Oral traditions describing details of ancient volcanic eruptions and their effects survive throughout the inhabited world. Many such eruptions, especially those having catastrophic environmental and societal consequences, proved sufficiently memorable to form the basis of enduring oral traditions. Using global databases, we identified 2306 such eruptions from 477 inhabited locations that occurred before the start of the Common Era (CE) and are therefore likely to have been the subject of oral traditions. Of these, we selected 20 events (‘remembered’ Holocene eruptions) for which there are extant oral (-derived) traditions that demonstrate how such traditions can reveal details of past volcanism that often are undetectable by retrodictive geoscientific enquiry. We also selected 20 events (‘forgotten’ Holocene eruptions) about which no oral traditions are known and discuss the possible reasons for this. Such oral traditions, while often challenging for conventionally trained geoscientists to interpret, are valuable yet largely overlooked sources of information about the nature and effects of Holocene volcanism that can usefully complement geoscientific enquiry. In particular, we identified locations where memories of such volcanism appear ‘forgotten’ in the hope that scientists might focus their attention on revealing, identifying, and analyzing local traditions.

This article is about the seminar held at Luiss University in Rome on 17 June 2024. The seminar focused on ‘The End of Christian Democracy: A New Direction for Research’ and was the first milestone and official launch of the PRIN research project ‘The End of Christian Democracy: The Collapse of a Political Dream – Voices from the Margins’, led by a consortium of four universities: Luiss, Roma Tre, Bologna and Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples.

The engraved slate plaques were part of an extensive and variable class of ritual objects in Late Neolithic and Copper Age Iberia, with Classic plaques being the most numerous and standardized type. Classic plaques have a top and base separated by a horizontal line or bands, and base registers of repeating design elements (triangles, checkerboard, etc.). Associated with burials, they have been interpreted as genealogical records, with their base design referencing a clan or other social unit and their number of registers denoting the generational distance of the deceased from an important ancestor. The authors evaluate the genealogical hypothesis using a larger dataset than available when originally proposed, employing statistical analyses to examine the relationship between the number of registers and find locations, and between design elements and tomb size. Tomb size is viewed as a measure of collective labour, and hence a proxy of the status of the individuals in the tomb. These analyses show significant patterning between the number of registers and the plaques’ geographic distribution, and between specific design elements and tomb size, suggesting that the genealogical hypothesis remains a plausible explanation for the Classic plaques.

Acquired prosopagnosia is a rare disorder, but it serves as a model for impairments in expert-level visual processing. This review discusses five key observations made over the past 30 years. First, there are variants, an apperceptive type linked to damage to the inferior occipitotemporal cortex and an amnestic type associated with anterior temporal lesions, both either right or bilateral. Second, these variants are clustered in syndromes with other perceptual deficits, the apperceptive type with field defects, dyschromatopsia and topographagnosia, and the amnestic type with topographagnosia and the auditory disorders of phonagnosia and acquired amusia. Third, extensive testing often shows additional problems with recognizing exemplars of other objects, especially when degrees of expertise are taken into account. Fourth, the prosopagnosic impairment does not affect all facial information. For example, the perception of expression and lip-reading likely depends on other neural substrates than those for processing facial identity. Last, face perception in prosopagnosia is not immutable but can improve with extensive training, though as yet this does not represent a cure for the condition. Continuing work with neural networks and animal models will enhance our understanding of this intriguing condition and what it tells us about how our brains process vision.

This article investigates memory practices in connection with retrospective Facebook groups created for remembering specific aspects of the past. It focuses on how members of these groups experience and deal with how Facebook's interface and algorithms enable, shape, and interfere with memory practices. From this point of departure, the article discusses and nuances the idea that a ‘connective turn’ has brought with it an ontological shift in memory culture (Hoskins 2017a) and a ‘greying’ of memories (Hoskins and Halstead 2021). Theoretically, the article draws on Deborah Lupton's (2020) concept of ‘data selves’, which offers an account of how people interact with data and technology. This concept does not view data practices as immaterial but rather as material, corporeal, and affective, thus prompting an understanding of memory practices as hybrid processes where offline and online practices intersect (Gajjala 2019; Merrill forthcoming/2024). In this qualitative study, nine members of retrospective Facebook groups were chosen to participate in semi-structured interviews. The analysis explains the importance of viewing contemporary memory practices as hybrid, showing a greying effect within the affordances of Facebook that shapes both which memories are shared and how memories are shared. In addition, the analysis nuances the idea of an ontological shift in memory culture and the greying of memories by investigating how the interviewees’ deal and struggle with the affordances of the platform in their memory practices.

Since the sinking of SS Arandora Star 84 years ago, the memory of this tragic wartime incident has been strongly held and developed within the British Italian community, moving through several phases, from oblivion to recognition and commemoration to a more recent growing awareness in a wider mnemonic community of interest. The aim of this special issue is threefold: to raise further the profile of the Arandora Star; to consolidate and secure the uncertain historical foundations of the event; and to advance the historiography by introducing new facts and perspectives and uncovering previously hidden or unknown aspects both of the past and the continuing afterlife. The six articles presented move logically through the history and stages of memory evolution and its manifestation – internment and deportation, the sinking itself, material, cultural and political aspects of the deathscape, oral histories, the multimedia ‘archive’, with finally, an embarkation listing to plug a serious knowledge gap.

This article progresses Second World War historiography of ‘enemy alien’ internment, especially of the SS Arandora Star, sunk in 1940 with a high loss of Italian civilian lives. Employing a new paradigm, that of the deathscape, defined as a topography of death and the practices that surround it, this investigation recontextualises Arandora Star remembrance in Scotland. Ambiguous loss, complicated grieving, disenfranchisements in mourning and absences in multiple layers of the deathscape form overarching themes that are explored in parallel to emotional-affective memory. The previously neglected study of individual memorialisation, both private and ‘official’, provides an important primary source in the fragmented materiality of the deathscape, allowing fresh insight on both cultural manifestations and political context. As the material and cultural apex of the deathscape, the Italian Cloister Garden and Arandora Star Memorial in Glasgow, created by Archbishop Mario Conti in 2011, are evaluated through the lenses of leadership, identity and heritage activism.

Within British-Italian history of the Second World War, there are several questions surrounding the sinking of the SS Arandora Star, on 2 July 1940, which still remain problematic. Nevertheless, this tragedy continues to play a prominent role in the heritage and memories of the Anglo-Italian communities in the UK. This article focuses on the experiences and memories of the Arandora Star from the perspective of members of the Italian community in the North-East of England. Oral histories of Italian civilian internees who were embarked onto the ocean liner were collected via qualitative interviews with descendants of victims and survivors. This article contributes to raising awareness of Arandora scholarship by articulating how memories were interpreted retrospectively and transmitted down generations. Informing the debate on the purpose of misremembering in oral history, this article sheds light on the events and their imaginary reconstruction.