Daily Life Archive
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Feasting with Early Medieval Chiefs: Locating Political Action through Environmental Archaeology
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis excellent paper was the first given in the session on Early Medieval Europe. It looked at various archaeological excavations in Iceland and Denmark and the political role feasting played in pre-Christian Viking societies. -
Acquiring, Flaunting and Destroying Silk In Late Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on May 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper will argue that vibrantly coloured silks and other elaborate textiles were ubiquitous in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. -
A History Of Personal Hygiene
Posted on April 21, 2013 | No CommentsAllan Gregg interviews Katherine Ashenburg, the author of The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History -
The Roots of Rhythm: The Medieval Origins of the New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Beignet
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper argues that the beloved Mardi Gras beignet, eaten in advance of the Lenten fast, derives from deep-fried pastries used to break the Ramadan fast by medieval Muslims living in Spain. -
Cottage Gardening in the 14th Century England
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsAs a student member of this research project, I spent my fall semester investigating various aspects of 14th century English agriculture and cottage gardening and blogged regularly about my findings to exchange information with the other project members. -
Did people in the Middle Ages take baths?
Posted on April 13, 2013 | No CommentsA closer look shows that baths and bathing were actually quite common in the Middle Ages, but in a different way than one might expect. -
New Towns in Medieval France and Nature of Institutions
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsIn its early stages, a new town was a village community created by a central authority (king or overlord) on his wildland to meet the needs of growing populations and to further both its own benefits and the common interests of the inhabitants. -
Making Good Scents: Fragrance in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsIf asked to imagine the smell of the medieval world, most people would probably crinkle their nose in disgust. The Middle Ages have a reputation for being one of the smelliest periods in history. -
The Medieval Calendar
Posted on March 13, 2013 | No CommentsCalendars used during the Middle Ages were very different from the simple calendars we use today. In the middle ages people experienced time very differently. For those who could decipher it the medieval calendar was a map of the church year. -
Contemplating the Evolution of Medieval Double-Entendre Literature
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe linguistic composition of the Exeter Book Riddles supports this, and in fact, the genre became a refuge for contemporary colloquial speech which was seen as coarse and lower class within the ideologies of Christianity and Germanic heroism. -
Elite and government in medieval Leiden
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe development of Leiden's 61ite is traced up to 1420. The siege of the city in that year and the assumption of power by Jan van Beieren resulted in important changes in the urban government: the faction of the Hoeken finally lost ascendancy and the viscount of Leiden ceased to have control over the city's administration. -
The Prudent Village: Risk Pooling Institutions in Medieval English Agriculture
Posted on March 9, 2013 | No CommentsThe prudent peasant chose to scatter his farm fields to protect himself and his family from idiosyncratic agricultural shocks because better alternatives did not exist. Peasants had no better way of protecting themselves from idiosyncratic agricultural shocks. -
Widows in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsOwing to a fairly large number of mainly vernacular codes of law that have survived, we are in a position to see at least how in legislation the position of women in general, but also of widows in particular, was defined. -
Personal’ Rituals: The Office of Ceremonies and Papal Weddings, 1483-1521
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsThis analysis reveals the increasing involvement of papal ceremonialists in the preparation and supervision of wedding events,5 highlighting the ceremonialists’ own broad definition of their mandate and a pragmatic approach to the boundaries of papal ritual. -
Fashion of Middle England and its Image in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsFashion of Middle England and its Image in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Petra Štěpánková Bachelor Thesis, Masaryk University – Brno, Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, Brno (2012)... -
A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, 1000 to 1600
Posted on February 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis book examines the ordinary, routine, daily behaviour, experiences and beliefs of people in Scotland from the earliest times to 1600. -
The Progression of the Fork: From Diabolical to Divine
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper is about 'Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005' curated as part of the Cooper Hewitt exhibit on utensils. -
Animals in Medieval Sports, Entertainment, and Menageries
Posted on February 3, 2013 | No CommentsWe shall see that apes, marmosets, and popinjays were hardly the only kinds of animals pressed into service as entertainers for medieval people, for virtually every common European animal - and a large number of exotic imported species as well - took some part, large or small, in games, spectacles, menageries, performances, tournaments, and displays. -
The Regular Canons and the Use of Food, c. 1200–1350
Posted on January 31, 2013 | No CommentsWe are greatly handicapped by the lack of material available to us for this period. By and large, household accounts which provide gross details of quotidian diet elude us. However, to recover the everyday diet of the canons, one useful approach is to examine corrodies and study the assumptions there, by way of analogy, with what can be inferred as normal consumption by canons. -
Awkward Adolescents: Male Maturation in Norse Literature
Posted on January 25, 2013 | No CommentsAlthough medieval masculinities have become a subject of scholarly interest, there has been relatively little discussion of the transition in Old Norse until very recently. -
How to have a Renaissance Hairstyle
Posted on January 24, 2013 | No CommentsA video showing how to recreate a Renaissance hairstyle from early sixteenth-century Flanders. -
Dealing with rubbish in a medieval town: a ceramic case study
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsHow was rubbish perceived or categorized? -
Scottish saints cults and pilgrimage from the Black Death to the Reformation, c.1349-1560
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis will question this premise and provide the first indepth study of the cults of St Andrew, Columba of Iona/Dunkeld, Kentigern of Glasgow and Ninian of Whithorn in a late medieval Scottish context, as well as the lesser known northern saint, Duthac of Tain. -
The Beginning of Card Games
Posted on January 14, 2013 | No CommentsRecords of card playing begin to appear in Europe about the year 1300. The cards in use in the preceding century were in the hands of the wandering gypsies who came across the mountains of southern Europe, from whence no one knew. -
TROUBLESOME CHILDREN IN THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsIt must be stressed that the concept of childhood is certainly not an easy one. One is tempted to ask whether any generalisations about medieval or modern attitudes to childhood might not pose problems.
