This volume explores the final phase of the West Roman Empire, particularly the changing interactions between the imperial authority and external 'barbarian' groups in the northwest frontiers of the empire during the fourth and fifth centuries. The contributions present valuable overviews of recent archaeological research combined with innovative theoretical discussions. Key topics include the movement of precious metals, trajectories of imperial power, the archaeology of migration, and material culture in relation to debates about ethnicity.

The The Olsztyn Group in the Early Medieval Archaeology of the Baltic Region: The Cemetry at Leleszki deals with a much neglected problem of the archaeology of the early Middle Ages. Between the 5th and the 7th century, the region of the Mazurian Lakes in northeastern Poland witnessed the rise of communities engaged in long-distant contacts with both Western and Eastern Europe. Known as the Olsztyn Group, the archaeological remains of those communities have revealed a remarkable wealth and diversity, which has attracted scholarly attention for more than 130 years. Besides offering a survey of the current state of research on the Olsztyn Group, Miroslaw Rudnicki introduces the monographic study of the Leleszki cemetery (district of Szczytno, Poland) as one of the most representative sites. The prosperity and long-distance contact revealed by the examination of this cemetery shows that the West Baltic tribes had considerable influence in early medieval Europe, much more than scholars had been ready to admit until now.

Two precious Gold Horns were sacrificed by a group of Angles in South Jutland shortly before they migrated to England. The pictures on the horns offer a substantial explanation of the pre-Christian religion of the Angles. This book describes how many Anglian groups from the continent migrated to England and brought with them their culture and English language. It provides an original analysis of archaeological finds and documentation of the Anglo-Saxon religion. This can be observed in finds from the heathen Anglo-Saxons, - the Sutton Hoo ship burial, Franks Casket, the square-headed brooches, idols, amulets and ceramics. The book also explores Runes - the most remarkable invention of the Angles. The book will be enjoyed by anybody interested in English heritage and especially those with an interest in pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons.

This volume brings together scholarship from many disciplines, including history, heritage studies, archaeology, geography, and political science to provide a nuanced view of life in medieval Ireland and after. Primarily contributing to the fields of settlement and landscape studies, each essay considers the influence of Terence B. Barry of Trinity College Dublin within Ireland and internationally. Barry's long career changed the direction of castle studies and brought the archaeology of medieval Ireland to wider knowledge. These essays, authored by an international team of fifteen scholars, develop many of his original research questions to provide timely and insightful reappraisals of material culture and the built and natural environments. Contributors (in order of appearance) are Robin Glasscock, Kieran O'Conor, Thomas Finan, James G. Schryver, Oliver Creighton, Robert Higham, Mary A. Valante, Margaret Murphy, John Soderberg, Conleth Manning, Victoria McAlister, Jennifer L. Immich, Calder Walton, Christiaan Corlett, Stephen H. Harrison, and Raghnall O Floinn.

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, Maria Asenjo Gonzalez, Antonio Irigoyen Lopez, Alberto Leon Munoz, Matthias Maser, Sabine Panzram, Gisela Ripoll, Torsten dos Santos Arnold, Isabel Toral-Niehoff, Fernando Valdes Fernandez, and Klaus Weber.

Alfred Nobel made his name as an inventor and successful entrepreneur and left a legacy as a philanthropist and promoter of learning and social progress. The correspondence between Nobel and his Viennese mistress, Sofie Hess, shines a light on his private life and reveals a personality that differs significantly from his public image. The letters show him as a hypochondriac and workaholic and as a paranoid, jealous, and patriarchal lover. Indeed, the relationship between the aging Alfred Nobel and the carefree, spendthrift Sofie Hess will strike readers as dysfunctional and worthy of Freudian analysis. Erika Rummel's masterful translation and annotations reveal the value of the letters as commentary on 19th century social mores: the concept of honour and reputation, the life of a "kept" woman, the prevalence of antisemitism, the importance of spas as health resorts and entertainment centres, the position of single mothers, and more generally the material culture of a rich bourgeois gentleman. A Nobel Affair is the first translation into English of the complete correspondence between Alfred Nobel and Sofie Hess.

In Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150, Karen Rose Mathews analyzes the relationship between war, trade, and the use of spolia (appropriated objects from past and foreign cultures) as architectural decoration in the public monuments of the Italian maritime republics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In An Arena for Higher Powers Olof Sundqvist investigates ceremonial buildings and religious ruler strategies in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (i.e. AD 550-1050/1100). The author offers here an account of the role played by religion in political undertakings among the pre-Christian ruling elites at halls and cultic buildings. Sundqvist applies a regional approach, so as to be able to account for the specific historical, cultural and social contexts. The focus is mainly on three regions, the Lake Malaren area in Sweden, Trondelag in Norway, and Iceland. Since the political structure and other contextual aspects partly differed in the three regions, the religious strategies for gaining legitimacy and authorization at the sanctuaries also varied to some extent in these areas.

Bringing together the work of scholars from disparate fields of enquiry, this volume provides a timely and stimulating exploration of the themes of transmission and translation, charting developments, adaptations and exchanges - textual, visual, material and conceptual - that reverberated across the medieval world, within wide-ranging temporal and geographical contexts. Such transactions generated a multiplicity of fusions expressed in diverse and often startling ways - architecturally, textually and through peoples' lived experiences - that informed attitudes of selfhood and 'otherness', senses of belonging and ownership, and concepts of regionality, that have been further embraced in modern and contemporary arenas of political and cultural discourse. Contributors are Tarren Andrews, Edel Bhreathnach, Cher Casey, Katherine Cross, Amanda Doviak, Elisa Foster, Matthias Friedrich, Jane Hawkes, Megan Henvey, Aideen Ireland, Alison Killilea, Ross McIntire, Lesley Milner, John Mitchell, Nino Simonishvili, and Rachael Vause.

Uncovering the Germanic Past brings to light an unexpected side-effect of France's nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. While laying tracks for new rail lines, quarrying for stone, and expanding lands under cultivation, French labourers uncovered bones and artefacts from long-forgotten cemeteries. Although their original owners were unknown, research by a growing number of amateur archaeologists of the bourgeois class determined that these were the graves of Germanic 'warriors', and their work, presented in provincial learned societies across France, documented evidence for significant numbers of Franks, Burgundians, and Visigoths in late Roman Gaul. They thus challenged prevailing views in France of the population's exclusively Gallic ancestry, contradicting the influential writings of Parisian historians like Augustin Thierry and Numa-Denis Fustel de Coulanges. Although some scholars drew on this material evidence to refine their understanding of the early ancestors of the French, most ignored, at their peril, inconvenient finds that challenged the centrality of the ancient Gauls as the forebears of France. Crossing the boundaries of the fields of medieval archaeology and history, nineteenth-century French history, and the history of science, Effros suggests how the slow progress and professionalization of Merovingian (or early medieval) archaeology, a sub-discipline in the larger field of national archaeology in France, was in part a consequence of the undesirable evidence it brought to light.

The collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire offers insights into the Carolingian southeastern frontier-zone from historical, art-historical and archaeological perspectives. Chapters in this volume discuss the significance of the early medieval period for scholarly and public discourses in the Western Balkans and Central Europe, and the transfer of knowledge between local scholarship and macro-narratives of Mediterranean and Western history. Other essays explore the ways local communities around the Adriatic (Istria, Dalmatia, Dalmatian hinterland, southern Pannonia) established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus. Contributors are Mladen Ancic, Ivan Basic, Goran Bilogrivic, Neven Budak, Florin Curta, Danijel Dzino, Kresimir Filipec, Richard Hodges, Nikola Jaksic, Miljenko Jurkovic, Ante Milosevic, Marko Petrak, Peter Stih, Trpimir Vedris.

This illustrated book continues themes in Central European cultural history treated elsewhere with the intention of presenting an interdisciplinary study of early medieval socio-cultural developments.
A continuation of the preceding books, this volume examines the archeological evidence of the groups who settled Central Europe. It aims to amplify the information recorded during the late Roman Empire about societies, social dynamics and ethnological contexts by examining their material culture. The language of significant objects complements the literature of significant texts.
The three parts of the book inform of the historical and archeological evidence; elaborate the socio-cultural conclusions provided by archeology; examine the system of values as reflected in the forms of artistic expression. The study of objects helps clarify the contours of the Germanic populations of pre-Carolingian Central Europe.

Reading Medieval Sources is an exciting new series which leads scholars and students into some of the most challenging and rewarding sources from the European Middle Ages, and introduces the most important approaches to understanding them. Written by an international team of twelve leading scholars, this volume Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages presents a set of fresh and insightful perspectives that demonstrate the rich potential of this source material to all scholars of medieval history and culture. It includes coverage of major developments in monetary history, set into their economic and political context, as well as innovative and interdisciplinary perspectives that address money and coinage in relation to archaeology, anthropology and medieval literature. Contributors are Nanouschka Myrberg Burstroem, Elizabeth Edwards, Gaspar Feliu, Anna Gannon, Richard Kelleher, Bill Maurer, Nick Mayhew, Rory Naismith, Philipp Robinson Roessner, Alessia Rovelli, Lucia Travaini, and Andrew Woods.

In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Housed at the British Museum, they are among its most visited and beloved objects. Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by connecting medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, art history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of Iceland.

Among the few surviving archaeological sites from the medieval Christian kingdom of Nubia-located in present day Sudan-Qasr Ibrim is unique in a number of ways. It is the only site in Lower Nubia that remained above water after the completion of the Aswan high dam. In addition, thanks to the aridity of the climate in the area the site is marked by extraordinary preservation of organic material, especially textual material written on papyrus, leather, and paper. Particularly rich is the textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, written in Old Nubian, the region's indigenous language. As a result, Qasr Ibrim is probably the best documented ancient and medieval site in Africa outside of Egypt and North Africa. Medieval Nubia will be the first book to make available this remarkable material, much of which is still unpublished. The evidence discovered reveals a more complicated picture of this community than originally thought. Previously, scholars had thought medieval Nubia had existed in relative isolation from the rest of the world and had a primitive economy. Legal documents, accounts, and letters, however, reveal a complex, monetized economy with exchange rates connected to those of the wider world. Furthermore, they reveal public festive practices, in which lavish feasting and food gifts reinforced the social prestige of the participants. These documents show medieval Nubia to have been a society combining legal elements inherited from the Greco-Roman world with indigenous African social practices. In reconstructing the social and economic life of medieval Nubia based on the Old Nubian sources from the site, as well as other previously examined materials, Giovanni R. Ruffini will correct previous assumptions and produce a new picture of Nubia, one that connects it to the wider Mediterranean economy and society of its time.

Many aspects of medieval monarchy can only be recovered through archaeology. This archaeological survey of kingship in the period from the reign of William the Conqueror to that of Henry VIII brings together the physical evidence for the Kings and their courts in the form of a great variety of objects and buildings. John Steane looks at the changing perceptions of the cult of medieval kingship through symbols of power and regalia including crowns, seals and thrones, such as the Coronation Chair of Edward I. The result is a synthesis of current knowledge of the physical remains of medieval kingship that has not previously been attempted. Restoring many details of the lives and deaths of the great and powerful monarchs of the Middle Ages, this book reveals past public splendors as well as more private insights.

A Companion to Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Cordoba cover the history and culture of Roman, late antique, Visigoth and al-Andalus Cordoba in nineteen contributions, from the foundation of the city in the 169/168 B.C. by the praetor Marcus Claudius Marcellus to the end of the Muslim period in 1236 B.C., when the city fell into the hands of Ferdinand III the Saint, King of Castile. Making use of archaeological data and historical sources, combined with the latest research on the various fields under study, its authors give a compelling account of Cordoba’s most important archaeological, urban, political, legal, social, cultural and religious facets throughout the most exciting fifteen centuries of the city.

The current focus on the theme of authorship in Medieval and Early Modern studies reopens questions of poetic agency and intent. Bringing into conversation several kinds of scholarship on medieval authorship, the essays in Author, Reader, Book examine interrelated questions raised by the relationship between an author and a reader, the relationships between authors and their antecedents, and the ways in which authorship interacts with the physical presentation of texts in books.The broad chronological range within this volume reveals the persistence of literary concerns that remain consistent through different periods, languages, and cultural contexts. Theoretical reflections, case studies from a wide variety of languages, examinations of devotional literature from figures such as Bishop Reginald Pecock, and analyses of works that are more secular in focus, including some by Chaucer and Christine de Pizan, come together in this volume to transcend linguistic and disciplinary boundaries.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER & THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF 2021 'Astonishing and compelling' Bernard Cornwell 'This superb book is like a classical symphony, perfectly composed and exquisitely performed' THE TIMES Books of the Year Follow bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman - and the cutting-edge forensic techniques central to her research - as she uncovers epic stories of the Viking age and follows a small 'Carnelian' bead found in a Viking grave in Derbyshire to its origins thousands of miles to the east in Gujarat. 'This superb book is like a classical symphony, perfectly composed and exquisitely performed' THE TIMES Books of the Year Dr Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist, specialising in forensic techniques to research the paths of Vikings who came to rest in British soil. By examining teeth that are now over one thousand years old, she can determine childhood diet, and thereby where a person was likely born. With radiocarbon dating, she can ascertain a death date down to the range of a few years. And her research offers new visions of the likely roles of women and children in Viking culture. In 2017, a carnelian bead came into her temporary possession. River Kings sees her trace its path back to eighth-century Baghdad and India, discovering along the way that the Vikings' route was far more varied than we might think, that with them came people from the Middle East, not just Scandinavia, and that the reason for this unexpected integration between the Eastern and Western worlds may well have been a slave trade running through the Silk Road, and all the way to Britain. Told as a riveting story of the Vikings and the methods we use to understand them, this is a major reassessment of the fierce, often-mythologised voyagers of the north, and of the global medieval world as we know it.

Stone statues, indigenous to the early Turks, appeared in the vast territory of the Asian steppes, from Southern Siberia to Central Asia and across the foothills of the Ural Mountains. The custom originated among Cumans in Eastern Europe. The skill of erecting anthropomorphic stelae required proficiency in processing different kinds of stone and wood, and was characterized by artistic value of representations, as well as by the timeless aesthetics of the canon. The author presents the results of her formative studies into the collection of the Cuman sculptures of the Veliko-Anadol Forest Museum, Ukraine. The book delves into the history of research on Cuman stone stelae, resulting in great reading for all archeologists and historians alike.

Transformations of Identity and Society in Anglo-Saxon Essex: A Case Study of an Early Medieval North Atlantic Community presents the results of a comprehensive archaeological study of early medieval Essex (c.AD 400-1066). This region provides an important case study for examining coastal societies of north-western Europe. Drawing on a wealth of new data, the author demonstrates the profound influence of maritime contacts on changing expressions of cultural affiliation. It is argued that this Continental orientation reflects Essex's longterm engagement with the emergent, dynamic North Sea network. The wide chronological focus and inclusive dataset enables long-term socio-economic continuity and transformation to be revealed. These include major new insights into the construction of group identity in Essex between the 5th and 11th centuries and the identification of several previously unknown sites of exchange. The presentation also includes the first full archaeological study of Essex under 'Viking' rule.

This is the first academic book which concentrates on the discoveries of medieval date (6th- 13th centuries) from the territory of modern Poland. The book covers the principal research questions, such as the origins of the Slavs, societies of the proto-state period and the origins of the Polish state. The volume also includes a discussion of the most interesting, sometimes controversial, archaeological discoveries or issues. These include pagan Slavonic holy places, the monumental mounds of Little Poland, the first traces of medieval writing, exceptional strongholds, the origins of Polish towns, rural landscapes, archaeology of the oldest monastic complexes, and the question of locals and aliens viewed through archaeological evidence and many other topics. The book is meant mainly for students, archaeologists and historians. It can also be useful for a wider audience interested in the history and archaeology of central Europe. In November 2006 "The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland" received the KLIO Award from the Association of Polish History Publishers.

This volume aims to show through various case studies how the interrelations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Iberia were negotiated in the field of images, objects and architecture during the Later Middle Ages and Early Modernity. . By looking at the ways pre-modern Iberians envisioned diversity, we can reconstruct several stories, frequently interwoven with devotional literature, poetry or Inquisitorial trials, and usually quite different from a binary story of simple opposition. The book's point of departure narrates the relationship between images and conversions, analysing the mechanisms of hybridity, and proposing a new explanation for the representation of otherness as the complex outcome of a negotiation involving integration. Contributors are: Cristelle Baskins, Giuseppe Capriotti, Ivana Capeta Rakic, Borja Franco Llopis, Francisco de Asis Garcia Garcia, Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, Nicola Jennings, Fernando Marias, Elena Paulino Montero, Maria Portmann, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Amadeo Serra Desfilis, Maria Vittoria Spissu, Laura Stagno, Antonio Urquizar-Herrera.

In the course of the fifth century, the farms and villas of lowland Britain were replaced by a new, distinctive form of rural settlement: the settlements of Anglo-Saxon communities. This volume presents the first major synthesis of the evidence - which has expanded enormously in recent years - for such settlements from across England and throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and what it reveals about the communities who built and lived in them, and whose daily lives went almost wholly unrecorded. Helena Hamerow examines the appearance, 'life-cycles', and function of their buildings; the relationship of Anglo-Saxon settlements to the Romano-British landscape and to later medieval villages; the role of ritual in daily life; what distinguished 'rural' from 'urban' in this early period; and the relationship between farming regimes and settlement forms. A central theme throughout the book is the impact on rural producers of the rise of lordship and markets and how this impact is revealed through the remains of their settlements. Hamerow provides an introduction to the wealth of information yielded by settlement archaeology and to the enormous contribution that it makes to our understanding of Anglo-Saxon society.

The excavated foundations of a ninth-century sacral building in the northeastern suburb of Pohansko, an important centre of Great Moravia, and especially the find of the nobleman's grave H 153, has focused scholarly attention onto the nature of the Mojmirid state and the reasons behind its sudden disintegration. In this volume, a group of archaeologists, historians and a natural scientist aim to incorporate this remarkable discovery into the wider frameworks of Moravian power, society, and culture, and thereby arrive at some surprising conclusions. Contributors: are Stefan Eichert, David Kalhous, Pavel Kouril, Jiri Machacek, Vladimir Sladek, Ivo Stefan, Martin Wihoda, Roman Zehetmayer.