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Archeological and Historical Approaches to Complex Societies: The Islamic States of Medieval Morocco
Posted on March 20, 2013 | No CommentsWe postulate that during the Medieval period two widely different sociopolitical contexts existed, giving rise to diverse urban patterns. Most importantly, we argue that the second of these patterns represents a widespread situation that is inadequately treated in the literature. -
Scandinavian late Viking Age art styles as a part of the visual display of warriors in 11th-century Estonia
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsArtefacts decorated in Scandinavian Late Viking Age art styles have been known for a long time in the Estonian archaeological material, and were first published as early as 1914 by Max Ebert; a more comprehensive overview was given in 1929 by Birger Nerman. The finds include silver-plated and sometimes partially gilded weapons, as well as belt and scabbard fittings, plaques, and only a few pieces of jewellery. -
Rome During Avignon: Myth, Memory, and Civic Identity in Fourteenth-Century Roman Politics
Posted on February 19, 2013 | No CommentsBroadly conceived, my dissertation examines the traditions of popular government emerging spasmodically in the roughly two hundred and fifty years between the Roman senate’s 1143 revival, and the papacy’s definitive 1377 return to Rome from roughly seven decades in Avignon. The majority of my inquiry, however, is directed toward the much-understudied fourteenth century. -
Reconstruction of the diet in a mediaeval monastic community from the coast of Belgium
Posted on January 31, 2013 | No CommentsThe aim of the present article is to report the results of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on skeletons from a Belgian mediaeval population, and to look at variations in diet that may relate to age and social status. -
Body Mass and Body Mass Index estimation in medieval Switzerland
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsThe aim of the present study is to test the available BM estimation formulae based on the femoral head breadth (Auerbach and Ruff 2004, Grine et al. 1995, McHenry 1992, Ruff et al. 1991) on skeletal populations from medieval Switzerland and to reconstruct the BM and the BMI within a specific temporal and geographical setting. -
Heart burial in medieval and early post-medieval Central Europe
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsIn this chapter I will focus on heart burials as a particular version of this manner of dividing the dead body into different parts. I will discuss the development in Central Europe but also make a few comparisons with medieval England, as this area recently has been the subject of new work -
Transylvanian Identities in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsIdentity has become a subject of historical exploration as it is also one of the themes examined from the perspectives of various disciplines belonging to the social sciences such as sociology, psychology or anthropology. -
Sacrilege, Sacrifice and John Barbour’s Bruce
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No CommentsThe narrative accomplished on this plane is critical to the foundation, or re-foundation, of royal order after a usurpation, yet it is more than a dynastic expedient;3 rather, it is a story that, even as it bridges the gaps in credibility and legitimacy attendant upon a new royal line, primally reinforces the governing fictions of kingship as an institution. -
Anthropologist compares medieval lives, pre- and post-Black Death
Posted on September 6, 2012 | No Comments'The survivors were either tremendously lucky or there was something about them that made them better able to resist the Black Death or mount a really strong immune response to disease' -
Ancient DNA analysis indicates the first English lions originated from North Africa
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough the Royal Menagerie and its animals are known from documentary records, few physical re- mains survive (O’Regan et al., 2005). Amongst the rare exceptions are two lion skulls that were recovered from the moat of the Tower of London during excava- tions in 1936-1937. These skulls were recently radio- carbon-dated to AD1280-1385 and AD1420-1480. -
Medieval Urban Literacy: Questions and Possibilities
Posted on August 15, 2012 | No CommentsIn the Middle Ages, in towns one seems to have had more chance of being confronted with writing than elsewhere. Certain urban milieus participating in written culture, however, have caught the scholars’ attention more than others. Studies of the urban communes of northern Italy have suggested a direct link between the reception of the written word in daily life and the emergence of literate mentalities. -
Romanian-Saxon Intercultural Aspects in Braşov
Posted on June 24, 2012 | No CommentsThe most pertinent opinions can be expressed about this complex and subtle phenomenon not by appealing to the memory of documents and libraries, but living together in explicitly multi-cultural environments. -
Symbols of Protection: The Significance of Animal-ornamented Shields in Early Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on June 11, 2012 | No CommentsAnthropomorphic and zoomorphic decoration of shields can be evidenced, at least sporadically, from Roman to Viking times. While textual and pictorial information contributes to this knowledge, detailed archaeological analysis depends primarily on the survival of metal fittings. -
The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art: An Introduction
Posted on June 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis simplification is frankly astonishing when one considers the complex, multivalent and inventive iconographic contexts in which full or partial nakedness appears in medieval art. -
Beards: an archaeological and historical overview
Posted on June 10, 2012 | No CommentsIndeed, research suggests that the beard grows faster during periods when a man is sexually active, and some psychoanalysts claim that shaving is an act of auto-castration. -
The Significance of Feudal Law in Thirteenth-Century Law Codes
Posted on May 31, 2012 | No CommentsIn this thesis, I demonstrate the significance of feudal law to European populations and how it functions as a source of maintenance of peace and stability of land tenure. -
The Harsh Life on the 15th Century Croatia-Ottoman Empire Military Border: Analyzing and Identifying the Reasons for the Massacre in Cepin
Posted on April 4, 2012 | No CommentsTurkish intrusions into what is today the continental part of Croatia began in 1391 and continued throughout the 15th, and the beginning of the 16th century when a large part of continental Croatia was incorporated into the Turkish Empire. -
Going native, becoming German: Isotopes and identities in late Roman and early medieval England
Posted on March 8, 2012 | No CommentsIn these accounts, the individual and the group were biologically constituted in the sense that all the ‘people’ were descended from a common ancestor. Identity and belonging were carried and delivered in the blood; individuals were born into the people. -
Sex Differentials in Frailty in Medieval England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe sample used for this study comes from the East Smithfield Black Death cemetery in London. The benefit of using this cemetery is that most, if not all, individuals interred in East Smithfield died from the same cause within a very short period of time. -
Nations and National Identities in the Medieval World: An Apologia
Posted on January 30, 2012 | No CommentsLet us start with the concept and term 'nation' itself. In much modern discourse 'nation' and 'nationalism' have been given period-specific and pre- eminently political forms. -
Feuding in Viking Age Iceland’s Great Village
Posted on January 29, 2012 | No CommentsMy premise is that we come closest to understanding early Icelanders through a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, by focusing on their well-documented perception of themselves as a community and, on theother hand, through anthropological and historical analyses of the forces that shaped this perception. -
The Paleodemography of the Black Death 1347-1351
Posted on January 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe Black Death of 1347-50 has fascinated both researchers and lay people for over six hundred years1. The medieval epidemic had profound consequences both culturally and demographically and it did much to shape human history. -
Sacred, secular, or sacrilegious? prehistoric sites, pagans and the Sacred Sites project in Britain
Posted on December 23, 2011 | No CommentsThis paper introduces our Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights Project (www.sacredsites.or.uk), now in its fifth year, and explores issues and tensions developing within today's Britain around prehistoric 'sacred sites' and ‘heritage’, and their appropriation by a wide range of interested or concerned groups. -
Slavery and the slave trade in pre-colonial Africa
Posted on November 15, 2011 | No CommentsSlavery and the Slave Trade have been age old institutions and practices in almost every continent in the world. -
Evidence and Intuition: Making Medieval Instruments
Posted on October 2, 2011 | No CommentsEvidence and Intuition: Making Medieval Instruments Adelman, Beth Early Music America (Fall 2005) Abstract The Atlakvida (The Lay of Attila), an 8th-or early 9th-century story from the Old Icelandic Edda, contains...