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Rafe Blaufarb examines the interwoven problems of taxation and social privilege in this treatment of the contention over fiscal privilege between the seigneurial nobility and the tax-payers of Provence

Two Medieval Toll Registers from Tarascon presents an edition, translation, and discussion of two vernacular toll registers from fourteenth and fifteenth-century Provence. These two registers are a valuable new source for the economic, linguistic, and transportation history of medieval France, offering a window onto the commercial life of Tarascon, a fortified town on the east bank of the Rhône between Avignon and Arles. William D. Paden discusses the developing fiscal policy of the counts of Provence, for whom the tolls were collected, and the practice and vocabulary of medieval toll-keeping. An afterword considers the toll registers in relation to the poetry of troubadours, arguing that the realism of the registers and the idealism of troubadour poetry overlapped in the world of medieval Tarascon. 

Celebrated by writers from Petrarch to Peter Mayle, Provence's rugged mountains, wild maquis and lavender-filled meadows are world-famous. Historic cities like Arles, Avignon and Aix contain Roman amphitheatres, papal palaces and royal residences, while market towns and picturesque villages maintain age-old traditions of wine producing and agriculture. From the highland towns of Digne and Sisteron to the marshy expanse of the Camargue, Provence encompasses a rich variety of landscapes.Martin Garrett explores a region littered with ancient monuments and medieval castles. Looking at the vibrant dockside ambiance of Marseille and the luminous atmosphere of the Lubéron, he considers how writers like Mistral and Daudet have captured the character of a place and its people. He traces the development of Provence as a Roman outpost, medieval kingdom and modern region of France, revealing through its landmarks the people and events that have shaped its often tumultuous history.Through i.

For the Jews of Avignon and its environs, as for the Jews of western Europe in general, the closing years of the fourteenth century were marked by crisis and calamity. The plague that first arrived in 1347 struck Avignon again in 1372, 1373, 1374, 1382, 1388, 1397, and 1399. In 1391, mobs viciously attacked the Jewish communities of Aragon and Castile--a tragedy that resonated in Provence due to a description sent to the Jews of Avignon from Saragossa by Hasdai Crescas. The Kingdom of France expelled them again in late 1394. As these communities to the north and west suffered, the Jews of Avignon felt their pain and grew increasingly isolated. For Christians during this same period, Avignon was a highly significant city that served as the seat of the Pope during the fourteenth century. Jews living in the city surely felt the ramifications of this lengthy sojourn, which turned Avignon into an international center of political and intellectual life. Here, Roth explores the works of four Jewish intellectuals who lived in or near Avignon at the end of the fourteenth century: Isaac de Lattes, Joseph Kimhi, Eliezer Crescas, and Jacob Salomon.

The studies comprising this volume, most of them appearing for the first time in English, deal with some of the main topics in Maimonides’ philosophy and that of his followers in Provence. At the heart of these topics lies the issue of whether they adopted a completely naturalistic picture of the workings of the world order, or left room for the volitional activity of God in history. These topics include divine law, creation, the Account of the Chariot, prophet and sage, Mosaic prophecy, reasons for the commandments, and prayer. Special attention is paid to three lesser known but highly significant Provençal Jewish thinkers: Moses Ibn Tibbon, Levi ben Avraham, and Nissim ben Moses of Marseille.

Future trends in debris flow activity are constructed based on bias-corrected climate change projections using two meteorological proxies: daily precipitation and Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) combined with specific humidity for two Alpine areas. Along with a comparison between proxies, future number of days with debris flows are analyzed with respect to different regional and global climate models, Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and area for quantile mapping. Two different base periods are also analyzed, as debris flows were observed on only 6 (17) days between 1950 and 1979, yet on 18 (49) days between 1980 and 2009 for Fella River, NE Italy (Barcelonnette, SE French Alps). For both areas, future climate projections vary between no change up to an increase of 6.0 % per decade in days with debris flow occurrences towards the end of 21st century. In Barcelonnette, the base period and proxy have a bigger impact on the future number of debris flow days than the climate model or RCP used. In Fella River, the base period, RCP, and proxy used define the future range. Therefore the selection of proxy, base period and downscaling technique should be carefully considered for future climate change impact studies concerning debris flow activity and associated fast-moving landslides.

The classification of gobioid fishes is still under discussion. Several lineages, including the Eleotridae and Butidae, remain difficult to characterize because synapomorphies are rare (Eleotridae) or have not yet been determined (Butidae). Moreover, the fossil record of these groups is scarce. Exceptionally well-preserved fish fossils with otoliths in situ from uppermost Oligocene sediments (≈23-24 Mio. y. ago) in Southern France provide the most in-depth description of a fossil gobioid to date. The species was initially described as Cottus aries Agassiz, then transferred to †Lepidocottus Sauvage, and subsequently assigned to Gobius. Based on a comparative analysis of meristic, osteological and otolith data, this species most likely is a member of the family Butidae. This discovery is important because it represents the first record of a fossil butid fish based on articulated skeletons from Europe. The Butidae and Eleotridae are currently distributed in W-Africa, Madagascar, Asia and Australia, but they do not appear in Europe and also not in the Mediterranean Sea. The new results indicate that several species of the Butidae thrived in Europe during the Oligocene and Early Miocene. Similar to the recent Butidae and Eleotridae, these fishes were adapted to a wide range of salinities and thrived in freshwater, brackish and marginal marine habitats. The fossil Butidae disappeared from Europe and the Mediterranean and Paratethys areas during the Early Miocene, due probably to their lack of competitiveness compared to other Gobioidei that radiated during this period of time. In addition, this study documents the great value of otoliths for gobioid systematics.

Calin explores the 20th-century renaissance of literature in the minority languages of Scots, Breton, and Occitan, and demonstrates that all three literatures have evolved in a like manner, repudiating their romantic folk heritage.

The presence of \"geological\" amber (or \"succin\" in old French monographs) has been reported for several centuries in the Mesozoic deposits of Provence, southeastern France. Diverse amber-bearing sites were inventoried by the authors but their location and stratigraphical context remain unclear for most of them. In the past decades, various data concerning chemistry, palaeontological content and comparison with archaeological discoveries improved our knowledge of the ambers of Provence, but only those of Cretaceous age. The present paper aims at providing a comprehensive description of all the presently known amber-bearing deposits of Provence, including the description of new sites. We highlight the great potential of Provence ambers and allow to consider a wider time range, from the Early Cretaceous to the Miocene.

Bauxites in southern France (Provence and Languedoc) have been exploited since the beginning of the last century. Though most of the deposits are now subeconomic or mined-out, these bauxites represent model analogs for other economic bauxites of the world. These Cretaceous karst-type deposits lie directly on Jurassic carbonates, and have been formed through a combination of different processes: in-situ alteration of siliciclastic sediments deposited on carbonate platforms, and reworking of early bauxites in the karst network. In this study, we present preliminary bulk rock geochemical and in-situ laser ablation (LA) -ICP-MS analyses on Al- and Fe-oxy-hydroxides of Provence (Les Baux-de-Provence) and Languedoc (Villeveyrac, Loupian) bauxites, with the aim of evaluating the concentrations of rare earth elements (REEs) and their deportment in these minerals. REEs have total average concentrations of 700 mg/kg in the analyzed samples, which are mostly composed of boehmite, γ-AlO(OH), and Fe-oxy-hydroxides (hematite and goethite). Maximum REEs concentrations are commonly associated with positive Ce anomalies in chondrite-normalized patterns. In contrast with other examples from the literature, it has been observed that high REE concentrations also occur in samples apparently devoid or poor of REE-minerals. In these samples, the total amount of REEs is positively correlated with that of Ga (commonly contained in boehmite). LA-ICP-MS trace element analyses on boehmite and Fe-oxy-hydroxides have shown that while the Al-hydroxide contains the suite of REEs, goethite and hematite are preferentially enriched only in Ce. Considering that Al-hydroxides are digested during the Bayer process, an interesting issue to develop in the future is whether (and how) REEs released during Al-hydroxide digestion could be recovered together with Al from the pregnant leach liquor, as routinely done for Ga.