The Cultural Construction of Childhood in Scandinavia, 3500 BC—1350AD

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-204
Author(s):  
Stig Welinder
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Growth Process ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Burial Rituals ◽  
Burial Grounds

A set of Swedish and N orwegian burial-grounds and churchyards from the Neolithic to the Early Middle Ages (3500 BC—1350 AD) is analysed as concerns children's graves. Patterns of burial rituals corresponding to various concepts of childhood are constructed. Childhood is looked upon as a cultural construction independent of time and space. The basic growth process from infancy to adulthood is fundamental to the concept of childhood in all societies, but its transformation into burial ritual, material culture, symbols, and ideology is varied.

scholarly journals Flying Daggers, Horse Whisperers and a Midwinter Sacrifice: Creating the Past during the Viking Age and Early Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-219
Author(s):  
Eva Stensköld
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This paper sets out to trace the life history of a horse skull found in a bog in Scania in the year 1900. A parallel is drawn between the find of the horse and the famous painting, "Midwinter Sacrifice" by Carl Larsson. The story of the horse has opened up a discussion on how material culture is created and recreated in time and space, resulting in completely new communicative fields. The manifestation of the past and the reuse of Stone Age places and artefacts are brought into focus when the author discusses the location where the horse skull was originally found.

Poet of the Medieval Modern

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
In Parenthesis ◽  
Stone Sculpture

The early Middle Ages provided twentieth-century poets with the material to reimagine and rework local, religious, and national identities in their writing. Poet of the Medieval Modern focuses on a key figure within this tradition, the Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones (1895–1974), and represents the first extended study of the influence of early medieval culture and history from England on Jones and his novel-length late modernist poem The Anathemata (1952). The Anathemata, the second major poetic project after In Parenthesis (1937), fuses Jones’s visual and verbal arts to write a Catholic history of Britain as told through the history of man-as-artist. Drawing on unpublished archival material including manuscripts, sketches, correspondence, and, most significantly, the marginalia from David Jones’s Library, Poet of the Medieval Modern reads with Jones in order to trouble the distinction we make between poetry and scholarship. Placing this underappreciated figure firmly at the centre of new developments in modernist and medieval studies, Poet of the Medieval Modern brings the two fields into dialogue and argues that Jones uses the textual and material culture of the early Middle Ages—including Old English prose and poetry, Anglo-Latin hagiography, early medieval stone sculpture, manuscripts, and historiography—to re-envision British Catholic identity in the twentieth-century long poem. In The Anathemata Jones returned to the English record to seek out those moments where the histories of the Welsh had been elided or erased. At a time when the Middle Ages are increasingly weaponized in far-right and nationalist political discourse, the book offers a timely discussion of how the early medieval past has been resourced to both shore up and challenge English hegemonies across modern British culture.

scholarly journals Early medieval religious-memorial monuments of gadabay region of Azerbaijan

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 92-103
Author(s):  
Eldar Mehdiyev
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Historical Monuments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Private Collections ◽  
Comparative Manner

Gadabay situated at the western part of Azerbaijan Republic. There are many early medieval Christian temples, churches and monasteries which concern to Caucasian Albania in Gadabay region. This article is dedicated to early medieval temples and religious monuments of Caucasian Albania in Gadabay. It was researched Gadabay temple, Chaldash, Chanakhchi, Girdiman (Pir Javanshir), Agh kilse (White church), Ayrivang temples and Hamshivang monastery in last decade. These historical monuments established during early medieval period of Caucasian Albania. Early medievalreligious situation of the country was largely studied by Azerbaijani Albanian scholars. As it is known from the sources, in the early Middle Ages the religious situation in Albania as a whole was extremely complicated. Thus, idolatry persisted, and Christianity and Zoroastrianism struggled to spread. There was a fierce struggle between their ideologues and supporters. The defense of Zoroastrianism by the Sassanids and Christianity by the Romans and then the Byzantines by all means that the inter-religious struggle went beyond the borders of the country.When thinking about the structure of the society that existed in the Gadabay region in the early Middle Ages, it would be more correct to refer directly to sources on the history of Albania. The study of early medieval archeological monuments of Gadabay region used ancient and medieval sources, materials of historical, archeological and ethnographic researches carried out in various monuments, samples of material culture kept in museums, funds and private collections. As it is known, the works of Strabo, Plolemy, Kirokos Ganjali and especially the Albanian historian M. Kalankatuklu provide very valuable information about the history of Albania. Of course, the study of all this in relation to archeological materials and in a comparative manner is great scientific importance.M. Kalankatuklu states that during the reign of the Albanian Tsar Arsvagen and Prince Khurs of Girdiman, "there are still pagans left in Girdiman". At that time, Christianity was already widespread in the country.

scholarly journals Finger Rings with the Image of Archangel Michael of the Late 6th – 7th Centuries from Crimea

2020 ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
Elzara Khairedinova
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Right

Introduction. In the Early Middle Ages, Crimea was in the sphere of influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. In the material culture of the Early Medieval population of Crimea imprinted with archaeological monuments “Byzantine components” are quite clearly visible. The group of jewellery that clearly demonstrates the Byzantine influence includes bronze finger rings with the image of Archangel Michael originating from the GothoAlanian burial grounds of the South-Western Crimea and from the necropoleis of the Kerch Peninsula. The article substantiates the attribution and dating of the finger rings, reveals a circle of analogies, interprets the meaning of the images, and also considers the peculiarities of wearing this type of jewellery. Methods. The author determines dating of the Crimean findings by the accompanying inventory in the graves. The paper reveals a circle of analogies for the attribution of the finger rings, analyzes findings from the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire and from areas with political and economic ties. Analysis. In the late 6th – 7th centuries bronze finger rings with the image of Archangel Michael imported from Byzantium and produced in local workshops on imported samples were popular in Crimea. The signet ring of variant A of the late 6th – the first quarter of the 7th cc. with a profile portrait of the Archangel and the monogram of his name, undoubtedly, refers to Byzantine products brought from Asia Minor. The two finger rings of variant B engraved with the face and the almost full-length figure of the Archangel were made by Bosporan artisans in the 7th century on the Byzantine samples. The finger rings from Crimea depicting the Archangel belonged to young women who had a high social status. They were worn on hands, as a rule, on the right forefinger and in breast necklaces that connected fibulae. Christian symbols and plots placed on signet rings, in the view of the ancient Christians, should have given the jewellery the properties of an amulet which protected the person wearing it from all sorts of troubles. Results. The presented finger rings depicting Archangel Michael are an important source for studying the early stage of the history of Christianity in the South-Western Crimea and the Bosporus. Findings of this kind testify to the unity of culture in the Christian world and are a good example of close economic and cultural ties between the region and the Byzantine Empire in the Early Middle Ages. Key words: South-Western Crimea, Bosporus, Crimean Goths, Byzantine jewellery, finger rings, amulets, Archangel Michael.

scholarly journals They Are Preserved Forever: Visualising the Memorialisation of Archipelagic Religious and Community Identities

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 999
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Sarah Jane Gibbon
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Gis Mapping ◽  
Qualitative Gis ◽  
The People ◽  
Parish Community ◽  
Island Community ◽  
Burial Grounds

In this article, we respond to the Special Issue theme by addressing the complexities of religious identities in archipelagic communities where the dual role of the sea as conduit and barrier has impacted the parish system, farming estates and community life. The focus is primarily on nineteenth and twentieth century testimonies and material evidence, approached within a broader chronological context going back to the Middle Ages. Using qualitative GIS mapping of the habitations of the people memorialised in two burial grounds in Orkney, we visualise the active role of the islander in constructing identities linking people and place at parish, community and personal levels. The results show that the people with memorial stones were buried within a long-established parochial structure but did not adhere to ecclesiastical norms, with district burial grounds being favoured over a single parish churchyard. We conclude that this approach demonstrates the complexities of identities within an island community and identify its applicability in other contexts combining material culture and historical documentation to investigate religious island identities.

Das Ende Großmährens – Überlegungen zur relativen und absoluten Chronologie des ostmitteleuropäischen Frühmittelalters

2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-348
Author(s):  
Jiří Macháček ◽  
Petr Dresler ◽  
Renáta Přichystalová
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
East Central ◽  
Moravian Church ◽  
Living Culture ◽  
Significant Correction ◽  
The Rich

Abstract The Fall of Great Moravia. Reflections on relative and absolute chronology of Early Middle Ages in the East-Central Europe. Dating the so-called Great Moravian jewelry and Great Moravian church graveyards is one of the crucial tasks of archaeology of the Early Middle Ages. The chronological systems developed based on the rich graves investigated over the past 60 years within the Czech Republic help in dating archaeological finds from the 9th to the 10th century all over Europe. This study addresses the question of how long the luxury jewelry existed as part of living culture and until when the earliest church graveyards with burials of people clad in the traditional Great Moravian costume existed in Moravia. The solution to this problem is supported by assessments of finds from graves excavated at Pohansko near Břeclav and, most importantly, by radiocarbon dating the application of which is still not common in archaeology of the Early Middle Ages. The result of the present research is a finding that in Great Moravian church graveyards burials continued consistently until the mid-10th century, occasionally probably even a little longer. People were interred there wearing the typical Great Moravian costume which included the luxury jewelry as its component. It is a significant correction of the previous opinions and a partial return to the original dating of Great Moravian material culture from the 1950s and 1960s.

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