The Discovery of an Early Bearing-Dial

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl V. Sølver
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
North Western

It has hitherto been generally presumed that the division of the horizon into thirty-two points was a development of the late medieval period. Such a division, it has been said, was impossible in the pre-compass era. ‘It is questionable whether even so many as sixteen directions could have been picked out and followed at sea so long as Sun and star, however intimately known, were the only guides’, one eminent authority has declared; ‘Even the sailors in the north-western waters had only four names until a comparatively late date.’ Chaucer's reference in his Treatise on the Astrolabe to the thirty-two ‘partiez’ of the ‘orisonte’ has for long been quoted as the earliest evidence on the subject. The Konungs Skuggsjà, a thirteenth-century Norwegian work, however, refers to the Sun revolving through eight œttir; and the fourteenthcentury Icelandic Rímbegla talks of sixteen points or directions. An important discovery by the distinguished Danish archaeologist, Dr. C. L. Vebæk, in the summer of 1951, brings a new light to the whole problem and makes the earlier held view scarcely tenable. Vebæk was then working on the site of the Benedictine nunnery (mentioned by Îvar Bárdarson in the mid-fourteenth century) which stands on the site of a still older Norse homestead on the Siglufjörd, in southern Greenland. Buried in a heap of rubbish under the floor in one of the living-rooms, together with a number of broken tools of wood and iron (some of them with the owner's name inscribed on them in runes) was a remarkable fragment of carved oak which evidently once formed part of a bearingdial. This was a damaged oaken disk which, according to the archaeologists, dates back to about the year 1200.

scholarly journals Jelentés a Kaposvárt elkerülő 61-es számú főút 2. lelőhelyén végzett feltárásról

2014 ◽  
pp. 175-184
Author(s):  
Edith Bárdos ◽  
Máté Varga
Keyword(s):  
Medieval Period ◽  
The South ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Site Number ◽  
Extended Area

The preliminary explorations of the bypass of road 61 to the North of Kaposvár took more years. Among the ex-cavations in the pathes of the new highway, one of the great-est and most important is the excavation of site number 2 to the South of Toponár. The excavation is located on the East-ern bank of Stream Deseda. The territory was almost always suitable for settlement. It is proved by the fact that we found artifacts from 9 period-cultures from the late Neolithic to the late Medieval period. On the site of the excavations there is an outstanding amount of scattered cremation burials and urn graves from the period of the Transdanubian Encrusted Pot-tery Culture, as well as the cemetery established in the 11th century, in the Arpadian-age. The extended area of the exca-vations was settled intensively in the late Avar-age and in the early Arpadian-age.

scholarly journals Re-examining Foresti's Supplementum Chronicarum and the “Ethiopian” embassy to Europe of 1306

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-515
Author(s):  
Verena Krebs
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Legenda Aurea

AbstractA widely reported story in the historiography on medieval Ethiopia relates how, in the year 1306, an “Ethiopian” embassy visited the court of Pope Clement V in Avignon and offered military aid in the fight against Islam to Latin Christianity. This article re-examines the source – Jacopo Filippo Foresti's Supplementum Chronicarum – thought to document an episode of one of the earliest European–African Christian contacts. It investigates Foresti's own sources, their historiographical transmission history, and the feasibility of relating it to the socio-political entity of Solomonic Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa in the early fourteenth century, concluding that Foresti's information was based on Latin Christian texts, such as the Legenda Aurea and the myth of Prester John, only. The ‘Ethiopian’ embassy of 1306 is thus not borne out by sources and should be dismissed in scholarship, resetting the timeline of official Ethiopian–Latin Christian contacts in the late medieval period.

Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean: An Introduction

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 149-173
Author(s):  
Taryn E. L. Chubb ◽  
Taryn E. L. Chubb ◽  
Emily Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Merchant Class ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Mendicant Orders

Abstract When the mendicant orders were founded in the thirteenth century, they quickly began to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with the emerging merchant class. This special issue of Medieval Encounters is an interdisciplinary study of the complex connections that developed between the two groups throughout the Mediterranean during the late medieval period. These relationships have rarely been addressed in the scholarship on this period, but in urban centers throughout the medieval Mediterranean, friars and merchants crossed paths daily and the evidence of their interaction reveals the extent to which the two communities came to depend upon one another.

Merchant Taylors of London’s shift to business English: New insights on the languages of record in their Master and Wardens’ Accounts

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
José Miguel Alcolado Carnicero
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Written Communication ◽  
Business English ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period

AbstractFrench and Latin used to be the two main languages of record in the Merchant Taylors, as well as other London livery companies, as late as the fifteenth century, at least. From the fourteenth century onwards, English was becoming more and more present in this guild’s business accounts, until it replaced both Romance languages as their new official medium of written communication. Seen the inconsistent dates of adoption of English in the Merchant Taylors’ Master and Wardens’ Accounts suggested in the literature, this article applies two different approaches to language shift in the late medieval period in order to analyse and illustrate when exactly the whole Company is supposed to have substituted French and Latin for English forever. As the search of that permanent and communal shift leads to the necessary consultation of financial manuscripts kept as late as the seventeenth century, it is concluded that the construction of a unitary framework for the study of the different language shifts in the London livery companies at different periods would yield more comprehensive results.

scholarly journals Phonotactics, graphotactics and contrast: the history of Scots dental fricative spellings

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN MOLINEAUX ◽  
JOANNA KOPACZYK ◽  
RHONA ALCORN ◽  
WARREN MAGUIRE ◽  
VASILIS KARAISKOS ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Sound Pattern ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth

The spelling conventions for dental fricatives in Anglic languages (Scots and English) have a rich and complex history. However, the various – often competing – graphemic representations (<þ>, <ð>, <y> and <th>, among others) eventually settled on one digraph, <th>, for all contemporary varieties, irrespective of the phonemic distinction between /ð/ and /θ/. This single representation is odd among the languages’ fricatives, which tend to use contrasting graphemes (cf. <f> vs <v> and <s> vs <z>) to represent contrastive voicing, a sound pattern that emerged nearly a millennium ago. Close examinations of the scribal practices for English in the late medieval period, however, have shown that northern texts had begun to develop precisely this type of distinction for dental fricatives as well. Here /ð/ was predominantly represented by <y> and /θ/ by <th> (Jordan 1925; Benskin 1982). In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this ‘Northern System’ collapsed, due to the northward spread of a London-based convention using exclusively <th> (Stenroos 2004). This article uses a rich body of corpus evidence for fifteenth-century Scots to show that, north of the North, the phonemic distinction was more clearly mirrored by spelling conventions than in any contemporary variety of English. Indeed, our data for Older Scots local documents (1375–1500) show a pattern where <y> progressively spreads into voiced contexts, while <th> recedes into voiceless ones. This system is traced back to the Old English positional preferences for <þ> and <ð> via subsequent changes in phonology, graphemic repertoire and letter shapes. An independent medieval Scots spelling norm is seen to emerge as part of a developing, proto-standard orthographic system, only to be cut short in the sixteenth century by top-down anglicisation processes.

Arbitration and the Law in England in the Late Middle Ages (The Alexander Prize Essay)

1983 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 49-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Powell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Prize Essay

The central problem facing the student of public order in England in the late middle ages is to reconcile two conflicting lines of research. On one hand the institutional historians, through their studies of the central courts at Westminister, the provincial circuits of assize and gaol delivery and the justices of the peace and coroners in the counties, have proved beyond doubt the sophistication of the late-medieval legal system. On the other hand the historians of crime have shown equally clearly that the courts were often incapable of keeping the peace or of doing justice. Indeed the late-medieval period has long been notorious as one of widespread uncontained disorder. Reviewing the secondary literature on the subject Professor Bellamy concluded: ‘Not one investigator has been able to indicate even a few years of effective policing in the period 1290–1485.’

scholarly journals Setting the Stage, Framing the Picture; the Gilding and Polychromy of Late Medieval Altarpiece Structures in the North

CLARA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Kausland
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Dimensional Effects ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Structural Parts ◽  
New Perspective

The gilding and polychromy of the structural parts of altarpieces have largely been overlooked in art historical studies. However, these specific designs were important elements in the framing of the sculptural and painted content of the altarpiece complex. This article provides a detailed art technological overview of the gilding and polychromy of the supporting elements of the whole corpus of Northern German altarpieces in Norway. It highlights the medieval craftsman’s use of sophisticated materials and techniques, and proves that, in addition to being secondary props, the shrine decorations bore important meanings in their own right, containing intrinsic material and aesthetical values. Furthermore, the study found both change and continuity in the specific craftmanship throughout the late medieval period. Changes in the layering and three-dimensional effects have been especially useful tools in the correction of previously assumed dates of origin of several of the altarpieces. It is hoped that the results presented in this study, together with a new perspective, encourages further close analyses of the ‘backdrop’ of medieval altarpieces in future studies.

scholarly journals Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Nahyan Fancy ◽  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

scholarly journals The origins and evolution of Cypriot glazed ware productions during the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries CE

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Ting ◽  
Thilo Rehren ◽  
Athanasios Vionis ◽  
Vasiliki Kassianidou
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Thin Section Petrography ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Full Consideration

AbstractThis paper challenges the conventional characterisation of glazed ware productions in the eastern Mediterranean, especially the ones which did not feature the use of opaque or tin-glazed technology, as technologically stagnant and unsusceptible to broader socio-economic developments from the late medieval period onwards. Focusing on the Cypriot example, we devise a new approach that combines scientific analyses (thin-section petrography and SEM-EDS) and a full consideration of the chaîne opératoire in context to highlight the changes in technology and craft organisation of glazed ware productions concentrating in the Paphos, Famagusta and Lapithos region during the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries CE. Our results indicate that the Paphos production was short-lived, lasting from the establishment of Frankish rule in Cyprus in the thirteenth century to the aftermath of the fall of the Crusader campaigns in the fourteenth century. However, glazed ware production continued in Famagusta and Lapithos from the late thirteenth/fourteenth centuries through to the seventeenth century, using technical practices that were evidently different from the Paphos production. It is possible that these productions were set up to serve the new, local demands deriving from an intensification of commercial activities on the island. Further changes occurred to the technical practices of the Famagusta and Lapithos productions around the 16th/17th centuries, coinciding with the displacement of populations and socio-political organisation brought by the Ottoman rule.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document