly on determining standardized capacities or units. While these few attempts have so far failed to establish a precise equivalence between ceramic vessels and volumetric units of capacity, this is no reason to a...
The general idea of the standard weight or étalon (in French) as an instrument certified by an incontestable authority is inadequate to apprehend the diversity of ancient control instruments and prototypes. Taking as a case study the late Roman Empire, characterized by unprecedented standardization...
After its early introduction in India (1840), photography soon became a widespread social phenomenon that progressively made its way into both private and public spaces. Based on a new collection of studio photographs – studio photography being the first manifestation of a local photographic cultur...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bThe accounting journals of the nephew of the doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari, show how Venice organized Atlantic convoys of galleys to Flanders and southern England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The ships were leased at auction by their owner,...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bOver several centuries, and especially during the 19th century, the frequency of aristocratic names (noms à particule) in various French elites decreased. However, this population has not yet merged into the middle classes: it still exhibits specific resident...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bThis article examines how the quality of water consumed in Mons (Belgium) was measured and monitored in the nineteenth century as scientific knowledge expanded and new analysis methods became available. The water from public and private wells, poorly protecte...
This article examines water supply contracts in nineteenth century French cities and especially the most widespread option, the so called robinet libre (literally free tap), which consisted in charging subscribers not for their actual consumption, but for an up-front assessment of their needs, i.e....
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bThis article examines the distribution and consumption of water delivered by water carriers in eighteenth-century Paris. By adopting a spatial methodology, it explores the profile of Parisian bucket and barrel water carriers and analyzes the collaboration bet...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bIn eighteenth-century France, constant pressure to install new production units along waterways led to frequent conflicts over water allocation. Protected manufacturers appealed to the Bureau of Commerce for support in handling the claims made against them. T...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bBeginning in the 1950s, the expanding neighbourhoods of irregular precarious housing in Madrid’s periphery came to be identified as a major public problem, leading to specific policies and to the production of extensive documentation. Focusing the analysis on...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bThis article examines the work of a state actuary, Jacques Ferdinand-Dreyfus (1884-1943), who was both a reformist socialist with links to the Durkheimian networks and a civil servant at the Ministry of Labour, from 1912 to 1940. Alongside Georges Cahen-Salva...
This article explores the history of censusing in the informal neighborhoods that have always been foundational to the Brazilian cityscape. Focusing on Rio de Janeiro and Recife, it argues that the censusing of favelas and mocambos was at once a technology of governance and a performance of North At...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bIn nineteenth-century Mexico, the activity of census-taking had not yet gained political legitimacy; the political will and the establishment of an administrative apparatus were insufficient to make possible the organization of a complete census. This article...
The 1946 Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections was set up to guarantee the fairness of the elections and of the plebiscite on monarchy that rival political factions had agreed to hold following the armed clashes of December 1944 and January 1945. To that end, the most recent developments in prob...
The major developments in the study of the history and sociology of statistics on Latin America since the late 1990s are largely unknown to European or American readers, mainly due to language barriers. Based on this observation, this article aims to provide a global view of this field of study thro...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bThis article focuses on the methods used to conduct censuses in the French metropolitan shantytowns between the early 1950s and the late 1970s. It seeks to determine the extent to which decolonization and the passage of a logic of police control in the contex...
`!-- Début du contenu @xml:lang="en" --bCensuses of shacks (baracche) in Rome can be studied via numerous analytical approaches. In this article, we use this type of source to gain deeper insight into the attitudes of the political and administrative institutions dealing with the spread of shantyto...