Relics of the Past tells the story of antiquities collecting, antiquarianism, and archaeology in Cuzco and Lima over the Araucanian territories and the War of the Pacific in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. While the role of foreign travellers and scholars dedicated to the study of South America's pre-Columbian past is well documented, historians have largely overlooked the knowledge gathered and the collections formed among collectors of antiquities, antiquaries, and archaeologists born or living in South America during this period. The landed gentry, the clergy, and an urban bourgeoisie of doctors, engineers, and military officials put antiquities on display in their private mansions or bestowed them upon the public museums that were being formed by municipalities and governments in Santiago de Chile, Cuzco, or Lima. Men, and some few women, gathered antiquities on their journeys 'inland' and during sociable weekend excursions, but also on quotidian commercial voyages or in military campaigns. They bartered antiquities with their fellow collectors or haggled about their price on the antiquities market. In their hours of leisure, they marvelled at them, wrote about them, and disputed over their meaning, age, and interest in learned societies, informal gatherings, and at meetings in universities and public museums. This volume unveils a hitherto largely unknown world of antiquarian and archaeological collecting and learning in Peru and Chile.

This collection of essays explores relics as religious and cultural phenomena. It considers the ways in which human remains and material objects have become the focus of worship, celebrity, curiosity, and conflict in a range of eras and cultures stretching from antiquity to the twenty-first century.

A piece of Plymouth Rock. A lock of George Washington’s hair. Wood from the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. Various bits and pieces of the past—often called “association items”—may appear to be eccentric odds and ends, but they are valued because of their connections to prominent people and events in American history. Kept in museum collections large and small across the United States, such objects are the touchstones of our popular engagement with history. In Sacred Relics, Teresa Barnett explores the history of private collections of items like these, illuminating how Americans view the past. She traces the relic-collecting tradition back to eighteenth-century England, then on to articles belonging to the founding fathers and through the mass collecting of artifacts that followed the Civil War. Ultimately, Barnett shows how we can trace our own historical collecting from the nineteenth century’s assemblages of the material possessions of great men and women.

Discover a new dark age—and the one girl wielding the light of truth—in a tale “with threads from The Hunger Games, The Giver, and other dystopian novels” (Booklist). For more than a hundred years, no maiden from Aerie has competed in the arduous Testing, but after Eva’s twin brother dies, she is determined to fulfill his dream of participating in the all-male competition, and enters despite her parents’ wishes. With the help of Lukas, her family’s servant from the Boundary lands, Eva learns the ways of the outcasts who live in the brutal and icy world beyond Aerie. She discovers the secrets of the blinding white landscape, the dogs who pull her sled, and the chasms that house the strange relics once worshipped by a godless humanity. This knowledge is exactly what she needs to survive—and win—the harsh trials of the Testing. Leaving the safety of Aerie behind gives Eva a chance to realize how strong she can be in the face of adversity—and how brave she’ll have to become in a society built on the shifting snows of lies . . . “Heather Terrell excavates a richly realized and adventurous world from the iced-over wreck of our own.” —William Alexander, National Book Award–winning author of Goblin Secrets “Part post-apocalyptic fiction and part high fantasy . . . Delicately weaving in elements of Inuit culture as well as elements you might find in Game of Thrones, Heather Terrell creates a world that is as intricate as it is icy . . . A page-turner.” —E. Kristen Anderson, editor of Dear Teen Me

Scripture speaks of miracles wrought through relics: a dead man was raised when Elisha’s bones touched him, and the clothing of Jesus and His apostles healed the sick. In the early Church, Masses were celebrated over the bones of the martyrs, and phials of their blood have effected countless miracles. Direct successors of the Apostles themselves speak of venerating relics; Church Fathers encourage it; throughout the ages of Catholic legacy, relics of the saints are always present. The Church takes diligent care in preserving and documenting the authenticity of her relics. Best-selling author Joan Carroll Cruz takes full advantage of these resources. With painstaking research, she exposes the details behind hundreds of the Church’s most famous and beloved relics. She covers 38 second-class relicsof our Lord and Lady, such as the Holy Grail and Our Lady’s Veil, and relics of all sorts from 75 favorite saints, such as St. Mary Magdalene, St. Agnes, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Maria Goretti, and many more! Relics is a unique collection of years of dedicated research about the lives of the saints and the mementos they left behind, to remind us of their presence and intercession for us.

Birds were never far from Thoreau’s mind. They wing their way through his writing just as they did through his cabin on Walden Pond, summoned or dismissed at whim by his whistles. Emblematic of life, death, and nature’s endless capacity for renewal, birds offer passage into the loftiest currents of Thoreau’s thought. What Branka Arsić finds there is a theory of vitalism that Thoreau developed in response to his brother’s death. Through grieving, Thoreau came to see life as a generative force into which everything dissolves. Death is not an annulment of life but the means of its transformation and reemergence. Bird Relics traces Thoreau’s evolving thoughts through his investigation of Greek philosophy and the influence of a group of Harvard vitalists who resisted the ideas of the naturalist Louis Agassiz. It takes into account materials often overlooked by critics: his Indian Notebooks and unpublished bird notebooks; his calendars that rewrite how we tell time; his charts of falling leaves, through which he develops a complex theory of decay; and his obsession with vegetal pathology, which inspires a novel understanding of the relationship between disease and health. Arsić’s radical reinterpretation of Thoreau’s life philosophy gives new meaning to some of his more idiosyncratic habits, such as writing obituaries for people he did not know and frequenting estate sales, and raises important questions about the ethics of Thoreau’s practice of appropriating the losses of others as if they were his own.