The Geoff Egan Memorial Lecture 2011. Artefacts, art and artifice: reconsidering iconographic sources for archaeological objects in early modern Europe

A first systematic analysis of historic domestic material culture depicted in contemporaneous Western painting and prints, c.1400-1800. Drawing on an extensive data set, the paper proposes to methodologies and hermeneutics for historical analysis and archaeological correspondence

Indicators of craft specialisation in medieval ceramics from north-west Russia

Book description: Novgorod is one of the most intensively and continuously studied urban sites in northern Europe. The excellent preservation of organic and inorganic material in its anaerobic soils, including the structural remains of streets, properties and buildings, has made it possible to study entire quarters of the town as well as the activities of its inhabitants. With deposits up to 8 m deep in places and with well-dated sequences from the early to mid-10th century, its importance to the study of both medieval Russia and the development of Europe cannot be over-emphasised. This publication series presents some of the recent results obtained from international, multidisciplinary projects into the origins and development of the medieval town and its hinterland. Previous volumes have concerned the pottery (2006) and wood use (2007); a forthcoming volume will publish research into animals. The Archaeology of Medieval Novgorod in Context includes papers on aspects of the environmental and technological context of the relationship between urban centre and rural hinterland. It begins by examining the environmental context for the settlement pattern that developed from the 9th to 15th centuries and examining the role that various natural resources had in contributing to that pattern. After a general paper on the natural environment based on a recent palynological study, it presents data from three study areas (the first in the Byeloozero area to the northeast of Novgorod; the second in the immediate hinterland of Novgorod and the third within Novgorod itself). It considers what, where and how certain natural resources were exploited during the medieval period in these areas. Where possible, it also attempts to explain the processes by which these resources were produced as commodities (via craft production, centralised workshops, household production, specialised settlements, etc.) and place the evidence from the three other volumes on ceramics, wood use and zooarchaeology into a wider context, concentrating on the exploitation, manufacture and consumption of these and other materials. Whilst not definitive, the collection aims to be a starting point for attempting to put Novgorod into a wider context of the medieval world

Local churches and the conquest of the North : elite patronage and identity in Saxo-Norman Northumbria

The social implications of the Saxo-Norman transition are particularly intriguing in Northumbria, where Anglian, Scandinavian, and Norman social structures, identities, and traditions of material culture converged. In the north, where royal control was less secure and there was a history of political independence, negotiating the transition required a calculated balance of imposed authority and regard for the institutions of the past. Local churches, already established as a focal point of religious and secular manorial life, were one of the primary arenas in which this dialogue of power was carried out. Through an examination of the evidence for stone church buildings and funerary monuments in eleventh and twelfth-century Northumbria, this paper demonstrates how the elite utilized church patronage to negotiate authority and identity in a period of acute transition, and how the particular political and cultural characteristics of Yorkshire, County Durham, and Northumberland could affect this process

Living in times of war: waste of c. 1600 from two garderobe chutes from the Castle of Middelburg-in-Flanders (Belgium)

The material remains and environmental data recovered during a rescue excavation in 2002-03 in the castle of the new town of Middelburg-in-Flanders throw light on the site, region and landscape in wartime. The paper discusses the historical context at the turn of the 16th century, the excavation of the castle, the taphonomy of the chutes, the analysis of the artefacts and ecological data recovered from two garderobe chutes in the upper court, and concludes with a synthesis focussing on the interpretation of the excavated record in the historically attested natural and socio-economic disruption caused by the Spanish-Dutch War

Performative regulation: a case study in how powerful people avoid criminal labels

This paper explores the role of invested powerful business actors in the criminalisation process as applied to the illicit antiquities market. We present a case study of the precise mechanics of the role played by trade interests in the formation of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003. This process involved the trade’s entering appearance in the legislative process and neutralising the possible constraining effects on its members of the new criminal offence which was to be created. We begin by exploring the political, historical and economic context in which discussion of the terms of the 2003 Act first began. We then follow the Act from its genesis through its various stages of drafting and re-drafting, to its enactment. This case study of a single piece of legislation provides further data to add to the line of prior research that illustrates that powerful white-collar criminals, as well as sometimes preventing criminal legislation entering the statute books, can also influence the design of criminal legislation that does enter the statute books in order to protect themselves and their own business interests. We also use this case study of a process of contemporary law-making to outline the concept of performative regulation: broadly, that which in appearance serves political ends but in practice effects an inconsequential level of control

Plasmids in the driving seat: The regulatory RNA Rcd gives plasmid ColE1 control over division and growth of its E. coli host.

Regulation by non-coding RNAs was found to be widespread among plasmids and other mobile elements of bacteria well before its ubiquity in the eukaryotic world was suspected. As an increasing number of examples was characterised, a common mechanism began to emerge. Non-coding RNAs, such as CopA and Sok from plasmid R1, or RNAI from ColE1, exerted regulation by refolding the secondary structures of their target RNAs or modifying their translation. One regulatory RNA that seemed to swim against the tide was Rcd, encoded within the multimer resolution site of ColE1. Required for high fidelity maintenance of the plasmid in recombination-proficient hosts, Rcd was found to have a protein target, elevating indole production by stimulating tryptophanase. Rcd production is up-regulated in dimer-containing cells and the consequent increase in indole is part of the response to the rapid accumulation of dimers by over-replication (known as the dimer catastrophe). It is proposed that indole simultaneously inhibits cell division and plasmid replication, stopping the catastrophe and allowing time for the resolution of dimers to monomers. The idea of a plasmid-mediated cell division checkpoint, proposed but then discarded in the 1980s, appears to be enjoying a revival.HG was funded by a BBSRC DTG studentship, grant number PCAG-EJNF.This is the final version. It was first published by Elsevier at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147619X1400088

Mortuary culture

The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe marks the arrival of early modern material culture studies as a vibrant, fully-established field of multi-disciplinary research

Assembling the archaeology of the global Middle Ages

Responding to recent developments in archaeological theory and growing interest in the ‘global Middle Ages’, an approach to exploring relations between local and global processes in the medieval world is proposed. The World-systems approach, applied by some historians to these kinds of macro-paradigms and questions, can expose significant challenges regarding social and economic development at a global scale. However, here it is suggested that the ‘assemblage thought’ of Deleuze and Guattari, developed by DeLanda, might offer a more productive approach for assessing the multi-scalar interactions that defined the lives of communities in the Middle Ages. Here consideration is given to the character of the Middle Ages and its relation to modernity; the implications of the multi-scalar approach are also exemplified using a brief discussion of the Anglo-Italian wool trade in the Late Middle Ages

E-Learning for Teachers and Trainers : Innovative Practices, Skills and Competences

Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.Final Published versio

Horseflesh and beaver pelts: aspects of faunal studies in Medieval Novgorod and its region

Abstract: Excavations in the medieval trading centre of Novgorod (NW Russia) have shown that horseflesh was consumed quite frequently and that horses were stabled in urban properties. Their carcasses were commonly utilized for the manufacture of skates and leather. Beaver meat was sometimes consumed in the town although their much greater importance as providers of pelts is not evidenced in the zooarchaeological evidence from Novgorod. Evidence can be found on sites deep within the forest zone of its expansive territory