The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

Original DocumentsAncient Ordinances of the Gild Merchant of the Town of Southampton

Excavations at Meadowsfoot Beach, Mothecombe, south Devon, between 2004 and 2011 focused on two main areas. In the first, evidence for occupation in a sand dune included successive hearths and imported early medieval finds. In the second, three phases of early medieval structures were uncovered, along with more imported finds including amphora sherds. At least one of the structures was very large, and is presently unique in Devon. The landscape context of the site is considered along with the impact of sea-level change and coastal erosion. The paper concludes with a discussion of the site and its relationship to post-Roman networks of trade and communications with late Antique Atlantic Europe and the Mediterranean. We argue that Mothecombe helps us towards a better understanding of these networks by furnishing new insights on their social foundations in western Britain.     

The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

Papal Power and Protection in the Shebet Yehudah

The sixteenth‐century Shebet Yehudah is an account of the persecutions of Jews in various countries and epochs, including their expulsion from Spain in the fifteenth century. It is not a medieval text and was written long after many of the events it describes. Yet although it cannot give us a contemporary medieval standpoint, it provides important insights into how later Jewish writers perceived Jewish–papal relations in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Although the extent to which Jewish communities came into contact either with the papacy as an institution or the actions of individual popes varied immensely, it is through analysis of Hebrew works such as the Shebet Yehudah that we are able to piece together a certain understanding of Jewish ideas about the medieval papacy as an institution and the policies of individual popes. This article argues that Jews knew only too well that papal protection was not unlimited, but always carefully circumscribed in accordance with Christian theology. It is hoped that it will be a scholarly contribution to our growing understanding of Jewish ideas about the papacy's spiritual and temporal power and authority in the Later Middle Ages and how this impacted on Jewish communities throughout medieval Europe.     

The landscape of Metztitlan,Mexico: Power and control in a sixteenth century Spanish administrative painting

ABSTRACT

The concept of landscape has been studied mostly as the view of a space with particular interest in its aesthetics, originating at the turn of the sixteenth century. However, I argue that in fourteenth century northern Europe, the concept was focused on polity rather than aesthetics. This article examines this lesser-known tradition by analysing the painting of Metztitlan, a sixteenth century town in Mexico, and arguing, first, that unlike all the other representations in the Relaciones Geográficas to which it belongs, it is the only landscape, and second, that this painting is associated with an administrative procedure common in Spain to gain control over imperial lands. I review European practices regarding the representation of towns under the Spanish Crown. Then, I present the results of the fieldwork carried out to locate several heights which probably served as vantage points to paint the landscape. Based on this research, I analyse the intentions of the painter to argue that it should be considered within the same tradition as the paintings made in Spain by Flemish painter Anton van de Wyngaerde, as part of the Spanish Empire's Germanic tradition of describing places with the intention of exerting control over them.     

Material culture as memory: combs and cremation in early medieval Britain

This paper argues that mortuary practices can be understood as 'techno-logies of remembrance'. The frequent discovery of combs in early medieval cremation burials can be explained by their mnemonic significance in the post-cremation rite. Combs (and other objects used to maintain the body's surface in life) served to articulate the reconstruction of the deceased's personhood in death through strategies of remembering and forgetting. This interpretation suggests new perspectives on the relationships between death, material culture and social memory in early medieval Europe.     

European Ideas of Peace in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries

This article explores the diversity of the European idea of peace in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In the late Middle Ages, a literary genre of “peace writings” emerged. Despite the ubiquitous academic interest in peace, however, late medieval scholastic conceptions of peace have hitherto escaped serious scholarly investigation. Drawing on Johan Galtung's classic typology of the idea of peace, this essay offers an examination of the discussions of Thomas Aquinas, Remigio de’ Girolami, and Dante on peace, which not only illustrates the diversity of late medieval visions of peace but also argues that late medieval thinkers shared the recognition that temporal peace was possible: a significant departure from the Christian skepticism of this-worldly peace.     

The Safavid-Qizilbash Ecumene and the Formation of the Qizilbash-Alevi Community in the Ottoman Empire,c. 1500–c. 1700

Alevis, the largest religious minority of Turkey, also living in Europe and the Balkans, are distinguished from both Sunnis and Shi?ites by their latitudinarian attitude toward Islamic Law. Conceptualizing this feature as “heterodoxy,” earlier Turkish scholarship sought the roots of Alevi religiosity in Turkish traditions which traced back to Central Asia, on the one hand, and in medieval Anatolian Sufi orders such as the Yasawi, Bektashi, Qalandari, and Wafa?i, on the other. A new line of scholarship has critiqued the earlier conceptualization of Alevis as “heterodox” as well as the assumption of Central Asian connections. In the meantime, the new scholarship too has focused on medieval Anatolian Sufi orders, especially the Bektashi and Wafa?i, as the fountainhead of Alevi tradition. Critically engaging with both scholarships, this paper argues that it was the Safavid-Qizilbash movement in Anatolia, Azerbaijan, and Iran rather than medieval Sufi orders, that gave birth to Alevi religiosity.     

Agricultural potential and actualized development in Hawai’i: an airborne LiDAR survey of the leeward Kohala field system (Hawai’i Island)

Archaeological investigations of Hawaiian agriculture have relied on relatively coarse-grained data to investigate archipelago-wide processes, or on fine-grained data to examine patterning within localized zones of agricultural production. These trade-offs between spatial coverage and data resolution have inhibited understanding of both spatial patterns and temporal trends. Our analysis of 173 km² of high-resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for leeward Kohala, Hawai’i Island identifies spatial and temporal patterning in regional agricultural development. Differential densities of alignments suggest variable levels of agricultural intensity. Agricultural processes of expansion, segmentation, and intensification can also be discriminated, with distinct zones of the field system having undergone different mixes of development. Areas within the field system with moderate to high levels of both average production and variability in production (determined using a climate-driven productivity model) were utilized relatively early in a highly intensified manner; these areas often underwent processes of segmentation and intensification. Less productive areas were developed later and exhibit evidence of expansion with lower amounts of segmentation and intensification, at set levels of intensity. The spatial and temporal variability in agricultural activities was influenced by the diverse environmental conditions across the landscape as well as variation in cultivars and cultivation techniques. Combining the high-resolution LiDAR data from a large area with potential productivity modeling allows for a more fine-grained understanding of agricultural development in this region of the Hawaiian archipelago.     

Climatic anomalies,food systems,and subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga

Climatic factors have affected subsistence strategies throughout human history. In northern Europe and Russia, short-term climatic anomalies and weather extremes are commonly thought to underlie famines in the Middle Ages. However, medieval subsistence crises were not just natural disasters and medieval people were not passive victims of climatic anomalies. In addition, the capacity to cope with climatic anomalies has varied temporally and spatially throughout the Middle Ages. Yet only a few studies have explored the climatic impact on regional medieval food systems comprehensively. This article examines the significance of climate variability on subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga (Russia), focusing on the relationship between short-term climate anomalies and crop cultivation. In addition, this paper evaluates the impact of crop failures, frosts, and other weather phenomena on the food system. The materials are drawn from medieval sources, paleoclimatological reconstructions, and archaeological evidence. The results show that short-term climatic anomalies alone rarely lead to severe subsistence crises, and during every famine period there is evidence of other contributing factors, such as unfavourable weather phenomena, disease, or social unrest. The variety of cultivated crops and agricultural techniques is shown to increase the region’s resilience to climatic anomalies and to crop failures.     

Description of a Curious Leaden Font in the Church of Brookland,Kent

Data collected from fieldwalking have traditionally been used to identify ‘sites’ (high-density pottery concentrations) and to distinguish crudely between arable and non-arable zones on the basis of the presence or absence of low-density pottery scatters. A deeper analysis of ceramic manure scatters has been undertaken here using material collected from an extensive survey of fields in north Buckinghamshire and south-west Northamptonshire. This has revealed changes in medieval manuring strategies over time and between different arable farming regimes. These systems, such as infield/outfield cultivation, open-field farming, demesne blocks, and assarts can all be characterized by the manuring strategies they deployed and identified from the signatures these have left in the ground. The plotting of ceramic manure scatters thus permits the detailed mapping of each component of the medieval arable zone, leading to a more comprehensive reconstruction of the medieval rural landscape than has previously been attempted. Importantly, it is argued, the study of ceramic manure scatters may provide a new archaeological indicator of the origins and development of the open-field system.     

Going round in circles: Some new evidence for population in the later middle ages

The Myntling Register contains some little known and, in some respects, highly unusual demographic evidence relating to the period from around the later fourteenth century up to the 1970s and to the wealthy Lincolnshire Priory of Spalding. It is in the form of hundreds of ‘family trees’ relating to the villein families of the priory's major manors. It has evidence of interest to economic historians of medieval England on several fronts, the three of which dealt with here are proportions of males to females, percentages of females marrying, and most particularly numbers of surviving children per family. This evidence, whilst by no means perfect, is of a much more direct kind than that often used in attempts to calculate later medieval population. As such it has a contribution to make to the very vexed question of later medieval demography.     

The extent of farm desertion in central Sweden during the late medieval agrarian crisis: landscape as a source

The effects of medieval agrarian crisis on settlement and population were considered in a major interdisciplinary research project in Scandinavia during the 1960s and 1970s. Within this project, there were significant differences in methods used to calculate the extent of farm desertion between historians in the participating countries. The reliance on written source material within the Swedish team reflected the dominant approach amongst historians who made less use of map and landscape evidence than others. In this renewed investigation of the magnitude of farm desertion in the Late Middle Ages, focussing on the province of Jämtland in central Sweden, field survey of the physical landscape and some three thousand historical maps are used as evidence, alongside conventional written sources, such as official letters and taxation documents. The results indicate that the extent of farm desertion in medieval Sweden has been underestimated because Swedish scholars generally eschewed the use of the retrogressive method, which their Norwegian counterparts had been using since the 1940s. There is therefore good reason to reassess the desertion rates of medieval farms in other parts of Sweden as well, using traditional geographical source materials together with the documentary sources usually favoured by historians This may also hold for other parts of Europe as well. The rate of desertion is discussed in a wider context of settlement contraction and expansion in central and peripheral areas of Sweden, including the long drawn-out process of reclamation of the deserted farms (ödesbölen).     

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.     

Cities of God? Medieval urban forms and their Christian symbolism

Situated in the context of recent geographical engagements with 'landscape', this paper combines 'morphological' and 'iconographic' landscape interpretations to examine how urban forms were perceived in late medieval Europe. To date, morphological studies have mapped the medieval city either by classifying urban layouts according to particular types, or by analysing plan forms of particular towns and cities to reveal their spatial evolution. This paper outlines a third way, an 'iconographic' approach, which shows how urban forms in the Middle Ages conveyed Christian symbolism. Three such 'mappings' explore this thesis: the first uses textual and visual representations which show that the city was understood as a scaled-down world – a microcosm – linking city and cosmos in the medieval mind; the second 'mapping' develops this theme further and suggests that urban landscapes were inscribed with symbolic form through their layout on the ground; while the third looks at how Christian symbolism of urban forms was performed through the urban landscape in perennial religious processions. Each of these 'mappings' points to the symbolic, mystical significance urban form had in the Middle Ages, based on religious faith, and they thus offer a deepened appreciation of how urban landscapes were represented, constructed and experienced at the time.     

Rural marketing in medieval Nottinghamshire

The data sources available for a study of medieval marketing are extremely limited. However, work in contemporary developing nations illustrates the existence of a detailed structure of periodic marketing. This paper draws cautious parallels between medieval Nottinghamshire and these contemporary patterns. It begins by reconstructing a possible set of markets for the fourteenth century; details of tolls and rents are mentioned in order to indicate the types of produce in circulation and some aspects of the practical functioning of the markets. The spatial and temporal characteristics of these markets are shown not to agree with either the trader or the consumer models of periodic marketing, although there is some evidence to suggest that markets taking place on the same day were generally not located in settlements that were close together. Taxation evidence suggests that a market did not always lead to a relative increase in the importance of a settlement. In addition markets appear to have been established by lords of widely varying social status. By the seventeenth century there had been a large reduction in the number of markets, and they had become essentially urban in character, primarily associated with the few main roads in the county.     

The Changing Exploitation of Oysters (Ostrea edulis L. 1758) in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: A Case Study from Dudley Castle,West Midlands

ABSTRACT

Analysis of over 4000 complete left oyster valves from late medieval and post-medieval Dudley Castle reveals the changing role of this perishable luxury over a 700-year period. Throughout the occupation, it seems that oysters were used as ingredients rather than served raw in the shell. A greater reliance on oyster consumption is apparent in the later fourteenth century, perhaps reflecting a more diverse diet amongst the aristocracy in the wake of the Black Death. An increased preference for mussels and whelks is also attested in the Tudor and early modern periods, reflecting changing perceptions of these foods.

Overall, it is likely that natural beds were exploited throughout the time that oysters were being brought to Dudley Castle; however, the evidence demonstrates a shift from limited exploitation of natural inter-tidal sources in the eleventh century towards the dredging of sub-littoral beds in later periods, with some possible translocation of oyster stock. Changes in the shape, size and appearance of the oyster shells suggest the source locales from which the oysters derived changed through time. A notable shift occurred in the fourteenth century, which could reflect changes in supply brought about by altered tenancy at Dudley Castle and/or disruptions to trade brought about by the Black Death. Future biochemical analyses are recommended to provide greater clarity on the origin of those sources.     

The myth and the stones of Venice: an historical geography of a symbolic landscape

John Ruskin's Stones of Venice criticized the Victorian city and Victorian society in the light of a reconstruction of medieval Venice. But Ruskin's reconstruction embodied elements of a long-standing myth propagated by Venetians themselves and inscribed in their organization of urban space and urban landscape. The geographical dimensions of the myth, its changing character through time, its iconographic expressions and its significance for English attitudes to Venice are described and explained. Ruskin used the myth to support his ideology, constructing a homology between architectural development and social structure. But the appeal of Venice transcends historical contingency and may, in part, be understood by reference to psychoanalytic categories, specifically sexual symbolism.