This book was written in 1991–1992 but incorporates elements of research that I carried out much earlier, in fact, since the beginning of the 1970s. It is an account of my work over a period of time when I was labouring ad maiorem Orientis antiquissimi gloriam only in my spare time, having had, principally for existential reasons, quite different official commitments. A further impulse towards the writing of this text has been constituted by my lectures on the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University, Prague, in 1982–1983 and then in 1990–1991.
Women in the Medieval English Countryside - Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague
Unlike most histories of European women, which have typically focused on the 19th and 20th century elite, this study reconstructs the public lives of peasant women and men during the six decades before the Black Death of 1348-49. Drawing on the extensive records of the forest manor of Brigstock, Judith Bennett challenges the myth of a "golden age" of equality for medieval men and women. Instead, she ably shows that women faced profound political, legal, economic, and social disadvantages in their dealings with men.
West over Sea - Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement Before 1300
This volume celebrates the 20th anniversary of Dr Barbara Crawford's Scandinavian Scotland (1987) and her wider contribution to the subject. Thirty contributions appear under the headings of ‘History and cultural contacts’, ‘The church and the cult of saints’, ‘Archaeology, material culture and settlement’, and ‘Place-names and language’.
Bestseller Carter, who expertly blended social commentary and devious plots in his previous novels (The Emperor of Ocean Park; New England White; Palace Council), delivers a modest spy thriller, his first work of fiction not to focus on characters from what he has termed "the darker nation." The sententious opening sentence ("On the Sunday before the terror began, Rebecca DeForde pointed the rental car into the sullen darkness of her distant past") sets the tone for this minor effort.
Two men are killed by cyanide poisoning before Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte comes to Broken Hill to take up the case, and a third dies soon after he arrives. All die in crowded public places, and all are elderly and single. Witnesses recall a woman being near each man before he died, but their descriptions seem to be of entirely different women. Clues are old and witnesses have been mishandled by an inept investigator before Bony arrives in the prosperous mining town, but with the help of the local constabulary, a professional burglar vacationing in Broken Hill, Inspector Bonaparte mounts an investigation to try to identify the murderer before she finds another victim.
