Defining issues

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Harding
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Current Generation ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Many ◽  
Archaeological Cultures

The universality of human mortality is the commonest of truisms, but the prospect of mortality evidently has weighed differently on different societies over the course of human history, from the oppressive burden of the later Middle Ages to the more relaxed live-for-the-present-ism of the current generation. The disposal of the dead is at basis a hygienic necessity that is recognized in all but the most socially disrupted circumstances, but the manner of disposal may reveal attitudes of society towards death and the concept of afterlife, or the role of the dead in the continuing life of the community. Even in our contemporary secular society, relatives of the victims of murder or abduction or of death in foreign parts crave the recovery of bodies for due burial, without which they apparently cannot ‘achieve closure’, a condition of grace that might have been considered essential to the dead, but which evidently matters equally to the bereaved. The discipline of archaeology is methodologically disposed to distort the reality of the past in that it seeks to recognize ordered patterns where in reality diversity and apparent irrationality must have been inherent. The keystone of Childe’s approach, the identification of archaeological cultures, was dependent upon recurrence of diagnostic types in association, which would permit the comparison of one cultural assemblage with another in time or space. Even in processual and post-processual approaches the essence is to reduce the ever-burgeoning data-base to some semblance of order, without which it is impossible for interpretation to proceed, other than intuitively, empathically, or experientially, that is, based upon imaginative reconstruction rather than being inferred, however inadequately, from archaeological data. The consequence of this process of classification has been to emphasize certain outstanding classes of data, like long barrows, stone circles, or hillforts, as typical of their period or region, at the expense of a subtler analysis of the many possible variations of settlement or burial sites that are detectable, even from the surviving archaeological record. In recent years there has been a significant shift in archaeological approaches to burial data.

The "Disgusting" Spider: The Role of Disease and Illness in the Perpetuation of Fear of Spiders

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham C. L. Davey
Keyword(s):  
Avoidance Response ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Spider Phobia ◽  
Disease Avoidance ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractRecent studies of spider phobia have indicated thatfearof spiders is closely associated with the disease-avoidance response of disgust. It is argued that the disgust-relevant status of the spider resulted from its association with disease and illness in European cultures from the tenth century onward. The development of the association between spiders and illness appears to be linked to the many devastating and inexplicable epidemics that struck Europe from the Middle Ages onwards, when the spider was a suitable displaced target for the anxieties caused by these epidemics. Such factors suggest that the pervasive fear of spiders that is commonly found in many Western societies may have cultural rather than biological origins, and may be restricted to Europeans and their descendants.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Owen Mason ◽  
Max Friesen
Keyword(s):  
The Arctic ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Cold Temperatures ◽  
Archaeological Interpretation ◽  
The North ◽  
North American Arctic ◽  
Excellent Preservation ◽  
Archaeological Cultures ◽  
Organic Remains

This chapter introduces the central issues relating to the archaeology of the North American Arctic, a region stretching 6,000 km from west to east and 3,000 km south to north. The region is characterized by a uniquely detailed ethnographic record, and excellent preservation of organic remains due to cold temperatures, which together allow particularly high-resolution interpretation of the archaeological record. Themes common to all northern archaeology covered in this chapter include the use of ethnographic analogy to understand ancient archaeological cultures, the role of climate change in archaeological interpretation, the construction of chronologies in an arctic setting, and the role of migration and interaction in the arctic past.

Credit and Village Society in Fourteenth-Century England

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Many ◽  
Village Society ◽  
Rural England

Exploring the role of credit is vital to understanding any economy. In the past two decades historians of many European regions have become increasingly aware that medieval credit, far from being the preserve of merchants, bankers, or monarchs, was actually of basic importance to the ordinary villagers who made up most of the population. This study is devoted to credit in rural England in the middle ages. Focusing in particular on seven well-documented villages, it examines in detail some of the many thousands of village credit transactions of this period, identifies the people who performed them, and explores the social relationships brought about by involvement in credit. The evidence comes primarily from inter-peasant debt litigation recorded in the proceedings of manor courts, which were the private legal jurisdictions of landlords. A comparative study that discusses the English evidence alongside findings from other parts of medieval and early modern Europe, the book argues that the prevailing view of medieval English credit as a marker of poverty and crisis is inadequate. In fact, the credit networks of the English countryside were surprisingly resilient in the face of the fourteenth-century crises associated with plague, famine, and economic depression.

The bearing of phyto-archaeological evidence on discussions of climatic change over recent millennia

1990 ◽  
Vol 330 (1615) ◽  
pp. 671-677 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Pinus Halepensis ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Last Glacial Period ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Buxus Sempervirens ◽  
Late Mesolithic ◽  
The Last Glacial

Phyto-archaeological data based on macro-remains studies, especially prehistoric charcoal, provide evidence concerning the changes in western Mediterranean vegetation during the last millennia. Comparisons are based on present vegetation levels as defined by Ozenda. From the last glacial period to the present time, differences between warm and cool vegetation were of about 8 °C in the south of France but less extreme in more southern regions. The late Pleistocene and early Holocene (Late Palaeolithic and part of Mesolithic) were a period of transition with pines and junipers. Then, the late Mesolithic and the early Neolithic are typically periods of good forestation. During the Neolithic period deciduous and holm oaks had a role of varying importance in all the present Mediterranean levels (thermomeso- and supramediterranean). Man’s influence on the vegetation became significant in the middle Neolithic (south of France) or earlier (south of Spain) and may be characterized by plants such as Buxus sempervirens, Quercus ilex, Pinus halepensis and heaths. The Chalcolithic, the Roman period and the Middle Ages are also periods during which Man’s influence was important.

scholarly journals Assesssing the role of humans in Greater Antillean land vertebrate extinctions: new insights from Cuba

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanset Orihuela ◽  
Lázaro W. Viñola ◽  
Osvaldo Jiménez Vázquez ◽  
Alexis M. Mychajliw ◽  
Odlanyer Hernández de Lara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Late Quaternary ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Land Vertebrate

ABSTRACTThe Caribbean archipelago is a hotspot of biodiversity characterized by a high rate of extinction. Recent studies have examined these losses, but the causes of the Antillean Late Quaternary vertebrate extinctions, and especially the role of humans, are still unclear. Current results provide support for climate-related and human-induced extinctions, but often downplaying other complex bio-ecological factors that are difficult to model or to detect from the fossil and archaeological record. Here, we discuss Caribbean vertebrate extinctions and the potential role of humans derived from new and existing fossil and archaeological data from Cuba. Our results indicate that losses of Cuba’s native fauna occurred in three waves: one during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, a second during the middle Holocene, and a third one during the last 2 ka, coinciding with the arrival of agroceramists and the early Europeans. The coexistence of now-extinct species with multiple cultural groups in Cuba for over 4 ka implies that Cuban indigenous non-ceramic cultures exerted far fewer extinction pressures to native fauna than the later agroceramists and Europeans that followed. This suggests a determinant value to increased technological sophistication and demographics as the most plausible effective extinction drivers.

scholarly journals The Role of Fire in the Posthumous Customs of Podlachia on the Border of Poland and Belarus

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Wawrzeniuk
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Basic Element ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Special Respect ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way ◽  
At Home

In this article, I would like to describe the role of fire in the customs of All Souls’ Day in the Easter period called przewody or radunica. The burning of the fires most commonly took place overnight at home and in cemeteries to illuminate the way for the transmigration of souls so they would not harm the living. The reflection of special respect for fire is known from the funeral rites from the area of Podlachia in the Middle Ages. It also served as a basic element of the ritual related to cyclical visits to the dead, as evidenced by the remains of charcoals or ash. Different kind of sources from the Middle Ages and modern times, from the region of eastern Poland (Podlachia and Belarus, in particular) shall be used to confirm that the rite lasted for many years.

ARTISANS AND TRADERS IN THE EARLY BYZANTINE CITY: EXPLORING THE LIMITS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 371-411
Author(s):  
Enrico Zanini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
Early Byzantine

The application of research methodologies and strategies derived from western urban archaeology to Early Byzantine contexts renders traditionally obscure social groups, like the productive and commercial “middle class”, visible in the archaeological record. Working from both a re-examination of written sources and an assessment of new archaeological data, it seems possible to trace the evolution of the social and economic role of artisans and shopkeepers in the Early Byzantine city between the 5th and 7th centuries. At the same time, the investigation of such undetermined social groups calls for a reflection about the limits of archaeological knowledge and the need for closer interaction between different disciplines and research perspectives.

Medieval Saints and Their Miraculous Songs: Ritual Singing, Funerary Piety, and the Construction of Female Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century Liège

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-530
Author(s):  
Luo Wang
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Religious Rhetoric ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Ritual Performance ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Perceived Religiosity ◽  
New Spirituality

AbstractThis article explores the conspicuous role of singing in the hagiographical construction of saintly women in the thirteenth-century Diocese of Liège. The constellation of Lives about Liégeois women occupies a prominent place in the “origin story” of the new spirituality in the later Middle Ages. However, one aspect of these women's perceived religiosity—their musical and vocal talent—though omnipresent in the sources, has received only sparse attention from scholarship. This article focuses on two of the most important Lives in this group, those of Mary of Oignies and Christina of Sint-Truiden, and demonstrates that hagiographers, mobilizing liturgical vocabulary and ritual ideas identifiable to a local audience, consistently represented women's singing as magnificent ritual performance. By doing so, the hagiographers highlighted these women's privileged access to the divine and distinct potency as intercessors for the living and the dead. This article also intends to show the highly sophisticated ways in which Latin liturgy and its vernacular appropriation, popular ideas and scholastic theories about music were negotiated, developed, and together contributed to a distinctive religious rhetoric in the articulation of female sanctity in thirteenth-century Europe.

On Future Directions in Pathology

1982 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 274-277
Author(s):  
Benjamin F. Trump ◽  
Irene K. Berezesky ◽  
Raymond T. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Transmission Electron Microscopy ◽  
Clinical Pathology ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Diagnostic Pathology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Organ Systems ◽  
The Many

The role of electron microscopy and associated techniques is assured in diagnostic pathology. At the present time, most of the progress has been made on tissues examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and correlated with light microscopy (LM) and by cytochemistry using both plastic and paraffin-embedded materials. As mentioned elsewhere in this symposium, this has revolutionized many fields of pathology including diagnostic, anatomic and clinical pathology. It began with the kidney; however, it has now been extended to most other organ systems and to tumor diagnosis in general. The results of the past few years tend to indicate the future directions and needs of this expanding field. Now, in addition to routine EM, pathologists have access to the many newly developed methods and instruments mentioned below which should aid considerably not only in diagnostic pathology but in investigative pathology as well.

The future role of the psychiatrist in Europe – a UEMS perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
M. Hermans
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Future Role ◽  
Personal Opinion ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

SummaryThe author presents his personal opinion inviting to discussion on the possible future role of psychiatrists. His view is based upon the many contacts with psychiatrists all over Europe, academicians and everyday professionals, as well as the familiarity with the literature. The list of papers referred to is based upon (1) the general interest concerning the subject when representing ideas also worded elsewhere, (2) the accessibility to psychiatrists and mental health professionals in Germany, (3) being costless downloadable for non-subscribers and (4) for some geographic aspects (e.g. Belgium, Spain, Sweden) and the latest scientific issues, addressing some authors directly.

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