To veteran travelers of the American Southwest, the name Chaco Canyon invokes an inaccessible, vast land of tremendous vistas and huge, empty stone houses. Today, the Canyon appears as a barren land and most visitors are struck by its apparent inhospitable nature. Yet almost 1000 years ago, during the Medieval period, Chaco Canyon was the hub of a flourishing Pueblo Indian society, with 12 multi-story great houses built of stone and wood, a dozen great kivas (large, subterranean ceremonial structures), and hundreds of smaller habitation sites, pueblos along the intermittent drainage known today as Chaco Wash. This society peaked in the year AD 1100, when more than 150 Chacoan towns, in addition to the 12 great houses in Chaco Canyon, and perhaps 30,000 people across the greater San Juan Basin of the southwestern United States were affiliated with Chaco. This landmass, which extends across portions of the four modern states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, is roughly equal in size to the country of Ireland.

Chacoan society endured for more than 200 hundred years, evolving and changing in the period from AD 950 to about 1150. The peak of Chacoan society can be more narrowly dated from AD 1020 to 1130. Undoubtedly, many leaders came and went during these hundred years. But, we have no written records to name these leaders. Unlike the history of other continents, in the Americas, the absence of written aboriginal languages means that written chronologies of the events, processes, and lives of people do not exist. This simple fact makes reconstruction and understanding of America's pre-European past very challenging. The archaeological record does speak to us. Thematic chapters guide readers to the emergence of Chacoan society, its cultural and environmental settings, and the Pueblo people. Other chapters detail what is known of Chacoan society c. 1100, how it was settled, and where its people probably dispersed to. Also, given the nature of the topic, information about the discovery and investigations of Chacoan society by Europeans and Americans is provided. An annotated timeline provides easy reference to key dates and events. Biographical sketches offer a look at the people who have formed our thoughts about and approaches to Chacoan society, and twenty annotated excerpted primary and secondary documents walk readers through Canyon related material. A glossary of terms is provided, as are illustrations and maps. The work concludes with recommended sources for further inquiry, websites, video, and print.

This book was first published in 1962. Until the era of the Industrial Revolution wool was, without question, the most important raw material in the English economic system. The staple article of the country's export trade in the Middle Ages, it remained until the nineteenth century the indispensable basis of her greatest industry. This book looks at the decline of cloth industry in East Anglia sine the mid-sixteenth century.

Completely updated to include important primary research, archaeological findings and debates from the last decade, this third edition of F. Donald Logan's successful book examines the Vikings and their critical role in history.

The author uses archaeological, literary and historical evidence to analyze the Vikings' overseas expeditions and their transformation from raiders to settlers. Focusing on the period from 800-1050, it studies the Vikings across the world, from Denmark and Sweden right across to the British Isles, the North Atlantic and the New World.

This edition includes:

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• a new epilogue explaining the aims of the book
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• updated further reading sections
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• maps and photographs.

By taking this new archaeological and primary research into account, the author provides a vital text for history students and researchers of this fascinating people.

This is an exploration of how the legend of Thor has been adopted, adapted and transformed through history. The myths of the Norse god Thor were preserved in the "Icelandic Eddas", set down in the early Middle Ages. The bane of giants and trolls, Thor was worshipped as the last line of defence against all that threatened early Nordic society. Thor's significance persisted long after the Christian conversion and, in the mid-eighteenth century, Thor resumed a symbolic prominence among northern countries. Admired and adopted in Scandinavia and Germany, he became central to the rhetoric of national romanticism and to more belligerent assertions of nationalism. Resurrected in the latter part of the twentieth century in "Marvel Magazine", Thor was further transformed into an articulation both of an anxious male sexuality and of a parallel nervousness regarding American foreign policy. Martin Arnold explores the extraordinary regard in which Thor has been held since medieval times and considers why and how his myth has been adopted, adapted and transformed.

The medieval film genre is not, in general, concerned with constructing a historically accurate past, but much analysis nonetheless centers on highlighting anachronisms. This book aims to help scholars and aficionados of medieval film think about how the re-creation of an often mythical past performs important cultural work for modern directors and viewers. The essays in this collection demonstrate that directors intentionally insert modern preoccupations into a setting that would normally be considered incompatible with these concepts. The Middle Ages provide an imaginary space far enough removed from the present day to explore modern preoccupations with human identity.

This book is about philology and its relevance over time. The compilation foregrounds a multi-faceted field of research that has dealt with the relationship between language, literature and culture for over 2,000 years. The main thread of this volume, comprising ten scholarly essays, is to show that philology as an academic field and a scholarly perspective understood in its widest sense as the profound understanding of language, literature and culture does matter in the twenty-first century, that is to say, in our own time characterized by globalization and digitalization. The contributions reflect the many dimensions of philology and its plurality, interdisciplinarity and the humanities. The volume seeks to illustrate various ways of engaging with philology. Here lies the true nature of philology, and this is why it still matters. Contributors are Massimiliano Bampi, Maja Backvall, Jonas Carlquist, Odd Einar Haugen, Helge Jordheim, Karl G. Johansson, Lino Leonardi, Harry Loennroth, Outi Merisalo, Marita Akhoj Nielsen and Nestori Siponkoski.

Intellectually and visually stimulating, this important landmark book looks at the religious, political, social and artistic significance of the Imperial tombs of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). It traces the evolutionary development of the most elaborately beautiful imperial tombs to examine fundamental issues on death and the afterlife in one of the world's most sophisticated civilizations. Selected tombs are presented in terms of their structure, artistic programs and their purposes. The author sets the tombs in the context of Chinese attitudes towards the afterlife, the politics of mausoleum architecture, and the artistic vocabulary which was becoming the mainstream of Chinese civilization.

This new volume in the Routledge Medieval Casebooks series explores medieval rhetorical practices. Ten original essays examine the ways in which contemporary readers and scholars might employ rhetorical theory to illuminate underlying meanings in medieval texts. The contributors also explore how rhetoric was used as a means of textual innovation in the work of medieval authors such as Chaucer and his contemporaries.

The boundaries between mental, social and physical order and various states of disorder - unexpected mood swings, fury, melancholy, stress, insomnia, and demonic influence - form the core of this compilation. For medieval men and women, religious rituals, magic, herbs, dietary requirements as well as to scholastic medicine were a way to cope with the vagaries of mental wellbeing; the focus of the articles is on the interaction and osmosis between lay and elite cultures as well as medical, theological and political theories and practical experiences of daily life. Time span of the volume is the later Middle Ages, c. 1300-1500. Geographically it covers Western Europe and the comparison between Mediterranean world and Northern Europe is an important constituent. Contributors are Jussi Hanska, Gerhard Jaritz, Timo Joutsivuo, Kirsi Kanerva, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Marko Lamberg, Iona McCleery, Susanna Niiranen, Sophie Oosterwijk, and Catherine Rider.

In The Byzantine Turks, 1204-1461 Rustam Shukurov offers an account of the Turkic minority in Late Byzantium including the Nicaean, Palaiologan, and Grand Komnenian empires. The demography of the Byzantine Turks and the legal and cultural aspects of their entrance into Greek society are discussed in detail. Greek and Turkish bilingualism of Byzantine Turks and Tourkophonia among Greeks were distinctive features of Byzantine society of the time. Basing his arguments upon linguistic, social, and cultural evidence found in a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, Rustam Shukurov convincingly demonstrates how Oriental influences on Byzantine life led to crucial transformations in Byzantine mentality, culture, and political life. The study is supplemented with an etymological lexicon of Oriental names and words in Byzantine Greek.

Catalonia: A New History revises many traditional and romantic conceptions in the historiography of a small nation. This book engages with the scholarship of the past decade and separates nationalist myth-history from real historical processes. It is thus able to provide the reader with an analytical account, situating each historical period within its temporal context. Catalonia emerges as a territory where complex social forces interact, where revolts and rebellions are frequent. This is a contested terrain where political ideologies have sought to impose their interpretation of Catalan reality. This book situates Catalonia within the wider currents of European and Spanish history, from pre-history to the contemporary independence movement, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of nation-making.

'Clavijo was so keen and intelligent an observer and so lively a retailer of travel gossip that this is a very welcome addition to the series.' New Statesman
Covering thousands of miles, Clavijo's epic journey began and ended in Cadiz taking in Rhodes, Constantinople, the Black Sea, and Central Asia.
Guy Le Strange's extensive introduction gives excellent historical and political background for the account and the material is supplemented with seven maps and plans.

"Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media" contextualizes historical films in an innovative way--not only relating them to the history of cinema, but also to premodern and early modern media. This philological approach to the (pre)history of cinema engages both old media such as scrolls, illuminated manuscripts, the Bayeux Tapestry, and new digital media such as DVDs, HD DVDs, and computers. Burt examines the uncanny repetitions that now fragment films into successively released alternate cuts and extras (footnote tracks, audiocommentaries, and documentaries) that (re)structure and reframe historical films, thereby presenting new challenges to historicist criticism and film theory. With a double focus on recursive narrative frames and the cinematic paratexts of medieval and early modern film, this book calls our attention to strange, sometimes opaque phenomena in film and literary theory that have previously gone unrecognized.

First published to wide critical acclaim in 1992, "The Two Cities" has become an essential text for students of medieval history. For the second edition, the author has thoroughly revised each chapter, bringing the material up to date and taking the historiography of the past decade into account.
"The Two Cities" covers a colorful period from the schism between the eastern and western churches to the death of Dante. It encompasses the Crusades, the expansionist force of the Normans, major developments in the way kings, emperors and Popes exercised their powers, a great flourishing of art and architecture and the foundation of the very first universities. Running through it is the defining characteristic of the high Middle Ages--the delicate relationship between the spiritual and secular worlds. In medieval times, these two essential elements of life were seen as the two 'cities' of the title, they could not be divided but there was constant tension between them.
This survey provides all the facts and background information that students need, and is defined into straightforward thematic chapters. It makes extensive use of primary sources, and makes new trends in research accessible to students. Its fresh approach gives students the most rounded, lively and integrated view of the high Middle Ages available.

This book traces the history and ecology of the Aymaras and the Quechuas: the highland peoples of the Central Andes, who formed the nucleus of the great Inca Empire which extended for two thousand miles along the Pacific coast to the fringes of the tropical interior. In twenty millennia the Indians of the Andes had had no cultural contacts with the Old World yet they had already passed independently through stages of development usually associated with the Neolithic Age and had achieved a degree of technical and artistic excellence. In four centuries of contact there has of course been appreciable acculturation and osmosis. Originally published in 1952.

This comprehensive volume provides easily-accessible factual material on all major areas of warfare in the medieval west. The whole geographical area of medieval Europe, including eastern Europe, is covered, including essential elements from outside Europe such as Byzantine warfare, nomadic horde invasions and the Crusades. Progressing chronologically, the work is presented in themed, illustrated sections, with a narrative outline offering a brief introduction to the area. Within each chronological section, Jim Bradbury presents clear and informative pieces on battles, sieges, and generals. The author examines practical topics including: castle architecture, with examinations of specific castles ship building techniques improvements in armour specific weapons developments in areas such as arms and armour, fortifications, tactics and supply. Readable and engaging, this detailed provides students with an excellent collection of archaeological information and clear discussions of controversial issues.

This study of crusading policy examines the relationship between the papacy and 'internal' crusades of Europe during the early 13th century. An 'internal' crusade is defined as a holy war authorized by the pope and fought within Christian Europe against those perceived to be foes of Christendom, either to recover property or in defence of the Church or Christians. This study is therefore not concerned with those crusades authorized against Muslim enemies in the East and Spain, nor with crusades authorized against pagans on the borders of Europe. Up to now these crusades have attracted relatively little attention in modern British scholarship.This in spite of their undoubted European-wide significance and an increasing recognition that the period 1198-1245 marks the beginning of a crucial change in papal policy underpinned by canon law. This book discusses the developments through analysis of the extensive source material drawn from unregistered papal letters, placing them firmly in the context of ecclesiastical legislation, canon law, chronicles and other supplementary evidence. It thereby seeks to contribute to our understanding of the complex politics, theology and rhetoric that underlay the papacy's call for crusades within Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century.

This book traces the 800-year history of Byzantium. From the early uncertain years of the Empire, to the triumphal period when its wealth attracted Viking and Asian warriors to join its armies, and finally to the death of Byzantium's last emperor in 1453, the Empire's military history is laid bare.

First full examination of why and how certain locations were chosen for opposition to power, and the meaning they conveyed. The direct contestation of power played a crucial role in early medieval politics. Such actions, often expressed through violence, reveal much about established authorities, power and lordship. Here the hitherto neglected role of place and landscape in acts of opposition and rebellion is explored for its meaning and significance to the protagonists. The book includes consideration of a range of factors relevant to the choice of location for such events, and examines the declarations and motivations of political actors, from disaffected princes to independently minded nobles, as well as those who responded to rebellion, to show how places and landscapes became used in political disputes. These include both "public" and "private", religious, urban and rural space. Covering a long period in England and northern France, from the late Carolingian period through to the emergence of cross-Channel polities in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, this book casts valuable light on the political relations of the early and central Middle Ages.

The western steppelands of Central Eurasia, stretching from the Danube, through the modern Ukraine and southern Russia, to the Caspian, have historically been the meeting ground of Inner Asian pastoral nomads and the agrarian societies of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. This volume deals, firstly, with the interaction of the nomads with their sedentary neighbours - the Kievan Rus' state and the medieval polities of Transcaucasia, Georgia in particular - in the period from the 6th century to the advent of the Mongols. Second, it looks at questions of nomadic ethnogenesis (Oghuz, Hungarian, Qipchaq), at the evolution of nomadic political traditions and the heritage of the Turk empire, and at aspects of indigenous nomadic religious traditions together with the impact of foreign religions on the nomads - notably the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. A number of articles focus on the Qipchaqs, a powerful confederation of complex Inner Asian origins that played a crucial role in the history of Christian Eastern Europe and Transcaucasia and the Muslim world between the 11th and 13th centuries.

An account of the re-emergence of Persia as a world player and the reassertion of its cultural, political and spiritual links with Turkic Lands, this book opposes the way in which, for too long, the whole period of Mongol domination of Iran has been viewed from a negative standpoint. Though arguably the initial irruption of the Mongols brought little comfort to those in its path, this is not the case with the second 'invasion' of the Chinggisids. This study demonstrates that Hülegü Khan was welcomed as a king and a saviour after the depredations of his predecessors, rather than as a conqueror, and that the initial decades of his dynasty's rule were characterised by a renaissance in the cultural life of the Iranian plateau.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203417879

Fruits of the most recent research on the worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The essays collected here embody the Haskins Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research on the early and central Middle Ages, especially in the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds, but also on thecontinent. Their topics range from the discovery of Bede's use of catechesis to educate readers on conversion, the discovery of an early eleventh-century Viking mass burial, and historical interpretations of Eadric Streona, to the development of monastic liturgy at Durham Cathedral, the Franco-centricity of Latin accounts of the First Crusade, and an investigation of Gerald of Wales' rarely considered Speculum duorum virorum. Contributions on the charters of the countesses of Ponthieu and Blanche of Navarre's role in military dimensions of governance explore the nature and mechanisms of female lordship on the continent, while others investigate the nature of kingship through close readings, respectively, of John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury and the Vie de Saint Gilles; a further chapter considers the changing image of William the Conqueror in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French historiography. Finally, a study of Serlo of Bayeux's defense of clerical marriage, along with a critical edition and facing translation of his poem The Capture of Bayeux offers readers new insights and access tothis often overlooked witness to Norman history in the early twelfth century. Contributors: Angela Boyle, Marcus Bull, Philippa Byrne, Jay Paul Gates, Veronique Gazeau, Wendy Marie Hoofnagle, Elizabeth van Houts, Kathy M. Krause, Charlie Rozier, Katrin E. Sjursen, Carolyn Twomey, Emily A. Winkler

This book offers a fresh interpretation of the relationship between the church, society and religion across five centuries of change. Andrew Brown examines how the teachings of an increasingly universal Church were applied at a local level and how social change shaped the religious practices of the laity. His approach encompasses the structures of corporate religion, the devotional practices surrounding cults and saints, the effects of literacy (not least on the development of heresy), and how gender, class and political power affected and fragmented the expression of religion.