Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 826 Schermerhorn Hall, 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 5517, New York, New York 10027, USA
Abstract:
This article accounts for the hitherto unexplained increase in the availability of ivory in mid-thirteenth-century France through an alteration in the medieval trade routes that brought elephant tusks from Africa to northern Europe. A newly-opened passage through the Straits of Gibraltar allowed a small amount of luxury goods to be shipped together with bulk materials necessary to the flourishing textile industries of northern Europe.