An aspect of the question of continuity between antiquity and middle ages: the origin of the Flemish cities between the North Sea and the Scheldt

Most historians of the Flemish cities have argued that there was no significant Roman habitation north of the civitates of Belgica secunda. Urban development in Flanders was thus seen essentially as a creation of the Carolingian period and after. But recent archaeological excavations have shown a substantial Roman presence at six cites which later were towns of medium or considerable importance. Although the buildings were evidently abandoned in the fifth century, settlement and political and ecclesiastical organization developed around them in the Merovingian age. The Roman background thus had a considerable effect on the development of town life in medieval Flanders.     

An aspect of the question of continuity between antiquity and middle ages: the origin of the Flemish cities between the North Sea and the Scheldt

Most historians of the Flemish cities have argued that there was no significant Roman habitation north of the civitates of Belgica secunda. Urban development in Flanders was thus seen essentially as a creation of the Carolingian period and after. But recent archaeological excavations have shown a substantial Roman presence at six cites which later were towns of medium or considerable importance. Although the buildings were evidently abandoned in the fifth century, settlement and political and ecclesiastical organization developed around them in the Merovingian age. The Roman background thus had a considerable effect on the development of town life in medieval Flanders.     

On Some Remains of the Work of William of Wykham,at Windsor Castle

Scholarly opinion on the character and timing of the end of Roman Britain remains deeply divided. The evidence presented by those favouring a ‘long chronology’ is seriously flawed. ‘Continuity’ or ‘survival’ of Roman Britain is claimed because early medieval activity is attested on some former Roman sites and some early medieval artefacts are of Roman type. But Roman Britain was part of a ‘world system’ with a distinctive and rich archaeological assemblage, and once terms are properly defined and material analysed quantitatively, the argument for fifth-century continuity collapses. The archaeological evidence shows that after a long process of decline beginning in the third century, Roman Britain had ended by c. A.D. 400.     

Medieval Ireland and the Shannon Hydro-Electric Scheme: reconstructing the past in independent Ireland

This essay considers the position of Irish medieval buildings in the early years of the twentieth century. Focusing on the treatment of the oratory of St. Lua at Killaloe, it examines the ways in which the ruins of the medieval past were used to signify a range of political, religious and cultural ideas and attitudes. The rising water levels following the Shannon Scheme works (begun in 1925) meant that this stone oratory was moved from its original position on Friar’s Island to the grounds of St. Flannan’s Roman Catholic Church in 1929. The resulting paper trail reflects the complex processes of decision-making within a civil service in transition as the new Irish Free State calibrated its position with regard to the past and the treatment of medieval ruins throughout the countryside. The case study of St. Lua’s oratory is considered here in the context of the nineteenth-century tradition of scholarship on medieval buildings, the development of the idea of a national Irish architecture during this period, and the impact of this tradition on subsequent engagement with the buildings of the medieval past.     

The Ancient Origins of Medieval Fields: A Reassessment

This article questions the suggestions that have been made by a number of archaeologists and landscape historians concerning the Roman and prehistoric origins of large tracts of the medieval rural landscape in lowland England. It suggests that arguments for large-scale continuity of field systems, mainly based on the evidence of excavations and topographic analysis, are flawed because they fail to take fully into account the topographic contexts, and the practical functions, of field boundaries. When these matters are given due weight, much of the evidence cited in support of ‘continuity’ instead appears to suggest a significant degree of discontinuity, at least in terms of systems of land division, between Roman Britain and medieval England.     

Townships and early fields in north Nottinghamshire

Recent work by Riley has illustrated the existence of an extensive system of fields of probable Roman date in north Nottinghamshire and south Yorkshire. When these are compared with the alignments of township boundaries it is evident that the two patterns do not coincide. This suggests that the medieval township structure was not based on an earlier pre-Saxon system of territorial divisions. Such a suggestion would support arguments that have been put forward for a discontinuity of occupancy between the Roman and Saxon periods in this part of England.     

Law,Principle, and the Theologico-Political History of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article takes it cue from the debate between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson regarding the possibility of political theology within Christianity, and in response, offers a conceptual-historical portrait of sovereignty and its juridical dimensions. Beginning with the introduction of Roman law into the medieval Church, the article traces the logic of “legal principle” as the basis of sovereign decision and how the form of legal distinctions adopted into canon law translate the Romanitas of law into the theory of papal sovereignty. By the Romanitas of law, that is to say the principle of sovereignty in law. The article then seeks to describe the conceptual translations of Roman politics and Stoic metaphysics into theological form and the logic of this translation into medieval natural law. The article concludes by evaluating how the civic theology of Rome is conceptually inherited by the politics and legal framework of sovereignty and returns to Peterson’s critique of Schmitt, arguing that political theology can be understood as a dynamic where politics is theologized, assuming that in the history of religion, theology and politics are never fully distinct to begin with.     

Sarus the Goth: from imperial commander to warlord

The genesis of the first western kingdoms in early medieval Europe has often been framed as the consequence of barbarian invasions bringing down the Roman empire in its western provinces. This article considers a considerably more corrosive factor in the breakdown of western imperial structures, i.e. the warlordism of its own military personnel, via a case study of the Gothic aristocrat Sarus’ micro‐politics of mobility. This article will show that Sarus is one of the earliest attested cases of men willing to opt out of imperial service and use violence to reintegrate themselves later. Re‐examining the rapidly shifting political circumstances, it will demonstrate that Sarus was increasingly forced to move and take independent violent action, together with his men, in order to survive. This has major implications for a newly developing early medieval European phenomenon: the transformation of regular imperial commanders into irregular warlords.     

Did Women Have a Transformation of the Roman World?

Despite intense and interdisciplinary interest in the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, work on women and gender generally remains marginal to the dominant paradigms for understanding political and social change in the period from c. 300 to c. 800 ce . This article critiques these interpretations from a gendered perspective and also reviews recent work on women and gender in late antiquity, Byzantium and the early medieval Europe. By outlining similarities and contrasts between women's lives in early medieval western and Byzantine cultures, it emphasises the diversity of women's experience. Suggestions about how to envisage a fully gendered history of this period conclude with a call for radically new approaches to the study of the transformation of the Roman world.     

MEDIEVAL GLASS FROM ROCCA DI ASOLO (NORTHERN ITALY): AN ARCHAEOMETRIC STUDY

An archaeometric study was performed on 33 medieval glass samples from Rocca di Asolo (northern Italy), in order to study the raw materials employed in their production, identify analogies with medieval glass from the Mediterranean area and possible relationships between chemical composition and type and/or production technique, contextualize the various phases of the site and extend data on Italian medieval glass. The samples are soda–lime–silica in composition, with natron as flux for early medieval glasses and soda ash for the high and late medieval ones. Compositional groups were identified, consistent with the major compositional groups identified in the western Mediterranean during the first millennium AD . In particular, Asolo natron glass is consistent with the HIMT group and recycled Roman glass; soda ash glass was produced with the same type of flux (Levantine ash) but a different silica source (siliceous pebbles, and more or less pure sand). Cobalt was the colouring agent used to obtain blue glass; analytical data indicate that at least two different sources of Co were exploited during the late medieval period. Some data, analytical and historical, suggest a Venetian provenance for the high/late medieval glass and a relationship between type of object (beaker or bottle) and chemical composition.     

Recent Archæological Researches in Rome

Luminescence dating has been applied to ceramic bricks sampled from a selection of English medieval ecclesiastical and secular buildings in Essex, Kent and Lincolnshire, ranging in age from the fourth to the late sixteenth centuries. The results obtained for the Anglo-Saxon churches, which included Brixworth, confirmed the reuse of Roman brick in all cases. The dates for the earliest medieval brick type indicate that brick making was reintroduced during the eleventh century, a century earlier than previously accepted, and dates for bricks from the same secular Tudor building indicate that the practice of recycling of building materials during the late medieval period was also applied to brick.     

The Nature and Genesis of the Peutinger Map

The place of the Peutinger map in the history of both ancient and medieval geography and cartography is controversial. Many basic questions as to its sources, dating and purpose remain unanswered. In the light of various pieces of new evidence these problems are reassessed. It is argued that the Peutinger map does derive from a Roman original but that, without precedent in Roman cartography or impact on later medieval cartography, the mapping of itinerary data onto a base map of the oecumene is likely to be a genuine innovation of the designer of the archetype. There is no need to suppose the map to be an officially state‐sponsored product. The sources relied upon were commonly available and would have been familiar to the public in late antiquity. The purpose of the map is more likely to have been ornamental than practical. It is impossible to determine a precise date or location for the creation of the archetype, but the cultural viewpoint embodied in the map is undoubtedly antique, Latin and western.     

Cultural contacts and ethnic origins in Viking Age Wales and northern Britain: the case of Albanus,Britain's first inhabitant and Scottish ancestor

Albanus, an eponymous ancestor for the kingdom of Alba, provides an example of the extent to which the creation of an ethnic identity was accompanied by new ideas about origins, which replaced previous accounts. Through an analysis of the Historia Brittonum’s textual tradition and Welsh knowledge of early Roman history and medieval ethnic groups, this article establishes that Albanus was added to the Historia Brittonum in the late ninth or early tenth century as an ancestral figure for the new kingdom of Alba in northern Britain. This was potentially a result of shared political situations in Gwynedd, Alba (formerly Pictland) and Strathclyde in relation to Scandinavian power at this time, which encouraged contacts and the spread of Alba-based ideology to Gwynedd. The later development of this idea and its significance in Alba itself, Geoffrey of Monmouth's account and English claims to supremacy over Scotland are also traced.     

Archaeological Explorations of Cultural Identity and Rural Economy in the North of Ireland: Goodland,County Antrim

Renewed examination of an enigmatic settlement site perched atop a cliff above Murlough Bay in Goodland Townland, County Antrim, Northern Ireland calls into question long held ideas about Gaelic rural economy on the eve of the Ulster Plantation by reintroducing the complex cultural and political relationships between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles. Long interpreted as temporary post-medieval booley huts associated with seasonal transhumance, recent re-evaluation of the site suggests instead that Goodland represents a permanent seventeenth-century Highland Scottish village. Although the medieval linkages between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles have long been acknowledged, twentieth-century sectarianism has subjugated awareness of the Highland (Roman Catholic) Scots focusing upon the legacy of the in-migration of Protestant Lowland Scots during the Ulster Plantation. Material evidence at Goodland re-introduces the Highland Scot to the contested landscape of contemporary Ulster identity, while also facilitating analysis of continuity, change, and cultural complexity in the rural economy of early modern Ireland.     

Sanctioned Heterodoxy: Local Cults in Two Chinese Catholic Villages, 1900-Present

While ecclesiastic and state authorities in Europe largely abolished medieval cults of saints because of their “heterodoxy,” late-imperial and modern Chinese Catholic communities in Shanxi still promulgate local cults dedicated to women and men who are believed to have performed posthumous miracles or who represent heroic virtue. Although constrained beneath the scrutiny of imperial, ecclesial, and modern political ideas of “orthodoxy” and “heterodoxy,” two Shanxi Catholic villages, Dongergou and Liangquandao (Liuhecun), have managed to preserve and promote Sister Maria Assunta Pallotta and Father Wang Shiwei as contemporary versions of traditional local cults. One of the manifest characteristics of these two Chinese Catholic local cults is how they have been transformed by traditional Daoist cults and have successfully survived in a liminal space between “orthodox” and “heterodox.” Relying on archival materials from the former Taiyuan Catholic Diocese Archive, records held in Roman archives, and oral testimonies, intricate patterns of accommodation and resistance to political and church authorities can be discerned as means for these remote Catholic villages to construct identity and cultivate social cohesion.     

On the Trail of the Oldest Domestic Cat in Poland. An Insight from Morphometry,Ancient DNA and Radiocarbon Dating

It is believed on the basis of archaeozoological research that the domestic cat appeared in Central Europe during the Roman Period. In Poland, the domestic cat is a common species in medieval deposits. Only a few finds of cat remains of pre‐medieval age have been reported from Poland to date, including several specimens from deposits older than the Roman Period, dated to the pre‐Roman Period and even the Bronze Age. To clarify the earliest history of the domestic cat in Poland, the paper presents a review of the available published cat remains and adds some data about newly discovered remains. Combined methods of morphometry and ancient DNA were applied to enable distinction of wildcats and domestic cats. The domestic cat remains were radiocarbon dated. In six cases of domesticated cat reported in the literature, five were positively taxonomically verified, both by morphology and by genetic analysis, and one was recognised as a European wildcat. According to radiocarbon chronology, the oldest studied find is dated to the fourth–third century bc and represents a wildcat. Only two individuals of domestic cat – skeletons from Łojewo and Sławsko Wielkie, both from Kuyavia region (central‐northern Poland) – represent the Roman Period (first–third century ad ), and they are the oldest confirmed domestic cats in Poland. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The road network of medieval England and Wales

The medieval road system of England and Wales has never been studied in any detail. This article attempts to bring together the cartographic evidence of the Gough and Paris maps and the more indirect evidence of three royal itineraries. This will suggest first which Roman roads were still in use in medieval times, and second what new lines of travel had come into use, thus distinguishing between the paved Roman roads which were still usable and the new routes which made and maintained themselves.     

ROMAN AND MEDIEVAL GLASS FROM THE ITALIAN AREA: BULK CHARACTERIZATION AND RELATIONSHIPS WITH PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES*

Compositional investigations were performed on 81 Roman and medieval glass fragments (first to 14th centuries ad ) from four Italian archaeological sites. The samples were soda–lime–silica in composition, with natron as flux for the Roman and early medieval glass samples, and with plant ash as flux for the late medieval ones. The varying colours are due to the differing FeO, Fe ₂ O ₃ , MnO and Sb ₂ O ₃ contents. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified six compositional groups related to age, which were compared with those found in the literature. In this way, technological continuity from the Roman to the early medieval period and the appearance of plant ash technology in the ninth century, 200 years in advance of the period previously believed, are demonstrated.