Christopher Gustav Memminger was born on January 9 His mother Eberhardina emigrated to Charleston Memminger's mother died of yellow fever when he was four years old His grandparents then placed Memminger in the Orphan’s House of Charleston At age 11 he was adopted by Thomas Bennett a well-known lawyer and the future Governor of South Carolina At 13 years old Memminger attended South Carolina College and graduated in 1825 South Carolina College is the University of South Carolina he returned to Charleston to begin a law career working for Mr From 1836 - 1859 Memminger served in the South Carolina House of Representatives Memminger's reforms created a program of graded schools in Charleston (which only served White children) Memminger in Flat RockThere are many manmade features at Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site The original construction of buildings took place under the ownership of Christopher Memminger North Carolina drew Meminger's interest in the 1830s By that time other wealthy Charlestonians began building summer homes in the town He purchased a large property in 1838 and named it “Rock Hill” for the granite outcroppings near the home Many features of the site today originate during Memminger's ownership Such features include the large white house known today as the Swedish House and Wash House functioned as quarters for enslaved people The site we see today is a product of wealth gained through chattel slavery Memminger was an enslaver in North and South Carolina Rock Hill's iconic structures were built with both hired and enslaved labor Memminger and SlaveryAs a lawyer in Charleston Memminger worked to assist clients trafficking enslaved persons He also managed many transactions involving people he enslaved as well he owned as many as 24 enslaved people (including children) Robert prepared Rock Hill ahead of time for the Meminger's later arrival Ledgers often list "servants" for unnamed enslaved people Language like "servants" instead of "slaves" softened the violent reality of chattel slavery and even fewer last names made it onto paper Memminger and PoliticsBefore the Civil War Memminger did not support secession from the U.S. He joined the Secession Convention of South Carolina he helped write the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States Confederate President Jefferson Davis made Memminger the Secretary of Treasury blockades stopped the export of cotton and rice Memminger finally increased taxes to support the war effort Memminger realized he could not save the Confederacy’s finances He resigned in July 1864 and retreated to Rock Hill Memminger also invested in the phosphate industry He continued to work in school reform as a member of the Charleston Public School Board Memminger helped reorganize South Carolina College into the University of South Carolina He continued to promote separate schools for White and Black children Memminger defended the institution of chattel slavery and Black oppression throughout his life He lived through the time of chattel slavery He was re-elected to the South Carolina legislature in 1877 based on his previous experience in politics and White supremacist views He and fellow legislators passed "Black Codes" in 1865 that reinforced racial structures in Post-Civil War South Carolina Black Codes oppressed Black Americans and forced them to work as a cheap labor force Memminger wrote that “black people needed white guidance similar to a master and apprentice relationship and that they were incapable of political participation or understanding of law.” Former Confederates benefitted from laws that restored White slaveholders as Southern society elites He died at the age of 85 in Charleston (1888) and is buried at St John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church in Flat Rock Download the NPS app to navigate the parks on the go Hartwig Gauder after winning the 50km race walk at the 1987 World Championships in Rome (© Getty / Bongarts) World Athletics is saddened by the news that Hartwig Gauder the 1980 Olympic and 1987 world champion in the 50km race walk died from a heart attack on Wednesday (22) who represented East Germany for most of his career first attracted attention when winning the 10,000m race walk at the 1973 European Junior Championships before claiming national 20km titles in 1975 and 1976 He was seventh over 20km at the 1978 European Championships just two years prior to his surprise triumph at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow where he clocked 3:49:24 to take gold in just his fourth race over the distance He missed the 1984 Games due to a boycott but returned in 1988 to take bronze in Seoul in 3:39:45 a performance that would remain as his lifetime best Gauder also took bronze at the 1990 European Championships and after German reunification won bronze at the 1991 World Championships before capping his career at the 1992 Olympics Gauder retired from competition in 1993 and continued work towards his degree in architecture but in 1995 was found to have contracted a viral heart infection After living with an artificial heart for a year Gauder later completed several marathons including New York and Berlin and in 2003 become the first heart transplant recipient to climb Mount Fuji He worked as an architect in Jena and Erfurt and remained a vocal campaigner for organ donation Gauder suffered kidney failure and was again in need of a donor "Thuringia has lost one of its most talented athletes and a tireless champion for organ donation," said Bodo Ramelow the Minister-President of the German state of Thuringia We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. 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SearchBrowseServicesOpen researchInstitution LoginSearchMenu links The recent discovery of several late Linearbandkeramik (LBK) sites in Central Europe has revealed evidence for increasing diversity in Neolithic mortuary practices which may reflect inter-community war and socio-political crisis at the end of the LBK the authors combine osteological and radiocarbon analyses of inhumations from Vráble Rather than a straightforward sign of inter-community conflict and war this development reflects a culmination of internal conflict and a diversification in the ritual treatment of human bodies The emerging variability in LBK methods of manipulating and depositing dead bodies can be interpreted as an experimental approach in how to negotiate social conflicts and community boundaries Vráble is a newly discovered LBK site in south-west Slovakia that has yielded evidence for diverse ways of handling the dead Some of the buried individuals show clear signs of post-mortem manipulation and the overall context hints at the use of specific burial rituals Vráble therefore adds a specific point of reference for interpretation of the previously mentioned examples further sharpening understanding of the ways in which the first farmers in Central Europe engaged with death and the deceased Vráble also adds to our understanding of the role that violence played in such practices and in the social dynamics within communities Figure 1. Vráble (star) and other sites mentioned in the text in relation to the general distribution of early LBK sites (shown in green, after Lüning Reference Lüning1988: 32 & fig Above) the three separate neighbourhoods of Vráble shown in the magnetic prospection data with the interpreted houses as white rectangles the ditches around the south-western neighbourhood as white lines and a high-resolution shaded elevation model as backdrop; the excavated areas in the south-western neighbourhood are clearly visible Below) the southern entrances to the enclosure around the south-western neighbourhood of Vráble and the excavated areas (figure by N The settlement of Vráble dates to between c. 5250 and 4950 cal BC (Furholt et al. Reference Furholt, Bátora, Cheben, Kroll, Rassmann and Tóth2014; Meadows et al. Reference Meadows, Müller-Scheessel, Cheben, Agerskov Rose and Furholt2019) The enclosure surrounding the south-western neighbourhood has a maximum perimeter of approximately 1450m and consists of three concentric components: two ditches and one palisade and a distinct phase of re-cutting is visible in the profile sections The inner ditch is smaller at only 1.5m wide Although the excavation of the ditches yielded no direct evidence concerning their temporal relationship their parallel courses suggest either that they were contemporaneous or that one was still clearly visible when the other was dug The absence of fine-grained fill layers that would indicate slow silting suggests that the fills of the ditches formed rapidly We therefore assume that the ditches were dug shortly before the oldest of the human burials were placed towards the bottom of the re-cut ditch deposits Excavations in Vráble have so far yielded the remains of approximately 19 human individuals (see Table S1 in the online supplementary material (OSM)) we cannot establish whether bones found considerable distances apart belong to the same individual or whether disarticulated bones found close together originate from different individuals The grouping of bone scatters was based on both proximity and plausibility stable isotope values and radiocarbon-dating of single bones Selection of burials from Vráble: 1) G13/S23; 2) G12/S23; 3) G7/S21; 4) G8/S21; 5) G4/S21; 6) G9/S21; 7) G2/S21 (figure by N a lack of cut marks indicates that it was probably removed following a period of decomposition The removal of the skulls and the single hand is also consistent with the hypothesis that the bodies were left uncovered for a period of time following deposition A particularly heavily disturbed individual (G5/S21) although it is unclear when these elements were separated from the post-cranial skeleton due to extensive disturbance of the extant remains I17/S23 & I18/S21) were found in the fills of the ditches These finds are more problematic to subsume under one specific burial custom as they potentially result from a number of different depositional processes originate from older burials that were disturbed and re-deposited during the digging of the ditches or from corpses that were left exposed on the ditch bank for an extended period so that only very few elements became incorporated into the ditch fill It seems very likely that further excavation of the outer ditch will yield many more individuals as only 50m of the 1450m circuit has so far been excavated Selection of grave goods from Vráble: 1) ceramic vessel from the upper layer of the outer ditch; 2) flint blade from burial G8/S21; 3) Spondylus medallion from an animal burrow; 4) flat adze from G7/S21 We suggest that the medallion probably derives from a now destroyed grave Most of the Vráble individuals are adults although the sex of eight individuals cannot be determined Due to the relatively small sample size and the restricted excavation area palaeodemographic analyses seem unnecessary especially as only one child and no elderly adults (60+) were present Most of the adult individuals died between the ages of 18 and 35 years with only two males and one female surviving past 35 years of age (see OSM4 for the methods used to assess age A fully healed fracture of the mid-shaft of the right tibia was observed in one individual (female G12/S23) Bayesian model of mortuary activity at Vráble (cf Full model code is provided in OSM3 (figure by J Figure 7. Summaries of modelled radiocarbon data (cf. Figure 6) of crouched and non-crouched burials from Vráble, obtained using the OxCal function KDE_Plot (Bronk Ramsey Reference Bronk Ramsey2017) within each bounded phase of the model shown in Figure 6 Crosses indicate the median calibrated (grey) and modelled (black) date of each individual and thus the number of dated individuals of each type (figure by J Figure 8. Modelled dates of crouched burials (cf. Figure 6) from Vráble (figure by J the differences in mortuary treatment at Vráble are striking While some individuals were buried (with clear investment in terms of time others were left exposed for a certain period of time the skulls of at least three skeletons from the ‘irregular’ group were removed during the decomposition process The true prevalence of this practice at Vráble cannot yet be assessed properly as some of the bone scatters were too poorly preserved as the modus operandi with the three articulated skeletons was identical this behaviour seems to have been part of a regular ritual practice within the Vráble community Such ancestor worship seems particularly unlikely in the case of the child from Vráble (G4/S21) Unfortunately, it is not easy to form a reliable overview of the general health of LBK individuals or the level of violence that they experienced. Four out of the eleven (36.4 per cent) well-preserved adult individuals from Vráble exhibit spinal defects. Tvrdý (Reference Tvrdý2016) reports a similar prevalence of spinal defects in 12 of the 37 (32.4 per cent) adult individuals from the nearby LBK cemetery at Nitra it seems that the prevalence of degenerative pathologies was similar at both Vráble and Nitra (only degenerative conditions are reported for the latter site) Cranial and post-cranial trauma observed in adult individuals from LBK cemeteries and settlement contexts (figure by N Figure 10. Models of all available AMS radiocarbon dates of LBK human bone samples. All dates at each site are placed between uniform phase boundaries, and the OxCal function KDE_Plot (Bronk Ramsey Reference Bronk Ramsey2017) is used to summarise the modelled dates (figure by N Vráble provides evidence with which to address two key current debates around LBK communities: their supposed ‘violent’ ends and, second, the variability of their burial practices. Some scholars envisage a direct connection between these two issues, seeing increasing mortuary variability towards the end of the LBK as further evidence for the violent termination of the LBK cultural model (e.g. Farruggia Reference Farruggia2001/2002: 120) While the evidence from Vráble seems to confirm the wider observation of diversification in burial rites towards the end of the LBK gruesome methods of handling the dead must represent the last stage of burial activity at a site crouched burials clearly post-date the headless individuals placed in the ditch we consider that the differential treatment of the dead was also probably driven by intra-community tensions Vráble further emphasises the variability in motives for manipulating and depositing human bodies in enclosure ditches in LBK settlements Traditional cultural-historical research tended to reify prehistoric cultural practices assuming that they constituted strict rules that must be followed we see a proliferation of different LBK ways of handling dead bodies rituals and acts of magic—all of which can be interpreted as experimental approaches Conceptualising LBK methods of manipulating human bodies in this way allows us to avoid the automatic attribution of evidence of interpersonal violence to functional explanations This is not intended to negate any of the suffering that some individuals of but it calls into question a simplified differentiation between ‘war’—where people suffer violent deaths—and ‘peace’ where the dead are buried in neat burial pits Vráble demonstrates much variation between the two We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insights and helpful comments This research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Müller) and the Vedecká grantová agentúra MŠVVaŠ SR a SAV (VEGA; project 2/0107/17; PI: I To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.103 Vráble (star) and other sites mentioned in the text in relation to the general distribution of early LBK sites (shown in green Examples of skeletal pathology at Vráble: 1) left clavicle from G3/S21 with signs of animal activity (arrows); 2) probable fractured and healed right metacarpal bone (‘boxer's fracture’) of G13/S23 (Figure 3.1); 3) clavicles from G13/S23 with the fracture affecting the left clavicle marked by arrows; 4) fused cervical vertebrae from G5/S21; 5) notochord defect on a cervical vertebra from G12/S23 (Figure 3.2) (figure by Z Summaries of modelled radiocarbon data (cf Figure 6) of crouched and non-crouched burials from Vráble obtained using the OxCal function KDE_Plot (Bronk Ramsey 2017) within each bounded phase of the model shown in Figure 6 Models of all available AMS radiocarbon dates of LBK human bone samples All dates at each site are placed between uniform phase boundaries and the OxCal function KDE_Plot (Bronk Ramsey 2017) is used to summarise the modelled dates (figure by N - No HTML tags allowed- Web page URLs will display as text only- Lines and paragraphs break automatically- Attachments Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly shared ownership in or any close relationship with any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work This pertains to all the authors of the piece Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly.