Daily Life Archive
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A good riddance of bad rubbish? Scatological musings on rubbish disposal and the handling of ‘filth’ in medieval and early post-medieval towns
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsWhat did people do with their rubbish, what does the material contained in these pits actually signify, and how representative of what would have been in use on these sites are the material assemblages recovered from these contexts? -
Beyond fragments and shards: Children in medieval Bergen
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsBy analysing physical remains reflecting the games, behaviour and clothing of children (specifically toys and shoes) it has been possible to obtain new information and shed new light on the everyday life of children in medieval Bergen -
The weir and the flowing earthworks of Bedford
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsSurprisingly 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. -
A Moorish Sheet of Playing Cards
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsExamining medieval playing cards from Spain and Italy. -
The Black Death And The Future Of Medicine
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper will specifically focus on the effects of the Black Death on medicine and medical practice in Europe. Its purpose is to investigate the Black Death’s influence on medicine, especially with regard to learned medicine and surgery. -
Tasting Histories Lecture: “Seasonal and Local Dining in the Middle Ages”
Posted on November 30, 2012 | No CommentsThis was a paper given at the University of Toronto by Yale Professor, Paul freedman, on food during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. -
Archaeological dig in Northern Ireland uncovers huge haul of medieval artefacts
Posted on November 29, 2012 | No CommentsArchaeologists have been impressed by the huge treasure trove of artefacts that have been discovered so far during excavations of a crannog in Northern Ireland. -
Spectacularizing Justice in Late Medieval England
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsI use the word ritual because in cases of treachery use of a general ‘script’ as ordered by these two accounts emerges with surprising frequency in England in the late 13th and early 14th century. -
Noble and Urban Family-Structures in the Late Middle Ages in the Hungarian Kingdom
Posted on November 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe everyday life of the clan people was filled with disputes over small plots, since it was the main duty of each generation to preserve and enlarge the lands of the clan. It was also the basic interest of the members of the clans to secure the survival of the clan by marriages that were fertile in every sense. It was a sign of the strength of the clan that the members had to consult before taking decisions in questions of marriage, inheritance. -
Beyond chicken: avian biodiversity in a Portuguese late medieval urban site
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsBetween 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. -
Medieval Book History Week Lecture: “Practical Latin and Formal English in the 14th-15th Centuries”
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis lecture is part of Medieval Book History Week. Renown Professor Jeremy Catto spoke about literacy and language in England during the later Middle Ages at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto. -
The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsDiscover what the Isle of Lewis chessmen can tell us about the development of chess as both a game and an art form. -
Female Dress in Cyprus during the Medieval Period
Posted on November 11, 2012 | No CommentsCyprus offers ample evidence for the way people dressed in medieval times. Such testimony is preserved in a variety of media: frescoes, icons, effigial slabs and manuscripts. -
“Engineers of the Angevin Empire (1154-1242)”
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper was also featured in SESSION III: The Medieval Experience of Siege at the Haskins conference. It explained the importance and contributions of Angevin engineers during the twelfth century. -
“How Could You Recognise a Member of the Merchant Guild in Saint-Omer around 1100?”
Posted on November 5, 2012 | No CommentsThis is another summary of a Haskins conference paper given in the session entitled: SESSION II: Who Do They Think They Are?. It deals with the customs of the guild of Saint-Omer -
Medieval Snuff Drama
Posted on October 29, 2012 | No CommentsThis was the piece that led to Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends. Over a decade later, I still find it fascinating that the Middle Ages had its own snuff stories, along with a host of other legends about all those mysterious things that never really happen at the theater . . . but people still believe them anyway. The medieval folklore puts to shame even all those legends about "method actors" going mad while playing madness. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. -
Coptic Conversion and the Islamization of Egypt
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsMost recently, Tamer el-Leithy has made a comprehensive study of Coptic conversion during the Mamluk period. In length and depth, this still-unpublished work eclipses the preceding article-length studies. Its subject is focused on conversion among the Coptic upper class in Cairo during the fourteenth century... -
Bishopstone, Sussex – A Quiet, Rural Anglo-Saxon Village? What the Human Remains Tell Us
Posted on October 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe primary aim of this text is the analysis and report of the skeletal human remains from the excavation of the late Anglo-Saxon settlement and cemetery at Bishopstone, East Sussex. The analysis of the skeletal remains covered the basic data: sex, age, stature, palaeopathology and dental pathology. -
Coptic Dress In Egypt: The Social Life Of Medieval Cloth
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsCoptic textiles in most collections present a very rich iconography, somewhat derived from classical traditions, which has also attracted the attention of art historians. Very little of their work, however, has made any headway in our understanding of the contemporaneous meanings of Coptic textile images and other decorations. -
The archaeological evidence for equestrianism in early Anglo-Saxon England, c.450-700
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsMost of our evidence is drawn from the funerary record,and more specifically from the rite of horse inhumation,or the provision of horse equipment as a grave good. Insacrificing horses to accompany the dead the Anglo-Saxon elite were doubtless influenced by Continental burial theatre, where the rite is to be observed at itsmost explicit. -
The Disposal of Human Waste: A comparison between Ancient Rome and Medieval London
Posted on October 11, 2012 | No CommentsThis essay examines the waste disposal options used in Ancient Rome and Medieval London, two cities that dealt with sewage in different ways. -
Dining at King’s College in the 15th century
Posted on October 8, 2012 | No CommentsPerhaps unsurprisingly, fish and seafood formed a major component in the diet of the fellows and scholars. -
Cultural Identity and Dress: The Case of Late Byzantine Court Costume
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsAt the earliest stages of its development, ceremonial costume was often a more ornate and luxurious version of contemporary attire. It's use in a ritual context, however, resulted in its becoming imbued with a symbolic significance, a significance that epitomized the political and religious ideology of the state in general and the self perception of the ruling class in particular. -
Iron Smelting in Vinland
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsAny former iron smelting site presents a special problem for archaeologists. The process of converting iron rich ore into a working iron bar requires a complex series of steps. Each separate function is most likely to be undertaken by heavily modifying the previous equipment set up. Unfortunately for the archaeologist, the evidence of those important earlier stages is certain to be blurred, if not totally obliterated, by later steps. It will be the very last part of the whole process which alone remain as evidence. -
Townscape as text: the topography of social interaction in Fethard, county Tipperary, AD 1300-1700
Posted on October 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe idea that complex social order in the past can be ‘read’ in the built environment, and indeed in material culture - tangible artefacts and landscape phenomena - in general, is a foundation of contemporary archaeology and historical geography.
