Tracking Occupational Intensity Using Archaeo-faunal Data: Case Studies from the Late Pleistocene in the Southern Cape of South Africa

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - Occupational intensity is a common theme in current research and has been linked to significant demographic trends in the past. The Late Pleistocene in...     

The Charms of Women and Priests: Sex,Magic, Gender and Public Order in Late Medieval Italy

How did judicial authorities in late medieval Italy understand the relationship between gender, sexuality, social status, magic and public order, especially when magic was used to facilitate the crime of adultery? What might this reveal about the intersection of gender, magic and public order in a place and time so fraught with political and social tensions? This study qualitatively compares four love‐magic trials from fourteenth‐century Lucca and suggests that the anxieties underpinning these trials were both particular to late medieval Italian communes and projected onto two populations, women and priests, whose unchecked sexuality posed the greatest threat to civic order. Historians examining gender in medieval European magic trials have often treated judicial officials’ anxieties as portents of the ‘witch craze’ of early modern Europe. Historians of medieval Lucca have tended to treat the political and gender histories of the city as largely separate. This article suggests that the courts’ increasing regulation of gender and sexuality in late medieval Lucca reflected larger ecclesiastical and communal concerns about the dissolution of civic order. In a world of civic power that increasingly belonged to secular men, the unchecked sexuality of women and clergy represented a dual threat to the stability of the family and, by extension, the city. This article argues that secular and ecclesiastical judicial officials feared not magic itself, but the ability of magic to invert power relations between men and women and between clergy and laity, destroying public order.     

Multiproxy approach to the study of Medieval food habits in Tuscany (central Italy)

A multiproxy approach based on archaeobotanical, organic residue and isotopic analyses was carried out on materials from 12 Medieval archaeological sites in Tuscany (central Italy), in order to provide a diachronic overview of local diet in rural and urban sites from the mid-eighth to the fourteenth centuries AD. Archaeobotanical analyses were applied to 130,578 seeds/fruits, residue analyses involved 87 samples from cooking and storing vessels, whereas analyses of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes included 63 human bone samples and 26 animal specimens. The results indicate that from the mid-eighth century AD, crop production was of high quality similar, to that of the Roman Age. The main cultivations were naked wheats, barley and horse bean, a diversity that attests the technological skills reached by Tuscan peasants during the whole Middle Ages. Different cereals and pulse abundantly supplemented the diet. This strategy not only ensured peasants’ subsistence in the mid-eighth century AD, minimizing the risks of environmental adversities, but it also increased crop production – from the mid-ninth century AD on, for the revived markets and trade. Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries AD, C4 plants had a dominant role in the peasants’ diet, when the wheat production was strictly collected first by the landlords and then by the cities for their own needs. Crop production was integrated by swine farming; animal meat consumption is well documented in rural and urban populations from the ninth century AD. Wine and olive oil, considered important elements of diet in Medieval Tuscany, have a very scarce presence, but they are recorded for later periods, mainly in urban areas and in higher social classes, such as the religious and aristocratic ones. In fact, only between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD was the great expansion of olive groves and vineyards recorded, when cities and urban populations claim to have access to these luxury foods.     

At the Transition from Late Medieval to Early Modern: the Archaeology of Three Wrecks from Turkey

During surveys in the Rhodian Straits in 2005–06, the staff of the RPM Nautical Foundation discovered three deepwater wrecks which reflect elements of the transition from late medieval to early modern seafaring. The assemblages, and their plotting on site‐plans generated from photographic evidence, point to the finding of a small oared warship equipped with wrought‐iron carriage‐ and swivel‐guns, a small coasting vessel armed with wrought‐iron swivel‐guns, and a larger merchantman equipped with cast‐iron carriage‐guns. While the features of the smaller vessels do not identify their country of origin, those of the larger merchantman have good parallels with known English wrecks. © 2009 The Authors     

The Archaeological Survey Project in Fatschenbrunn,Municipality of Oberaurach,Germany: A Case Study for the Reconstruction of Past Farming Regimes in the Late Medieval and Post-Medieval Era

This paper presents the preliminary results of a survey project which is being carried out in the small village of Fatschenbrunn, in Lower Franconia, Germany. The project combines archaeological, historical geographical, botanical, geological and pedological data to reconstruct the farming regimes and land use in the late medieval and post-medieval era. Although the project is still on-going, the collected data allows the formulation of hypotheses on the formation of fertile agricultural soils through long-term human intervention in the past.     

Airborne LiDAR application to karstic areas: the example of Trieste province (north-eastern Italy) from prehistoric sites to Roman forts

The Trieste Karst, at the northernmost shore of the Adriatic Sea, is rich in prehistoric caves and protohistoric hill forts. Most of these archaeological sites were already identified in the second half of the 19th century when large parts of the area were almost without vegetation coverage for the effect of sheep breeding and exploitation of wood resources. Only a few open-air archaeological sites have been discovered in recent years due to the lack of systematic archaeological surveys and reforestation.     

中古英国农村劳动力转移和城市化特点——兼与工业革命时期比较

中外学者主要关注工业革命以及由此带来的世界范围内的城市化运动,较少关注前工业化时期英国农村劳动力转移现象。中古劳动力转移和城市化具有不同于工业革命时期的特点:其一,主要动力源于农业而非工业,农业生产的兴衰决定了城市化和非农产业发展的进程;其二,中古劳动力转移历时久、水平低;其三,中古英国劳动力转移呈相对集中的地域流动模式,农村居民流动迁移的主要目标是首都伦敦。此外,中古英国劳动力转移在地域和行业流动方面均呈不均衡状况,地域上偏重英国东南部和西南地区,在行业流动方面主要集中于纺织等轻工业部门。工业革命后劳动力大量流向西部和北部,汽车、钢铁等重工业部门日渐重要,英国农村劳动力转移和城市化呈现出均衡化、网络化发展态势。     

江淮东部新石器时代末期社会生计个案分析——以东台开庄遗址为例

东台开庄为江淮东部一处内涵明确的以龙山文化时期遗存为主体的新石器时代末期遗址,兼有少量良渚文化遗存.通过对遗址开展的浮选获得了水稻和粟等农作物,狗尾草和藜属等杂草类种子,芡实、菱角、栎果等其他可食遗存.稻作是开庄遗址良渚文化晚期和龙山文化时期最重要的农耕生产内容.农业在聚落生业中不占绝对优势,先民采集狩猎作为食物的重要...