Water power and the plan of St Gall

An analysis of the scale used by the designer of the Plan of St Gall allows for no other conclusion than that the mill and mortars shown on this Plan were water driven. Because of the paradigmatic nature of the Plan this means that hydraulically operated mills and mortars were by the makers of the Plan considered to be standard equipment of a Carolingian monastery — a conclusion supported by a wealth of other documentary source material available for this period.The Romans knew the water mill, but made little use of it. Its general adoption and diffusion in Merovingian and Carolingian Europe is in this study attributed to the rise and spread of Benedictine monasticism. It received its primary impetus from the need to provide milled and crushed grain in bulk for communities of considerable size, including a leisure class of men who had to be freed from the normal chores of toiling for life so that their energies could be directed to their primary task: the Work of God (Opus Dei). Water-powered trip hammers were in use in China before the birth of Christ. Their portrayal on the Plan of St Gall suggests that they were introduced in western Europe, not by Marco Polo, as some propose, but in the age of folk migrations or the early Carolingian Period.     

Implications of a freshwater radiocarbon reservoir correction for the timing of late Holocene settlement of the Elk Hills,Kern County,California

Uncertainties regarding the magnitude of freshwater radiocarbon reservoir effects can introduce random errors into dates on archaeological freshwater carbonates. As a result, many archaeologists avoid dating freshwater shells unless no other datable materials are available. The chronology of prehistoric occupation of the former Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 (NPR-1) at Elk Hills, Kern County, has been established with 50 radiocarbon dates on freshwater mussels (Gonidea and Anodonta sp.). Characterization of any freshwater radiocarbon reservoir effect is crucial for the accurate interpretation of inferred settlement and subsistence changes on the Elk Hills. Paired charcoal and freshwater mussels sampled from closely associated contexts were dated to identify a freshwater reservoir effect. Paired Anodonta and Gonidea sp. shells were dated to investigate interspecific differences in fractionation. Results indicate that a 340 ± 20 ¹⁴C yr correction should be applied to conventional ¹⁴C dates on freshwater carbonates in the Buena Vista Basin before calendar calibration. Evidence of interspecific differences is inconclusive. Dates recalibrated with the reservoir correction indicate that widespread occupation of the Elk Hills is correlated with increasing precipitation towards the end of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and during the Little Ice Age, suggesting that slough resource exploitation may have been driven by regional population pressure rather than drought-related declines in aquatic productivity.     

Legal uncertainty,resistance to royal taxation and rural revolts in late medieval France: the case of Beauvoir-sur-Mer and Bois-de-Céné (1480)

In 1480, the inhabitants of Beauvoir-sur-Mer and Bois-de Céné, two small towns on the Atlantic coast of Poitou, in France, rebelled against the officials in charge of collecting the salt tax and arrested some of them. Despite the fact that the resulting civil disturbance had few long-lasting consequences, the case is an effective illustration of the dynamics of rural revolts at the end of the fifteenth century. This article demonstrates how violence was only the last stage of protest against royal taxation; the riots had been preceded by legal resistance and negotiations. The article also shows how the events were permeated and fuelled by judicial complexity and a climate of legal uncertainty surrounding the rights of French officials to collect the tax. These revolts must then be understood not simply as a reaction to excessive taxation, but more as self-defence against royal officials who refused to acknowledge the rights of the inhabitants of these towns.