Tree-rings and Medieval Archaeology

This reflection, which I dedicate to my friend Guido Vannini, deals with themes at the heart of his scientific way, his method and our relations and exchanges over the past decades. Christian archaeology is by far the veteran of “post-Roman” archaeologies. A discipline born in 16th century papal Rome, it was originally strongly marked by the seal of an apologetic Catholicism, in the hottest moments of the Counter-Reformation. During the second half of the 19th century it gradually emerged from this ideological confinement. During the 20th century it became internationalized and broadened the scope of its interests. The real turning point came in the 1970s, when medieval archaeology was gaining ground. The 1980s were the years in which the centuries long considered obscure (7th-8th centuries in particular) were the object of all the attention of Christian, Classical and Medieval Archaeologies, each initially claiming a sort of monopoly, according to different ideological parameters (among those who “believe in heaven and those who do not”... ), in a “je t’aime, moi non plus”, made up of angry looks, deaf dialogues, then today’s finally constructive exchanges and debates, and new balances arise from these initial conflicts and stimulating debates.

Zhores Khachatryan, the former head of the Department of ‘Archaeology of Ancient Armenia’ of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, NAS RA was one of the most devoted and honored archaeologists in Armenia.He was born in 1935, into a family with their origins in Sivas/Sebastia, which had fled during the Armenian Genocide. After a long and arduous journey, they found a home in Yerevan. After graduating from school, he was accepted to the Faculty of History of the Yerevan State University. He started his academic activities in 1959 as an assistant in the Department of ‘Ancient and Medieval Archaeology’ of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. During 1962-1965 he was a postgraduate student in the Department of ‘Antique Archaeology’ of the same institute. His advisor was Prof. B.N. Arakelyan, one of the leading archaeologists in Armenia. This was an essential school for Zh. Khachatryan for his specialisation in the problems of the Antique Period archaeology and history of Armenia. He worked at that same Institute until the final years of his life (2015).

This chapter considers the application of archaeological theory to later medieval archaeology, with a selective review of the different approaches offered over the past fifty years by archaeologists of the Later Middle Ages set into a wider historiographical framework. In this chapter key processual, structuralist, and post-processual studies are all debated with particular emphasis on phenomenology and the experiential, the archaeology of identity, biography, and the life-course. New forms of interpretation are judged to be neither consistent or coherent but, nevertheless, they offer exciting insights which cross disciplinary boundaries and challenge orthodoxies.

Drawing on the contributions to the Handbook as a whole, this final chapter begins by summarizing the current infrastructural issues surrounding the study of later medieval archaeology. These include unresolved questions around access to unpublished reports generated by developer archaeology, the numerous barriers to synthesis and collaboration across disciplines, and the surge in applications of new techniques. Also mentioned in this context are the challenge of integrating the results of public archaeology projects and the impact of new theoretical perspectives, many of which are applied to good effect in this volume. The second part of the article focuses on four ‘grand challenges’ which hold promise for the future. These are defined as social complexity, resilience, behaviour and identity, humans, and the environment.

Medieval Archaeology in the East Roman World

L’articolo si propone di ripercorrere le principali tappe dei processi insediativi e degli sviluppi economici nell’area deltizia di Comacchio tra V e X secolo, mettendone in evidenza i punti nodali e i caratteri materiali. Rifletteremo, inoltre, su alcune “questioni aperte”, sui principali interrogativi e sulle prospettive di studio emerse nell’ambito del progetto di ricerca “Archeologia Medievale a Comacchio”, avviato nel 2005, con particolare attenzione all’interazione tra comunità antropica e contesto ambientale.

The immediate impression of the field of historical archaeology is that of a vast jumble of strictly specialized archaeologies. The disciplines have different histories, the objects of study vary widely in time and place, and the debates are divided. At the same time, however, this jumble is pervaded by a shared feeling among many historical archaeologists that they are working in an intermediate zone, between subjects that are either more object centered or text centered. This feeling of being in-between and having a vague identity is often reinforced by the opinions and demands expressed by other disciplines. Historians have often come with “want lists” of all the things they think that historical archaeologies should be doing (e.g., Finley, 1971; Sawyer, 1983), and many prehistoric archaeologists see the historical archaeologies primarily as a laboratory in which they can test their methods (e.g., Bin-ford, 1977; Clarke, 1971). Moreover, the pioneers of the different historical archaeologies have in many cases been schooled in other subjects, which means that they have perceived the field as having special links with their own original discipline. For example, Michel de Bouard (1969:62), originally a historian, asserts that “medieval archaeology, in particular, must remain an auxiliary science to history.” The same view was expressed by the first generation of historical archaeologists in the United States (e.g., Harrington, 1955).

Medieval archaeology : families and freedoms

Medieval Archaeology and Excavations

(1966). A Pottery Louver from Great Easton, Essex. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 74-80.

Scientific Methods in Medieval Archaeology

From mountains to towns: DNA from ancient reindeer antlers as proxy for domestic procurement networks in medieval Norway

This paper investigates the origins of British Anglo-Saxon archaeology by focusing on the work of one early Victorian archaeologist: Richard Cornwallis Neville. The seemingly descriptive and parochial nature of Neville’s archaeological pursuits, together with the attention he afforded to Romano-British remains, has impeded due recognition, and critical scrutiny, of his contributions to the development of early Medieval burial archaeology. Using his archaeological publications as source material, I will show how Neville’s interpretations of Saxon graves were a form of memory work, defining his personal, familial and martial identity in relation to the landscape and locality of his aristocratic home at Audley End, near Saffron Walden, Essex. Subsequently, I argue that Neville’s prehistoric and Romano-British discoveries reveal his repeated concern with the end of Roman Britain and its barbarian successors. Finally, embodied within Neville’s descriptions of early Medieval graves and their location we can identify a pervasive Anglo-Saxonism. Together these strands of argument combine to reveal how, for Neville, Saxon graves constituted a hitherto unwritten first chapter of English history that could be elucidated through material culture and landscape.

THE exhibition of some six thousand years of Swedish art, lent by the Swedish Government to America to commemorate the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of New Sweden on the banks of the Delaware, is a unique enterprise for the Swedish museums. Operating in New York at Rockefeller Center from September 24th—October 6th, and then going to museums in the Eastern and Middle Western states, the exhibition includes objects which not only have never been shown outside of Sweden but which in many cases, lent by institutions and collectors often hundreds of miles apart, have never been shown together even to the Swedish public. The four hundred objects were chosen from the three fields of prehistoric and medieval archeology, native or peasant art, and from the more sophisticated collections of later Swedish painting. But always the selection was governed by the underlying purpose of revealing to the American visitor the homogeneity and unity of Swedish culture throughout its many centuries of development.

The Novgorod region of Russia is a sparsely populated area about the size of Ireland better known for its medieval archaeology and folklore than for anything else. Although Novgorod began the post-Soviet period with no unusual endowment of natural or human resources, it has attracted a large amount of foreign investment. Its dramatic economic success and political innovation have impressed observers. Local governments deliver benefits and services reliably, and the regional government responds quickly to citizens' needs and demands. Something noteworthy is happening in Novgorod that does not square with familiar headlines about contemporary Russia: oligarchs and oil, ethnic tensions and corruption.Nicolai N. Petro attempts to explain the Novgorod phenomenon by seeking answers at the regional level. Novgorod is, he finds, a model of effective democratic consolidation. Petro suggests that the region owes its unexpected recent success to its political elites, who have identified key cultural symbols and used those symbols to promote democratic development. Drawing on comparisons with other regions and countries, Petro finds that these cultural tactics often yield better results than do Western-style institutions and educational training programs. Current efforts to promote democracy focus too much on structural changes and not enough on the conditions needed to sustain them, Petro writes. For the rule of law, free markets, and free and fair elections to gain broad public support, they must first make sense within the local cultural tradition. The unexpected success of regional democratic development in a country not known for its democratic traditions suggests that local governments can transform the burden of the past into an ally of change, a finding with implications for democratic development initiatives in other areas of the world.