From the Baltic to the Black Sea - Studies in Medieval Archaeology
From the Baltic to the Black Sea offers a rare insight into the closed world of medieval Eastern Europe and opens up a neglected archaeological tradition to English-speaking readers. Selections focus on early European ethnic formations and states, the demography of medieval populations, and the nature of rural settlement and urban development. The book challenges the intellectual assumptions of medieval archaeology and questions its relationship to history and prehistory. It exposes the limitations of a strictly empirical approach to studying the period when written history began and the early medieval states emerged.
First published in 1987, this is the second book in the author's "Niccolo" series. The novel marks the coming of age of the hero, and his development in the treacherous world of medieval Europe's trade with the East.
The relationship between medieval animal symbolism and the iconography of animals in the Renaissance has scarcely been studied. Filling a gap in this significant field of Renaissance culture, in general, and its art, in particular, this book demonstrates the continuity and tenacity of medieval animal interpretations and symbolism, disguised under the veil of genre, religious or mythological narrative and scientific naturalism.
Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales
The conquest of Wales by the medieval English throne produced a fiercely contested territory, both militarily and culturally. Wales was left fissured by frontiers of language, jurisdiction and loyalty—a reluctant meeting place of literary traditions and political cultures. But the profound consequences of this first colonial adventure on the development of medieval English culture have been disregarded.
This short book is intended to serve as a practical guide to Gaelic language sources (as opposed to administrative or ecclesiastical records in Latin, French, or English) for the history of these communities in the high Middle Ages, laying emphasis on published texts for which English translations are available. Under six headings (annals, genealogies, poems, prose tracts and sagas, legal material, colophons and marginalia), it discusses not only the nature of the sources themselves, the purpose for which they were originally created, and their survival and availability to researchers, but also how to glean usable historical information from them.
