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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Historical geography
The central argument of The Formation of the English Kingdom in the
Tenth Century is that the English kingdom which existed at the time
of the Norman Conquest was defined by the geographical parameters
of a set of administrative reforms implemented in the mid- to late
tenth century, and not by a vision of English unity going back to
Alfred the Great (871-899). In the first half of the tenth century,
successive members of the Cerdicing dynasty established a loose
domination over the other great potentates in Britain. They were
celebrated as kings of the whole island, but even in their Wessex
heartlands they probably had few means to regulate routinely the
conduct of the general populace. Detailed analysis of coins,
shires, hundreds, and wapentakes suggests that it was only around
the time of Edgar (957/9-975) that the Cerdicing kings developed
the relatively standardised administrative apparatus of the
so-called 'Anglo-Saxon state'. This substantially increased their
ability to impinge upon the lives of ordinary people living between
the Channel and the Tees, and served to mark that area off from the
rest of the island. The resultant cleft undermined the idea of a
pan-British realm, and demarcated the early English kingdom as a
distinct and coherent political unit. In this volume, George
Molyneaux places the formation of the English kingdom in a European
perspective, and challenges the notion that its development was
exceptional: the Cerdicings were only one of several ruling
dynasties around the fringes of the former Carolingian Empire for
which the late ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries were a time of
territorial expansion and consolidation.
THE TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE
Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff.
This is the forgotten history of Britain's lost cities, ghost towns
and vanished villages: our shadowlands. 'A beautiful book, truly
original . . . It is a marvellous achievement.' IAN MORTIMER,
author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England 'Well
researched, beautifully written and packed with interesting
detail.' CLAIRE TOMALIN 'An exquisitely written, moving and elegiac
exploration.' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB 'Consistently interesting . . .
Green's passion and historical vision bursts from the page,
summoning up the past in surround sound and sensual prose.' CAL
FLYN, THE TIMES (author of Islands of Abandonment) Historian
Matthew Green travels across Britain to tell the forgotten history
of our lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages. Revealing
the extraordinary stories of how these places met their fate - and
exploring how they have left their mark on our landscape and our
imagination - Shadowlands is a deeply evocative and dazzlingly
original account of Britain's past. 'An eloquent tour of lost
communities.' PD SMITH, GUARDIAN 'A haunting, lyrical tour around
the lost places of Britain.' CHARLOTTE HIGGINS, author of Under
Another Sky 'A miraculous work of resurrection, stinging in a
perpetual present'. IAIN SINCLAIR, author of The Gold Machine
'Beautifully written.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Startling.' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Splendid.' THE HERALD 'Compelling.' HISTORY TODAY 'Excellent.' THE
SPECTATOR 'Fascinating.' DAILY MAIL 'Accomplished.' CAUGHT BY THE
RIVER 'Outstanding.' MIRROR
Indigenous knowledge has become a catchphrase in global struggles
for environmental justice. Yet indigenous knowledges are often
viewed, incorrectly, as pure and primordial cultural artifacts.
This collection draws from African and North American cases to
argue that the forms of knowledge identified as "indigenous"
resulted from strategies to control environmental resources during
and after colonial encounters.
At times indigenous knowledges represented a "middle ground" of
intellectual exchanges between colonizers and colonized; elsewhere,
indigenous knowledges were defined through conflict and struggle.
The authors demonstrate how people claimed that their hybrid forms
of knowledge were communal, religious, and traditional, as opposed
to individualist, secular, and scientific, which they associated
with European colonialism.
"Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment" offers comparative and
transnational insights that disturb romantic views of unchanging
indigenous knowledges in harmony with the environment. The result
is a book that informs and complicates how indigenous knowledges
can and should relate to environmental policy-making.
Contributors: David Bernstein, Derick Fay, Andrew H. Fisher, Karen
Flint, David M. Gordon, Paul Kelton, Shepard Krech III, Joshua
Reid, Parker Shipton, Lance van Sittert, Jacob Tropp, James L. A.
Webb, Jr., Marsha Weisiger
The OS Historical Map series comprises of Ancient Britain and Roman
Britain. Each archaeological period is identified using different
symbols and colours to show sites from the Stone Age through to the
early Middle Ages against a modern map base, double-sided to cover
the whole country. The Ancient Britain map and guide is
complemented by a timeline that shows British events in relation to
wider history. Key sites of significant historical interest are
highlighted using photographs, text and thumbnail mapping from the
OS Landranger map series. Additional information, such as a list of
archaeological terms, suggested reading and museums to visit, is
also included.
A detailed description of Hovell and Hume's early 19th Century
explorations in Victoria, Australia (now the location of
Melbourne).
The Canyon de Chelly is one of the best Cliff Ruins regions in the
United States. This book details the pueblo dwellings in the
region, with over a hundred black and white diagrams and
photographs. The original index and footnotes have been preserved.
Elisha Kent Kane (1820 57) was a medical officer in the United
States Navy, best known for the so-called 'Grinnell voyages' to the
Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin's expedition. Originally
published in 1856, this two-volume work documents his second
expedition, between 1853 and 1855, during which his ship became
ice-bound, and he and his men survived by adopting Inuit survival
skills, such as hunting, sledge-driving and hut-building. In Volume
1, Kane recounts the dangers posed by icebergs, glaciers and
fluctuating tides, which led to his ship's entrapment, and records
his impressions of the Inuit whom he later relied on for survival.
Along with extensive illustrations of the animals, terrain and
people encountered on his mission, and a useful glossary of Arctic
terms, Kane's writings reveal his own controversial personality as
well as his relationship with the Inuit and his admiration for
their skills.
This book, a much-augmented translation of the author's original
Hungarian version, is an account of Hungary's past from the
perspective of environmental history, incorporating a wide range of
environmentally-relevant research findings. Data on climate,
agriculture, mining, hunting, urban development and political
administration are synthesised to create a rich account of a people
in the environment, and the processes of adaptation, exploitation
and co-existence required for survival. Importantly, it offers
anglophone readers access a considerable digest of important
scholarship previously only available in Hungarian. Until now,
there has been no environmental history in English of Hungary and
the wider region from which the present country crystallised. The
book covers the environmental history of Hungary prior to the
Industrial Revolution. It begins with the prehistory of the two
protagonists in this environmental story, the Carpathian Basin and
the Hungarians; and traces the transformation of the Hungarians,
under environmental, social and economic forces, from nomadic
tribes to a settled society in the Middle Ages. The environmental
developments of the later Middle Ages, a period of relative
stability, are explored before the story turns to a long era of war
with the Ottoman Empire, during which the key to survival lay in
finding adaptive forms of settlement and subsistence systems.
Finally, the book chronicles the age of reconstruction following
the Ottoman wars and the challenges posed as the country's
population more than doubled, a growth unmatched by agricultural or
industrial development. The present volumes leaves Hungary at the
dawn of the Industrial Age, a country displaying symptoms of
over-population and environmental over-exploitation.
Christy Constantakopoulou examines the history of the Aegean
islands and changing concepts of insularity, with particular
emphasis on the fifth century BC. Islands are a prominent feature
of the Aegean landscape, and this inevitably created a variety of
different (and sometimes contradictory) perceptions of insularity
in classical Greek thought. Geographic analysis of insularity
emphasizes the interplay between island isolation and island
interaction, but the predominance of islands in the Aegean sea made
island isolation almost impossible. Rather, island connectivity was
an important feature of the history of the Aegean and was expressed
on many levels. Constantakopoulou investigates island interaction
in two prominent areas, religion and imperial politics, examining
both the religious networks located on islands in the ancient Greek
world and the impact of imperial politics on the Aegean islands
during the fifth century.
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