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Short notes

Acta Poloniae Historica 100, 2009

PL ISSN 0001-6892

GENERAL WORKS'

Piotr Guzowski and Marzena Liedke (eds.), Człowiek wobec miar i czasu w przeszłości |Man’s Attitude to Measures and Time in the Past), Kraków 2007, ‘Avalon’, 275 pp., sum. in English

This is a collection of studies which were read at a confercncc entitled ‘When people ceased to be happy: man and the measures of timc and distance in the past’. The conference was held in Białystok in 2006. The volume deserves at-tention for the studies concern subjects which belong to the auxiliary Sciences of history: chronology, metrology and historical geography. In accordance with the editors’ intention. the book is divided into these three parts. The fourth part is of a different character; it comprises historiographic cssays of little historical value.

Particularly worthy of mention in the first part are the studies by Robert Suski and Janusz Losowski. Suski deals with the chronology of political events in 3rd century Romę on the basis of preserved inscriptions. He proposcs a new datę for the emperor Aurelian’s victory in Gaul. In his vcry interesting study, well substantiated by sources, Losowski analyzes changcs in the measuring of time which took place in Polish towns between the 16th and the 18th century. That was the period when the 12-hour system of measuring time gained popu-larity in Poland, as the author shows using Cracow, Poznań and Warsaw as his examp!cs. He comparcs the results of his research with the situation in smali towns, whcre changes were much slower.

The second part, devoted to metrology, contains studies dealing with measur-ment of area in Greater Poland and Kuyavia (Joanna Karczewska), the measuring of corn fields (Krzysztof Boroda), the development of measuring systems in Volhynia (Władysław Berkowski), and volume measurements in the territory belonging to the Lviv Orthodox chapter (Witold Bobryk). Ali these studies are bascd on inspections of landed estates and churches and on law court books. Since many different measures were used in the Polish-Lithuanian Com-monwealth, the studies on łocał conditions, on individual regional systems of measuring weight, volume and area are really very important and are a valuable supplement to the most important publications published during the last few years by Witold Kula, Jerzy Topolski, Andrzej Wyczański, Grzegorz Myśliwski and Anna Dunin-Wąsowicz.

* Authors of shorts notes: Jacek Adamczyk (JA), Dorota Dukwicz (DD), Krzysztof Kosiński (KK), Olga Linkiewicz (OL), Magdalena Micińska (MAf), Maciej Ptaszyński (AfP).