Life in medieval europe8/8/2023 ![]() ![]() From about 1350 to 1500 the period of the late Middle Ages was a time of transition, seeing the emergence of modern Europe. The period of the High Middle Ages, from about 1000 to 1350, was the high water mark of medieval civilization, leaving a durable legacy in the soaring cathedrals and massive castles which sprang up all over Europe. The Christian Church, already highly influential by the time of the western Roman empire’s fall, strengthened its hold on society. Western European society was reshaped with the rise of self-sufficient estates (or manors), then of horse-soldiers ( knights), and finally of feudalism. Literacy, and with it learning, all but vanished. Long distance trade shrank, the currency collapsed, the economy mostly reverted to barter, and the towns diminished in size. The five-plus centuries after the fall of Rome (up to c.1000) have been called the Dark Ages, and witnessed a dramatic decline in the level of material civilization. The thousand-year long period of western Medieval Europe can be divided into three main phases, of unequal length. ![]() It was one of the most fascinating and transformative eras in world history. In fact, though, modern historians regard these centuries as the cradle of the modern age, a time when many elements of our society which we value – democracy, industrialization, science and so on, had their roots. We still get an echo of this in the ideas surrounding the term “ Gothic” – dark, gloomy, foreboding. In fact, the term was coined by later historians, and means “Middle Ages”, which might today be rendered as “in-between times” – that period which came after the high civilizations of the Greeks and Romans, and before the high civilization of the Renaissance: an age of barbarism, ignorance, illiteracy and violence. Jeux sans Frontières: Play and Performativity or Questions of Identity and Social Interaction across Town and Country - MARK A.The period of European history which we call “Medieval” is usually regarded as consisting of the thousand years or so between the fall of the Roman Empire in the west (in the 5th century), through to the period of the Renaissance in the 15th century. Mounts for Furnishings, Padlocks and Candleholders: Understanding the Urbanisation of Medieval England through Metal Small Finds Recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme - MICHAEL LEWIS Meat Consumption as Identity of Status and Profession during the Middle Ages: A Review of the Zooarchaeological Evidence from Rome and Latium (Italy ) - CLAUDIA MINNITI Patterns of Diversity: Using Ceramics to Examine the Social Topography of the Medieval Town of Płock, Poland - MACIEJ TRZECIECKI Urban Patterns of Animal Husbandry on Three Sites in Medieval Anatolia - EVANGELIA PIŞKIN Zooarchaeology at Medieval Ipswich: From wic to Regional Market Town - PAM CRABTREEĪn Archaeobotanical Perspective on Wooden Artefacts from Medieval Reykjavík - DAWN MOONEYīuilding the Towns: The Interrelationship Between Woodland History and Urban Life in Viking Age Ireland - EILEEN REILLY, SUSAN LYONS, ELLEN O’CARROLL, LORNA O’DONNELL, INGELISE STUIJTS, and ADRIENNE CORLESS Together, these sections make a significant contribution to medieval archaeology and offer new and unique insights into the conditions of everyday life in medieval Europe. The volume is divided into four key parts: an exploration of the processes of provisioning an assessment of the dynamics of urban population an examination of domestic life and a discussion of the status quaestionis and future potential of urban environmental archaeology. Case studies from across Europe encourage a comparative approach between town and country, and provide a pan-European perspective to current debates. ![]() The contributions included here address central themes such as urban identities, the nature of towns and their relationship with their hinterlands, provisioning processes, and the role of ritual and religion in everyday life. The papers in this volume aim to redress the balance by taking an environmental and artefact-based approach to life in medieval Europe. Artefacts and environmental remains are abundant from archaeological excavations across Europe, but until now they have most commonly been used to accompany broader narratives built on historical sources and studies of topography and buildings, rather than being studied as important evidence in their own right. ![]()
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