Technological Continuity,Technological 'Survival': the Use of Horizontal Mills in Western Ireland,c. 1632–1940

Abstract

This article discusses the continued use of the early medieval horizontal waterwheel form, well into the post-medieval period in the Atlantic Provinces of the British Isles. It argues that archaeological and documentary evidence demonstrates that the horizontal mills of western Ireland represent the continued use of this technology from the early medieval period in to modern times. Similarly, it argues that the traditional horizontal mills of Scotland and its western islands can, on linguistic grounds, be linked into the same enduring tradition. The continued use of this technology in these societies appears to be as much a product of social context and choice, as it was a technological 'survival' in a 'marginalised' area.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

Research on the history of the third world in Scandinavia

The aim of this paper is to challenge some of the established views on monetary and economic aspects of medieval Norwegian history. This challenge is not only based on a different understanding of the evidence, but also on new interpretations of documentary and numismatic evidence. Contrary to what has been the general understanding I argue that money was available, and it was, in longer periods of time, available within a framework of a well organized monetary system with large coinages. In the second half of the 12th century, coins became distributed and used among a larger group of people in rural areas than ever before. In market places and towns, money economy was emerging in the 11th and 12th, and probably seen partly in effect in the 13th and 14th century. If we accept the evidence for coinage and the use of money as being widely distributed, or even accept it partly, it opens up a range of new perspectives to use as starting points for understanding medieval monetary and economic history in Norway.     

Early medieval landscapes in north‐west Spain: local powers and communities,fifth–tenth centuries

There has been in the last few years a rapid expansion in the archaeology of early medieval societies in the north‐west of the Iberian Peninsula. A large part of this evidence remains unpublished or has been published incompletely. This article considers the historical landscapes of the north‐western Iberian Peninsula in the early medieval period as social constructions, starting with the identification of the systemic relationships between different archaeological entities. The dynamics and articulation of early medieval societies in the Cantabrian area and in the Duero and Tagus basins will be outlined by means of deconstructing their landscapes. To achieve this, a set of variables will be analysed in comparative terms from three regions selected as case studies: Madrid, the Duero basin and the Basque Country. With the aim of explaining these systems diachronically a division between the fifth–eighth and eighth–tenth centuries will be taken into consideration.     

A Few Remarks upon the Antiquities of Silver Found at Cuerdale

The settlement of Le Yaudet, in northern Brittany, occupies a prominent position on a headland dominating the estuary of the river Léguer. It is the focus of a long-term research excavation, now in its tenth year, designed to study continuities and discontinuities in the occupation sequence from the Iron Age to the late medieval period. The paper focusses on late Roman and early medieval occupation. Tenuous evidence for late fourth- to early fifth-century military use is considered. Thereafter, fields worked by the ‘lazy bed’ method were laid out: contemporary corn-drying ovens have produced dates in the sixth and seventh centuries. The results are discussed in the context of the sparse historical evidence and other contemporary finds from Brittany.     

Pope Leo of Bourges,clerical immunity and the early medieval secular

This article investigates the early medieval secular through the lens of clerical immunity – that is, the legal exemption of clerics from courts labelled as secular. It focusses on a short text, eventually attributed to Pope Leo, which was written in fifth-century Gaul to define this immunity. By pursuing this text’s fate as it was revised and put to use into the eleventh century, the article demonstrates how the early medieval secular was a religious category employed for different purposes at different times.     

Garden plants in medieval Iberia: the archaeobotanical evidence

Of all the plants that were used in early medieval times, many were grown in gardens and orchards and contributed to the subsistence of medieval communities. Archaeobotany provides direct evidence of the range of species used either for food or for other purposes. In this contribution, we explore the evidence of garden produce in early medieval Iberia focusing on archaeobotanical data. First, we will analyse the available data, taking into consideration different types of preservation. Second, we will examine the diversity of species, trying to establish the uses and purposes of the taxa identified. Finally, we will discuss results within the better‐known wider European context.     

Introduction: people,places and possessions in late medieval England

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the rising interest in materiality and its impact on late medieval scholarship. Presenting an overview of the field, it considers how recent attention to physical spaces and objects has shed new light on the lives and experiences of late medieval men and women, and explores the sources and agendas driving new research. In particular, it evaluates the use of written evidence for accessing and investigating material culture, considering the types of documents informing material approaches, and the questions being asked of them. The analysis also reflects upon the distinct scholarly trajectories of building and landscape studies, and the disjuncture between medieval and early modern scholarship in this area. Providing an introduction to this special issue, it shows how the six contributors collectively address these lacunae to offer holistic readings of the relationships between people, places and possessions in late medieval England.     

魏晋南北朝时期的铜香炉——兼论魏晋南北朝时期的熏香习俗

魏晋南北朝铜香炉可分为熏炉和熏斗两大类,总体上为汉代铜香炉样式的延续和发展,而形制有所简化。装饰艺术方面有所创新,融合新的时代因素,与同时期的其他生活家居用品风格配套。尽管受到瓷器制造业兴起的影响,铜香炉仍在生活中占有一席之地。这一时期,熏香习俗更加普及,内涵更为丰富,生活用香和宗教用香在文献中有不少记载。香料、香具和熏香习俗也随着贸易和交往传播域外。     

Kings,chieftains and public cult in pre‐Christian Scandinavia

The article addresses the question of the performance of pre‐Christian public cult by political leaders in early medieval Scandinavia. This question is traditionally discussed within the larger theoretical frame of sacral kingship in early medieval Scandinavia. In this article, the key contemporary evidence is presented and discussed with the conclusion that the sources do not show political leaders performing pre‐Christian public cult. Instead, the evidence shows that political leaders participated in private religious rituals whose performance, however, was not connected with political leadership per se.     

The Aetiology of Vampires and Revenants: Theological Debate and Popular Belief

In this paper, I discuss the supposed aetiology of undead corpses (by which I mean corpses that refused to stay dead), and the theological explanations for their existence, as outlined in the historical documents at the time, and the various arguments that ensued. I examine the medieval notion that the Devil might reanimate a corpse and pretend to be the deceased, for example, the post‐mortem effects of excommunication, and the incorruptibility of deceased saints and martyrs. In particular, I focus upon the vampires of eighteenth‐century Europe and the aetiological explanations proffered by the theologians, philosophers and medical fraternity at the time, such as vestigium vitae and premature burial, compared to folk belief at the village level. Furthermore, I argue that despite the largely successful campaign by the socio‐religious elite to eradicate such notions, muted belief in the existence of vampires continued to emerge thereafter because folk belief was fuelled by an entrenched early modern belief‐system that had itself promoted the existence of undead corpses.     

Ultra-modern thoughts: political theology in Leo Strauss’s Philosophy and Law

A primary theme in Leo Strauss’s early work is how medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy, while influenced by Plato, differs from him in crucial ways. This theme is central to Strauss’s 1935 book Philosophy and Law. Philosophy and Law concerns the medieval ‘philosophic foundation of the law,’ which provides a rational justification of revelation. For Strauss, the foundation provides this justification by virtue of some difference it has from Plato. In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Strauss’s view of this difference. I suggest that, for Strauss, whereas Plato conceived of the legislator and his legislation, the foundation conceives of the sovereign and his sovereign laws. On this basis, I also suggest a solution to a perennial mystery of Philosophy and Law: Strauss claims that the medieval foundation reveals ‘ultra-modern thoughts,’ yet does not explicitly state the identity of these thoughts. I suggest that their author is Carl Schmitt.     

Technologies of Appearance: Hair Behaviour in Early Medieval Europe

Personal appearance in general—and the grooming of hair in particular—has long held a position of interest in historical, art-historical, and literary scholarship. The same cannot be said of archaeology, and the material aspects of personal grooming in the construction and communication of identity have not been fully synthesized. As a result, little attempt has been made to understand the social role of hair in less well documented societies, such as those of early medieval northern and western Europe. This paper considers archaeological, iconographic and documentary evidence for the significance of, and physical engagement with hair in early medieval northern and western Europe, and offers a model for the interpretation of grooming as a social phenomenon. It is argued that grooming was a socially meaningful practice, and that it played a key role in the construction of early medieval identities, as well as in the maintenance and manipulation of boundaries and distinctions between individuals and groups.     

Food, drink and ritualised communication in the household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265

This article investigates the use of feasts and gifts of food in the household of Eleanor de Montfort between February and August 1265. In his influential The dangers of ritual, Philippe Buc argued, through a study of early medieval chronicles, that rituals in medieval Europe were regularly targets for disruption and aggressive manipulation either in practice or in the texts reporting the rituals. This article tests Buc’s thesis against administrative records from thirteenth-century England. The evidence from Eleanor’s household accounts is illuminated through a study of contemporary literary sources and didactic texts. It concludes that the administrative records indicate that rituals in practice were less habitually the subject of manipulation and conflict than the literary evidence indicates.     

Beyond royal estates and monasteries: landownership in the early medieval Ardennes

Most historians who have studied the medieval Ardennes have focused exclusively on royal and monastic properties, assuming that every early reference to land in the area is either to the property of royal monasteries or to fiscal land. Actually, the evidence from the region around Bastogne (Belgium), the centre of what would later be called pagus Ardennensis, shows that as early as the seventh century ‘private’ landowners were present and active in the area. This observation leads to a new reading of the rural economy and society, the formation of monastic property and the links between local and royal power in the early medieval Ardennes.     

Comparative Study of Perimortem Weapon Trauma in Two Early Medieval Skeletal Populations (AD 400–1200) from Ireland

Violence was a reality of life in early medieval Ireland (AD 400–1200). Its omnipresence is indicated from numerous narratives of regicide, mortal conflicts, battles and warfare that survive in ancient myths, legends and annalistic accounts. The archaeological evidence of violence and conflict is mainly identified in the osteoarchaeological record, and approximately 13% of all skeletal populations from excavated early medieval cemeteries in Ireland have shown evidence of weapon trauma. This study considers the osteological representation of violent deaths in two contemporaneous Irish skeletal populations dating to this period: Mount Gamble in County Dublin and Owenbristy in County Galway. This analysis involves assessing the different anatomical regions of the body for evidence of lesions that can be attributed to weapon trauma. The results indicate that these populations are likely to have been exposed to violence under differing circumstances; the evidence suggests that the individuals from Mount Gamble may have been well equipped or skilled at interpersonal battle, in contrast to the majority of individuals from Owenbristy who may have been unprotected and unprepared. The presence of two adolescents and two adult females amongst the victims from the latter population gives insight into a wider social dimension of weapon trauma in early medieval Ireland. There is also evidence of postmortem mutilations and decapitations, which reflect ritualistic aspects of violence. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.