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Tenth century Archive
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Infant Burials and Christianization: The View from East Central Europe
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis was the second paper in the Early Medieval Europe I series given at KZOO and another fabulous archaeology paper. It contrasted infant grave sites in early converted medieval Poland and Anglo Saxon England. -
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. -
Æthelflæd: Warrior Queen of Mercia
Posted on April 5, 2013 | No CommentsHer deeds are largely forgotten, but as Alex Burghart explains, Æthelfæd turned a cornered kingdom into a powerhouse that defeated the Welsh and the Vikings -
Sleep paralysis in medieval Persia – the Hidayat of Akhawayni
Posted on March 25, 2013 | No CommentsSleep paralysis, a rapid eye movement (REM) parasomnia, is characterized by a period of inability to perform voluntary movements at sleep onset (hypnagogic form) or upon awakening (hypnopompic form). -
Aelfthryth, Queen of England
Posted on March 12, 2013 | No CommentsIn researching medieval queens, I came across the story of a queen having all the elements of a fairy tale. Her name is Aelfthryth, the wife of King Edgar the Peaceable -
Narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThis dissertation investigates narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the bodies of holy men and women were constructed through such narratives and read in local appropriations of emblematic vitae and passiones. -
Notes on a private library in fourth/tenth-century Baghdad
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsStudies on medieval Arabic bibliophilia have mainly focussed on public and semi-public institutions, for some of which we have detailed information. Less is known about private libraries and their physical arrangement. This paper looks at the library of Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī (d. 335/947), which is described by the sources in unique terms, contextualising it with al-Ṣūlī’s own words on collecting and organizing books. -
Novgorod the Great in Baltic Trade before 1300
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsThe information on trade contacts between Novgorod and Scandinavian countries preserved in the works of Old Norse -
To Be A Prince In The Fourth/Tenth-Century Abbasid Court
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper explores one aspect of the personal world that constituted the fourth/ tenth century caliphal court by focusing on the life and career of the Abbasid prince Abu al-ʿAbbas, eldest son of the caliph al-Muqtadir (AH 295–320/CE 908–932). -
The Old English Rune Poem – Semantics, Structure, and Symmetry
Posted on February 17, 2013 | No CommentsThe later runic alphabets do, of course, follow the basic pattern of the earlier Germanic Fupark though considerably modified by the late eighth century, decreasing in the number of runes in Scandinavia whilst increasing in number in the runic alphabets of England. -
Hidden in Plain Sight: The “Pietre di Paragone” and the Preeminence of Medieval Measurements in Communal Italy
Posted on February 11, 2013 | No CommentsPropelled by an active engagement with measurements, the medieval communes devised a revolutionary method to preserve these measurements, which I call Pietre di Paragone. -
Basil II and the government of Empire (976-1025)
Posted on February 8, 2013 | No CommentsThe reign of Basil II (976-1025) is widely accepted as the apogee of medieval Byzantium. -
Marriage between King Harald Fairhair and Snæfriðr, and their Offspring: Mythological Foundation of the Norwegian Medieval Dynasty?
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsHistorians in Nordic countries since the turn of the twentieth century have become increasingly aware of the problem using these primary sources from earlier times, especially the sagas from the late twelfth- and thirteenth centuries, about three hundred years after Harald assumedly lived. It was Halvdan Koht(1873-1965)who introduced this point of view into Norwegian historiography, although some researchers, including Yngvar Nielsen, had cast doubt on the accuracy of the account before him. -
The Sack of Viking Limerick
Posted on January 20, 2013 | No CommentsThey carried of their jewels and their best property, and their saddles beautiful and foreign; their gold and their silver; their beautifully woven cloth of all colours and of all kinds... -
Aethelred the Unready
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsCalling Aethelred 'Unraed' could mean he was given bad counsel, he did not take advice from his counselors or that he himself was unwise. Perhaps all were true. Let’s look at the story and see. -
Abbo of Fleury: strategies for gaining influence and authority in tenth-century West Francia
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation analyzes how a tenth-century abbot, Abbo of Fleury (ca. 945 – 1004), used learnedness, church precedents, and intimations of heresy as strategies to renegotiate the bonds between powerful persons in order to increase his authority and influence within the church and kingdom of West Francia. -
Trickster, Convert, Martyr, Saint: Four Ways of Dying in Dudo of St. Quentin’s History of the Normans
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsI want to push this a bit further here and argue that Dudo was aiming to produce something that we might term sacramentary history, to show the three-fold interaction of the linear time experienced by fallen humanity, the cyclical time in which events are continually re-enacted and foreshadowed in the sacraments, and the unchanging eternity of time as experienced by God. -
The Ideology of the Feminine in Byzantine historical narrative: The role of John Skylitzes’ Synopsis of Histories
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No Comments"Who once sliced men more sharoly than the sword Is victim of a woman...Epitaph for Emperor Nicephoros II Phocas. -
The invasion of Scotland, 934
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe various conflicts and settlements in the period 920 to 945 are often considered inisolation but they are connected and also together form part of two longer-term processes -
The Meaning of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in the Tenth Century
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsThe Great Mosque of Cordoba is universally recognized as one of the most singular monuments of medieval architecture. Celebrated for its harmony, balance, dramatic use of light and decoration, and its overall unity and aesthetic sensitivity, the monument belongs to an established functional type, the hypostyle mosque, but amounts to more than a mere variant of this type. -
Lay Initiative in the Early Peace of God Movement
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsMary Skinner argues in her paper that that the laity were fully involved agents that supported the peace councils, and often took the initiative in trying to limit warfare. -
Conquest or Colonisation: The Scandinavians in Ryedale from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsThe study of settlement history has developed within the fields of history, archaeology and geography. As a result much of the work carried out in settlement studies has borrowed the research and conclusions of scholars from other disciplines. -
The Effects of the Mongol Empire on Russia
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper looks at the Mongol Empire's impacts on Russia in terms of religion, art, language, government, and the ultimate rise of Moscow. -
Furor Teutonicus: The View of the ‘Germans’ in Italy during the Reign of Emperor Frederick I, ‘Barbarossa’ (1152-90)
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No Comments“Medieval Europe did not love the Germans. The Italians hated them, the French admitted their courage, but detested their manners, the English were jealous of them, the Slavs both feared and hated them, while the Germans despised and contemned the Slavs.”16 But it is the Italian side I would like to concentrate on in this paper. Further, I do not wish to examine the reasons for the conflicts between 'Germans' and 'Italians' in this era, nor the events surrounding them. I will try to focus strictly on the views that were expressed about Germans in mediaeval Italy in general and during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa in particular. -
Death on the Dorset Ridgeway: a Viking Murder Mystery
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsAngela Boyle recounts the extraordinary archaeological discovery made in the summer of 2009 in Dorset in southwest England.