Medieval (Other Keyword)
1-25 (53 Records)
One of the more dramatic results of the English Reformation was the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Once these institutions were closed and sold off, they often had a secondary purpose for the new landholders, such as working farms, personal residences and colleges. In spite of this, much of the architecture of the original monastery was destroyed, with stone, brick, and metal carted off. This paper focuses on how the stone from monasteries became a resource in the immediate vicinity of the...
Asturias Across Time and Space: An Exploration of Medieval and Early Modern Spain using Stable Isotopes (2015)
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from 104 individuals from eight sites was used to reconstruct the diets of Medieval and Early Modern (AD 600-1750) individuals from Asturias, Spain. Asturias is a coastal region located in northern Spain that remained one of the last Catholic kingdoms when the Moors ruled Iberia. Asturian society was structured hierarchically and divided into clergy, nobility, and peasant classes. Each socioeconomic group buried their own according to status and wealth....
Between radicalism and tolerance: Characterising the rule of a militarised Christian theocracy in the medieval Baltic (2016)
The Teutonic Order, the last of the major military orders founded in the Holy Land in the twelfth century, developed a strong, centralised hierarchy once it redirected its efforts to crusading in the Baltic. After the initial period of crusading was over, its fortified monasteries were built with consistent regularity, and the Order adopted a top-down, corporate approach to controlling the conquered territories, under the leadership of the Grand Master. However, despite this centralisation,...
Bridging the Gap: Understanding the empty Medieval landscape of post-Roman Aquitaine (2015)
The end of the Roman Empire is marked archaeologically by an impressive shift in material culture. Changes in land organization and the use of more ephemeral building materials created a largely invisible and difficult to detect post-Roman landscape. Archaeologists initially assumed such landscapes were abandoned as a result of the political and economic chaos resulting from Rome’s fall. Work in northwest Europe in the past two decades, however has shown that new techniques can help locate these...
Building Charlieu: Chronology and Asset Flow over Time at Saint Fortunatus Monastery, 872-1120 C.E. (2016)
The monastery of Saint Fortunatus in Charlieu, France, was built and rebuilt several times from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. In the twentieth century, the monastery was excavated by American archaeologist and art historian Elizabeth Sunderland, who relied heavily on its relationship to mega-monastery Cluny to reconstruct the smaller abbey’s chronology. However, re-examining Charlieu’s timing and phasing with attention to material and labor costs over time exposes an alternative chronology...
Castle Ballintober, County Roscommon, Ireland: The Castles in Communities Project (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring the Gaelic Social Order through Castle Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Castles in Communities program at Ballintober Castle in County Roscommon, Ireland has been studying the construction sequence of the castle and the newly discovered deserted medieval village in the hinterlands. As we work with the community of Ballintober we are faced with a conundrum of how best to present our results as...
Castles in Communities Anthropology Settlement Survey: Preliminary data from 2015/2016 field seasons at Ballintober, Ireland (2017)
An overview of project design and preliminary results from two field seasons of research aimed at expanding our understanding of settlement in later medieval Ireland. The field school program run by Foothill College at Ballintober Castle in Co. Roscommon has made remarkable progress 1) identifying possible phases of Anglo-Norman and subsequent Gaelic Irish castle construction and occupation, 2) utilizing different geophysical techniques to find a Deserted Village associated with the castle,...
Childhood and Adulthood Mobility at Medieval (1240s AD) Solt-Tételhegy, Hungary Reconstructed from Stable Oxygen Isotope Analysis (2016)
Between 2005 and 2009, archaeologists excavated more than 100 skeletons from the medieval (1240s AD) Hungarian site of Solt-Tételhegy. Little has been published about this archaeological settlement, and although previous stable isotopic research has described the migration patterns of medieval European peoples, here we present the first such study performed on a medieval Hungarian population. Stable oxygen isotope analysis was conducted on dental enamel from 23 individuals and on bone apatite...
Christian Life in Medieval Nubia at el-Kurru, Sudan (2017)
The Nubian site of el-Kurru (modern Sudan) lies along the Nile River about 140 km upstream of Old Dongola, the capital of the Medieval Christian kingdom of Makuria. In 2015-2016, a cemetery adjacent to the settlement was excavated, containing 26 skeletons. Here, I will present current bioarchaeological work on these individuals. Biological profiles were developed, including sex and age ranges, health markers evaluated, and indicators of pathology and trauma identified. Those interred span all...
The Chronological and Liturgical Context of Charnel Practice in Medieval England: Manipulations of the Skeletonized Body at Rothwell Charnel Chapel, Northamptonshire (2017)
The rare survival of a charnel chapel and the commingled remains of more than 2,500 individuals it houses at Holy Trinity Church, Rothwell, England provides a unique opportunity to investigate the postmortem manipulation of human remains in the medieval period. The apparent paucity of charnel chapel sites in England has led to the dismissal of charnelling as a marginal practice with little liturgical significance, a pragmatic solution to the need for storage of disturbed bones. Yet the evidence...
Comparative Eurasian Statecraft: al-Andalus in the context of the Medieval West (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Attempts to describe and explain differences between Western and Asian state structures have a long history, starting with Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Production and Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism.The bottom-up approach offered here argues that differences between the two forms are due largely to the way primary...
Conserving a Castle: The Connection between Archeology and Preservation in Making History Accessible (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nestled in the hidden heartlands of Roscommon, Ireland is Ballintober Castle. Ballintober Castle and its surrounding deserted village are the site of an archeological field school, Castles in Communities. As the field school progresses into its fifth year, castle conservation becomes more important for continuing archeological work and maintaining the cultural...
The Cross in the North: Pictish Christianization in Light of the Northern European Experience (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Christianization in Northern Europe’s first millennium CE has been intensively studied by numerous disciplines and is often viewed as a cause or outcome of social, political, and economic changes. Christianity arrived at different times through differing processes, far better understood in some...
Digital Humanities and Religious and Social Archaeology of Medieval Central Eastern Europe: New Trends and Approaches (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The present paper introduces the ERC project RELIC and its sister WEAVE project REPLICO, modeling how the general population was involved in significant historical processes such as Christianization and state formation, by conducting a complex, comparative analysis and contextualization of...
Experimental Archaeology and the Theory of Experience: A View from Medieval Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The theoretical foundation of experimental archaeology is often left implicit. Some argue that the primary value of experimental archaeology lies in scientific experiments to investigate specific and non-theoretical questions about ancient technology. This paper will address the experiential...
Experimental Archaeology of Medieval Food as Participant Observation (2018)
Central to anthropology is the concept of participant observation, where a researcher engages in immersive learning through ethnographic fieldwork. This concept is also important for archaeologists as immersive learning provides an avenue for more robust interpretation and the development of better research questions. Participant observation is not directly possible in the study of medieval archaeology, but replication studies of food culture can serve as one avenue toward immersive learning in...
Feeding Medieval Towns: The Zooarchaeological Evidence (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Provisioning played a critical role in the establishment of early medieval towns in northwestern Europe from the eighth through the tenth centuries CE. Zooarchaeology can reveal how the inhabitants of early medieval towns obtained meat and other animal products. Recent zooarchaeological research has revealed how the...
Fosterage and Mobility at the Early Medieval Irish Monastery on the Island of Illaunloughan: A Bioarchaeological Case Study (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fosterage and mobility both require creating and breaking social ties. Early medieval Irish texts suggest that mobility and fosterage, which is the practice of children leaving home to be raised and educated, were means by which monastic communities gained members and sustained a prestigious social standing. Examining these practices through biogeochemistry...
From Terrace to Tray: Agriculture and Foodways at a Thirteenth-Century Alqueria (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Food and Foodways: Emerging Trends and New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The preparation of a meal begins with the acquisition of ingredients—and for much of our human past, this has meant growing or gathering. Thus, food production through farming is a natural starting point for investigating foodways, especially for communities that are self-sufficient or have limited access to...
Gribshunden (1495), a Royal Medieval Danish Flagship in the Baltic Sea (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The royal Danish-Norwegian flagship Gribshunden (or Gryffen) was launched in 1485 as one of the earliest purpose-built warships in northern Europe. King Hans uniquely employed the vessel as his “floating castle”, combining hard and soft power functions into a mobile seat of government. After a decade in active service, the ship was...
Ground-penetrating Radar and Photogrammetry in Medieval France: Results from the Auvergne (2016)
The medieval period in Europe is well known from archaeological sites and historical records including England’s Domesday Book. The Auvergne of southern France, however, is a poorly studied upland region. This rugged environment of volcanic peaks contains a rich, yet mostly unknown medieval history. A research program is underway that includes archaeological survey, excavation, and geophysical survey at sites across the region. GPR survey in June 2015 focused on unexcavated portions of Les...
Imagined Forests: Woodlands and Wood Resources in Medieval Icelandic Literary, Documentary and Archaeological Sources (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Medieval literary sources describe the Icelandic landscape when the first settlers arrived as ‘forested from the mountains to the shores’. It had previously been thought that the island was rapidly deforested after settlement, but recent research gives a much more nuanced picture of woodland history. It...
Investigations at Amisfield: A Late Medieval Scottish Tower House (2015)
The "Debatable Lands" of the Scottish-English border region remained a frontier in a virtual state of war for centuries. Conflicts with England (the Border Wars) were punctuated with feuds among powerful Scottish families for dominance. Landholding families built small fortified towers for security in this hostile environment. Amisfield Tower, one of the best preserved small towers in Scotland, served the Charteris family from at least AD 1400 to 1630. Excavations adjacent to the tower sampled a...
Just Beyond the ‘Land of Women’: Examining Gender in Early and Late Medieval Ireland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1996, historian Lisa Bitel published "Land of Women: Sex and Gender in Early Ireland," a critical study of medieval gender, which remains influential over 20 years later. While more recent historical and literary research is available, there have been relatively few archaeological investigations of gender...
Landscapes of (Re)Conquest: Archaeologies of Cultural Transformation in Medieval Iberia and Occitania (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the highlights of the Landscapes of (Re)Conquest project (2018–2023), which has investigated the impact of conquest, migration and cultural transformation in the frontier societies of medieval Iberia and Pyrenean Occitania. Focusing on specific regional case studies, it considers how the creation...