The Risley Park Silver Lanx: A Lost Antiquity from Roman Britain

1981 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Johns
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Late Roman

SummaryIn 1729, a decorated fourth-century Roman silver dish bearing a Christian inscription was found at Risley Park, Derbyshire. Damaged when found, the fragments of the vessel were soon lost, but an illustrated account of it was published by William Stukeley in 1736. Stukeley and later authorities interpreted the inscription as implying that the dish had belonged to a late Roman church in France, and considered that it had been brought to Britain as loot in the Middle Ages. This paper presents a description and assessment of the Risley Park lanx in the light of the greater knowledge of late Roman silver plate now available, and makes the suggestion that the vessel may have been imported into Britain in the Roman period.

scholarly journals Late Antiquity by Gordon Childe: Sources and Inspirations

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 157-165
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Jastrzębowska
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Late Roman

In the last chapter of What Happened in History, Childe touched on the problematic of Late Antiquity. His pessimistic view of that period was a variation on the theme of decadence. This theme had existed in the Roman Republic and under the Empire, long before there was any Late Antiquity to be decadent. It then persisted throughout the Middle Ages and found monumental expression in Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Childe, however, took it to excessive lengths in his denunciation of the politics, economy, and culture of the Late Roman Empire. Childe based his arguments largely on the work of Rostovtzeff and Heichelheim. Both these eminent historians were exiles: Rostovtzeff from the Russia of the October Revolution and Heichelheim from National Socialist Germany. It is no belittlement to say that their work was influenced by the insights of their political experiences. Childe, however, did not appreciate this and adopted their thinking somewhat uncritically. He further added parallels between the Roman Period and his own time, which resulted in an unduly dark vision of the last phase of the Roman Empire.

Economy and Power in Late Roman Britain

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Gerrard
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Agricultural Resources ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Surplus Extraction ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter reviews the relationship between power and economics in fourth-century Britain. It argues that the Roman past has often been intuitively understood as rational and that its economics can be easily characterized as ‘proto-capitalist’. The Roman period was, however, both complex and irrational. Agricultural production was the powerhouse of the economy and provided the foundations of both power and status during the late Roman period. The focus on the agricultural economy allows the structures of power – tax, tribute and surplus extraction – and their transformation to be studied. During the fifth century the imperial superstructure collapsed, but the continued local control of agricultural resources provides a mechanism for how the late Roman world was transformed into early medieval societies.

scholarly journals Tacitus during the late Roman Period and the Middle Ages

1916 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 196-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Haverfield
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Know How ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Late Roman

While lately engaged with an edition of the ‘Agricola,’ it occurred to me to enquire how far Tacitus was read, and his works copied, during the period between his lifetime and the introduction of printing. Such an enquiry is more necessary than is always realised, if one is to appreciate properly the character and importance of the manuscripts of an ancient author. One needs not only to know their dates, relationships and general merits or demerits, but also to understand what may be called their ‘background,’ that is to know how far the author in question was seriously studied and his works copied during the centuries between his own day and the Renaissance. I therefore tried to work out some account of the history of Tacitus in this respect. I have been able to do this only very briefly, but the sketch, though short, may interest some readers of our Journal, and, being more or less historical, is not alien to its proper scope. Moreover, no quite similar sketch seems to exist, either in English or, so far as I am aware, in any language.

Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Hummer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Late Roman

What meaning did human kinship possess in a world regulated by biblical time, committed to the primacy of spiritual relationships, and bound by the sinews of divine love? In the process of exploring that question, this book offers a searching re-examination of kinship in Europe between late Roman times and the high Middle Ages, the period bridging Europe’s primitive past and its modern present. It critiques the modernist and Western bio-genealogical and functionalist assumptions that have shaped kinship studies since their inception in the nineteenth century, when biblical time collapsed and kinship became a signifier of the essential secularity of history and a method for conceptualizing a deeper prehistory guided by autogenous human impulses. It argues that this understanding of kinship is fundamentally antagonistic to medieval sentiments and is responsible for the frustrations researchers have encountered as they have tried to identify the famously elusive kin groups of medieval Europe. It delineates an alternative ethnographic approach inspired by recent anthropological work that privileges indigenous expressions of kinship and the interpretive potential of native ontologies. The book reveals that kinship in the Middle Ages was not biological, primitive, or a regulator of social mechanisms; nor is it traceable by bio-genealogical connections. In the Middle Ages kinship signified a sociality that flowed from convictions about the divine source of all things and wove together families, institutions, and divinities into an expansive eschatological vision animated by “the most righteous principle of love.”

scholarly journals Late-Holocene forest resilience in the central Pyrenean highlands as deduced from pollen analysis of Lake Sant Maurici sediments

The Holocene ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 095968362110332
Author(s):  
Valentí Rull ◽  
Núria Cañellas-Boltà ◽  
Teresa Vegas-Vilarrúbia
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Southern Central ◽  
Central Pyrenees ◽  
The Middle Ages

Palynological analysis of the last ca. 4300 cal year BP using a sediment core taken from high mountain (ca. 1900 m elevation) Lake Sant Maurici sediments (southern-central Pyrenees) showed remarkable vegetation constancy during the Bronze Age and the Middle Ages. Records of the Iron Age and the Roman period were missing due to a major sedimentary gap. During the studied periods, the vegetation around the lake was largely dominated by pine ( Pinus) forests with birch ( Betula), oak ( Quercus) and hazel ( Corylus) trees, as is the case today. The composition of these forests and the abundance of their components remained quite stable, despite the occurrence of temperature and moisture shifts. The degree of human disturbance, notably that of pastoralism and cereal cultivation by scattered and temporary settlements, was very low and had little or no effect on the dominant forests. This situation contrasts with most high-elevation (subalpine and alpine) environments of the central Pyrenees that were massively anthropized during the Middle Ages. Further research should be aimed at finding sediments corresponding to the Iron Age and the Roman period to verify whether the vegetation constancy can be extended throughout the Late-Holocene. Past records of this type may allow the estimation of natural and anthropogenic thresholds for irreversible forest changes, which would be useful for conservation purposes.

Vigils of the saints and the stational liturgy of Milan

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (02) ◽  
pp. 99-113
Author(s):  
TERENCE BAILEY
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The Public ◽  
The City ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Service Books

AbstractVigils, an important and eventually troublesome component of the cult of the saints, are attested to in the fourth century by Sts Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. In Gregorian regions nearly all these penitential observances were prohibited by a synod in Rouen in 1231, and have been virtually ignored in the scholarly literature. In the Ambrosian orbit, Vigils remained an extraordinarily important part of the public liturgy until the end of the Middle Ages; however, the treatment of these offices in the Milanese service books presents a confused picture that can only be pieced together with some difficulty. In clarifying the practices of Vigils, certain details are brought to light concerning the two other examples of the external episcopal liturgy of Milan (the three-day Litany in the week following Ascension, and the daily stations at both the ancient baptistries of the city), and even important details about the practices in the cathedrals themselves, practices concerning which the ordinal is silent, ambiguous or even misleading.

A Roman Fortified Villa at Norton Disney, Lincs.

1937 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Oswald
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
The Road ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The Military

Villas are so uniform in character that they arouse comparatively little interest compared with the military problems of Roman Britain. But a villa surrounded by ditches, whether for defensive purposes or not, can be immediately classed as a rarity. A list of such examples of domestic fortification in the Roman period includes the houses at Castle Dykes, near Ripon, at Cwmbrwyn in Carmarthenshire, at Bartlow in Cambridgeshire, at Langton in Yorkshire, and at Ely near Cardiff. Of these only the two last have been scientifically excavated, and only the house at Ely has fortifications which conform to the building. In these circumstances the discovery of a villa surrounded by five ditches and occupied, through five periods of construction and reconstruction, from the latter half of the first to the middle of the fourth century is of particular interest.The villa in question is situated some 200 yards east of the Fosseway, at a point 9 miles south of Lincoln and a mile and a half north of Brough (Crococolana). The site is marked on the Ordnance Survey and known locally as Potter Hill. It comprises a long ridge of land some hundred feet higher than the plain in which Crococolana is placed. Stukeley in his Itinerary says, ‘and journeying to the space of about 12 Roman miles, I found Collingham on my right hand: there is a high barrow or tumulus called Potters Hill, where they say was a Roman pottery: it stands upon an eminence commanding a prospect both ways upon the road. Half a mile further is Brough.’Nevertheless the presence of a Roman building was not suspected until the discovery in 1933 by the farmer, Mr. E. Taylor, of a mosaic pavement.

scholarly journals From the Light and into the Dark: the Transformation to the Early Middle Ages

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arrush Choudhary
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Decentralized Governance ◽  
The City ◽  
The Middle Ages

From a historic perspective, the period of Roman rule and the following Middle Ages are polar opposites. For most, the city of Rome and the Western Roman Empire represent a time of advancement for the Mediterranean world while the Middle Ages are viewed as a regression of sorts for Europe. The reasons explaining the underlying cause of this transition from the Western Roman Empire to the Middle Ages are numerous but this paper will specifically focus on the practices started by the Romans themselves and how they contributed to the rise of the Early Middle Ages on the Italian Peninsula. More specifically, economic turmoil and urbanization following the 3rd century crisis in the city of Rome laid the groundwork for social, legislative, and political changes that thread the path to the fundamental characteristics of the Middle Ages. Changing views of the city and the countryside, the construction of latifundia and villas, and the passing of legislation that restricted the rights of laborers, in addition to other transformations in late Rome, all contributed to the decentralized governance, rural life, and serfdom that are characteristic of the Middle Ages. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to illustrate that despite the major differences that exist between the Roman period and the Middle Ages, the practices of the late Western Roman Empire were often directly carried over into the Middle Ages and, as a result, for one to truly understand the origins of the Middle Ages, it is essential to comprehend the traditions started by the late Romans.

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