Historians have long believed that Offa’s Dyke was built in the late eighth-century, but new evidence suggests it might be 200 years older.
Leiðarvísir: Its Genre and Sources, with Particular Reference to the Description of Rome
April 13, 2014 By
For the last two centuries, Leiðarvísir has been the subject of great interest by scholars from a variety of disciplines: not only Old Norse scholars, but also historians, geographers, toponymists and scholars of pilgrimage have studied and analysed this work.
The emergence of concentrated settlements in medieval Western Europe: explanatory frameworks in the historiography
April 12, 2014 By
There is now a general scholarly consensus that the concentration of rural people into settlements in Western Europe (as opposed to dispersed or scattered habitations across the countryside) occurred in various stages between the eighth and twelfth centuries, though with regional divergences in precise timing, speed, formation, and intensity.
Call for Papers: Moving Women, Moving Objects (300-1500) (ICMA CAA 2015)
April 8, 2014 By
CFP: Moving Women, Moving Objects (300-1500) (ICMA CAA 2015)
The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem
March 23, 2014 By
This documentary takes a look at the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem – one of the largest and greatest atlases ever assembled.
The Crimea on the Map of South Sarmatia by Bernard Wapowski
March 4, 2014 By
The purpose of the present article is publication and analysis of the content of the map of the Crimea, practically unknown in Ukraine, which is a part of the map of the South Sarmatia of 1526 by ‘the father of the Polish Cartography’ Bernard Wapowski.
Arctic encounters between Norse and Natives
March 3, 2014 By
Contact between the Norse and Native peoples in Canada’s Arctic was more extensive and earlier than first believed, according to recent archaeological evidence.
Holy War and the home front : the crusading culture of Berry, France in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries
February 8, 2014 By
Le Berry, in the geographical centre of France, developed its own “crusading culture” that both affected the ideas of the people living there and effected new institutions and traditions in that society pertaining to the crusades.
Abandoned medieval settlement in Spain was devoted to growing grapes, archaeologists finds
January 1, 2014 By
Archaeologists have discovered an abandoned settlement in the Basque Country of Spain that seems to have been turned into a medieval version of a factory-farm in order to concentrate the cultivation of vineyards.
On the windy edge of nothing: Vikings in the North Atlantic World
December 29, 2013 By
With a focus upon the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, Kevin Edwards will present a select narrative of past and recent writings, archaeological enquiry and scientific research concerning the Norse settlement of the North Atlantic.
An early medieval symbol carved on a tree trunk: pathfinder or territorial marker?
December 23, 2013 By
The chance discovery of a carved symbol on a waterlogged tree of the six–ninth century AD may be the earliest mark on a living tree that has so far come to light.
Traveler’s Tips from the 14th Century: The Detours of Ibn Battuta
December 22, 2013 By
What advice can Ibn Battuta provide the globe-trotting public of the 21st century?
Why did Vinland fail?
November 26, 2013 By
Brigitta Wallace, one of the leading scholars on the Vikings in North America, examines why their settlements failed.
North America’s First Contact: Norse-Inuit Relations
November 18, 2013 By
The interaction between the Norse and Inuit was sparse, at times hostile, and could have possibly doomed the Greenland colonies to extinction.
Vínland and Wishful Thinking: Medieval and Modern Fantasies
November 12, 2013 By
Reevaluating the wishful reality of the Vinland islands requires that the stories of the Vinland journeys be squarely situated in the context of the world geographic system adopted by those who told those stories.
Medieval Fortress discovered in Ireland
October 15, 2013 By
‘There is no doubt in my mind that we are looking at a major, unstudied settlement.’
Pelagios Project to give better understanding of ancient and medieval maps
September 23, 2013 By
A collaborative project is bringing together maps and geographical texts from Antiquity and the Middle Ages in a new online database that will allow researchers and the general public to explore online the changing historical significance of many of the world’s most famous cities, as well as smaller urban centres.
Ten Beautiful Medieval Maps
July 28, 2013 By
Our list of the best medieval maps – ten maps created between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, which offer unique views into how medieval people saw their world.
The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Terry Jones and Patrick Geary
July 25, 2013 By
Filmed at the British Academy in London on July 1, 2013
Project uses GIS to map Jewish communities of the Byzantine Empire
June 5, 2013 By
Geographic information systems – once limited to the domain of physical geographers – are emerging as a promising tool to study the past, as researchers are discovering for medieval history.
The so-called Genoese World Map of 1457: A Stepping Stone Towards Modern Cartography?
May 18, 2013 By
Around the time of Christopher Columbus’s birth, we find on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in the north of Italy, a variety of people particularly interested in problems of geography and cartography.
‘Fromm thennes faste he gan avyse/This litel spot of erthe’: GIS and the General Prologue
May 2, 2013 By
This paper was given at the Canada Chaucer Seminar on April 27, 2013.
Queen of All Islands: The Imagined Cartography of Matthew Paris’s Britain
April 29, 2013 By
In the middle decade of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris drew four regional maps of Britain. The monk’s works stand as the earliest extant maps of the island and mark a distinct shift from the cartographic traditions of medieval Europe.
The European Reconquest of North Africa
April 14, 2013 By
The chief structural features of Africa Minor are simple. The territory consists of a long strip of land bounded on the north by the Mediterranean,on the south by the Sahara, on the east by the Gulf of Tripoli and the Libyan Desert, on the west by the Atlantic.
Here there be no dragons: Maravilla in Two Fifteenth-Century Spanish libros de viajes
April 1, 2013 By
Monsters, anthropomorphs, and marvels are common ingredients in medieval travel literature, and even narratives of real medieval journeys include these creatures, to the delight of the reading audience.
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