scholarly journals Close Companions? A Zooarchaeological Study of the Human–Cattle Relationship in Medieval England

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1174
Author(s):  
Matilda Holmes ◽  
Helena Hamerow ◽  
Richard Thomas

Across medieval Europe, cattle commanded a major, if shifting, economic and social value, and their use for meat, milk, and traction is well established. Although the changing roles of cattle throughout this period may have influenced relationships between humans and cattle, this has been largely neglected in historical and zooarchaeological studies. Data from nearly 700 archaeological assemblages of animal remains have been used to provide an overview of the herd structures (age and sex) of cattle populations for England between AD 450 and 1400. These have been analysed alongside pathological and sub-pathological changes in over 2800 lower limb bones of cattle from seventeen archaeological sites to provide a better understanding of the use of cattle for ploughing, hauling, and carting. The findings were considered alongside historical documents and ethnographic evidence to chart changing human–cattle relationships. Results indicate that human–cattle relations varied with changing economic, agricultural, and social practices. From the mid-fifth century, cattle were a form of portable wealth, however, by the mid-ninth century, they were perceived as a commodity with monetary value. From this period, close human–cattle bonds are likely to have been widespread between plough hands and working animals. Such bonds are may have diminished with the increasing number of young beef cattle kept to supply the urban population from the mid-eleventh century.

1961 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 538-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Olsen

AbstractThe diagnostic value of animal remains from archaeological sites is discussed in the following order of importance of the various osteological elements which can be used for interpreting the fauna they represent: teeth, skull fragments, articular ends of limb bones, foot bones, portions of the pectoral and pelvic girdles, and vertebrae.


2019 ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Derek Attridge

This, the first of four chapters on the Middle Ages, explores the rise of vernacular verse from the fifth to eleventh centuries. There is a little surviving evidence for oral poetry in the vernacular languages prior to the fifth century, and the first written example comes from the beginning of that century. The story of Caedmon’s inspired poetry is examined, as is Bede’s ‘death song’ and other evidence for poetic activity in England in the seventh and eighth centuries. Several Old High German poems of the ninth century are considered, as well as Alfred the Great’s interest in poetry. Beowulf, dated somewhere between the late seventh and the eleventh century, includes scenes of poetic performance and may be itself an example of the kind of poem it depicts in performance. Also discussed are the Old English poems Deor and Widsith and the Viking and Viking-influenced poems of the tenth century.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 286-288
Author(s):  
Therese Martin

The year 2018 saw the publication of two important monographs, each with groundbreaking scholarship on complementary aspects of monasticism; together they offer a clear path forward for Medieval Studies as a whole. While Fiona Griffiths’s Nuns’ Priests’ Tales and Steven Vanderputten’s Dark Age Nunneries approach the essentially interrelated natures of men’s and women’s medieval monasticism from different perspectives, it is by reading them in concert that one becomes aware of the paradigm shift they signal. In a welcome change from a traditional consideration of so-called “double” monasteries as neither fish nor fowl, Griffiths and Vanderputten offer a feast of evidence for the multiple levels of interactions between the genders—including priests and nuns, students and teachers, patrons, family members, and rulers, as well as the conventionally understood mixed religious communities of monks and nuns—at majority female monasteries in Western Christendom from the early through central Middle Ages. Vanderputten starts at the beginning of the ninth century and carries his investigation forward to the mid-eleventh, at which point Griffiths launches her study, moving the matter on from the late eleventh century into the early thirteenth.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 537-548
Author(s):  
Sebbane Habib ◽  
Omar Boukhri

After the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Andalusian Islamic state witnessed a political rupture as a result of chaos, rivalries and sectarian conflicts throughout the fifth century AH corresponding to the eleventh century AD. These dangerous security breakdowns led to the disintegration and division of the Islamic Caliphate in Andalusia into a group of independent kingdoms and small emirates which ultimately found themselves on one hand in permanent wars between them, and on the other in skirmishes with the neighbouring Christian forces. This fact contributed to lack of stability and peace of these lands and the establishment of weak governing systems for a long time. This political situation stressed the worsening of their social conditions and their scientific life. Nevertheless, this situation generated a motivating nostalgia and rage in some scholars and jurists such as Imam Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī who is considered one of the key-figures and scholars of Andalusia. He had a prominent role in pushing forward and reviving scientific life by setting various new foundations in order to reform some fields. His writings were directed for educational purposes. Besides, he included the reform of Islamic jurisprudence, which was aimed primarily for jurists and rulers. Furthermore, some of his writings were sermons and ethical moral instructions for commoners. His endeavours led him to enter the political life as he assumed the judicial profession of a judge, that enabled him to be in more touch with the various kings of sects giving him the chance to advise and guide them. His efforts in that end resulted in seeking to reunite the kings of the sects and their princes under the banner of Islam and unite their forces for the defence of Muslim presence in Andalusia against the Christian threat.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadezhda Karastoyanova

Animal remains from archeological sites give a rather good sample of data, showing habitats and biodiversity during the early Holocene . In multiple settlements in the Eastern Balkans, there are numerous remains of wild mammals that were hunted by humans through the prehistory (7200-5800 BP). This gives a general idea of the habitats around and near the settlements. Such deposits of animal remains are the main source of data on fauna during this period and give us information on the processes leading to the extinction of some species. This paper analyzes more than 26000 animal remains (bones, horns, antlers and teeth) from large mammals from orders: Аrtiodactyla, Perissodactyla and Carnivora from 4 still unpublished deposits from Bulgaria. I summarize data from already published remains from 33 sites in East Balkans. These analyses provide a general picture of both habitats and biodiversity and some of the major factors that caused extinction of some large mammals in Bulgaria during the early Holocene.


2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Crowe

The Roma entered the Balkans from India during the Middle Ages. They reached Persia sometime in the ninth century and by the eleventh century had moved into the Byzantine Empire. According to the eleventh-century Georgian Life of Saint George the Athonite, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of wild animals preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve. Adsincani is the Georgian form of the Greek word Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi, from which the non-English terms for Roma (cigán, cigány, tsiganes, zigeuner) are derived. Adsincani means “ner-do-well fortune tellers” or “ventriloquists and wizards who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown.” “Gypsy” comes from “Egyptian,” a term often used by early modern chroniclers in the Balkans to refer to the Roma. Because of the stereotypes and prejudice that surround the word “Gypsy,” the Roma prefer a name of their own choosing from their language, Romani. Today, it is preferable to refer to the Gypsies as Rom or “Roma,” a Romani word meaning “man” or “husband.” Byzantine references to “Egyptians” crop up during this period as Byzantine political and territorial fortunes gave way to the region's new power, the Ottomans. There were areas with large Roma populations in Cyprus and Greece which local rulers dubbed “Little Egypt” in the late fourteenth century.


1970 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger E. Reynolds

The treasure manuscriptClm 19414of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich has for many years provided scholars in three fields of study with a rich lode of material. Art historians have found one of the best examples of fourteenth-century GermanBibliae pauperumin this manuscript. Historians of canon law have discovered several books of the early eleventh-centuryCollectio XII Partium. For historians of the barbarian lawsClm 19414contains an excellent witness to theLex Baiuwariorum. The purpose of this article is to bring to light another portion ofClm 19414, a florilegium on the ecclesiastical grades which should be of interest to historians of early medieval canon law, religious instruction, and sacramental theology.


2021 ◽  
pp. 227-232
Author(s):  
Snježana Kužir ◽  
Lucija Bastiančić ◽  
Nikolina Škvorc

The studied material includes animal remains from the four archaeological sites in the Podravina region of Croatia. The animal remains originate from sites with traces of metallurgical activity as well as from some settlement features which were also investigated. According to C14 analysis, and comparison with archaeological finds excavated in the vicinity of Torčec, the majority of the finds date from the period of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. At all four sites, the animal remains were damaged, sporadic findings, which made a complete archaeozoological analysis impossible. A descriptive primary analysis (element representation and taxonomic interpretation) was carried out. At all sites the remains were mainly from domestic mammals. One fragment of a bird bone was also found, but species determination was not possible. Particular attention was paid to the taphonomic effects on the bones.


1985 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-371
Author(s):  
Raji M. Rammuny

Summary Most of the early Arab grammarians were chiefly concerned with the description of language structure and particularly the problem of explaining the inflectional marks. Al-Jurjānī, in the fifth century AH/eleventh century AD, was the first among Arab grammarians to depart from earlier trend of linguistic analysis and to put forward a demonstrable theory for the study of language and grammar in terms of the interrelationships that bind the constituents of speech together. According to al-Jurjānī, there are three types of relationships: syntactic relationships, semantic relationships, and the relationship between syntax and semantics. This paper contains a systematic account of these syntactic-semantic interrelationships in particular, and al-Jurjānī’s approach and methodology to language and grammar in general. Our investigation is based on an intensive study of the concepts of naẓm (discourse arrangement) and taclīq (interrelationship) which al-Jurjānī discussed with ample evidence and cogent reasoning in his major work Dalā’il al-Icjāz (Illustrations of the Inimitability [of the Qur’ān]). A distinctive feature of this research is the effort made to show the connection between al-Jurjānī’s linguistic concepts and equivalent notions used in modern linguistics. The study concludes with an important fact; namely, that al-Jurjānī was one of the frontier scholars to call for the study of language on the basis of syntactic-semantic functions and as a discipline independent of grammatical regents.


Author(s):  
Veerle Linseele

Archaeozoology is the study of animal remains, mainly bones and other hard parts, from archaeological sites. It contributes to a more complete understanding of various aspects of human life in the past. Ideally, archaeozoologists, like other specialists, should be involved in the entire process of an archaeological research project, from its design, to fieldwork and data collecting, to final reporting and publication. For efficient communication and fruitful collaboration, the archaeologists involved in this process need to understand the basics of archaeozoological methodology and the range of questions that the discipline can answer. Methods vary among archaeozoologists—not least with regard to quantification—and it is important to be aware of these differences and their possible impact on results when comparing data for different sites. While the actual analysis of animal remains is done by the archaeozoologists, preferably in circumstances where they have access to a comparative collection of recent animal skeletons, the excavation and collection of remains is often the responsibility of the archaeologists. Animal remains are affected by a host of taphonomic processes of loss that are beyond our control. To avoid additional loss of information at the fieldwork stage, appropriate methods are particularly important. The use of sieves with a mesh size no greater than 2 mm is essential in order not to miss the smaller, but no less informative, animal remains. Project leaders play an important role in providing good storage facilities for archaeozoological remains after excavation and after study. With the rapid development in analytical methods, it can be extremely interesting to return to previously studied remains and sample them.


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