Mensuration in Early Medieval Barcelona
Various units of length are found in use in early medieval Barcelona, but the dexter is by far the most common. However, the interpretation of its value is by no means straightforward.
Freyja and Freyr: Successors of the Sun – On the absence of the sun in Nordic saga literature
Why is the Sun is missing in Nordic saga literature, considering its vital role in the religious life in the Bronze Age North?
The Medieval Climate Anomoly in the Iberian Peninsula reconstructed from marine and lake records
Selected multi-proxy and accurately dated marine and terrestrial records covering the past 2000 years in the Iberian Peninsula facilitated a comprehensive regional paleoclimate reconstruction for the Medieval Climate Anomaly (900-1300 AD).
14th-century Japanese artwork comes to the Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s recent acquisitions include a 14th-century Japanese hanging scroll featuring the Buddhist deity Aizen Myōō, Wisdom King of Passion.
‘Lost chapel’ of Westminster Palace revealed in new 3D model
The first dedicated House of Commons chamber, destroyed in the 1834 Palace of Westminster fire, has been reconstructed with the help of 3D visualisation technology.
Morbidity and mortality of leprosy in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, nearly everyone in Europe was exposed to the disfiguring, painful and ostracizing disease of leprosy. But did contracting the disease necessarily increase a person’s chances of dying?
Unravelling a medieval murder mystery
In the ultimate cold case an Aberdeen historian has re-examined a 600 year old murder, fitting of a plot for Game of Thrones.
The prehistory of medieval farms and villages: from Saxons to Scandinavians
Those seeking to unravel the biographies of settlements, communities and landscapes back into the Early Middle Ages must chiefly rely upon material evidence locked up in the landscape, to be extracted and interpreted using approaches drawn from archaeology and related disciplines.
The Princesses Who Might have been Hostages: The Custody and Marriages of Margaret and Isabella of Scotland, 1209-1220s
In 1209, stemming from the Treaty of Norham, Scottish hostages were sent south into England. Margaret and Isabella, daughters of King William of Scotland, went along, too.
The Lives and Deaths of Young Medieval Women: The Osteological Evidence
Osteology, the study of human skeletal remains, can provide substantial and detailed information on growth, health and daily life of the general population.
Outcasts, Emperorship, and Dragon Cults in The Tale of the Heike
Among the Heike variants to be examined, the Kakuichibon (1371) and Enkyôbon (1309-10) exhibit certain symmetries of contrast that make them especially useful for understanding the relationship between sacred authority and manipulations of the defiled other embodied in outcast or semi-outcast performers.
Lauacrum: just another word for baths? How the terminology of baths may have reflected changes in bathing habits
The word lauacrum has been interpreted in various ways, but has never been the subject of a thorough research.
The Battle of Nicopolis (1396), Burgundian Catastrophe and Ottoman Fait Divers
The Battle of Nicopolis was the first major encounter between the Ottoman Empire and the Western European states of the later Middle Ages.
Sutton Hoo to be transformed
£1.8 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund will lead to a new experience for visitors of the famous Anglo-Saxon site.
Did Crusaders get Tattoos? Devotional Symbols and Practices in Medieval Europe and the Holy Land
I explore what appears to be a largely overlooked aspect of devotional practice associated with the medieval crusading movement.
New Medieval Books: From Normandy to China
You can read about living in London, marrying in China, or ruling in Normandy.
The Twelve Types of Drunkenness
Oswald von Wolkenstein gives us twelve examples of what happens to drunk people.
Boys Joust Wanna Have Fun
Training for the tournament was an integral part of medieval boyhood.
Wasteland: Buffer in the Medieval Economy
At the end of the Roman period the area of wasteland seems to have increased. Since the increase or decrease in wasteland is closely linked with the economy in general, we can discern several periods of decline and growth.
Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy
This article examines the role of testing and innovation in sixteenth-century Italian pharmacy. Apothecaries were less concerned with testing drugs for efficacy or creating novel products than with reactivating an older Mediterranean pharmacological tradition and studying the materials on which it relied.
Breaking Down Barriers: Eunuchs in Italy and North Africa, 400-625
This paper considers how attitudes towards to imperial eunuchs as military leaders changed in parallel in both Greek and Latin texts from the 4th to 7th centuries, and the key role played by Justinian’s eunuch generals Solomon and Narses.
Love and Lust in Later Medieval England: Exploring Powerful Emotions and Power Dynamics in Disputed Marriage Cases
Depositions from matrimonial litigation are a compellingly, if deceptively, vivid source for the words, sentiments and circumstances surrounding courtship and marriage making.
Hamlet with the Princes of Denmark: An exploration of the case of Hálfdan, ‘king of the Danes’
This article explores the case of one ‘Prince of Denmark’ called Hálfdan, ‘king of the Danes’. His life, as best we can reconstruct it, reveals much that is of great significance for our understanding of the Viking Age, not only in England but in Denmark and the Frankish realm as well.
Hunger and the Clerical Canine: The Dog as Metaphor in Piers Plowman B
Hunger in Piers Plowman B is a controversial and perplexing figure in passus 6, one that has garnered considerable and remarkably divergent critical attention over the years.
Dialect in the Viking-Age Scandinavian diaspora: the evidence of medieval minor names.
This thesis aims to investigate the Scandinavian contribution to medieval microtoponymic vocabulary in two areas of northwest England, and it attempts to clarify what Scandinavian-derived place-name elements in minor names can tell us.