Early Medieval Society Research Articles

RE‐IMAGINING NAVAN FORT: NEW LIGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF A MAJOR CEREMONIAL CENTRE IN NORTHERN EUROPE

SummaryThis article presents major discoveries from a new campaign of large‐scale multi‐method geophysical surveying, focused on Navan Fort and its environs. Alongside a re‐appraisal of excavated evidence, it offers a new model for the evolution of Navan. The large earthwork now known as Navan Fort sits alongside other iconic monuments such as Tara, Rathcroghan, Knockaulin and Cashel as one of Ireland’s so‐called provincial centres. Historical texts imply that these Iron Age complexes became enduring symbols of power for early medieval societies, and royal centres for overkings. These references, alongside the incredible scale of these landscapes, have encouraged intensive research, but only recently has non‐invasive survey begun adding new data and facilitating new interpretations. Prior to the present study, discussion of Navan Fort was limited to the results of small‐scale but iconic excavations. These new discoveries significantly change understandings, adding spectacular new monumental phases, and facilitating re‐assessment of Navan’s role within both later prehistoric and medieval society, as well as of the nature of ceremonial landscapes and their role in developing sacral kingship in northern Europe.

The situation of conflicting loyalties and the Old English Genesis’ version of the story of the Fall

The paper addresses the idiosyncratic version of the story of the Fall presented in the Old English poem Genesis from the perspective of religious and political moral of Early Medieval Society. The methodology of the research bases on the analysis of the social functions of texts. To understand the didactic message of the poem the poet’s conception of “fall” should be looked attentively. “The Fall” of angels and men is presented in the text as the failure of choice, due to overconfidence or the appellation to the wrong authority. As could be seen from historical sources the problem of choice in the situation of conflicting loyalties was essential for Anglo-Saxon society. Person’s behavior in this situation was judged according to the results of his or her actions, not according to his or her initial reasons.

Embroidery and its early medieval audience: a case study of sensory engagement

ABSTRACT Embroidery made and used in early medieval England (c. 450–1100) was considered fine art. Today 43 surviving examples known or believed to have been made in early medieval England have been stylistically and technically analysed, and placed within chronological timeframes. Recently the embroideries and their makers’ positions within early medieval society have also been explored, and ‘life’ biographies have been written for some pieces. Until now, the viewers’ experiences of encountering and interacting with embroidery have never been fully investigated. This paper uses sensory archaeology as a technique to access the early medieval ‘mindset’ in order to explore how people actually engaged with embroidery as opposed to what each piece was meant to show or tell them. The early 10th-century embroidered stole and maniple, which were rediscovered in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral in the 19th century, are used as a case study.

Wood use in early medieval weapon production

In this paper, the analyses of wood remains from weapons that were found in early medieval graves in Belgium are presented. In addition, a large number of wood identifications from other early medieval weaponry from northwestern Europe (Germany, France, Switzerland, and England) was collected, resulting in a dataset of more than 800 items. The analysis of this dataset shows that the selection of wood taxa for specific weapons was largely similar all over northwestern Europe during this period and this selection can be explained by the physical and technical properties of each of these wood species. For instance, common ash (Fraxinus excelsior) being the preferred wood for arrow and spear shafts and alder (Alnus sp.) for scabbards. However, some regional differences emerged from this extensive dataset, e.g., the use of holly (Ilex aquifolium) for the production of axe handles being restricted to northern Belgium and poplar/willow (Populus sp./Salix sp.) being the preferred wood for shields in the UK, while these were mostly made from alder (Alnus sp.) in continental Europe. The results demonstrate the added value of wood anatomical analysis of mineralized wood particles preserved in the corrosion layer of metal objects, and weapons in particular, from archeological contexts. Clearly, taxonomic identifications have the potential to shed more light on material culture, technological craftsmanship, and the burial ritual in early medieval societies.

The pyre and the grave: early medieval cremation burials in the Netherlands, the German Rhineland and Belgium

ABSTRACT This paper problematizes grand-narrative thinking in continental, north western European early medieval (450–800 CE) burial archaeology. Using the existing research history and current debate on early medieval cremation burials, I demonstrate that European early medieval burial archaeology has focused on explaining the development of the furnished inhumation burial since the discipline’s conception. This has led to a misrepresentation of the diversity of early medieval burial practices and reinforced broad, unsatisfactory explanatory models. By including other burial types, like cremation burials, the overall model is changed in terms of what early medieval burial practices comprised, enabling a better understanding of the development of early medieval society.

The Art of the Slender Line

Abstract: This article examines aspects of Dr. Françoise Henry’s work on early Irish Christian art, particularly abstractive qualities found in illuminated manuscripts of the 5th to 7th centuries, which she claimed were a key in revealing knowledge of contemporary medieval Ireland, that the fusion of cultures between the existing indigenous people of Ireland and the incoming Christians was revealed through connections with other intellectual artforms, including music and literature. However, the relationship between Christian iconography and liturgy has not yet been fully explored. Work by recent scholars is widening discussion on these manuscripts not simply to ascertain their contemporary religious meaning but also to analyse their place in early medieval society as a whole, and to incorporate the modern viewer as an integral part of interpretation.

Estudiar el estado para comprender las sociedades altomedievales: a propósito de un libro reciente

Alvaro Carvajal’s Bajo la mascara del regnum is an original and fruitful contribution to existing research on early medieval societies, based on Bob Jessop’s approach to state theory. This article suggests a number of points for discussion around three issues: agrarian growth, the forms and functions of justice, and conflicts over space. On the one hand, the potential of Carvajal’s approach can be verified beyond the aspects that constitute the core of the book. On the other hand, its originality makes very apparent (by contrast) some theoretical and historiographic problems that burden current research practice.

Prophetic Resistance to Islam in Ninth-Century Córdoba: Paulus Alvarus and the Indiculus Luminosus

Abstract The Indiculus Luminosus has been discussed for its polemical depiction of Muḥammad, its author’s lament over the loss of Latinity in Umayyad Córdoba, or its relation to the so-called Córdoban Martyrs of the 850s. None of these, however, comprehends the purpose of the work as a whole. A layman, Paulus Alvarus, wrote the Indiculus in 854 CE to galvanize the Córdoban Christian elites to oppose Islam through public preaching and affirmation of their Christian identity without compromise. Asserting prophetic authority and appropriating ecclesiastical modes of discourse to engage and influence the elites of an early medieval society, Alvarus’s Indiculus provides a crucial, if idiosyncratic, witness to a time of profound cultural and religious change.

ВІЧЕ У ПОМОРСЬКИХ СЛОВ’ЯН XI–XII ст. (до історіографії проблеми)

Background: The research on early medieval Pomerania (eleventh–twelfth centuries) and its assemblies discusses a variety of interpretations. Scholars explain veche and its place in the governance of the region based on their understanding of Slavic societies. Historians trace the development of Pomerania during the Early Middle Ages, analyze gradual transformation of its institutions. Recent studies use such concepts as segmentary structures and chiefdom as well as the newest archaeological material. Purpose: The goal of the article is to study the research on veche, particularly the most recent publications. Among them, the works of such historians and archaeologists as Piotr Boroс, Karol Modzelewski, Roman Zaroff, Michaі Tymowski, Michaі Kara, Przemysіaw Urbaсczyk, and others. The paper investigates their understanding of the place of assemblies in the governance of early medieval Pomerania as well as the appliance of such concepts as segmentary structures and chiefdom. Results: Pomeranian veche could be understood both as an element of the early medieval societies and as a way of collective decision-making. The article highlights various approaches to the study of veche, specifically the appliance of such concepts as segmentary structures and chiefdom. The paper investigates their usefulness for the research on early medieval Pomerania and its assemblies. The concepts of segmentary structures and chiefdom describe local communities and regional political formations, respectively. They help to distinguish a few levels of governance, to analyze relations between various parts of early medieval societies, and to trace integration as well as state formation processes. The future studies could continue the discussion about the appliance of different methodological approaches in research on well-known and fragmentary source material. Key words: veche, Pomerania, historiography, segmentary structures, chiefdom.

Divided Kingdom, 561: Gamification of the Early Middle ages

Gamification has been a growing trend as a tool for pedagogical use. Incorporating game-design elements into a non-game context not only has the potential to amplify student motivation and interaction, but allows for the exploration of a new way to learn, teach, and understand history. Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum provides us with an interesting viewpoint into the world of 6th century Frankish Gaul. Understanding the motivations behind the characters in Gregory’s work and their relationship with the religious and political atmosphere of the 6th century can be difficult for modern readers. My project uses elements of role-playing to better engage students in interacting with the text. Students inhabit the role of a historical character from Historia Francorum and play out a narrative ‘campaign’ of multiple sessions as that character. Through research and primary source reading they will develop an understanding for their character, the world they inhabit, and their role within that society. Students engage with other students, prepare and give speeches, all in their prescribed roles. This, along with continual feedback on their actions given by the instructor, will cultivate a unique and more engaging learning atmosphere for students. My goal for this undergraduate research project is to develop an alternative approach to understanding the dynamics of early medieval Frankish society. By turning Gregory’s work into an inhabitable space, the large body of text becomes approachable and engaging to students. The final phase of the project which is underway, is testing it in a third year undergraduate history course.

Społeczna interpretacja wybranych wczesnośredniowiecznych cmentarzysk rzędowych w perspektywie gender studies i lifecycle analysis

The study consists of two parts. The first part comprises analysis and social interpretation of archaeological and anthropological burial data from selected early medieval row cemeteries located in the catchment area of the Odra and Vistula rivers. The second part has a form of appendix of sample burials used for analysis and interpretation carried out in the project (altogether 2286 burials from 29 cemeteries). The conducted analysis aimed at recognizing the past social system in terms of constructing and expressing gender relations and their position within the lifecycle in the early Medieval society from the period between the 10th and 13th century AD in Poland. This attempt is based on the premise that death and associated funerary rites are most of all social events. Therefore, the funeral rites, along with associated material remains, may to some extent reflect social phenomena. The dissertation starts with an overview of the early Medieval burial customs and their changes over time, focusing primarily on the inhumation burial rite and row cemeteries. It is followed by presenting basic categories of gender and lifecycle studies. This section comprises also a possibility of applying both concepts for interpretation of archaeological and anthropological data from cemeteries. The next section involves analysis of available empirical materials from the Medieval row cemeteries and is aimed to identify and define the rules for treatment the dead according to sex and age. The following elements of burial rites have been taken into consideration: a placement of the burial in cemetery, grave construction, grave goods, etc. A special interest has been focused upon burial rules practiced at row cemeteries in reference to atypical burials.

Understanding 6th-century barbarian social organization and migration through paleogenomics

Despite centuries of research, much about the barbarian migrations that took place between the fourth and sixth centuries in Europe remains hotly debated. To better understand this key era that marks the dawn of modern European societies, we obtained ancient genomic DNA from 63 samples from two cemeteries (from Hungary and Northern Italy) that have been previously associated with the Longobards, a barbarian people that ruled large parts of Italy for over 200 years after invading from Pannonia in 568 CE. Our dense cemetery-based sampling revealed that each cemetery was primarily organized around one large pedigree, suggesting that biological relationships played an important role in these early medieval societies. Moreover, we identified genetic structure in each cemetery involving at least two groups with different ancestry that were very distinct in terms of their funerary customs. Finally, our data are consistent with the proposed long-distance migration from Pannonia to Northern Italy.

Divided Kingdom, 561: Gamification of the Early Middle ages

Gamification has been a growing trend as a tool for pedagogical use. Incorporating game-design elements into a non-game context not only has the potential to amplify student motivation and interaction, but allows for the exploration of a new way to learn, teach, and understand history. Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum provides us with an interesting viewpoint into the world of 6th century Frankish Gaul. Understanding the motivations behind the characters in Gregory’s work and their relationship with the religious and political atmosphere of the 6th century can be difficult for modern readers. My project uses elements of role-playing to better engage students in interacting with the text. Students inhabit the role of a historical character from Historia Francorum and play out a narrative ‘campaign’ of multiple sessions as that character. Through research and primary source reading they will develop an understanding for their character, the world they inhabit, and their role within that society. Students engage with other students, prepare and give speeches, all in their prescribed roles. This, along with continual feedback on their actions given by the instructor, will cultivate a unique and more engaging learning atmosphere for students. My goal for this undergraduate research project is to develop an alternative approach to understanding the dynamics of early medieval Frankish society. By turning Gregory’s work into an inhabitable space, the large body of text becomes approachable and engaging to students. The final phase of the project which is underway, is testing it in a third year undergraduate history course.

Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200, ed. Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser

The volume under review originated in a conference held in Manchester in 2005 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Max Gluckman’s influential ‘Peace in the Feud’. Though only one of the constituent chapters was originally presented at the conference, the contributors seek to further the themes discussed there, probing our understanding of western (or ‘Latin’) Europe between Late Antiquity and the central Middle Ages. As Conrad Leyser explains in the introduction, the volume aims to move discussion of the period beyond the traditional fetishisation of the state and central authority (which is alternatively held to have collapsed in Late Antiquity or the years straddling the first millennium) and on to matters of religion and society. The inspiration here comes from recent work on the late Roman and Carolingian empires, which emphasises that neither was a monolith—and that daily life was generally dictated by social (rather than political) forces. Put playfully, as Leyser states, the modern British political mantra, ‘Small State–Big Society’ (associated with David Cameron’s Conservatives), is used to explore the years between 300 and 1200. In particular, the aim is to use the Church and social conflict as alternative prisms through which to construct an understanding of developments over these years.

Medieval and Early Modern Murder: Legal, Literary and Historical Contexts, ed. Larissa Tracy. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018, xiv, 486 pp., 3 b/w ill.

This volume treats one of the worst crimes people can commit, murder, as it was perceived and evaluated in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. Originally conceived in 2013, the project then grew out of a number of scholarly events organized by Larissa Tracy. While much work has already been done on violence in the Middle Ages, murder in its specific legal and cultural connotations certainly deserves particular and further attention, although crime and punishment have also been addressed even quite recently (Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, ed. A. Classen and Connie Scarborough, 2012; here not consulted). Crime constitutes a legal case, and should be studied first of all through the lens of legal history, which is the case here in the first section of papers. But it remains unclear how the entire volume really intends to embed the deed within the legal discourse, although Tracy refers to some major law books (leaving out others, again, such as Eike von Repgow’s famous Sachsenspiegel, ca. 1225/1230). The discourse on crime at large, and on murder in specific allows us to understand any society throughout time because murder has been a universal phenomenon. Would it hence make sense to quote Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish, here in the trans. by Alan Sheridan, 1995), who had only a vague idea about the Middle Ages and claimed that the legal system as we know it today emerged only in the early modern age (6)? Tracy uses him as a fig <?page nr="295"?>leaf and quickly turns away from him because early medieval societies knew already of extensive legal codes, some of which are here taken into consideration by individual contributors.

Zubin Mistry. Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500–900.

Zubin Mistry’s Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500–900 seeks to uncover the cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. While evidence about pre-modern attitudes to abortion in early medieval Western Europe is fragmentary, Mistry manages to summon a range of sources, all condemning the practice. In excerpts of canon laws, penitentials, sermons, saints’ lives, and biblical commentaries, he reads deeply into the context that occasioned authoritative statements on abortion. The resulting monograph is the first to comprehensively gather all of the authoritative fragments on abortion in continental Western Europe from the period and to consider their cumulative effects, addressing how they relate to one another to reflect, if not a cohesive discourse on abortion, then at least the “thought-worlds” of their authors. Abortion in the Early Middle Ages firmly establishes that reactions to the practice of abortion were situational, rooted in specific historical circumstances, and unrepresentative of contemporary abstract concerns about fetal “life.”

Waloryzacja środowiska przyrodniczego wczesnośredniowiecznego grodu w Rękoraju na Wysoczyźnie Piotrkowskiej, Polska Środkowa

Dla społeczności wczesnego średniowiecza najdogodniejszymi obszarami do zasiedlania były tereny o dużej geo- i bioróżnorodności, zaś preferowanymi formami geomorfologicznymi były terasy rzeczne zbudowane z piasków średnio- i drobnoziarnistych. Przeprowadzone analizy pozwoliły na wykreślenie map waloryzacji, dla których punktem wyjścia była mapa geomorfologiczna obszaru. Waloryzację środowiska otoczenia grodziska w Rękoraju wykonano w celu wskazania obszarów, które były najkorzystniejsze dla gospodarki wczesnośredniowiecznej w warunkach „agrotechniki lekkiej”.

Kate Cooper & Conrad Leyser (eds), Making early medieval societies: conflict and belonging in the Latin West, 300-1200

Kate Cooper &amp; Conrad Leyser (eds), <i>Making early medieval societies: conflict and belonging in the Latin West, 300-1200</i>

Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Medieval West, 300-1200.Edited by Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser

<i>Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Medieval West, 300-1200.</i>Edited by Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser

Abortion in the early Middle Ages, c.500-900

When a Spanish monk struggled to find the right words to convey his unjust expulsion from a monastery in a desperate petition to a sixth-century king, he likened himself to an aborted fetus. Centuries later, a ninth-century queen found herself accused of abortion in an altogether more fleshly sense. Abortion haunts the written record across the early middle ages. Yet, the centuries after the fall of Rome remain very much the dark ages in the broader history of abortion. This book, the first to treat the subject in this period, tells the story of how individuals and communities, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, construed abortion as a social and moral problem across a number of post-Roman societies, including Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul, early Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian empire. It argues early medieval authors and readers actively deliberated on abortion and a cluster of related questions, and that church tradition on abortion was an evolving practice. It sheds light on the neglected variety of responses to abortion generated by different social and intellectual practices, including church discipline, dispute settlement and strategies of political legitimation, and brings the history of abortion into conversation with key questions about gender, sexuality, Christianization, penance and law. Ranging across abortion miracles in hagiography, polemical letters in which churchmen likened rivals to fetuses flung from the womb of the church and uncomfortable imaginings of resurrected fetuses in theological speculation, this volume also illuminates the complex cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. Zubin Mistry is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University of London.