The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The papers in this session present the results of recent and ongoing fieldwork and laboratory research on the archaeology of medieval Europe (c. 400-1500 CE). These interdisciplinary and international projects represent some of the most exciting and innovative work being conducted across the continent from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the emergence of the modern world. Themes of political conflict and conquest, frontiers, urbanization, daily lived experience, and human-environment dynamics are examined through the lenses of bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, landscape studies, archaeometric analyses, and so forth.

Other Keywords
Historic • Landscape Archaeology • Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Architecture • Historical Archaeology • Mortuary archaeology • Iron Age • demography • Zooarchaeology • Survey

Geographic Keywords
Isle of Man (Country) • Principality of Monaco (Country) • Kingdom of Spain (Country) • Principality of Andorra (Country) • Portuguese Republic (Country) • Gibraltar (Country) • Kingdom of Sweden (Country) • Kingdom of Norway (Country) • French Republic (Country) • United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nort (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-13 of 13)

  • Documents (13)
Documents
  • Bodiam Castle: Lived Experience and Political Ecology (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Johnson.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discussed the results of buildings and landscape survey at Bodiam Castle, SE England, 2010-2015. Bodiam is a much discussed site, a classic case study in the 'defense versus status' debate in castle studies. Our project moved beyond this false and misleading binary framing of a tired...

  • Broken Edges: Investigating Jewelry Damage by Violence and Fatigue (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Wicker.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many Scandinavian Migration Period gold bracteate pendants of the 5th and 6th centuries show evidence of pre- or post-depositional damage. Impressions of broken edges of the jewelry were made with polyvinyl siloxane (PVS), and the impressions were then analyzed as part of a larger project to...

  • Burial at the Black Friary in Trim, Ireland: 700 Years of Friary-Town Relations (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Scott. Finola O'Carroll.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lord of Trim, Geoffrey de Geneville, established a Dominican friary to the north of the town in AD 1263. Ongoing excavations at the Black Friary since 2010 have documented a sequence of burials that date from the 13th through the early 20th centuries. Despite this continuity in the use of the...

  • Castles of Conquest or Factionalism and the Creation of Political Landscapes (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Stull.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Castles play a significant role in the creation of a social and political landscape. The placement and proximity of castles to each other and to other places in the landscape can be markedly different depending on the political circumstances of their creation. The castles of Germany’s Altmühltal...

  • Daily Lives in Early Medieval Bavaria: Degenerative Joint Disease in the Carolingian Altenerding, Germany (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Williams. Kendra Weinrich.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project investigates lived experience in early medieval Germany by examining degenerative joint disease (DJD) in human skeletal remains from Altenerding, Germany. A 2008 excavation at the Petersbergl site unearthed 128 burials from a 9th century cemetery associated with the Carolingian court...

  • FLAME: Framing the Late Antique and Early Medieval Economy (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Stahl. Lee Mordechai.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The FLAME project is a collaborative effort of a dozen scholars worldwide to track the production and circulation of coinage in western Eurasia from CE 325-750 in order to investigate the transition from ancient economies to those of the Middle Ages in Europe, North Africa, and Western and Central...

  • The Mosfell Excavations: Viking Archaeology in Iceland (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Byock.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Presents recent findings of the Mosfell Archaeological Project (MAP) in Iceland’s Mosfell Valley (Mosfellsdalur). Reviews excavations at Leiruvogur Bay at the coastal mouth of the valley and at Hrísbrú, the farmstead of the Mosfell chieftains. These two Viking Age sites formed a 10th century...

  • (Re)Conquests: Creating New Societies at the Frontiers of the Medieval Western Mediterranean (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleks Pluskowski. Guillermo García-Contreras Ruiz. Michelle Alexander. Rowena Banerjea. Marcos García-García.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper introduces the key questions of the "Landscapes of (Re)Conquest" research programme which is investigating the character of frontier societies in the medieval SW Mediterranean in the context of multiple conquests and regime changes. How did conquering authorities deal with the creation...

  • Settlement Shifts and the Transformation of Power in Medieval Italy: Preliminary Results from the Excavation of the Castle of San Giuliano (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Zori. Colleen Zori. Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati. Dennis Wilken. Deirdre Fulton.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Northern Lazio, Italy, was a region of shifting boundaries in the Middle Ages. Across the medieval centuries, it encompassed the southern extent of Lombard territory, a southwestern edge of Byzantine lands, and a northern portion of the Papal States. Given the scant textual documentation of this...

  • Sex-Specific Patterns of Survival in the Context of Urbanization and Environmental Change in Medieval and Post-medieval London, England (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon DeWitte.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Medieval and post-medieval populations in England experienced several crises, including famines and plague epidemics. These occurred at a time of increasing social inequality, urbanization, and shifting climatic conditions. This study examines temporal trends in survivorship (as a proxy for health)...

  • Traversing the Great Forest: Work and Mobility in Sweden’s Premodern Farmscape (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only T. L. Thurston.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of pre-modem Sweden comprised wooded uplands lying outside more densely populated 'civilized' regions. Often collectively called The Great Forest, this territory stretched from south-central to the high north, where Scandinavian, Finnish, and Sami people often lived in close proximity....

  • The Use and Benefit of Integrated Geophysical Survey in the Study of an Irish Early Medieval Site Rath Maol (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Brody. Andrew Bair.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper addresses the value of an integrated geophysical survey approach, which includes the application of GPR, DGPS, and magnetic gradiometry, to identify archaeological areas of occupation non-invasively. This approach was applied to RathMaol, as part of a larger ongoing research project,...

  • Using Zooarchaeology to Study Urban Origins in Antwerp, Belgium: Evidence from the Burcht and Gorterstraat Sites (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Pam Crabtree. Douglas Campana.

    This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of urbanism in northwestern Europe has been of interest to medieval archaeologists and historians since the days of Henry Pirenne, and these questions have been central to anthropological archaeology throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the critical features of early...