Medieval Silkworm Farming: A Global Perspective
How silkworms have influenced trade and agriculture throughout the world in a story spanning millennia.
Farming with Charms in the Middle Ages
By Kathryn Walton When medieval farmers were faced with a particularly difficult problem, they would turn to magic for a solution. Medieval farmers used…
Who were the peasants in the Middle Ages?
Our new columnist Lucie Laumonier explains the four common characteristics of what is a peasant in the Middle Ages.
The Zanj Revolt: A Slave War in Medieval Iraq
After generations of oppression, an army of slaves rose up to challenge the Abbasid Caliphate.
What was farming like in medieval Iceland?
How did Icelanders build and run farms in the Middle Ages?
The Macclesfield Cattle Enterprise of Edward the Black Prince, and why it failed, 1354 to 1376
Most of the Macclesfield cattle were not bought, but transferred from other places on the prince’s estates. One major source at the beginning was the other manors of the earldom in Cheshire as cattle farming was wound up in them, mostly from Frodsham and some from Drakelow and Shotwick
The Templar Lands in Lincolnshire in the Early Fourteenth Century
The focus of the study is the Templar estates in Lincolnshire during the first four decades of the fourteenth century. Within this context, two themes are explored: the characteristics of Templar farming and estate management and the fate of the former Templar properties between 1312 and 1338.
Was a lease effective as a weapon of lordship? The use of documents in the principality of Salerno (10th-11th Century)
This paper attempts to examine the strategic use of the agrarian contracts by the landlords of the principality of Salerno in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
Beekeeping from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages
Beekeeping from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages By Gene Kritsky Annual Review of Entomology, 2017. 62:249–64 Humans and honey bees have a long history…
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.
Fish on Friday III: From Fish Weir to Table
It’s no mystery that medieval people ate fish. The fish industry was a vital element of the medieval European economy, and fueled lots of movement around the continent. However how did they get onto the trestle tables and trenchers?
Book Review: Occupying Space in Medieval and Early Modern Britain and Ireland
Our review of ‘Occupying Space in Medieval and Early Modern Britain and Ireland’
Livestock and animal husbandry in early medieval England
Major themes in the zooarchaeological record regarding livestock and animal husbandry in England from the 5th to 11th Centuries AD are reviewed.
Medieval Beekeeping
All about bees and beekeeping from the 10th century.
Medieval Pest Control
Have a pest troubling you? In the Middle Ages, you could try these remedies to get rid of them – poisons, traps, or even writing a letter to them!
Human-Bovine Plagues in the Early Middle Ages
In other words, when spreading among cattle, a now-extinct morbillivirus episodically colonized and spread in human populations during the early Middle Ages.
Study reveals size of livestock were at their lowest in Early Middle Ages
A new study, covering the last 2000 years of livestock animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, has revealed that in Spain these animals were at their smallest size during the 8th and 9th centuries.
Environmental Crusading: The Teutonic Knight’s Impact After the Baltic Crusades
Environmental archaeologist and Professor of Archeology at Reading, Dr. Aleks Pluskowski, examined Malbork and several other sites across Eastern and Northern Europe in his recent paper, The Ecology of Crusading: The Environmental Impact of Holy War, Colonisation, and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic. Pluskowski is keenly interested in the impact the Teutonic Knights and Christian colonisation had on the region. His ambitious 4 year project on the ecological changes in this area recently came to a close at the end of 2014.
Medieval Horse Stable: The Results of Multi Proxy Interdisciplinary Research
A multi proxy approach was applied in the reconstruction of the architecture of Medieval horse stable architecture, the maintenance practices associated with that structure as well as horse alimentation at the beginning of 13th century in Central Europe.
The imperial abbey of Ellwangen and its peasants: a study of the polyptych of 1337
This paper presents an analysis of Ellwangen Abbey’s polyptych of 1337, with a view to understanding better the nature of the south German rural economy in this period.
A peasant is a peasant, is a peasant? : Medieval Maritime Peasant Lives
A peasant is a peasant, is a peasant…or is s/he? Was the life of a peasant who lived in the coastal regions of England the same as that of the peasant who made his livelihood toiling on the land for his local lord?
Of sagas and sheep: Toward a historical anthropology of social change and production for market, subsistence and tribute in early Iceland
This dissertation deals with the formation of chiefdoms, communities, ecclesiastical institutions and state, and with production for market, subsistence and tribute in early Iceland in the context of climatic change and ecological succession.
The Importance of Parks in Fifteenth-Century Society
In this paper, my aim is to consider the role of parks in the fifteenth century.
Profile of a Plant: The Olive in Early Medieval Italy, 400-900 CE
The essay illuminates some of the ways that early medieval Italian communities engaged their environmental inheritance, how they recast the stolid olive to fit local contingencies.
The Contours, Frequency and Causation of Subsistence Crises in Carolingian Europe (750-950)
The Contours, Frequency and Causation of Subsistence Crises in Carolingian Europe (750-950) Timothy P. Newfield Crisis Alimentarias en la Edad Media: Modelos, Explicaciones…