The Pennsylvania State University Medieval Garden: Using a Specialized Garden as an Alternative Teaching and Learning Environment
Since its installation, various colleges within the university as well as community groups have used the garden as an alternative classroom for learning activities, educational demonstrations, and events related to the medieval period.
Agricultural wage labour in fifteenth-century England
In the period when agriculture dominated almost every aspect of daily life, the lords and wealthy peasants relied on paid labourers for farming business, yardlanders hired labourers to work with them, whilst moderate and landless villagers worked for hire. Agrarian wage labour is a window on the economy as well as on agricultural society.
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
What work did Viking slaves do?
‘Slave work in general was heavy and dirty’ explains Janken Myrdal in his article ‘Milking and Grinding, Digging and Herding: Slaves and Farmwork 1000-1300’.
Modern nationalism and the medieval sagas
Nineteenth-century romanticism had a special interest in both the medieval world and primitive, untainted rural culture. As the nineteenth century progressed and turned into the early twentieth, the Danes fell more and more under the nostalgic spell, tending to look upon the Icelanders through increasingly romantic and patronizing eyes
Plague And Changes In Medieval European Society And Economy In The 14th And 15th Centuries
Standards of hygiene in the Middle Ages appeared high enough to prevent diseases as medieval Europeans, contrary to popular beliefs, bathed quite often. However, contact with domestic animals, which were frequently kept in the part of the house reserved for human activity, exposed people to animal-related diseases passed to humans via insects.
Religious Orders and Growth through Cultural Change in Pre-Industrial England
The central hypothesis advanced in the present study is that the cultural virtues emphasized by Weber had a pre-Reformation origin in the religious Order of the Cistercians, a Catholic order which spread across Europe as of the 11th century, and that this monastic order served to stimulate growth during the second millennium by encouraging cultural change in local populations.
The Decline of the Cow: Agricultural and Settlement Change in Early Medieval Ireland
This article considers cows and dairying as the basis of value system in early societies, particularly in Ireland.
Innse Gall: Culture and Environment on a Norse Frontier in the Scottish Western Isles
The title of this paper encapsulates a central problem to be faced when looking at the notion of a frontier zone in the islands which fringe western mainland Scotland. It asks if the region was a „Norse frontier‟, yet the territorial designation of the kingdom which encompassed most of the maritime zone from Lewis in the north to Man in the south is given in its medieval Gaelic form.
Famine and Pestilence in the Irish Sea Region, 500–800 AD
Michelle Ziegler examines the questions on why does plagues seemed so much worse in the Middle Ages. Why did medieval populations die so much more frequently? Was it because of malnutrition?
The useful plants of the city of Ferrara (Late Medieval/Renaissance) based on archaeobotanical records from middens and historical/culinary/ethnobotanical documentation
Today the well preserved Medieval centre of Ferrara still has numerous household and kitchen gardens. Nevertheless, a significant number of these plants also have alimentary/medicinal uses, documented both in contemporary historic-literarybotanic sources, and in Italian ethnobotanical sources
The Oldest Danish Book about Gardening
Our knowledge about which plants were cultivated in Denmark in the antiquity and in the Middle Ages is still improving, because of new excavations, studies of archives, better dating methods and macro- and micro- fossil analyses in old cultural layers.
The Plants used in a Viking Age Garden A.D. 800-1050
Overpopulation in the Scandinavian countries created the Viking society, whose tradesmen, settlers and sea warriors had a considerable influences on the European countries. In return, influenced by what they saw, they brought back goods of all kinds, probably also seeds and posssibly plants.
The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy
The rabbit was a rare beast in medieval England, and much sought after for both its meat and its fur.
The North Italian Cotton Industry 1200-1800
The versatility of cotton and its adaptability to a wide range of climatic conditions ensured a steady demand among urban and rural consumers linked by extensive commercial networks.
Climate, environment and farming in Ireland during the last two millennia: insights from palaeoecology
Keynote presentation at ‘Study of Irish Historic Settlement, Climate, Environment, Settlement and Society: changing historic patterns in Ireland’ conference
A Quiet Revolution – The Horse in Agriculture, 1100-1500
The partnership of man and horse on the land goes back a long time, but, as John Langdon shows, it was not until after the Conquest that the horse really began to come into its own.
The cost of enclosure and the benefits of convertible husbandry among peasant holdings in medieval England
The present paper will attempt to address these issues and outline the attitudes of the peasantry in regard to the potential of enclosing land and adopting convertible husbandry.
The Cost of Capital and Medieval Agricultural Technique
A major purpose of this paper is to consider the consequences of high medieval interest rates on wages and production techniques. It is argued that the high capital costs of medieval times had an important role in shaping medieval agricultural institutions and production techniques, and must also have sharply reduced wages in medieval Europe.
Alternate fortunes? The role of domestic ducks and geese from Roman to Medieval times in Britain
In this paper the relative frequency of duck and goose bones found in archaeological sites of Roman and medieval times in Britain will be discussed.
Millstones for Medieval Manors
Richard Holt recently reminded us that mills were at the forefront of medieval technology and argued persuasively that windmills may have been invented in late twelfth-century England.
The Rectitudines singularum personarum: A Pre- and Post-Conquest Text
The most important extant document for our understanding of Anglo-Saxon manorial social structure is a text scholars call the Rectitudines singularum personarum
Communities and sustainability in medieval and early modern Aragon, 1200-1600
This paper examines the case of sheep raising in Aragon from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century to explore the political dynamics and social criteria that rural communities used to manage their common land, and their role in larger economic and political frameworks.