Primstav and Apocalypse Time and its Reckoning in Medieval Scandinavia
This work is intended as an exploration of methods of time-reckoning and conception in Medieval Scandinavia. In the main this is tied to the dynamism between a duality: that of the cyclical and linear models of time‟s progression. Involved in this study are sources verbal and pictoral.
New study to look at Norse farming on the Orkney Isles
A year-long study will begin this fall that will look look at herding economies in the Orkney Isles from the 8th to the 15th century AD.
The role of goat in English medieval husbandry and economy
This paper presents a summary of an on-going PhD project that aims to re-assess the role of goats in the medieval economy and society of England.
The emergence of concentrated settlements in medieval Western Europe: explanatory frameworks in the historiography
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.
Bastard Feudalism in England in the Fourteenth Century
As this summary indicates, the study of fifteenth-century bastard feudalism has shown the necessity of exploring both the private relationship – its nature, extent and function – and the public system of local rule within which it operated and of which it was an essential part.
How to defraud your lord on the medieval manor
Here are six ways to commit fraud explained by Robert Carpenter in the 13th century.
Tenure to Contract: Lordship and Clientage in Thirteenth-Century England
English historians have increasingly stressed the underlying continuity between feudalism and ‘bastard feudalism.’ Indentured retaining is no longer seen as a corrupted and disruptive form of feudalism, but instead as its ‘logical successor.’
Pruning Peasants: Private War and Maintaining the Lords’ Peace in Late Medieval Germany
‘Peasants are best when they grieve, and worst when they rejoice.’
Environmental Effects in the Agriculture of Medieval Egypt
Agriculture has been the main source of the economy for all dynasties established in Egypt and the Mamluk kingdom was no exception.
Ragnhild Simunsdatter and women’s social and economic position in Norse society
In this paper I will focus on Norse women’s social and economic position in the high and late Middle Ages, with Ragnhild Simonsdatter and the Papa Stour document of 1299 as a point of departure.
Commons in the late medieval Crown of Aragon: Regulation, uses and conflicts, 13th-15th centuries
In this paper, we shall show some characteristics of the use of pastures and commons in the Crown of Aragon between the thirteen and fifteenth centuries.
Managing the Commons: The role of the elites in the uses of common lands in the Midlands of the kingdom of Valencia during the Middle Ages
In a recent paper, Danie Curtis has given a framework for classifying preindustrial societies in accordance with four variables, these are, the property, the power, the market of basic products and the modes of production.
Learning by doing or expert knowledge? Technological innovations in dike-building in coastal Flanders (13th-18th centuries AD)
Dike construction apparently uses simple technology, with slow and gradual change; not the kind of technology that reshaped the material conditions of living, comparable to the spread of electricity or sanitation in the 19th century ‘networked’ city (and linked to the disciplining of society and the rise of domesticity and the modern self-reflexive individual) (often inspired by Latour and Foucault).
The Black Death, Economic and Social Change and the Great Rising of 1381 in Hertfordshire
What drove medieval people to such desperation that they felt they had no other course of action other than revolt? Was this a spontaneous reaction to a perceived injustice or a desperate response to years of simmering resentment?
The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
Life for the revolutionary peasants was structured by feudal ties and obligations. The villein was tied to the soil until he could buy his freedom. He lived in a wattle and daub hut with his family and animals on a floor of mud. Work began at dawn on his few (often separated) strips of land; he was obligated to work on his lord’s land three days a week, tend and shear his sheep, feed his swine, and sow and reap his crops.
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40,…
The Trends Toward Serfdom in Mediaeval England
The bald theory of progressive subjection during Anglo-Saxon times does not appear possible of definition; and even as a hypothesis, it would seem inadequate.
Grain Prices in Cairo and Europe in the Middle Ages
How did price levels and trends in Cairo compare to those in Europe?
Into the frontier: medieval land reclamation and the creation of new societies. Comparing Holland and the Po Valley, 800-1500
In the paper it is shown that medieval land reclamation led to the emergence of two very divergent societies, characterised by a number of different configurations; (a) power and property structure, (b) modes of exploitation, (c) economic portfolios, and (d) commodity markets.
Peasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent
Peasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent By Donald R. Abbott Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 11…
Medieval Europeans and their Aquatic Ecosystems
Purposeful medieval fish-catching activities combined with unintended consequences of large-scale agricultural, urban, and commercial development during the Middle Ages to affect, separately and together, aquatic ecosystems and their component fish species in demonstrable ways.
Organized Collective Violence in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Tuscan Countryside: Some Case Studies from Central and North Eastern Tuscany
Violence is often thought of as a characteristic of all medieval societies. How such societies chose to exercise this violence is therefore a good, and understudied, way into understanding the basic rules about how they worked. Concentrating on twelfth and thirteenth century Tuscany, my intention is to show that a specific form of violence, namely organized collective violence, was not an option available to all social groups within the medieval rural society of northern Italy…
The Heavy Plough and the Agricultural Revolution in Medieval Europe
This research tests the long-standing hypothesis, put forth by Lynn White, Jr., that the adoption of the heavy plough in northern Europe led to increased population density and urbanization
The Ecology and Economics of Medieval Deer Parks
There is a wealth of literature on a diversity of aspects of medieval parks, from their invertebrate ecologies, to rare lichens and bryophytes, to their herds of deer, their fishponds, and to the politics of fashion and taste and the provision of sport and entertainment for an affluent elite.