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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region > European archaeology > Medieval European archaeology
This book tells the transnational history of Portuguese communities
in Canada and the United States against the backdrop of the Cold
War, the American Civil Rights movement, the Portuguese Colonial
War, and Canadian multiculturalism. It considers the ethnic,
racial, class, gender, linguistic, regional, and generational
permutations of "Portuguese" diaspora from both a transnational and
comparative perspective. Besides showing that diasporas and nations
can be co-dependent, This Pilgrim Nation counters the common notion
that hybrid diasporic identities are largely benign and empowering
by revealing how they can perpetuate asymmetrical power relations.
Sense and Feeling in Daily Living in the Early Medieval English
World seeks to illuminate important aspects of daily living and the
experience of the environment through sense and emotion, using
archaeological, art and textual sources. Twelve papers explore
sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and emotions such as anger,
horror, grief and joy. Similar in theme and method to the first,
second and third volumes in the Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon
World series, the collected articles illuminate how an
understanding of the sensory and emotional landscape that helped
form the daily lives of the peoples and the environments of early
medieval England can inform the study of England before the Norman
Conquest. The sights, smells, and sounds that informed the physical
and emotional landscape of town, scriptoria, and hall, for example,
explain urban planning, literary imagery and emotional attachment
evident among the early medieval English peoples. Experienced
senses and emotions are thus as central to understanding the inner
and outer landscape of the pre-Conquest English as crafts, towns or
water structures.
The Battle of Hastings in 1066 is the one date forever seared on
the British national psyche. It enabled the Norman Conquest that
marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England. But there was much more to
the Normans than the invading army Duke William shipped over from
Normandy to the shores of Sussex. How a band of marauding warriors
established some of the most powerful dominions in Europe - in
Sicily and France, as well as England - is an improbably romantic
idea. In exploring Norman culture in all its regions, Leonie V
Hicks is able to place the Normans in the full context of early
medieval society. Her wide ranging comparative perspective enables
the Norman story to be told in full, so that the societies of
Rollo, William, Robert (Guiscard) and Roger are explored in
unprecedented detail. From Hastings to the martial exploits of
Bohemond and Tancred on the First Crusade; from castles and keeps
to Romanesque cathedrals; and from the founding of the Kingdom of
Sicily (1130) to cross-cultural encounters with Byzantines and
Muslims, this is a fresh and lively survey of one of the most
popular topics in European history.
This comparative analysis argues that there were four or, more
likely, five major turning points of world history, whose lasting
effects are being felt to this day. These turning points show
striking resemblances to each other: An apparently coherent
community of shared convictions and a shared way of life splits
unexpectedly in two, with one section swerving off on the road to a
radically new set of values. This has probably been true of the
rise of monotheism in opposition to the existing polytheistic norms
of Oriental cultures. It has been true of the primitive Christian
Church breaking away from Judaism. It was true of the Protestants
breaking away from Rome. It also has been true for two secular
revolutions: the independence of the United States of America
inventing the republican order of representative democracy, and the
Russian Revolution, when the revolutionaries decided to give up on
peaceful socialism and resort to violence.
Urban Transformations is a theoretical and empirical account of the
changing nature of urbanization in Germany. Where city planners and
municipal administrations had emphasized free markets, the rule of
law, and trade in 1871, by the 1930s they favoured a quite
different integrative, corporate, and productivist vision. Urban
Transformations explores the broad-based social transformation
connected to these changes and the contemporaneous shifts in the
cultural and social history of global capitalism. Dynamic features
of modern capitalist life, such as rapid industrialization,
working-class radicalism, dramatic population growth, poor quality
housing, and regional administrative incoherence significantly
influenced the Greater Berlin region. Examining materials on city
planning, municipal administration, architecture, political
economy, and jurisprudence, Urban Transformations recasts the
history of German and European urbanization, as well as that of
modernist architecture and city planning.
WINNER OF THE FRANK WATSON BOOK PRIZE 2021. SHORTLISTED IN
SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2021 The first full-scale,
interdisciplinary treatment of the wide-ranging connections between
the Gaelic world and the Northumbrian kingdom. Northumbria was the
most northerly Anglo-Saxon kingdom; its impressive landscape
featured two sweeping coastlines, which opened the area to a
variety of cultural connections. This book explores influences that
emanated from the Gaelic-speaking world, including Ireland, the
Isle of Man, Argyll and the kingdom of Alba (the nascent Scottish
kingdom). It encompasses Northumbria's "Golden Age", the kingdom's
political and scholarly high-point of the seventh and early eighth
centuries, and culminates with the kingdom's decline and
fragmentation in the Viking Age, which opened up new links with
Gaelic-Scandinavian communities. Political and ecclesiastical
connections are discussed in detail; the study also covers
linguistic contact, material culture and the practicalities of
travel, bringing out the realities of contemporary life. This
interdisciplinary approach sheds new light on the west and north of
the Northumbrian kingdom, the areas linked most closely with the
Gaelic world. Overall, the book reveals the extent to which Gaelic
influence was multi-faceted, complex and enduring. Dr FIONA EDMONDS
is Reader in History and Director of the Regional Heritage Centre
at Lancaster University.
This volume provides a full analytical catalog of all known
pre-Norman sculpture from this region. As little documentary
evidence survives from the area, the sculpture is vital to
understanding the early development of the Church, the shifting
relationships between communities, and the ways in which political
affiliations gave access to a variety of cultural centers across
England, Ireland, mainland Europe and Scandinavia.
Among the significant carvings are the crosses at Sandbach with
their elaborate figural sculpture and the delicate carvings from
Halton and Hornby in the Lune valley. Much of the work is of the
10th- and 11th-century Viking period, and shows an intriguing
mixture of Scandinavian-derived motifs alongside Christian
iconography.
Introductory chapters set the material within its historical,
topographical and art-historical context.
The German Ocean examines archaeological and historical evidence
for the development of economies and societies around the North Sea
from the beginning of the twelfth century until the mid sixteenth
century. It draws in material from Scandinavia to Normandy and from
Scotland to the Thames estuary. While largely concerned with the
North Sea littoral, when necessary it takes account of adjacent
areas such as the Baltic or inland hinterlands. The North Sea is
often perceived as a great divide, divorcing the British Isles from
continental Europe. In cultural terms, however, it has always acted
more as a lake, supporting communities around its fringes which
have frequently had much in common. This is especially true of the
medieval period when trade links, fostered in the two centuries
prior to 1100, expanded in the 12th and 13th centuries to ensure
the development of maritime societies whose material culture was
often more remarkable for its similarity across distance than for
its diversity. Geography, access to raw materials and political
expediency could nevertheless combine to provide distinctive
regional variations.Economies developed more rapidly in some areas
than others; local solutions to problems produced urban and rural
environments of different aspect; the growth, and sometimes
decline, of towns and ports was often dictated by local as much as
wider factors. This book explores evidence for this 'diverse
commonality' through the historic environment of the North Sea
region with the intention that it will be of interest not only to
historians and archaeologists but to those who live and work within
the historic environment. This environment is a common European
resource with much to contribute to a sustainable future - the book
provides an archaeological contribution to the understanding of
that resource.
The story of the Vikings in North America as both fact and fiction,
from the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic
in the tenth and eleventh centuries to the myths and fabrications
about their presence there that have developed in recent centuries.
Tracking the saga of the Norse across the North Atlantic to
America, Norse America sets the record straight about the idea that
the Vikings 'discovered' America. The journey described is a
continuum, with evidence-based history and archaeology at one end,
and fake history and outright fraud at the other. In between there
lies a huge expanse of uncertainty: sagas that may contain shards
of truth, characters that may be partly historical, real
archaeology that may be interpreted through the fictions of saga,
and fragmentary evidence open to responsible and irresponsible
interpretation. Norse America is a book that tells two stories. The
first is the westward expansion of the Norse across the North
Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries, settling in Greenland
and establishing a shore station at L'Anse aux Meadows in
Newfoundland (to which a chapter of the book is devoted) and ending
(but not culminating) in a fleeting and ill-documented presence on
the shores of the North American mainland. The second is the
appropriation and enhancement of the westward narrative by
Canadians and Americans who want America to have had white North
European origins, who therefore want the Vikings to have
'discovered' America, and who in the advancement of that thesis
have been willing to twist and manufacture evidence in support of
claims grounded in an ideology of racial superiority.
The 23 chapters in this volume explore the material culture of
sanctity in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and
c. 1220, with a focus on the ways in which saints and relics were
enshrined, celebrated, and displayed. Reliquary cults were
particularly important during the Romanesque period, both as a
means of affirming or promoting identity and as a conduit for the
divine. This book covers the geography of sainthood, the
development of spaces for reliquary display, the distribution of
saints across cities, the use of reliquaries to draw attention to
the attributes, and the virtues or miracle-working character of
particular saints. Individual essays range from case studies on
Verona, Hildesheim, Trondheim and Limoges, the mausoleum of Lazarus
at Autun, and the patronage of Mathilda of Canossa, to reflections
on local pilgrimage, the deployment of saints as physical
protectors, the use of imagery where possession of a saint was
disputed, island sanctuaries, and the role of Templars and
Hospitallers in the promotion of relics from the Holy Land. This
book will serve historians and archaeologists studying the
Romanesque period, and those interested in material culture and
religious practice in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean
c.1000-c.1220.
The Archaeology of the 11th Century addresses many key questions
surrounding this formative period of English history and considers
conditions before 1066 and how these changed. The impact of the
Conquest of England by the Normans is the central focus of the
book, which not only assesses the destruction and upheaval caused
by the invading forces, but also examines how the Normans
contributed to local culture, religion, and society. The volume
explores a range of topics including food culture, funerary
practices, the development of castles and their impact, and how
both urban and rural life evolved during the 11th century. Through
its nuanced approach to the complex relationships and regional
identities which characterised the period, this collection
stimulates renewed debate and challenges some of the long-standing
myths surrounding the Conquest. Presenting new discoveries and
fresh ideas in a readable style with numerous illustrations, this
interdisciplinary book is an invaluable resource for those
interested in the archaeology, history, geography, art, and
literature of the 11th century.
Across the nine thematic chapters of Experiencing Medieval Art,
renowned art historian Herbert L. Kessler considers functional
objects as well as paintings and sculptures; the circumstances,
processes, and materials of production; the conflictual
relationship between art objects and notions of an ineffable deity;
the context surrounding medieval art; and questions of
apprehension, aesthetics, and modern presentation. He also
introduces the exciting discoveries and revelations that have
revolutionized contemporary understanding of medieval art and
identifies the vexing challenges that still remain. With 16 color
plates and 81 images in all-including the stained glass of Chartres
Cathedral, the mosaics of San Marco, and the Utrecht Psalter, as
well as newly discovered works such as the frescoes in Rome's aula
gotica and a twelfth-century aquamanile in Hildesheim-Experiencing
Medieval Art makes the complex history of medieval art accessible
for students of art history and scholars of medieval history,
theology, and literature.
Examination and analysis of one of the most important artefacts of
Anglo-Saxon society, the cruciform brooch, setting it in a wider
context. Cruciform brooches were large and decorative items of
jewellery, frequently used to pin together women's garments in
pre-Christian northwest Europe. Characterised by the strange
bestial visages that project from the feet of thesedress and cloak
fasteners, cruciform brooches were especially common in eastern
England during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. For this reason,
archaeologists have long associated them with those shadowy tribal
originators of the English: the Angles of the Migration period.
This book provides a multifaceted, holistic and contextual analysis
of more than 2,000 Anglo-Saxon cruciform brooches. It offers a
critical examination of identity in Early Medievalsociety,
suggesting that the idea of being Anglian in post-Roman Britain was
not a primordial, tribal identity transplanted from northern
Germany, but was at least partly forged through the repeated,
prevalent use of dress and material culture. Additionally, the
particular women that were buried with cruciform brooches, and
indeed their very funerals, played an important role in the
process. These ideas are explored through a new typology and an
updated chronology for cruciform brooches, alongside considerations
of their production, exchange and use. The author also examines
their geographical distribution through time and their most common
archaeological contexts: the inhumation and cremation cemeteries of
early Anglo-Saxon England. Dr Toby Martin is a British Academy
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford
University.
This book addresses a critical era in the history of the city of
Rome, the eighth century CE. This was the moment when the bishops
of Rome assumed political and administrative responsibility for the
city's infrastructure and the physical welfare of its inhabitants,
in the process creating the papal state that still survives today.
John Osborne approaches this using the primary lens of 'material
culture' (buildings and their decorations, both surviving and known
from documents and/or archaeology), while at the same time
incorporating extensive information drawn from written sources.
Whereas written texts are comparatively few in number, recent
decades have witnessed an explosion in new archaeological
discoveries and excavations, and these provide a much fuller
picture of cultural life in the city. This methodological approach
of using buildings and objects as historical documents is embodied
in the phrase 'history in art'.
Echoes of the Middle Ages are all around us in Britain. Sites like
the Tower of London, Hampton Court, and the castles of Scotland and
Wales are mainstays of cultural tourism, Medieval institutions like
the monarchy, monasteries, and universities are familiar to us, and
we come into contact with the remnants of Britain's medieval past
every day we drive past a castle on a hill or visit a local church.
People today can come into direct contact with their medieval
predecessors through the inspiring cross-section of later medieval
finds that can now be found on display in museums across the
country. In many ways, the medieval past has never been so present.
The Oxford Handbook of Later Medieval Archaeology in Britain
provides an overview of the archaeology of the later Middle Ages in
Britain between AD 1066 and 1550. Sixty-one entries, divided into
ten thematic sections, cover topics ranging from later medieval
objects, human remains, archaeological science, standing buildings,
and sites such as castles and monasteries, to the well-preserved
relict landscapes which still survive. This is a rich and exciting
period of the past and most of what we know about the material
culture of the medieval period has been discovered in the past two
generations. This volume provides comprehensive coverage of the
latest research and describes the major projects and concepts that
are changing our understanding of the later Middle Ages.
Anglo-Saxon farming made England so wealthy by the eleventh century
that it attracted two full-scale invasions. In Anglo-Saxon Farms
and Farming, Debby Banham and Rosamond Faith explore how
Anglo-Saxon farmers produced the food and other crops and animal
products that sustained England's economy, society, and culture
before the Norman Conquest. The volume is made up of two
complementary sections: the first examines written and pictorial
sources, archaeological evidence, place-names, and the history of
the English language to discover what kind of crops and livestock
people raised, and what tools and techniques they used in producing
them. The second part assembles a series of local landscape studies
to explore how these techniques were combined into working
agricultural regimes in different environments. These perspectives
allow the authors to take new approaches to the chronology and
development of open-field farming, to the changing relationship
between livestock husbandry and arable cultivation, and to the
values and social relationships which under-pinned rural life. The
elite are not ignored, but peasant famers are represented as
agents, making decisions about the way they managed their resources
and working lives. A picture emerges of an agriculture that changed
from an essentially prehistoric state in the sub-Roman period to
what was, by the time of the Conquest, recognizably the beginning
of a tradition that only ended in the modern period. Anglo-Saxon
farming was not only sustainable, but infinitely adaptable to
different soils and geology, and to a climate changing as
unpredictably as it is today.
This ground breaking volume brings together contributions from
scholars across a range of disciplines (including literary studies,
history, geography and archaeology) to investigate questions of
space, place and identity in the medieval city. Using Chester as a
case study - with attention to its location on the border between
England and Wales, its rich multilingual culture and surviving
material fabric - the essays recover the experience and
understanding of the urban space by individuals and groups within
the medieval city, and offer new readings from the vantage-point of
twenty-first century disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.
The German Ocean examines archaeological and historical evidence
for the development of economies and societies around the North Sea
from the beginning of the twelfth century until the mid sixteenth
century. It draws in material from Scandinavia to Normandy and from
Scotland to the Thames estuary. While largely concerned with the
North Sea littoral, when necessary it takes account of adjacent
areas such as the Baltic or inland hinterlands. The North Sea is
often perceived as a great divide, divorcing the British Isles from
continental Europe. In cultural terms, however, it has always acted
more as a lake, supporting communities around its fringes which
have frequently had much in common. This is especially true of the
medieval period when trade links, fostered in the two centuries
prior to 1100, expanded in the 12th and 13th centuries to ensure
the development of maritime societies whose material culture was
often more remarkable for its similarity across distance than for
its diversity. Geography, access to raw materials and political
expediency could nevertheless combine to provide distinctive
regional variations. Economies developed more rapidly in some areas
than others; local solutions to problems produced urban and rural
environments of different aspect; the growth, and sometimes
decline, of towns and ports was often dictated by local as much as
wider factors. This book explores evidence for this `diverse
commonality' through the historic environment of the North Sea
region with the intention that it will be of interest not only to
historians and archaeologists but to those who live and work within
the historic environment. This environment is a common European
resource with much to contribute to a sustainable future - the book
provides an archaeological contribution to the understanding of
that resource.
The Living Inca Town presents a rich case study of tourism in
Ollantaytambo, a rapidly developing destination in the southern
Peruvian Andes and the starting point for many popular treks to
Machu Picchu. Tourism is generally welcomed in Ollantaytambo, as it
provides a steady stream of work for local businesses, particularly
those run by women. However, the obvious material inequalities
between locals and tourists affect many interactions and have
contributed to conflict and aggression throughout the tourist
zones. Based on a number of research visits over the course of
fifteen years, The Living Inca Town examines the experiences and
interactions of locals, visitors, and tourism brokers. The book
makes room for unique perspectives and uses innovative visual
methods, including photovoice images and pen and ink drawings, to
represent different viewpoints of day-to-day tourist encounters.
The Living Inca Town vividly illustrates how tourism can perpetuate
gendered and global inequalities, while also exploring new avenues
to challenge and renegotiate these roles.
Princes of the Church brings together the latest research exploring
the importance of bishops' palaces for social and political
history, landscape history, architectural history and archaeology.
It is the first book-length study of such sites since Michael
Thompson's Medieval Bishops' Houses (1998), and the first work ever
to adopt such a wide-ranging approach to them in terms of themes
and geographical and chronological range. Including contributions
from the late Antique period through to the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, it deals with bishops' residences in England,
Scotland, Wales, the Byzantine Empire, France, and Italy. It is
structured in three sections: design and function, which considers
how bishops' palaces and houses differed from the palaces and
houses of secular magnates, in their layout, design, furnishings,
and functions; landscape and urban context, which considers the
relationship between bishops' palaces and houses and their
political and cultural context, the landscapes and towns or cities
in which they were set, and the parks, forests, and towns that were
planned and designed around them; and architectural form, which
considers the extent of shared features between bishops' palaces
and houses, and their relationship to the houses of other Church
potentates and to the houses of secular magnates.
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