This thesis challenges the extremes of both environmental determinism and the modernist perspective that humanity exists in social and/or cultural isolation from the natural environment.
Animal keeping and the use of animal products in medieval Emden (Lower Saxony, Germany)
December 20, 2012 By
This thesis deals with the faunal remains from several excavations in the centre of the medieval town of Emden (Lower Saxony, Germany; Figure 1-1). The aim of this thesis is to answer questions concerning the development of animal husbandry and the use of animal products in the medieval period.
The weir and the flowing earthworks of Bedford
December 9, 2012 By
Surprisingly few urban dwellers today know in which direction their local river flows. Which way is upstream and which downstream? Such knowledge, once so crucial, no longer has much significance for town inhabitants. Other flows – of electricity, gas and oil – now provide most of the energy that the town needs.
Plague, Settlement and Structural Change at the Dawn of the Middle Ages
December 5, 2012 By
Calculations on the number of inhabitants during these centuries are, however, impossible to make. The most famous attempt, by J.C. Russell, is, as will be revealed below, not satisfying. Using results from other studies, like those referred to above, Russell assumed hypothetical population figures without any real empirical evidence.
Market Failure during the Great Famine in England and Wales (1315-7)
November 29, 2012 By
While there can be little doubt that the floods of 1314-6 were the primary harbingers of the crisis, it is, perhaps, worth asking to what extent they were the only factors behind the hardship experienced between 1315 and 1317.
Beyond chicken: avian biodiversity in a Portuguese late medieval urban site
November 14, 2012 By
Between 2003 and 2004, prior to the construction of an underground parking in the Avenue Miguel Fernandes, an archaeological rescue excavation was carried out by a team of archaeologists from the company Crivarque…The excavations uncovered 137 silos, of which 109 were fully excavated. The high concentration of silos turned out to be the most striking find of the archaeological works.
Flemings in the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381
November 14, 2012 By
While the Peasants’ Revolt has been studied in depth by generations of medieval historians, the same cannot be said of England’s foreign-born inhabitants, and the largest group among these, the so-called Flemings (a term which was also applied to those from other principalities in the Low Countries besides Flanders).
The pattern of settlement on the Welsh border
October 28, 2012 By
The attempt made in this paper to answer these questions will be based almost entirely on Welsh evidence. The English evidence, examined and re- examined since the late nineteenth century, is already sufficiently familiar to members of the British Agricultural History Society.
The Coleridge Hundred and its Medieval Court
October 28, 2012 By
Where possible, I have given examples of the earliest type of court documented, with examples of the type of case heard, and by whom they were heard, concentrating on the Manorial and Mayor’s Courts, which are the best documented, and whose Rolls nave been translated by the authors of my chief sources of reference.
Modelling Population and Resource Scarcity in Fourteenth-century England
October 26, 2012 By
Hallam argues that the steady population rise of the 12th and 13th centuries may not have been the main cause of the crisis of the 14th century. First, unprecedented harvest failures and animal diseases between 1315 and 1322 had significant adverse effects on peasant welfare.
Managing tithes in the late middle ages
October 23, 2012 By
Tithe represented a diversion to religious uses of around one-tenth of England’s agricultural wealth.
Irrigation and taxation in Iraq 6th to 10th Century
October 20, 2012 By
Water management was crucial for agriculture in Iraq. The delicate ecological balance that allowed high soil productivity could be seriously threatened by irresponsible land administration.
The Lands and ‘Sisterlands’ of Aberdour, c.1100-1650
October 13, 2012 By
Of the lands in Aberdour, we begin in very uncertain time long before the Sisterlands became such and a period from which few documents are available. It is thought that shortly after 1100 some of the lands in what was later to become the burgh of Aberdour came to be held by a Norman-French family, the Viponts.
Technological Change in Medieval England: A Critique of the Neo-Malthusian Argument
October 13, 2012 By
The last two sections will address this issue by dividing the material into two periods preceding and following the great epidemic. The interpretation that will be provided is heavily indebted to Brenner.
Settlement and Field Structures in continental North-West Europe from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries
October 10, 2012 By
Since the eighties and increasingly during the nineties there has been a renewed interest on the continent in medieval rural settlement, mainly among archaeologists and geographers
A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great
October 4, 2012 By
Despite their isolation and poverty, the Slavic plowmen succeeded in settling this unforgiving region, expanding their numbers, and, most importantly, creating the beginnings of a trading network along the many rivers of the region—the western Dvina, the Volkhov, the northern Dvina, and the Dniepr and its tributaries.
The Gallic Aristocracy and the Roman Imperial government in the fifth century A.D.
September 23, 2012 By
The recovery, however, proved to be too superficial for the continuing prosperity of either Gaul or the Western Roman Empire. The problems of the imperial government continued with little relief. The government still had to drive out and keep out the barbarians…
“A Swarm in July”: Beekeeping Perspectives on the Old English Wið Ymbe Charm
September 14, 2012 By
At the same time, however, their differing responses to the remedy attest both to the variation of beekeeping practices and the multivalence of Wið Ymbe itself. The fact that two beekeepers interviewed within two days and two hundred miles of each other can respond differently to the charm’s advice on swarms suggests that we reevaluate unilateral assertions regarding what the text might have meant across the hundreds of years that we now know as the Anglo-Saxon period.
How Great Was the Great Famine of 1314-22: Between Ecology and Institutions
September 7, 2012 By
The first aspect to be examined is the extent of harvest failures within different crop sectors. The second issue is to what degree was the Great Famine of 1314-22 a subsistence crisis…My project is based on over 3,000 manorial and monastic accounts compiled between c.1310 and 1350.
The Pennsylvania State University Medieval Garden: Using a Specialized Garden as an Alternative Teaching and Learning Environment
September 5, 2012 By
Since its installation, various colleges within the university as well as community groups have used the garden as an alternative classroom for learning activities, educational demonstrations, and events related to the medieval period.
Agricultural wage labour in fifteenth-century England
August 22, 2012 By
In the period when agriculture dominated almost every aspect of daily life, the lords and wealthy peasants relied on paid labourers for farming business, yardlanders hired labourers to work with them, whilst moderate and landless villagers worked for hire. Agrarian wage labour is a window on the economy as well as on agricultural society.
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
August 19, 2012 By
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
What work did Viking slaves do? New research looks at slavery in medieval Scandinavia
August 16, 2012 By
‘Slave work in general was heavy and dirty’ explains Janken Myrdal in his article ‘Milking and Grinding, Digging and Herding: Slaves and Farmwork 1000-1300′.
Modern nationalism and the medieval sagas
August 5, 2012 By
Nineteenth-century romanticism had a special interest in both the medieval world and primitive, untainted rural culture. As the nineteenth century progressed and turned into the early twentieth, the Danes fell more and more under the nostalgic spell, tending to look upon the Icelanders through increasingly romantic and patronizing eyes
Feasting And The Culture of Anglo-Saxon Food
August 5, 2012 By
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the most common crops grown in Anglo-Saxon England were wheat and barley.
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