Commerce and Consumers: The Ubiquitous Chest of the Late Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-404
Author(s):  
Katherine Anne Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thing Theory ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

Contrary to their ubiquity within written, visual, and material sources, chests have largely remained overlooked in studies of the late Middle Ages. Bill Brown’s “thing theory” helps to explicate the ways in which chests can transform from unnoticed “things” in the background to meaningful “objects” when viewed through their entanglements with commercial, consumer, political, and moral concerns. The interdisciplinary study of chests in the late Middle Ages brings together a range of evidence including inventories, guild accounts, court pleas, contemporary writings, images, and material culture from Burgundy, France, and England.

scholarly journals LATE MEDIEVAL MONUMENTS IN THE MATSUTA GLADE OF THE DIGOR GORGE

Kavkaz-forum ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Г.Н . Вольная (Керцева)
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Funeral Rite ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Project Construction ◽  
History Of

Материальная культура позднего средневековья Дигорского ущелья Северной Осетии недостаточно хорошо изучена по сравнению с другими периодами. В статье впервые представлен комплекс археологических памятников, расположенных на Поляне Мацута Дигорского ущелья: памятники, их расположение, история изучения. Цель исследования – рассмотреть Поляну Мацута как погребальный и культовый комплекс, где находятся позднесредневековые полуподземные склепы, каменные ящики, менгиры, цырты, «нартовский» ныхас, поселения кобанского и аланского периодов. Это памятники являются почитаемыми у местного населения, упоминаются в нартовском эпосе. В статье использовались полевые методы исследования, метод анализа и аналогий. В статье представлен авторский материал спасательных раскопок 2020 г. «Грунтового могильника Мацута I, средневековье» XVI-XVIII вв. в зоне реализации проекта «Строительство фельдшерско-акушерского пункта в с. Мацута». Могильник представляет собой погребения в каменных ящиках. Всего было раскопано 75 ящиков, в которых покойные лежали вытянуто на спине головой на запад с широтными отклонениями. Некоторые ранние погребения сопровождаются обрядом кремации. Погребальный обряд находит аналогии в горной Балкарии. Для погребального обряда характерно отсутствие керамической посуды в погребениях. Над ранними погребениями могильника была устроена тризна с кремацией и большим количеством фрагментированной керамики, скорее всего местного производства. Погребальный инвентарь достаточно беден и характерен для горнокавказской культуры позднего средневековья. Во взрослых погребениях найдены одежда, обувь, пояса, головные уборы, пояса; в женских – украшения; в мужских – ножи, оселки. В детских погребениях (в большинстве случаев) слева от головы обнаружены только куриные яйца, либо погребальный инвентарь совсем отсутствует. Отмечается высокая детская смертность. Детские погребения составляют почти 50% от всего числа раскопанных погребений. The material culture of the late middle ages of the Digor gorge in North Ossetia is not well studied in comparison with other periods. The article presents for the first time a complex of archaeological monuments located in The Matsuta Glade of the Digor gorge: monuments, their location, and history of study. The purpose of the study is to consider the Matsuta Glade as a funerary and cult complex, where there are late medieval semi-underground crypts, stone boxes, menhirs, tsyrts, "nartovsky" Nykhas, settlements of the Koban and Alan periods. These monuments are revered by the local population, mentioned in the Nart epic. The article uses field research methods, the method of analysis and analogies. The article presents the author's material of rescue excavations in 2020 of the "Ground burial ground of Matsuta I, middle ages" of the XVI-XVIII centuries in the area of the project "Construction of a paramedic and midwifery station in the village of Matsuta". The burial ground is a burial in stone boxes. In total, 75 boxes were excavated, in which the deceased lay stretched out on their backs with their heads facing West with latitude deviations. Some early burials are accompanied by a cremation ceremony. The funeral rite finds analogies in the mountainous Balkaria. The funeral rite is characterized by the absence of ceramic dishes in the burials. A funeral feast with cremation and a large amount of fragmented pottery, most likely of local production, was built over the early burials of the burial ground. The grave goods are rather poor and typical for mountain Caucasian culture of the late middle ages. In adult burials found clothes, shoes, belts, headwear, belts; women's jewelry; the men's knives, whetstones. In most children's burials, only chicken eggs are found to the left of the head, or there is no burial equipment at all. Children's funerals account for almost 50% of the total number of excavated graves.

Pottery Complex of the Second Half 13th – First Half 15th Centuries from Excavations in Kamianets-Podilskyi

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (6) ◽  
pp. 136-179
Author(s):  
Pavlo Nechytaylo ◽  
◽  
Olena Onohda ◽  
◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Building Structures ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Culture Development

The paper analyses ceramics and buildings remains of the second half 13th – first half 15th centuries, coming from excavations in Kamianets-Podilskyi. It aims to introduce materials into scientific circulation, to compare the collection with synchronous objects from adjacent territories, to trace interactions in the material culture development in late medieval towns. Ceramics of the Golden Horde and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania times began to be systematically researched relatively recently in Ukraine. Thus, the materials from Kamianets-Podilskyi contribute to deepening our knowledge of less-known periods in the history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Materials analyzed were obtained during rescue archaeological research on the Polish Market square in Kamianets. These were fragmented parts of underground and aboveground building structures, as well as a collection of various household items. Building materials were mostly local clays and loam, less often wood and stone were used. A set of clay ‘roll’ blocks set in one of the pits allows us to assume similarity with the Golden Horde building technologies. Finds of coins and Crimean polychrome bowls fragments also indicate the complex emerged during the Golden Horde period. However, certain groups of pottery and coins of European minting define the complex upper date within the first half 15th century. Diverse ceramic types range from the complex is an interesting local typological phenomenon. It reflects mutual influences of the pottery traditions development both in time and space. After processing artefacts collection, the main groups of pottery were identified according to technological features. Some of them are rooted in the local ancient Rus’ traditions, others were formed under the influence of Western trends, while samples of a ‘specific’ group were common for almost the entire territory of modern Ukraine during Late Middle Ages. Pots collection was preliminary systematized up to 5 most common types selection, based on rim profiles. Many of them have a wide range of analogies, locally from Kamianets, as well as from the Western Ukraine, in Poland, Moldova and Romania. In addition to pots, the collection includes other types of kitchen and tableware, such as makitras, lids, jars and other single samples of ceramics. The typological diversity correlates with the multi-layered processes which took place in Kamianets-Podilskyi life during the Golden Horde and the Lithuanian periods. Materials from the complex, as well as other finds from synchronous objects within the city, deepen our understanding of the city’s development large-scale picture, which, however, requires further research.

scholarly journals British Material Diplomacy in Precolonial Uganda: The Gift Exchanges of John Hanning Speke, 1860-1863

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-174
Author(s):  
Alison Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Gift Exchanges ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Published Account

Summary In recent decades the interdisciplinary study of elite gift exchange in various geographical and temporal contexts has transformed historians’ understanding of colonial diplomacy. By combining analysis of textual, visual and material sources with theoretical approaches to material culture and gift exchange from anthropology, scholars have increasingly come to examine colonial diplomacy not only through the high-politics and text-based operations of bureaucrats in imperial metropoles, but also as a material and cultural project operating through the local and personal. This essay uses the published account of John Hanning Speke (1863) and his descriptions of ‘gift exchanges’ in present-day Uganda to understand the materiality of early British diplomacy there. As Speke was the first Briton to reach Uganda, it examines how gift exchanges impacted the logistics and outcomes of his visit. Re-examining his text this way reveals the importance of material knowledge, performance and exchange in early cross-cultural encounters in the region.

scholarly journals Arheološki nalazi dekorativno-funkcionalnih elemenata obuće iz kasnoga srednjeg vijeka u Kaštelima

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonči Burić
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Church

Late medieval graves in the Kaštela region have been found to contain, in addition to jewelry, decorative-functional elements of clothing and footwear, termed Gothic according to the stylistic period then in fashion. These are finds from graves that were then on the territory of the commune districts of Split and Trogir. Finds are taken into consideration here that belong to remains of footwear, which so far in Croatia have not even been recognized as such, and which can be stratigraphically and typologically placed in the late Middle Ages (14th-15th cent.). These are objects of a utilitarian character that at the same time have clear stylistic traits, and they have been discovered in the past two decades during systematic excavation of medieval cemeteries in Kaštela. These are large parish cemeteries that grew up around early medieval churches; the cemetery around the church of St. George of Putalj and the cemetery around the church of St. George of Radun. The Putalj cemetery was the graveyard for the inhabitants of medieval Sućurac for more than four centuries (12th-16th cent.), and the Radun cemetery belonged to part of the village of Radun and had an even longer continuity of burial (11th-16th cent.). The first examples were found at these sites, some of them in situ, which enabled a more precise functional determination of them through stylistic-typological parallels and also among dislocated finds in graves with multiple burials, as well as parallels at cemeteries in neighboring regions in central Dalmatia. Finds to the present of shoe buckles can be classified to two typological variants (Pl. I:1-3), one of them called the Radun type according to the eponymous site (Pl. I:1, 3). They are all chronologically coherent and belong to those strata of the cemeteries that are dated according to determined parameters (stratigraphy, typology of the finds) to the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, when the Gothic style in art was already completely developed. They can thus be attributed as artistic craft products of the artisan workshops in Split and Trogir at that time, which were distributed throughout the area of the urban districts of those communes. Finds of functionally identical objects have been recorded on the territory of Roman Salona and its broader vicinity, but in the period of late antiquity, while in the early modern period (16th-18th cent.) finds of iron hobnails for shoes or boots have been registered at a large number of sites in the hinterland of central Dalmatia. In addition to the rare and generalized tiny depictions of shoe buckles in the artistic sources of the Gothic and Renaissance (paintings, frescoes, sculptures) in Western Europe, references to them can also be found in written sources. One notarial document from the 16th century in Zadar mentions shoe buckles under the term fiube da scarpe. The investigation of this segment of material culture is just beginning, and new data can be expected to be discovered in documents and works of art, and above all in new archaeological finds of buckles for footwear, which will considerably improve our knowledge of this interesting attire detail from the Gothic and Renaissance periods.

scholarly journals Středověká kožedělná produkce z Litovle

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Aleš Hoch ◽  
Pavel Šlézar
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
Original Function ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Public Areas ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
The Town

Between 1997 and 2017, an extensive collection of approximately 3,500 leather fragments from the second half of the 13th to the 15th century was obtained from archaeological rescue excavations carried out in the historic core of Litovel. Most of the finds come from public areas of the town. Only a few dozen artefacts have been determined in terms of their original function. All the remaining finds can be classified as primary to secondary waste, among which manufacturing waste was often present, indicating the nearby presence of a craft workshop. In the case of Litovel, this has been demonstrated at two sites, and hypothetically at three others. These are specifically shoemaker or cobbler workshops. The leather artefact assemblage from Litovel contains typical representatives of material culture from the High and Late Middle Ages, most often in the form of shoes (high and low cuts, children’s sizes), clothing accessories (belts), equipment (scabbards) and items rarely found elsewhere including unique objects such as a case for wax writing tablets and a face mask.

Öffnen, Schließen, Zerstreuen, Verdichten.

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Bernhard Siegert
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Media Objects ◽  
The Media

"Im Rahmen der technikphilosophischen, ethnologischen wie auch medien- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Debatte über die Handlungsmacht der Dinge ist es zu einer Konjunktur von Ontologien gekommen, die jedoch das traditionelle Konzept der Ontologie dekonstruiert bzw. verschiebt. Der Beitrag folgt dieser Verschiebung der Ontologie, die Medien und mediale Artefakte nicht mehr als Substanzen denkt, sondern als Verkettungen von Praktiken und Operationen, die diese Medien-Dinge allererst generieren. Nach ›operativen Ontologien‹ zu fragen bedeutet, nach den konkreten ontischen Operationen zu fragen, die allererst ontologische Unterscheidungen hervorbringen – z. B. zwischen Form und Materie, Bild und Gegenstand, Ding und Prozess, Figur und Grund. Diese ontischen Operationen bilden den Kern dessen, was man Kulturtechniken nennt. Anhand von beispielhaften Hybridobjekten aus dem Bereich der material culture des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit zeigt der Beitrag, wie dies konkret zu verstehen ist. The debate on the agency of objects, lead by philosophy, ethnology as well as cultural and media studies, has triggered a boom of ontologies, deconstructing the traditional concept of ontology. The contribution follows this shift of ontology, which no longer conceives of the media and media artifacts as substances, but as concatenations of practices and operations that are generated by media objects in the first place. To ask for ‘operational ontologies’ means to ask for the concrete ontical operations which first of all produce onto- logical distinctions – e. g. between form and matter, image and object, thing and process, figure and background. These ontical operations form the core of what we call cultural techniques. The contribution illustrates and explains this thesis with reference to hybrid objects from the material culture of the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity. "

scholarly journals Aznayevo settlement in the XVII – XIX centuries based on the results of archaeological research

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-38
Author(s):  
Al'bert Tagirovich Akhatov
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
General Information ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Republic Of Bashkortostan ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Historical Comparative ◽  
Research Show

The subject of this article is the Aznayevo settlement – dwelling site of Bashkirs of the late Middle Ages and Modern Age located in the territory of Ishimbaysky District of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The main goal of this work consists in introduction into the scientific discourse of general information on the monument, as well as materials acquired in the course of archaeological research conducted in 1998 and 2016. Special attention given to the analysis of findings that characterize the economy and way of living of its inhabitants. For clarification of the chronological framework and establishment of relation of Aznayevo settlement with the Bashkir neighboring villages Aznayevo and Khazinovo, the author attracts archival and cartographic material. The article also employs historical-comparative and descriptive methods of analysis of the artefact. The conducted archeological research show that Aznayevo settlement, which supposedly was the winter encampment for the local Bashkir population in the XVII – XIX centuries has existed for a long period of time. In the course of its expiration, were acquires new materials that characterize the economic activity, spiritual and material culture of Bashkirs in the past, including certain aspects that were poorly covered in the ethnographic and historical literature. At the same time, they contribute to examination and reconstruction of ethnogenetic and ethnocultural processes that unfolded in Southern Ural in the late Middle Ages and Modern Age, as well as in the preceding time.

scholarly journals ‘Purest Bones, Sweet Remains, and Most Sacred Relics.’ Re-Fashioning St. Kazimierz Jagiellończyk (1458–84) as a Medieval Saint between Counter-Reformation Italy and Poland-Lithuania

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1011
Author(s):  
Ruth Sargent Noyes
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Grand Duchy ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article explores the Counter-Reformation medievalization of Polish–Lithuanian St. Kazimierz Jagiellończyk (1458–1484)—whose canonization was only finalized in the seventeenth century—as a case study, taking up questions of the reception of cults of medieval saints in post-medieval societies, or in this case, the retroactive refashioning into a venerable medieval saint. The article investigates these questions across a transcultural Italo–Baltic context through the activities of principal agents of the saint’s re-fashioning as a venerable saint during the late seventeenth century: the Pacowie from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Medici from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, during a watershed period of Tuscan–Lithuanian bidirectional interest. During this period, the two dynasties were entangled not only by means of the shared division of Jagiellończyk’s bodily remains through translatio—the ritual relocation of relics of saints and holy persons—but also self-representational strategies that furthered their religio-political agendas and retroactively constructed their houses’ venerable medieval roots back through antiquity. Drawing on distinct genres of textual, visual, and material sources, the article analyzes the Tuscan–Lithuanian refashioning of Kazimierz against a series of precious reliquaries made to translated holy remains between Vilnius to Florence to offer a contribution to the entangled histories of sanctity, art and material culture, and conceptual geography within the transtemporal and transcultural neocolonial context interconnecting the Middle Ages, Age of Reformations, and the Counter-Reformation between Italy and Baltic Europe.

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