Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Medieval Europe (medieval + europe)
Selected AbstractsWithout the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval EuropeGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 1 2007Theresa Earenfight First page of article [source] Communication and Contention: The Role of Literacy in Conflicts with ,Abb,sid OfficialsHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2007Maaike Van Berkel ,Abb,sid officials of the late ninth and early tenth centuries operated in a highly bureaucratized and literate environment and they expressed their identity in terms of expertise in writing. However, in their daily business they had to communicate with all kinds of social groups, some of which had not , or only to a certain level , been introduced to writing. During the last three decades a series of groundbreaking studies appeared on the introduction and dissemination of writing in Medieval Europe. The role of literacy in Arab and Islamic societies in this period have as yet received very little, and mainly rather specialized, attention. The communication between ,Abb,sid officials and other social groups will be studied in cases of conflict and their settlements. Conflict settlement is also a field of research that recently witnessed important new insights. Studying the use of written documents in dispute settlements , a situation in which communication is of vital importance to all parties involved , forms therefore an excellent opportunity to analyse familiarity with, and confidence in, writing among the various groups within the ,Abb,sid caliphate. [source] Migration to the Medieval Middle East with the CrusadesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2009Piers D. Mitchell Abstract During the 12th and 13th centuries thousands of people moved from Europe to the Middle East to fight, undertake pilgrimage, or settle and make a new life. The aim of this research is to investigate two populations from the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, by determining who was born in Europe and who came from the Middle East. Oxygen and strontium stable isotope analyses were conducted on the enamel of teeth from skeletal remains excavated from Crusader contexts. Twenty individuals from the coastal city of Caesarea (10 high status and 10 low status), and two local Near Eastern Christian farmers from the village of Parvum Gerinum (Tel Jezreel) were analyzed as a control sample. Results were compared with known geographic values for oxygen and strontium isotopes. The population of the city of Caesarea appears to have been dominated by European-born individuals (probably 19/20, but at least 13/20), with few locals. This was surprising as a much higher proportion of locals were expected. Both controls from the farming village of Parvum Gerinum had spent their childhood in the area of the village, which matches our understanding of limited mobility among poor Medieval farmers. This is the first time that stable isotope analysis has been applied to the study of the migration of peoples between Medieval Europe and the Middle East at the time of the crusades. In view of these findings, we must now rethink past estimations of population social structure in Levantine coastal Medieval cities during the Crusader period. Am J Phys Anthropol 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe , By Anneke B. Mulder-BakkerRELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2007Karen Teel No abstract is available for this article. [source] Exercise of royal power in early medieval Europe: the case of Otto the Great 936,73EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 4 2009David Bachrach Current scholarly orthodoxy holds that the German kingdom under the Ottonians (c.919,1024) did not possess an administration, much less an administrative system that relied heavily upon the ,written word'. It is the contention of this essay that the exercise of royal power under Otto the Great (936,73) relied intrinsically on a substantial royal administrative system that made very considerable use of documents, particularly for the storage of crucial information about royal resources. The focus of this study is on Otto I's use of this written information to exercise royal power in the context of confiscating and requisitioning property from both laymen and ecclesiastical institutions. [source] When documents are destroyed or lost: lay people and archives in the early Middle AgesEARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 4 2002Warren Brown In this paper, I discuss some largely unexplored evidence about lay archives in early medieval Europe. This evidence consists of a set of formulae from late Roman, Merovingian, and Carolingian Gaul, and from Carolingian Bavaria. According to these formulae, lay men and women in these regions from the sixth to the ninth centuries kept documents in private archivesbecause they regarded documents as vital to the security of their property holdings. The manuscripts in which the formulae survive indicate that lay people continued to keep archives throughout the ninth century and into the tenth. They also suggest, however, that by the end of the eighth century traditions about how lay people used and stored documents were being preserved and maintained to a large degree by churches and monasteries. [source] An economic and social history of later medieval Europe, 1000,1500 , By Steven A. EpsteinECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2010RICHARD W. UNGER No abstract is available for this article. [source] Loving Friends: Surviving Widowhood in Late Medieval WestminsterGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 1 2010Katherine L. French Although medieval moralists routinely warned against women socialising with either men or women, this article argues that friendships were instrumental in helping women survive widowhood. In medieval Europe, widowhood was frequently a time of vulnerability and poverty. Unscrupulous businessmen and other opportunists often preyed upon widows. Looking at the different ways men and women in Westminster made their wills and analysing those chosen to administer them reveals that widows frequently turned to the husbands of their friends to execute their wills and oversee their estates. [source] Kings and sons: princely rebellions and the structures of revolt in western Europe, c.1170,c.1280*HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 215 2009Björn Weiler Uprisings by royal sons against their fathers were a common phenomenon in the politics of medieval Europe, but one that, so far, has not been fully explored in the context of the thirteenth century. This was, however, a period during which numerous norms and mechanisms were developed that continued to define the Latin West well into the early modern period. This article uses three case studies (England 1173; Germany 1234; and Castile 1282) to outline both shared features of medieval European politics at large, and characteristic differences between central regions of the medieval West. [source] Pests and Diseases of Prehistoric Crops: A Yield ,Honeymoon' for Early Grain Crops in Europe?OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 1 2001Petra Dark Before the agricultural improvements of recent centuries, grain yields in medieval Europe appear to have been extremely low: well below the full potential of the crops. If yields were similarly low in prehistory, the adoption of cereal cultivation could have conveyed few benefits in terms of productivity. Consideration of the key constraints on cereal yield highlights the previous neglect of the role of pests and diseases. It is suggested that these may have been particularly damaging in the medieval period, but much less so during the early stages of the adoption of agriculture. Textual and archaeological evidence for the past occurrence of pests and diseases is discussed and, combined with consideration of the development of pest and pathogen problems of recent crop introductions, used to provide a possible outline of the early development of the pest/disease burden. It is suggested that when grain crops were first introduced into temperate Europe there may have been a ,honeymoon period' with high yields: pests and diseases which had been endemic on cereals in semi-arid, continental, or Mediterranean climates did not thrive in the temperature climate, while species native to north-west Europe may not have been adapted to attack cereals. Subsequently, however, some pests and diseases evolved to attack cereals in this environment. These may have prompted changes in grain production methods to reduce the risk of damage. Pests and diseases must have been a driving force in agrarian change for several millennia, and cannot be ignored in attempts to understand the history of agriculture. [source] Sex differentials in frailty in medieval EnglandAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2010Sharon N. DeWitte Abstract In most modern populations, there are sex differentials in morbidity and mortality that favor women. This study addresses whether such female advantages existed to any appreciable degree in medieval Europe. The analyses presented here examine whether men and women with osteological stress markers faced the same risks of death in medieval London. The sample used for this study comes from the East Smithfield Black Death cemetery in London. The benefit of using this cemetery is that most, if not all, individuals interred in East Smithfield died from the same cause within a very short period of time. This allows for the analysis of the differences between men and women in the risks of mortality associated with osteological stress markers without the potential confounding effects of different causes of death. A sample of 299 adults (173 males, 126 females) from the East Smithfield cemetery was analyzed. The results indicate that the excess mortality associated with several osteological stress markers was higher for men than for women. This suggests that in this medieval population, previous physiological stress increased the risk of death for men during the Black Death to a greater extent than was true for women. Alternatively, the results might indicate that the Black Death discriminated less strongly between women with and without pre-existing health conditions than was true for men. These results are examined in light of previous analyses of East Smithfield and what is known about diet and sexually mediated access to resources in medieval England. Am J Phys Anthropol 143:285,297, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Early Medieval Christian Identity and Anti-Judaism: The Case of the Visigothic KingdomRELIGION COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2008Rachel L. Stocking This article discusses the efforts by Catholic rulers to eliminate the Jewish communities of the Visigothic kingdom in Spain. Their sustained effort to define Christian identity through the forced baptism of Jews and criminalization of Judaism was unusual in early medieval Europe. In explaining Visigothic anti-Judaism, modern historians have disagreed over the roles of Iberian Jews, Visigothic kings, and Catholic church leaders such as Isidore of Seville. This article suggests that rather than seeking causation in royal greed, religious fanaticism, or ,crypto-Judaism', historians can more fruitfully call upon the approaches used by scholars of later medieval Christian identity and anti-Judaism in Western Europe. [source] | ||||||||||