The Hanseatic Cultural Signature: Exploring Globalization on the Micro-Scale in Late Medieval Northern Europe

Abstract

The Hansa formed the principal agent of trade and cultural exchange in northern Europe and the Baltic during the late medieval to early modern periods. Hanseatic urban settlements in northern Europe shared many things in common. Their cultural ‘signature’ was articulated physically through a shared vocabulary of built heritage and domestic goods, from step-gabled brick architecture to clothing, diet, and domestic utensils. The redevelopment of towns on the Baltic littoral over the past 20+ years offers an archaeological opportunity to investigate key attributes of late medieval society on the micro-scale. Such attributes include the development of mercantile capitalism, colonialism, and proto-globalization. For instance, distributions of artefacts now point to the Hansa as an agent of the Reformation movement in northern and western Europe. Where they were once almost exclusively regarded as material evidence for long-distance commercial activity, domestic artefacts, such as table and heating ceramics, are now subject to scrutiny as media for social, cultural, ethnic, and confessional relationships, and combine to create a distinctive Hanseatic material signature. Ceramic case studies illustrate how the archaeology of the Hansa now intersects with the wider historical debate about Europeanisation and proto-globalization arising from the development of long-distance maritime trade from the thirteenth century onwards.