Fortresses and fashion statements: gentry castles in fourteenth-century Northumberland

The fourteenth century saw a dramatic upsurge of new castle building in northern England. Not unreasonably, historians have associated this with the Scottish wars, seeing this proliferation as a direct response to Scottish raiding, and assuming that these castles were designed and built solely to perform a defensive military function. However, recent work on castles has questioned such purely functionalist interpretations. This article examines the castles built in the fourteenth century by the ‘gentry’ of Northumberland, the most exposed of all the border counties to Scottish attack, and sets them in their local and national contexts. Were these castles just built as defensive fortresses, or did they also serve a more symbolic role, in a society which had rapidly become militarised with the onset of war in 1296? Were they in fact intended as much to keep up with the neighbours as to keep out the Scots?     

Crusaders’ castles—the fourth generation: reflections on Frankish castle-building policy during the 13th century

This paper examines Frankish castle-building policy during the 13th century through two case studies, Château Pèlerin and Montfort. During this period, castles were built mainly by the military orders, in the same locations as, or very close to, existing fortifications. Furthermore, these activities often coincided with the presence of a crusade in the region. In the two case studies the initiators of the projects had reasons other than military to execute them. The main conclusion of this paper is that during the 13th century castles were not built in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem for strategic reasons or according to a well defined programme, but in order to meet a series of religious, moral, social as well as economic and political considerations. This conclusion may imply that this was the case also during the 12th century.     

Silchester

Medieval houses warrant the same holistic type of study that has been recently applied to medieval castles. Dartington Hall was a leading residence of the late fourteenth century and was subject to an important rebuilding programme nearly a hundred years later. Its construction, purpose and development extend far beyond any local consideration, with vital aspects that relate to the broader political and cultural context of late medieval England.     

Archaeological Excavations of the Medieval Royal Kincardine Landscape,Aberdeenshire, Scotland

KINCARDINE PARK is among the earliest and largest medieval parks in Scotland. It was royally owned and is believed to have served as a hunting park throughout the 13th and 14th centuries. Nearby are the ruins of Kincardine Castle, considered to be associated with the park, and one of the first Scottish stone-built castles. This paper presents the results of excavations conducted in the park landscape, and at the stone-built Scottish castle. New insights are provided on how medieval Scottish parks were constructed and used, and the cultural significance of these monuments is explored.     

Imagining the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: The Politics and Economics of the Rebuilding of Trakai Castle and the ‘Palace of Sovereigns’ in Vilnius

Abstract

In 1884 the prominent nation-builder Jonas Basanavi?ius declared that castle mounds and literature were the only appropriate elements from which to build the Lithuanian nation. Basanavi?ius’s view, this article suggests, had a lasting influence on the public uses of history in twentieth-century Lithuania. The study explores the construction of two iconic images of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Trakai Castle and the ‘Palace of Sovereigns’ in Vilnius. Built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Trakai Castle was once the seat of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, but fell into neglect before its reconstruction in the 1960s. Dating back to the thirteenth century, the Palace in Vilnius deteriorated during the eighteenth century, was dismantled at the beginning of the nineteenth, and has been completely rebuilt since 2000. It is striking that the reconstructions of castles were the largest state investments in culture in both the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes. The reconstruction of Trakai Castle was criticized on economic and ideological grounds by Nikita Khrushchev. The rebuilding of the Palace polarized Lithuanian intellectuals. The presentation compares the intellectual, social, and political rationales which underpinned the two projects and explores the changes and continuities in the uses of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes.     

民居中的奇迹——福建的土楼

土楼是福建西南部以永定为中心的客家人的民居。这种民居非常特殊,有方形、园形。多为四层,中间为庭院。居民多属同族、同宗、同姓。它是北方因战乱而南迁的移民带来的。在东汉以后。北方战乱,大姓士绅多聚居建成坞壁,作为保护自己。客家人南迁到福建西南,在少数民族与荒野之中,也采取这种形式建筑以适应防守需要。永居的土楼在当地环境亦有发展,特别是园形土楼,形成独特形式。由于客家人聚族迁移此地,土楼既适应其特殊环境,而且也进一步促进了客家人以耕读为中心的强大内聚力的文化的发展。因此,土楼既是客家文化的一种外在景观,又是其文化内涵的外在条件。     

Original DocumentsCharter of Hugh of Bayeux to the Church and Canons of St. Mary of Torrington,temp. Henry II

The ‘Northern British Cooking-Pot’ stems from Saxo-Norman antecedents, and is found in two basic light-coloured fabrics, the ‘Gritty Northern’ and the ‘Staxton Ware Type’. From Yorkshire the type spread in the early thirteenth century west over the Pennines to Carlisle and thence to south-west Scotland. Present evidence suggests that while ‘Gritty Northern’ ware traditions may have spread to eastern Scotland by an overland route, there is reason to suppose there was close contact between the potteries of Fife and Angus and those of the Scarborough district in the late thirteenth century. While in Scotland there is a considerable hybridization of forms and fabrics, ‘Gritty Northern’ ware appears predominant north of the Forth, ‘Staxton Type’ ware to the south. In the fourteenth century distinctively Scottish local variants occur. French and Low Countries influences on early Scottish pottery are discussed, a tentative Scottish cooking-pot type-series put forward, and a gazetteer of sites producing rim-sherds given.     

LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE HISTORICAL CAPITALS OF LITHUANIA DURING THE 13TH‐14TH CENTURIES

The castles of Kernav?, Trakai and Vilnius define the core territory of the nascent Lithuanian state. The transformation of the landscape in order to create power centres within the territory of Lithuania at the end of the 13^th century into the 14^th century is a testimony to the ambitions of the ruling Gediminid dynasty. The article presents the results of research carried out in 2018–2019 based on LiDAR data analysis, geophysical surveys, and archaeological investigations with minimal destructive impact. To reconstruct the paleorelief of the landscape, pedological methods were applied. In Kernav?, the most extensive landscape transforming works relate to the construction of hillforts: the steep ridges of the Neris river valley were artificially separated from the upper terrace and thereby transformed into two hillforts, separated by a defensive moat. For the construction of a brick castle in Old Trakai, a site exploiting the advantages of the natural terrain was chosen. Here a suitable location was found that could with few efforts be transformed into a hillock encircled with a moat. The brick castle at New Trakai was built on a peninsula going into a lake and further separated by deep moats. In scholarly writings, it has been assumed that this hillfort was of artificial origin. But the research has challenged this by demonstrating that the hillfort of the Peninsula Castle in New Trakai was merely a transformed glacial hill.     

An age of transition? Castles and the Scottish Highland estate in the 16th and 17th centuries

Abstract

In the archaeology of post-medieval rural Scotland, research traditions have inhibited understanding of social change prior to the 18th century as the emphasis has been on the dramatic overturn of 'traditional' society with Improvement and the Clearances. This contrasts with the situation for England and, indeed other parts of Europe, where there is an established concern for the much earlier 'Age of Transition' from medieval to modern. Here I explore the ancestry of Improvement by considering the genesis of the landed estate in the 16th and earlier 17th centuries, and this is primarily achieved through an analysis of the architecture and geography of castles in one area of the Highlands. This case study concerns the castles of the Glenorchy Campbells, a lineage emerging in the earlier 15th century and proceeding to become one of the most significant of Scottish, and British, landed families. In no small part through a changing approach to castle building, their rise was predicated on the transformation of clan territory into landed estate in the period after 1550. The usefulness of the 'Age of Transition' construct, in this specific context and in general, is appraised. In concluding, I argue for the alternative of the dialectical Marxist concept of contradiction. This places the focus on tension, fluidity, and lack of resolution in society, running counter to the idea of transition from one state to another. With contradiction, modern society as a simply definable entity is never established and cannot be delineated in a straightforward way. It is an itinerant process, constantly emerging and changing.     

The geography and natural resources of Bolivia

This paper tries to show the main thread of Scottish national identity in the nineteenth century and how Scotland's close connection with the empire did not asuage Scottish desires to retain a national identity. The paper tries to illustrate that the interpretation of the union connection by the Scottish political classes was central to the understanding of Scotland as a nation during the period. Examples are also provided of the way in which the union could be questioned in this century, but this was with the caveat that this would necessarily be limited; for such was the extent to which national identity was played out on an imperial stage. Although Scots never lost sight of their distinctiveness, any extension of the critique of union would have ultimately worked against their ability to confidently display their identity as they did quite successfully in the nineteenth century.     

The Gothic and the Gaelic: Exploring the Place of Castles in Ireland’s Celtic Revival

This paper examines the conflict in early nineteenth century Ireland that emerged between the way castles were portrayed in academia on the one hand and romantic literature on the other. Focusing on a key text of the Celtic Revival, Sydney Owensons The Wild Irish Girl, the paper explores how this novel (with its strong gothic influences) established a lens through which Gaelic Ireland could be understood and how this in turn affected the representation of castles. The second part of the paper ties these themes into an analysis of the relationship between architecture, literature and identity in the occupation of Leap Castle, Co. Offaly during the changing political climate of nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland.     

A history of conservation of built heritage sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania

The interaction between the Swahili Coast of the present-day Tanzanian coast and other parts of the Indian Ocean world dates back to the first millennium AD. This commercial communication resulted in the rise of several coastal city-states (stonebuilt towns), some of which date back to the tenth century. Unfortunately, some of these states started to collapse during the second half of the second millennium and the majority of them is in a ruinous state. These material remains, which according to the Tanzania’s Antiquities Act of 1964 deserve legal protection, have not been studied comprehensively mainly to establish their conservation history. The current article addresses this problem, and by analysing documents, it establishes the conservation history of monuments and historic buildings of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania. Research results indicate that some built heritage sites started decaying during the fourteenth century AD. Because of recognising the importance of these built heritage sites, communities of the region embarked on strategies to care these built heritage sites. This observation contradicts the European conventional wisdom maintaining that, in Africa, conservation of built heritage sites such as monuments and historic buildings began in the nineteenth century and was propagated by European colonialists.     

An Account of Some Monumental and Wayside Crosses,Still Remaining in the West of Cornwall

The building history of Colchester Castle is reconsidered in the light of previously unpublished evidence from excavations, 1931 to 1977. The Norman castle is seen as a development from a late Saxon villa regalis, constructed in two phases, the first beginning c. 1074 × 1076 (by the crown) and the second c. 1101 (by Eudo Dapifer). It was strengthened in the mid-thirteenth century and maintained into the early fourteenth but thereafter declined, its main function being as a prison. The upper storey of the keep and the southern bailey defences were demolished late in the seventeenth century.     

Conflict and State Development in Ancient Tonga: The Lapaha Earth Fort

Warfare is often considered as a key factor in the formation complex societies, but in the Pacific archaeological evidence for inter-group conflict during political centralization is rare. Most earthwork forts in Tonga are assumed to have been built in the nineteenth century when the traditional system of rulership collapsed, yet few forts on Tongatapu have been excavated or 14C dated. A fort in the chiefly center of the ancient Tongan state was mapped with theodolite and LiDAR, and excavated. Radiocarbon and traditional history indicate the fort known as the Lapaha Kolotau was made in the fourteenth century AD at the same time that chiefly architecture was being built at an unprecedented scale at the new elite center. The construction of an earthwork fort provides the first evidence that political centralization in Tonga was likely to have been contested.     

Suffragan Bishops in the Medieval Diocese of York

Abstract

By looking at three families, all of Anglo-Scandinavian descent in the male line and neighbours in the Furness peninsula, this article seeks to examine the particular ways in which they, and similar families in the region, adapted to the changes that occurred in the century and a half or so after the Norman Conquest. By the early thirteenth century, an assimilation had taken place whereby these families were beginning to play the role expected of knightly families in thirteenth-century England as a whole, taking their place within a single elite alongside families that traced their male descent back to Continental immigrants. The article examines this process of assimilation by looking at the families' participation in the local aristocratic network, their changing naming practices, their marriage and landholding relationships, and their mix of old and new tenures. It further looks at the introduction of castles, markets and boroughs, and the families' interaction with the growing penetration and sophistication of royal and ecclesiastical administration in the region. Finally, it examines the families' reaction to, and participation in, the transformation of the local Church, both secular and regular.     

The Internationalism of German Castle Research: Bodo Ebhardt,His European Network,and the Construction of 'Castle Knowledge'

Abstract

Recent monographs and articles emphasize the strong impact of nationalism and racist thinking on archaeology. In contrast to the treatments which focus on single nation states and on archaeology as a politically legitimate science, this paper explores the tension between internationalism and racist premises in German castle research, and how it manifests itself in the construction of knowledge about medieval castles across national borders. I will focus on Bodo Ebhardt, Germany's most famous and influential castle researcher of the first half of the 20th century. The analysis of his scientific work, and of his personal contact with other European researchers as well as with German politicians and patrons, will shed light on the changes and continuities in his network, and in particular on his construction of the past that was influenced by the formation of this network, which, in turn, affected his assessment of medieval castles.     

Demythologizing Politicized Myths: A New Interpretation of the Seven Gentlemen Incident

This article investigates a political event in modern China that has received relatively little attention in the West. The Seven Gentlemen Incident occurred in the midst of the national crisis of Japanese aggression, when an independent patriotic movement led by seven Shanghai intellectuals organized the National Salvation Association and urged Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Japanese invaders. The Chiang regime, however, arrested the seven and accused them of plotting to overthrow the government. They were released only after Japan launched a full-scale attack on China in July 1937. Scholars have offered varying images of the incident. While the Seven Gentlemen were denounced as criminals by the Nationalists in Chinese Taiwan, they were respected as national heroes in Chinese mainland. Myths with conflicting viewpoints have been created. What were the life and career backgrounds of these people? Were they petty-bourgeoisie, as some mainlanders assume? Were the seven figures, as mainland Chinese claim, motivated under communist leadership to organize their association? What were their relations with the Nationalist regime and the Communist Party? This article endeavors to answer these questions based on new primary documents in particular archival material and offers new perspectives on this fascinating episode of modern China.     

Some Observations upon the “Danse Macabre,” or Dance of Death

(1) Some of the dating hitherto accepted for Raglan Castle is inaccurate. The earliest work was erected between 1432 and 1445, but the majority of the present structure, including the keep, was built between 1461 and 1469.

(2) The keep at Raglan was not built to protect the owner from attack by members of his own retinue as claimed by W. Douglas Simpson, A. J. Taylor and others, but for political reasons associated with the accession of Edward IV.

(3) The view that ‘bastard feudalism’ was responsible for the development of tower-houses and keeps in late medieval England is erroneous. Furthermore, it is suggested that most keeps built in the fifteenth century were erected in response to a particular political situation confined to the second half of the century.

Considerable use is made of historical as well as architectural material, for the integration of these two disciplines leads to conclusions quite different from those of previous writers who have tended to limit their field to the study of the structural evidence only.     

Feeding the Crusades: Archaeobotany,Animal Husbandry and Livestock Alimentation on the Baltic Frontier

ABSTRACT

The integrated results of micromorphology, plant macrofossil, pollen, phytolith, and non-pollen palynomorph analyses represent an important study of two thirteenth-century Teutonic Order castles at Karksi (Livonia), and Elbl?g (Prussia). The research examines deposits that formed during the period of active crusading. At Karksi, the investigation of a midden and of the organic-rich sediment beneath allows the diachronic use of this area to be understood. Freshwater aquatic indicators are consistent with the occurrence of shallow stagnant water, as also suggested by a waterlaid pond sediment identified in thin-section. Coprophilous spore taxa suggest the use of the pond as a watering hole. Plant macrofossils from the midden represent a range of habitats, mostly from wet/damp areas, as well as pastures and meadows, and also woodlands. Fragments of millet are embedded within herbivore dung in thin-section showing the use of this grain as fodder. At Elbl?g, parasite ova may derive from animal feces as they also occur in the dung observed in thin-section, and a range of coprophilous fungal spore taxa were extracted. The results reveal information about the range of livestock that the Teutonic Knights kept, whereabouts within the castles the animals were stabled, and what fodder was used.