Download or read book The Long Morning of Medieval Europe written by Jennifer R. Davis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent advances in research show that the distinctive features of high medieval civilization began developing centuries earlier than previously thought. The era once dismissed as a "Dark Age" now turns out to have been the long morning of the medieval millennium: the centuries from AD 500 to 1000 witnessed the dawn of developments that were to shape Europe for centuries to come. In 2004, historians, art historians, archaeologists, and literary specialists from Europe and North America convened at Harvard University for an interdisciplinary conference exploring new directions in the study of that long morning of medieval Europe, the early Middle Ages. Invited to think about what seemed to each the most exciting new ways of investigating the early development of western European civilization, this impressive group of international scholars produced a wide-ranging discussion of innovative types of research that define tomorrow's field today. The contributors, many of whom rarely publish in English, test approaches extending from using ancient DNA to deducing cultural patterns signified by thousands of medieval manuscripts of saints' lives. They examine the archaeology of slave labor, economic systems, disease history, transformations of piety, the experience of power and property, exquisite literary sophistication, and the construction of the meaning of palace spaces or images of the divinity. The book illustrates in an approachable style the vitality of research into the early Middle Ages, and the signal contributions of that era to the future development of western civilization. The chapters cluster around new approaches to five key themes: the early medieval economy; early medieval holiness; representation and reality in early medieval literary art; practices of power in an early medieval empire; and the intellectuality of early medieval art and architecture. Michael McCormick's brief introductions open each part of the volume; synthetic essays by accomplished specialists conclude them. The editors summarize the whole in a synoptic introduction. All Latin terms and citations and other foreign-language quotations are translated, making this work accessible even to undergraduates. The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies presents innovative research across the wide spectrum of study of the early Middle Ages. It exemplifies the promising questions and methodologies at play in the field today, and the directions that beckon tomorrow.

Download or read book New Directions in Early Medieval European Archaeology written by Sauro Gelichi and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book of essays is dedicated to the memory of Riccardo Francovich, one of Europe’s most eminent Medieval archaeologists, who died in 2007. It began as a one-day conference held at the British School at Rome the day after Riccardo Francovich would have been 65 years old, on the 11 June 2011. The book takes as its core theme a comparison of Italian and Spanish Medieval Archaeology, in each case challenging the status quo and attempting to move the boundaries of our historical discussions ever forwards. The volume attempts to evaluate if the Medieval Archaeology of these two important Mediterranean countries, largely unfamiliar on the international stage, with their different ‘histories’, can be compared. To do this, a key moment in their formation is reviewed - the passage from the Ancient to the Medieval world. This approach highlights not only the identifi cation of singular conjunctures (the impact of the new ‘barbaric’ aristocracies on the social structures of the Roman world, and how Islam was established, for example, in the peninsula as in Sicily), but also parallel evolutions at the macro-structural level (for example, conditions in towns and the countryside). Taking the paradigm of fragmentation as a basic starting-point that characterizes the western world after the fall of the Roman Empire, it offers comparative archaeologies in terms of themes, but above all else in terms of shared methods."--

Download or read book Archaeology of the Mediterranean during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages written by Angelo Castrorao Barba and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Varied approaches to an overlooked time period in the history and archaeology of the Mediterranean This book presents multidisciplinary perspectives on Greece, Corsica, Malta, and Sicily from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries, an often-overlooked time in the history of the central Mediterranean. The research approaches and areas of specialization collected here range from material culture to landscape settlement patterns, from epigraphy to architecture and architectural decoration, and from funerary archaeology to urban fabric and cityscapes. Topics covered in these chapters include late Roman villas; the formation of Byzantine and Islamic settlements in western Sicily; reuse of protohistoric sites in late antiquity and the middle ages in eastern Sicily; early Christian landscapes and settlements in Corsica; the transition from late antiquity through Byzantine rule to Muslim conquest in Malta; trade network trajectories of the Aegean islands and Crete; and crosscultural interactions in medieval Greece. Together, these essays show the potential of post-Ancient and post-Classical archaeology, highlighting missing links between the Roman world and medieval Byzantium and broadening the horizons of new generations of archaeologists. Contributors: Carla Aleo Nero | Effie F. Athanassopoulos | Giuseppe Bazan | Amelia R. Brown | Gabriele Castiglia | Angelo Castrorao Barba | David Cardona | Santino Alessandro Cugno | Michael J. Decker | Franco Dell’Aquila | Scott Gallimore | Matt King | Rosa Lanteri | Pasquale Marino | Roberto Miccichè | Philippe Pergola | Filippo Pisciotta | Natalia Poulou | Grant Schrama | Claudia Speciale | Davide Tanasi

Download or read book Italy and Early Medieval Europe written by Ross Balzaretti and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey of recent work in Medieval Italian history and archaeology by an international cast of contributors, arranged within a broader context of studies on other regions and major historical transitions in Europe, c.400 to c.1400CE. Each of the contributors reflect on the contribution made to the field by Chris Wickham, whose own work spans studies based on close archival work, to broad and ambitious statements on economic and social change in the transition from Roman to medieval Europe, and the value of comparing this across time and space.

Download or read book The nEU Med project Vetricella an Early Medieval royal property on Tuscany s Mediterranean written by Giovanna Bianchi and published by All’Insegna del Giglio. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nEU-Med project is part of the Horizon 2020 programme, in the ERC Advanced project category. It began in October 2015 and the University of Siena is the host institution of the project. The project is focussed upon two Tuscan riverine corridors leading from the Gulf of Follonica in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Colline Metallifere. It aims to document and analyze the form and timeframe of economic growth in this part of the Mediterranean, which took place between the 7th and the 12thc. Central to this is an understanding of the processes of change in human settlements, in the natural and farming landscapes in relation to the exploitation of resources, and in the implementation of differing political strategies. This volume presents the multi-disciplinary research focussed upon the key site of the project, Vetricella, and its territory. Vetricella is thought to be the site of Valli, a royal property in the Tuscan march. It is the only Early Medieval property to be extensively studied in Italy. Located on Italy’s Tyrrhenian coast, the archaeology and history of this site provide new insights on estate management, metal production and wider Mediterranean relations in the later first millennium. Apart from reports on the archaeology, the finds from excavations and environmental studies, three essays consider the wider European historical and archaeological context of Vetricella. Future monographs will feature studies by members of the project team on aspects of Vetricella, its finds and territory.

Download or read book An Environmental History of Medieval Europe written by Richard Hoffmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and try to handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This groundbreaking environmental history examines medieval relationships with the natural world from the perspective of social ecology, viewing human society as a hybrid of the cultural and the natural. Richard Hoffmann's interdisciplinary approach sheds important light on such central topics in medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, urbanization and technology, as well as key environmental themes, among them energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. Revealing the role of natural forces in events previously seen as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, the 'tragedy of the commons', agricultural clearances and agrarian economies. By introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, it brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself.

Download or read book The Power of Cities written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Power of Cities focuses on Iberian cities during the lengthy transition from the late Roman to the early modern period, with a particular interest in the change from early Christianity to the Islamic period, and on to the restoration of Christianity. Drawing on case studies from cities such as Toledo, Cordoba, and Seville, it collects for the first time recent research in urban studies using both archaeological and historical sources. Against the common portrayal of these cities characterized by discontinuities due to decadence, decline and invasions, it is instead continuity – that is, a gradual transformation – which emerges as the defining characteristic. The volume argues for a fresh interpretation of Iberian cities across this period, seen as a continuum of structural changes across time, and proposes a new history of the Iberian Peninsula, written from the perspective of the cities. Contributors are Javier Arce, María Asenjo González, Antonio Irigoyen López, Alberto León Muñoz, Matthias Maser, Sabine Panzram, Gisela Ripoll, Torsten dos Santos Arnold, Isabel Toral-Niehoff, Fernando Valdés Fernández, and Klaus Weber.

Download or read book Essays on Production and Trade in Late Medieval Iberia and the Mediterranean written by Flávio Miranda and published by Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra / Coimbra University Press. This book was released on with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the tenth century on, technical and technological advancements in agriculture resulted in an unprecedented growth of cultivated land in Europe, which would contribute to a progressive integration of markets. This economic drive occurred during a time of profound political, social, and religious change. In certain parts of Europe, citystates emerged to become the standard form of polity, breaking away from previous ruling models and thrusting a new era of urban life and economic development. This period was also marked by the zenith of Islam throughout the Middle East, the Maghreb, and the Iberian Peninsula, with its people revolutionising agricultural production. Through specific case studies, this book aims to understand how these pieces of the medieval economy worked and evolved, how distinctive they were from one region to another, and what consequences local, regional, and international trade have had in people’s everyday lives.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe written by Felix Biermann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first comprehensive study of the material imprint of slavery in early medieval Europe. While written sources attest to the ubiquity of slavery and slave trade in early medieval British Isles, Scandinavia and Slavic lands, it is still difficult to find material traces of this reality, other than the hundreds of thousands of Islamic coins paid in exchange for the northern European slaves. This volume offers the first structured reflection on how to bridge this gap. It reviews the types of material evidence that can be associated with the institution of slavery and the slave trade in early medieval northern Europe, from individual objects (such as e.g. shackles) to more comprehensive landscape approaches. The book is divided into four sections. The first presents the analytical tools developed in Africa and prehistoric Europe to identify and describe social phenomena associated with slavery and the slave trade. The following three section review the three main cultural zones of early medieval northern Europe: the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Slavic central Europe. The contributions offer methodological reflections on the concept of the archaeology of slavery. They emphasize that the material record, by its nature, admits multiple interpretations. More broadly, this book comes at a time when the history of slavery is being integrated into academic syllabi in most western countries. The collection of studies contributes to a more nuanced perspective on this important and controversial topic. This volume appeals to multiple audiences interested in comparative and global studies of slavery, and will constitute the point of reference for future debates.

Download or read book Towns and Commerce in Viking Age Scandinavia written by Sven Kalmring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an interdisciplinary and geographically wide-ranging approach to understanding the emergence of towns and commerce in Viking-age Scandinavia and their eventual demise by the end of the period. It tracks the diverging characteristics of urban communities against the background of traditional social structures in the Viking world.

Download or read book Islamic Glass in the Making written by Nadine Schibille and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-31 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New insights into the history of Islamic glassmaking The ancient glass industry changed dramatically towards the end of the first millennium. The Roman glassmaking tradition of mineral soda glass was increasingly supplanted by the use of plant ash as the main fluxing agent at the turn of the ninth century CE. Defining primary production groups of plant ash glass has been a challenge due to the high variability of raw materials and the smaller scale of production. Islamic Glass in the Making advocates a large-scale archaeometric approach to the history of Islamic glassmaking to trace the developments in the production, trade and consumption of vitreous materials between the eighth and twelfth centuries and to separate the norm from the exception. It proposes compositional discriminants to distinguish regional production groups, and provides insights into the organisation of the glass industry and commerce during the early Islamic period. The interdisciplinary approach leads to a holistic understanding of the development of Islamic glass; assemblages from the early Islamic period in Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Egypt, Greater Syria and Iberia are evaluated, and placed in the larger geopolitical context. In doing so, this book fills a gap in the present literature and advances a large-scale approach to the history of Islamic glass.

Download or read book The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia written by Santiago Castellanos and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-11-13 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The structures of the late ancient Visigothic kingdom of Iberia were rooted in those of Roman Hispania, Santiago Castellanos argues, but Catholic bishops subsequently produced a narrative of process and power from the episcopal point of view that became the official record and primary documentation for all later historians. The delineation of these two discrete projects—of construction and invention—form the core of The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. Castellanos reads documents of the period that are little known to many Anglophone scholars, including records of church councils, sermons, and letters, and utilizes archaeological findings to determine how the political system of elites related to local communities, and how the documentation they created promoted an ideological agenda. Looking particularly at the archaeological record, he finds that rural communities in the region were complex worlds unto themselves, with clear internal social stratification little recognized by the literate elites.

Download or read book Formative Britain written by Martin Carver and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 1110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Formative Britain presents an account of the peoples occupying the island of Britain between 400 and 1100 AD, whose ideas continue to set the political agenda today. Forty years of new archaeological research has laid bare a hive of diverse and disputatious communities of Picts, Scots, Welsh, Cumbrian and Cornish Britons, Northumbrians, Angles and Saxons, who expressed their views of this world and the next in a thousand sites and monuments. This highly illustrated volume is the first book that attempts to describe the experience of all levels of society over the whole island using archaeology alone. The story is drawn from the clothes, faces and biology of men and women, the images that survive in their poetry, the places they lived, the work they did, the ingenious celebrations of their graves and burial grounds, their decorated stone monuments and their diverse messages. This ground-breaking account is aimed at students and archaeological researchers at all levels in the academic and commercial sectors. It will also inform relevant stakeholders and general readers alike of how the islands of Britain developed in the early medieval period. Many of the ideas forged in Britain’s formative years underpin those of today as the UK seeks to find a consensus programme for its future.

Download or read book Landscapes of Movement and Predation written by Brenda J. Bowser and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Landscapes of Movement and Predation is a global study of times and places where people were subject to brutality, displacement, and loss of life, liberty, livelihood, and possessions. Extensive landscapes of predation emerged in the colonial era when Europeans expanded across much of the world, appropriating land and demanding labor from Indigenous people, resulting in the enslavement of millions of Africans and Indigenous Americans. Landscapes of predation also developed in precolonial times in places where people were subjected to repeated ruthless attacks and dislocation. With contributions from archaeologists and a historian, the book provides a startling new perspective on an aspect of the past that is often overlooked: the role of violence in shaping where, how, and with whom people lived. Using ethnohistoric, ethnographic, historic, and archaeological data, the authors explore the actions of both predators and their targets and uncover the myriad responses people took to protect themselves. Contributors Fernando Almeida Thomas John Biginagwa Brenda J. Bowser Catherine M. Cameron Charles Cobb Robbie Ethridge Thiago Kater Richard M. Leventhal Lydia Wilson Marshall Cliverson Pessoa Neil Price Ben Raffield Andrés Reséndez Samantha Seyler Fabíola Andréa Silva

Download or read book Urban Interactions written by Michael J. Kelly and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is dedicated to eliciting the interactions between localities across late antique and early medieval Europe and the wider Mediterranean. Significant research has been done in recent years to explore how late "Roman" and post-"Roman" cities, towns and other localities communicated vis-à-vis larger structural phenomena, such as provinces, empires, kingdoms, institutions and so on. This research has contributed considerably to our understanding of the place of the city in its context, but tends to portray the city as a necessarily subordinate conduit within larger structures, rather than an entity in itself, or as a hermeneutical object of enquiry. Consequently, not enough research has been committed to examining how local people and communities thought about, engaged with, and struggled against nearby or distant urban neighbors.Urban Interactions addresses this lacuna in urban history by presenting articles that apply a diverse spectrum of approaches, from archaeological investigation to critical analyses of historiographical and historical biases and developmental consideration of antagonisms between ecclesiastical centers. Through these avenues of investigation, this volume elucidates the relationship between the urban centers and their immediate hinterlands and neighboring cities with which they might vie or collaborate. This entanglement and competition, whether subterraneous or explicit across overarching political, religious or other macro categories, is evaluated through a broad geographical range of late "Roman" provinces and post-"Roman" states to maintain an expansive perspective of developmental trends within and about the city.

Download or read book Early European Castles written by Oliver Creighton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval castles were, alongside the great cathedrals, the most recognisable buildings of the medieval world. Closely associated with concepts of justice, lordship and authority as well as military might, castles came to encapsulate the period's very essence. Looking at above and below-ground evidence and examining a wide variety of sites - from towering donjons to earth and timber castles - in different parts of western Europe, this book explores the relationship between early castle building and the emergence of a new aristocracy and investigates the impact of authority on the organisation of the landscape. A particular focus is on the social context of early private fortifications: Europe's earliest castles came to embody a new and radically different form of power – an aristocratic authority that was highly personal in nature, glaringly visible in its presence, and enforceable through violence, both threatened and real. The volume reassesses traditional models of castle origins; examines aspects of elite lifestyle in and around these structures, including pastimes and diet; considers medieval visual experiences of sites and their settings; and explores some future directions for research.

Download or read book Medieval Europe written by Chris Wickham and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-15 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spirited history of the changes that transformed Europe during the 1,000-year span of the Middle Ages: “A dazzling race through a complex millennium.”—Publishers Weekly The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period—one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation. Tracking the entire sweep of the Middle Ages across Europe, Wickham focuses on important changes century by century, including such pivotal crises and moments as the fall of the western Roman Empire, Charlemagne’s reforms, the feudal revolution, the challenge of heresy, the destruction of the Byzantine Empire, the rebuilding of late medieval states, and the appalling devastation of the Black Death. He provides illuminating vignettes that underscore how shifting social, economic, and political circumstances affected individual lives and international events—and offers both a new conception of Europe’s medieval period and a provocative revision of exactly how and why the Middle Ages matter. “Far-ranging, fluent, and thoughtful—of considerable interest to students of history writ large, and not just of Europe.”—Kirkus Reviews, (starred review) Includes maps and illustrations