Fifteenth Century CE Research Articles

SILK ROAD, ISLAM, AND CONFUCIANISM

The history of the Silk Road, or Silk Routes as some historians prefer to call it, is one of the most impactful periods in human history spanning nearly sixteen centuries, from the second century BCE until the fifteenth century CE. It was the opening of trade to the outside world by the Han dynasty in China in 130 BCE that opened the official curtain of the Silk Road history. This Silk Road history may be regarded as the history of the encounters of the greatest human civilisations before modern times. It is a period of history that witnessed the birth of two great religions and civilisations of the world, namely Christianity and Islam. In the context of our present discussion, it is not the history of the individual religions and civilisations sharing the approximately 6,437 kilometre or 4,000 milelong Silk Road that mainly interests us. Rather, it is the inter-civilisational encounters that went into the shaping of the Silk Road history in question.

Beyond the Buddhist heartland: Magadha’s Himalayan and trans-Himalayan networks (fifth to fifteenth century CE)

The Buddhist landscape of ancient Magadha, modern south Bihar in eastern India, constituted the religion’s heartland because the Buddha had lived and taught here for a substantial period of time in the sixth century BCE. Within a few centuries after the Buddha’s death, Magadha started developing strong trans-regional connections, attracting pilgrims from within and beyond the subcontinent to the many shrines and monasteries that came to define the region. While Magadha’s robust translocal networks have been well established, a long-term history of its interface with the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan regions in the premodern period has yet to be charted. In this paper, I explore Magadha’s connections with parts of Nepal, Tibet and China in the course of a millennium (fifth to fifteenth century CE), using a combination of texts, inscriptions, sculptures and other artefacts. Within Magadha, I focus on Mahābodhi, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and on Nālandā, the site of a renowned mega-monastery (mahāvihāra), since they had the most enduring transcultural links. Such an exercise highlights the evolving character of the Buddhist heartland and the perception of it in the Asian Buddhist world. It also demonstrates how cross-cultural influences contributed to shaping Buddhist practices both within and beyond the heartland.

Constructing a borderlands in the ancient international four corners: Settlement layout, architecture, and mortuary practices in thirteenth through fifteenth century CE villages along the contemporary united states-Mexico border

Archaeological interpretations for the seemingly sudden introduction of new types of material culture or cultural practice often include attribution to the arrival of a migrant population as part the construction of a periphery or frontier zone. In the International Four Corners area of the American Southwest/Mexican Northwest, archaeologists often correlate the ascendancy of Paquimé in the late thirteenth century CE with the development of a northern periphery in southwestern New Mexico. Simultaneously, sites in far southeastern Arizona became partially integrated into the Salado phenomenon. I evaluate architecture, settlement, and mortuary data from 26 sites with respect to existing models. Given ongoing historian discourse regarding Indigenous borderlands during European colonization, I advocate a model enabling the occurrence of borderlands construction prior to colonization and lacking a predominate hierarchical society. I conclude that the inhabitants of the International Four Corners region situated themselves within multiple inter- and intra-regional zones of interaction and that existing models of frontiers and edge regions are inadequate to address the variability present, but that of the borderlands does as it recognizes relationships to adjacent culture cores as influential but also centers the local inhabitants and their agency.

The Emergence of Maritime Polity in Goa (Tenth Century to Fifteenth Century CE)

Scholars, who studied the nature of the Goa Kadamba polity, did not comprehend the fact that the Goa Kadambas exhibited the features of not only coastal polity but also maritime polity. At the same time, we accept the contention that the Shilaharas represented coastal polity while it lacked the features of a maritime polity. We support our argument by using the inscriptional data and foreign travelogue accounts, which exhibit the attempt of the Goa Kadambas to protect their maritime trade interest through their alliance with the Arab traders and maintaining a navy.

Pre-hispanic agricultural dynamics in the Quebrada of Morohuasi (Salta, Argentina)

The Quebrada de Morohuasi (Salta, Argentina), located in a semi-arid high-altitude environment, is known to host vast pre-Hispanic cultivation areas. Recent archaeological studies carried out in the agricultural area of Morohuasi allow for a better definition and understanding of the social and productive dynamics that took place there. Field records and AMS dating indicate two main productive phases that were discontinuous in time. These show an initial phase during the Formative Period, between the first and fourth centuries CE, during which the agricultural substratum was formed, and a final phase during the first decades of the fifteenth century CE that was related to the establishment of an agricultural colony under the control of the Inkas. Although the same cultivation plots were utilized during both phases, the mode and relations of production were substantially different, particularly in the second phase with the participation of contingents of mitmaqkunas brought from other regions.

DeVun, Leah, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance

Leah DeVun’s fine book is a major contribution to gender studies. It will remain a key reference work on premodern, nonbinary bodies for at least the next five years, if not decade. Aimed at a wide audience that includes historians of European gender and sexuality, art historians, literary scholars, philosophers, animal studies scholars, medical historians, LGBT scholars and gender activists, The Shape of Sex is an avowedly politically engaged study, not only offering a ‘usable past’ for nonbinary, genderqueer, trans, sex variant and intersex persons today but also imagining for them—and for everyone—‘a more radically transformative future’ (p. 14). Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated with colour and black and white images, The Shape of Sex provides a wide-ranging analysis of how European thinkers from the third- to the fifteenth-century CE—theologians, legal theorists, makers and illustrators of bestiaries and mappaemundi (symbolic maps of the world), travel writers, encyclopaedists, natural philosophers, physicians, surgeons and alchemists—imagined bodies that did not fit within the traditional dimorphic understanding of sexed bodies during this period, and thus raised crucial questions about which bodies counted as human and which did not.

Trade Flux’s Influence Upon Southeast Asian Economical Backwardness During 17th Century

Southeast Asia as a region of exotic lands located between China and India countries on Indian Oceanic passageway of which little was known. Southeast’s Asian earliest center’s of power emerged between the first and fifteenth centuries CE, as their leaders faced issues relative to rulling their domains, which were mainly moving form highly localized tribal and clan-based societies. In the predominant world, the Southeast Asian region was illustrated in international sources as wealth land. The story of economic development in early Southeast Asia begins long before the Christian Era. Southeast Asia had already been for centuries a region with unique cultural identity. Trade has been important facet for Southeast Asia, since it obtained numerous commodities as clove, sandalwood, camphor, pepper that had been traded since Rome and Han era. As time passed, many trade activities faced failures which indicated economical backwardness. This article tries to emphasize the trade flux’s impact upon Southeast Asian economical backwardness in 14th century.

Landscape Heritage at Çadir Höyük: From Cartography to Digital Imagery

Abstract Studies of archaeological cultural heritage typically focus on sites and landscapes threatened by military conflict, while threats from development and urban expansion are often more common. Excavations at Çadır Höyük began as a salvage campaign in advance of the construction of the Gelingüllü Dam—a modern infrastructural project. While our team has been excavating since 1994, the mound of Çadır Höyük and our host village of Peyniryemez have been recorded in maps and historical documents stretching as far back as the fifteenth century CE. This article examines the history of archaeological engagement at the site with a particular focus on the cartographic and visual record.

Redefining the age of tattooing in western North America: A 2000-year-old artifact from Utah

How people decorate their bodies provides insight into cultural expressions of achievement, group allegiances, identity, and status. Tattooing has been hard to study in ancient societies for which we do not have tattooed mummies, which adds to the challenge of placing current body modification practices into a long-term global perspective. Historic studies document the practice of tattooing among many Indigenous North American groups. While the distribution and complexity of tattoo traditions indicate these practices predate the fifteenth century CE and arrival of Europeans, the antiquity of North American tattooing is poorly understood. During a recent inventory of legacy archaeological materials from the Turkey Pen site in southeastern Utah, we discovered a tattooing implement constructed from a sumac stem, prickly pear cactus spines, and yucca leaf strips. This artifact was recovered in 1972 from an in situ midden but, until now, remained unidentified. The tattooing artifact dates to 79–130 CE during the Basketmaker II period (ca. 500 BCE – 500 CE), predating European arrival to North America by over 1400 years. This unusual tool is the oldest Indigenous North American tattooing artifact in western North America and has implications for understanding archaeologically ephemeral body modification practices. Events such as the Neolithic Demographic Transition—which occurs in many places around the globe—may link to an increase in body modification practices as social markers, as appears to be the case for the Basketmaker II people in the southwestern United States.

(Re)discovering Love Stories: Byzantine Mentality and the Greek Novel from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century CE

(Re)discovering Love Stories: Byzantine Mentality and the Greek Novel from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century CE

Gestión de la ganadería y patrones de consumo de una comunidad indígena expuesta al fenómeno colonial: el caso de la Estructura 12 de la Cueva Pintada (Gran Canaria, España)

Se presenta el estudio de los taxones faunísticos domésticos recuperados en dos contextos espaciales y estratigráficos documentados en la Estructura 12 del yacimiento de La Cueva Pintada de Gáldar (Gran Canaria, España). Datados entre los siglos XV y XVI d.C., uno es indiscutiblemente anterior a la conquista de la isla y el otro corresponde, con toda probabilidad, a un momento en el que esta ya se ha producido. Cerdos, cabras y ovejas son las únicas especies domésticas consumidas durante todo el siglo XV y principios del siglo XVI. No se documentó la introducción de nuevos animales ni se detectó el uso de herramientas metálicas para el tratamiento carnicero o el consumo. Sin embargo, en el contexto más antiguo de los analizados, previo a la anexión definitiva de la isla, la frecuencia de restos de cerdo (NME=63%) es muy superior a la de caprinos (NME=37%), circunstancia prácticamente inédita en el Archipiélago hasta la fecha. Dicha tendencia parece que se invierte a medida que nos acercamos a finales del siglo XV, periodo de plena ocupación colonial. Lo que permanece inalterable es la mayor proporción de cabras con respecto a las ovejas en cada etapa. Los perfiles de mortalidad a lo largo de la secuencia estudiada sugieren que mientras cabras y ovejas eran consumidas a cualquier edad durante todo el año, aunque preferentemente adultas, el sacrificio de cerdos se centraba en individuos subadultos, con edades comprendidas entre los 12- 25 meses, una vez habían alcanzado su peso óptimo. Este resultado muestra el aprovechamiento diversificado de la cabaña caprina y la gestión especializada en el mantenimiento de la cabaña porcina, pudiendo estar su sacrificio asociado a momentos y espacios en los que la demanda de carne fuera mayor.

Glass artifacts at Angkor: evidence for exchange

Although glass beads were found in large quantities in Southeast Asia during the Iron Age and into the first millennium CE, glass artifacts from the Angkorian period (ninth–fifteenth centuries CE) are less common and have not been as well-studied. This paper presents the results of an analysis of 81 glass beads and artifacts from the ninth-century royal capital of Hariharālaya and later (twelfth–fourteenth centuries CE) contexts from the walled city of Angkor Thom. Compositional analyses using laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) have identified glass belonging to three broad compositional groups. The earlier Hariharālaya sites have numerous glass beads and vessel fragments made from vegetal soda glass, associated with Middle Eastern production, as well as high-alumina mineral soda glass of a sub-type frequently found at Iron Age sites in Southeast Asia and likely produced in South Asia. Beads from the later-period sites within Angkor Thom are primarily lead glass, associated with Chinese glass production, and different sub-types of high-alumina mineral soda glass that have also been found at sites in Southeast Asia dating from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries CE. A small number of beads from Angkor Thom also have a vegetal soda composition distinct from beads at Hariharālaya. The results of this study provide a new type of evidence for elite participation in broader regional exchange networks during the Angkorian period.

Treatises on the Salvation of Abū Ṭālib

The following article surveys a few treatises regarding the salvation of the Prophet Muḥammad’s uncle, Abū Ṭālib b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. circa 619ce). The controversy concerning Abū Ṭālib’s place in the hereafter stems from a wealth of reports condemning him to hell due to his refusal to convert to Islam and others which testify to his lifelong belief in God and the prophethood of Muḥammad. The first group of reports was canonized in the collections of Bukhārī and Muslim, while the second group largely appeared insīraand Shīʿīḥadīthliterature. Although Shīʿī thinkers have upheld the faith and salvation of Abū Ṭālib from the earliest periods of Islamic history, very few Sunnīs shared this opinion despite transmitting some of the same proof-texts cited in Shīʿī works. According to most Sunnīs, these proof-texts were either inconclusive or insufficient in proving Abū Ṭālib’s conversion to Islam or his salvation. However, there is a remarkable shift in the sensibilities of some Sunnīs after the ninth centuryhijrī(fifteenth centuryce). In contrast to early Sunnīs who considered such a possibility to be unlikely or flatly denied it, a few Sunnīs over the past five centuries have joined their Shīʿī co-religionists in their commitment to the salvation of Abū Ṭālib. This article introduces the relevant proof-texts and theological arguments that classical Shīʿī and modern Sunnī writers have utilized to advocate the belief in Abū Ṭālib’s salvation.

Settlement Reorganisation and the Rebirth of the Ottoman Empire: Bayesian Modelling Narrows Dates for Post-Medieval Occupation at Kaman-Kalehöyük, Kırşehir Province, Turkey

The Ottoman reoccupation of the site of Kaman-Kalehoyuk (Kirsehir Province, Turkey) apparently occurred sometime during the fifteenth century CE, a time of massive territorial and administrative transformation in the Empire. A rich suite of archaeobotanical material recovered from the site offers a potentially invaluable source of information on Ottoman-era Anatolian agroeconomy, especially since historiographic research on the topic has uniformly ignored archaeological perspectives. Here we present results of a multi-proxy analysis aimed at establishing an absolute multiphasic chronology for Kaman-Kalehoyuk’s Ottoman occupation, founded upon Bayesian statistical modelling of high-precision radiocarbon dates from cereal remains. We use the new chronology to position Kaman-Kalehoyuk’s resettlement within a historical context, allowing a new perspective on settlement responses to large-scale Ottoman sociopolitical change in Anatolia.

Changing Crafts in the Spaces Between States: Formal, Functional, and Decorative Transformations in Fifteenth-Century CE Ceramics at Kirikongo, Burkina Faso (West Africa)

The fifteenth century CE in central West Africa saw the rise and/or expansion of states and empires, major shifts in settlement patterns, and growth of new trading connections between the forest and Sahel. However, very little is known about how these events affected areas not incorporated into states, such as western Burkina Faso, which was likely home to diverse noncentralized societies. Previous archaeological work at the site of Kirikongo, in the Mouhoun Bend, Burkina Faso, examined the histories of these communities from ca. 100 to 1400 CE. This paper introduces the fifteenth-century (Red IV) ceramics from Kirikongo, exploring their form, function, and decoration and assessing their presence at other sites in the region. Based on these distributions, many communities in the Mouhoun Bend decreased in size or were abandoned during Red IV. During Red IV, potters also adopted new ceramic forms and decorations. These may be associated with new economic activities and with increasing entanglements with Mande and/or Dogon communities.

Die frühesten türkischen Übersetzungen von Tausendundeiner Nacht und deren Bedeutung für die arabische Textgeschichte

Abstract Despite the shoreless output of scholarly publications on the Thousand and One Nights in general, research on the textual history is comparatively limited. Given the small number of early Arabic manuscripts, evidence from early translations is crucial for any reconstruction of the Mamluk version of the Thousand and One Nights, written approximately between 1425 and 1500 CE. For some time, the existence of an early Turkish translation, extant in two manuscripts and dated to the fifteenth century CE on linguistic grounds, has been known. The two manuscripts cover the first 56 nights of the work. A later Turkish version, written in the seventeenth century CE, extant in a nine volume manuscript, has been known for a long time too. In this contribution, the discovery of further parts of the oldest Turkish translation is indicated for the first time. Text samples are edited, translated and compared to the oldest Arabic version of the Thousand and One Nights. A collation with the nine volume manuscript has shown that parts of it contain the earlier translation of the fifteenth century. Furthermore, some Turkish versions of single stories also belonging to the Thousand and One Nights are discussed. Among these are the story of the Queen of the serpents (Cāmaspnāme) and the story of Sayf al-Mulūk. Based on the new evidence from Turkish manuscripts and their numbering of the nights, an overall view on the puzzle of fragments is given. The same is done for the early Arabic manuscripts. As a result, it has turned out that both groups show the same sequence of stories. There are inserted stories, but no reversed order of stories is found. This suggests that a stable tradition of the overall structure of the work existed. Finally, the contribution contains an inventory of 62 Turkish manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights and of single stories.

Bhoma's Kitchen: Food Culture and Food Symbolism in Pre-Islamic Java

This article discusses the food symbolism in martial scenes of kakavin, narrative poems composed in Old Javanese between the ninth and fifteenth centuries CE. Starting from the hypothesis that Javanese conceived of a battle and a preparation of food with a common set of ideas and concepts, a striking food metaphor, found in the Bhāratayuddha, has been analyzed. The slaying of Kama, an epic hero who sided with the Pāndavas, is likened to the process of steaming rice. Karṇa's body is compared to a dish of half-cooked rice stirred before it is put into the bamboo steamer to be finished over the boiling water. I have argued that this literary vignette represents the earliest Javanese detailed description of the method of cooking rice by steaming, the method now common in Java and Bali. In the second part of this article I have analyzed three “literary breakfasts,” using the rich evidence of the Kakavin Rāmāyana and the Bhomāntaka. I have demonstrated that in pre-Islamic period the Javanese already had a well-developed concept of breakfast, the first meal of the day. In the third part of the article I have argued that the famous “feasting passage” in Bhomāntaka, 81.34–49, which describes a meal organized for warriors on the night before their march to battle and which represents an immensely rich account of dishes prepared from hearts, lungs, intestines and marrow, is best understood as a participatory animal sacrifice. The Bhomāntaka thus supports a view that the consumption of meat in the martial context had a ritual character in pre-Islamic Java.

The Creative Erudition of Chapaṭa Saddhammajotipāla, a 15th-Century Grammarian and Philosopher from Burma

This paper focuses on the scholastic technique of the Theravāda scholar-monk Chapaṭa Saddhammajotipāla (Burma, fifteenth century CE). Chapaṭa is the author of several scholastic treatises in Pāli, the most voluminous of which is the Suttaniddesa, a commentary on the Pāli grammar of Kaccāyana (ca. sixth to seventh century CE). I offer a general introduction to the Pāli grammatical tradition and especially to the Pāli grammatical tradition of Burma, together with an introduction to the life and works of Chapaṭa. I also offer the first annotated translation of a passage from the Suttaniddesa and in this way I show how the scholastic technique of Chapaṭa is based on a precise (and sometimes fastidious) use of quotations, mainly from other Pāli or Sanskrit grammatical texts, but also from Buddhist literature. I finally give a preliminary assessment of typology and purpose of every different type of quotation. Although this paper consists mainly of preliminary work, it is the first essay entirely devoted to the Suttaniddesa, which is one of the most important grammatical works in the Theravāda tradition.

Mythical Past and Historied Present: Another Interpretation of a Polychrome Vessel from Nochixtlan, Oaxaca

AbstractThis study presents an alternative interpretation of one of the most aesthetically charged objects known from southwestern Mesoamerica, a tripod vessel seemingly manufactured in the fifteenth century CE. The analysis links the content of the visual narrative painted on the vessel with the use of the object, a function glyphically described around its neck. I argue that the binary structure of the depicted imagery and of the myth of origin encoded in the narrative was dialectically projected into the historical social field that motivated the commissioning of the artifact: a marital alliance to unite two powerful noble houses in order to forge a new dynasty. The deployment of the vessel to drink cacao during a marriage ceremony helps explain how its inscribed surface was meant to be read, and the depicted archetypical toponyms are hypothetically identified with lived places in the valleys of Nochixtlan and Coixtlahuaca.

Vietnam. Ancient Vietnam: History, art and archaeology. By Anne-Valérie Schweyer. Bangkok: River Books, 2011. 428 pp. Illustrations, Maps.

Ancient Vietnam: History, art and archaeology By ANNE-VALERIE SCHWEYER Bangkok: River Books, 2011. 428 pp. Illustrations, Maps. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000520 Vietnam is among the most attractive tourist destinations in the world and Vietnamese studies are an essential field of scholarship. Bangkok-based River Books and its publisher Narisa Chakrabongse have produced a highly valuable, well-illustrated colour guidebook about the ancient civilisations of Vietnam written by a renowned French historian and epigrapher, Anne-Valerie Schweyer from the Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS). The volume is enriched by Paisarn Piemettawat's beautiful colour illustrations. As a guidebook, this monograph has its own beauty: limited texts with many brilliant images of Vietnamese art on every page; detailed sections which can be read separately, and simplified spelling of Vietnamese, Sanskrit and Cham names and terms. Readers who wish to broaden their knowledge of Vietnamese history and art will find this here. Ancient Vietnam consists of four independent parts. The first deals with history; the second describes the religion, art and architecture of Champa--a common name of ancient kingdoms which flourished in Central Vietnam from the fifth to the fifteenth century CE. The third part describes religion, architecture and monuments of the 'Viet Land', i.e. the Red River Valley or Northern Vietnam. The fourth and final part gives a brief account of five principal museums in Vietnam. For the convenience of readers the monograph contains a glossary of Sanskrit names and terms, a brief bibliography, an index and a reference list of Vietnamese, Sanskrit, and Cham spellings. It also includes many maps and plans of archaeological sites throughout, including maps of Vietnam (p. 9), of 'major trade routes between India and Southeast Asia between the 10th-15th centuries' (p. 10), of Champa (p. 58), of 'the main Viet sites around Hanoi' (p. 252), of Hanoi (p. 263), and many others. Meanwhile, Schweyer offers a fresh look at Vietnam's history. While traditional scholarship has concentrated on the history of the Vietnamese as in The birth of Vietnam by Keith W. Taylor (University of California Press, 1983), or on the history of Champa as in George Maspero's Le royaume de Champa (Les Editions G. Van Oest, 1928), Schweyer incorporates Champa and its culture within the ancient history of Vietnam: a historical sketch begins with Champa and then gives parallel developments in Champa and in the Viet Land. Ancient Vietnam covers a long timespan from the first millennium BCE to the end of the fifteenth century CE when the Champa kingdom of Vijaya was conquered by the Dai Viet emperor Le Thanh Tong in 1471. Schweyer synthesises contemporary historical research on Champa and describes its polities as trade-oriented and the Viet Land as agricultural. She believes Champa never was 'a centralised territory under the rule of a king' (p. 9). The Chams, an Austronesian group, adopted Indic, not Sinicised, cultural traits, including Sanskrit, because China 'had imperialistic desires incompatible with the independent spirit of the Chams' and 'the Chams saw in India, social and political structures to which they could relate; they were, thus, seduced by a script which could also be used to record their own language, something that was not possible using Chinese ideograms' (p. 13). I wonder why and how the Chams could adopt an Indic writing due to their 'independent spirit'; this vague concept can hardly be verified by the available sources. How can this factor explain the adoption of Hinduism or Buddhism? I suppose the spread of a religious system, like Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam has required propagation of its main ideas by its exponents; therefore, the adoption of Indic religious systems in Champa and the Viet Land was possible due to the activities of many Buddhists or Hindus who propagated these systems; they could have been from India proper. …