Ben Jervi
Biographic Data
| ID | 97457 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben Jervi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben |
| FAMILY NAME | Jervi |
| SIGNATURE | BEN JERVI |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cardiff University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5295-0647 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 96 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Temporality and Political Ecology in a Medieval Small Town
The potential of legacy data for experimenting with new conceptual approaches to medieval urbanity is explored through a case study of Romsey, Hampshire (UK). The paper explores the theme of ‘forgotten towns’ in three ways. Firstly, by mapping the ‘archaeological method assemblage’ of development-led archaeology it is proposed that an emphasis on the characterization of significance creates forgetfulness as data are not synthesized and the potent…
Multi-isotope evidence shows extensive free-roaming pig husbandry endured in medieval England
This study investigates regional variation in pig husbandry in 12th–16th century England and its role in sustaining woodlands, wetlands and small towns. Medieval pig management is often characterised as a transition from forest-dwelling pigs to pigs being increasingly confined in urban sites, a key stage in the evolutionary history of the European domestic pig. However, multi-isotope analysis (δ 13 C, δ 15 N, δ 34 S, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) of dentine, bon…
Thinking Through Change
The potential for combining elements of the adaptive cycle and assemblage thought to develop a novel approach to change in historical urban contexts is developed. It is proposed that the “adaptive cycle” model common in studies of resilience provides a valuable comparative tool for understanding change, but is limited by its conceptualization of the system as a homogeneous whole and its linear approach to temporality. This is particularly problem…
Relationality and Economic Emergence
This article presents an analysis of the relationship between urbanization as an ongoing process and economic development in medieval ( c. AD 1250–1400) southern and midland England. It is proposed that understanding the distribution of pottery through network analysis provides a means of comprehending the role played by affective material relations in these processes. Rather than seeing pottery distributions as reflecting an overarching economic…
Vegetal Thinking and Urban Becoming
Mapping the urbanization of Medieval England
Small and Medium-Sized Towns in Medieval England
DESPITE THEIR UBIQUITY, the character and function of small towns in medieval England continues to provoke debate. These places, situated at the intersection of urban and rural life, are ambiguous and display a high degree of diversity. Drawing upon recent analyses of modern European small towns, I propose a new approach to this debate. The paper begins with an assessment of the potential and limitations of hierarchical approaches to medieval tow…
Potting
Beyond Urban Hinterlands. Political Ecology, Urban Metabolism and Extended Urbanization in Medieval England
Drawing on insights from contemporary urban theory, this contribution questions where medieval urbanization took place. It is proposed that urbanization is a process which extends beyond towns and cities, which are merely a representation of a more expansive and transformative process. Through discussion of building stone, grain production, salt extraction, woodland management and mineral exploitation, it is argued that medieval urbanization was …
Felons' chattels and English living standards in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
The later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have long occupied an intriguing and contested place in discussions of England's long-run economic development. One key issue around which debate has coalesced is the living standards of the population as a whole and of different groups within it. We contribute to this debate by bringing forward new evidence on the material living standards of peasants, artisans, and wage-earners in the countryside and…
Minoritarian entrepreneurs
From the perspective of the present, the economic development of preceding periods can seem linear and inevitable, guided into being by those who benefitted most from increasing commercialisation. Yet this majoritarian narrative belies the importance of the individual and the everyday, of adaptation and creativity. Here, the author explores the potential of a minoritarian approach to entrepreneurship, in understanding medieval economic developmen…
Urbanity, Decline, and Regeneration in Later Medieval England
It is proposed that combining a microhistorical approach with the frameworks offered by household archaeology and posthumanism provides a way of rethinking what urbanity means in archaeological (specifically later medieval) contexts. This approach is deployed to challenge generalising approaches which obscure the complexity, vibrancy, and generative capacity of past urbanities. Focussing on the question of the fortunes of later medieval small tow…
Brewing difference
Kilns used for drying grain and for malting are common features of archaeological excavations in medieval towns and in the countryside. They occur in a variety of situations, including within urban tenement plots, open spaces within the urban landscape, manorial enclosures and field systems. This paper examines what the situation of drying kilns can reveal about the ways in which household and community labour were organised and the role of infra…
Confronting Commerce
Whetstones imported from Norway into England are used to explore emergent processes of commercialisation in medieval England. The study is based on a sample of 2201 whetstones (both imported and locally provenanced) from excavated contexts, and the distribution and chronology of these objects is presented. Drawing on the nomadic thought of Rosi Braidotti and the associated concept of ecologies of interdependence, these innocuous objects are under…
Repetition, persistence and generality
Examining Temporality and Difference
A new theoretical approach to medieval rural settlement, built on the concept of intensity, is proposed. It is argued that analysing settlements as intensive spaces creates new opportunities to explore the emergence of difference in medieval lived experience. The approach is intended to overcome the challenges posed by approaches to medieval architecture framed by binary divisions ( e.g . inside/outside). Drawing on posthuman thought, it is argue…
Becoming Through Milling
The relationship between handmilling, undertaken in domestic contexts, and mechanized mills in medieval Kent is used to challenge linear approaches to economic progress in the Middle Ages. Inspired by posthuman perspectives which emphasize messiness, non-linearity and multiplicity, medieval economic development is re-imagined as a patchwork of intensive material processes. In so doing, an approach is developed which works towards dissolving probl…
Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households 1300-1600. Data Paper
The data in the related digital archive was collected to examine the archaeological and historical evidence for material culture in English medieval rural households, with the aim of gaining a fuller picture than what might be attainable by looking only at objects or documents in isolation. The digital archive provides a starting point for anyone wishing to research aspects of medieval rural settlement
The Archaeology of Emptiness? Understanding Open Urban Spaces in the Medieval World
Using examples from medieval Europe and Africa, an approach to understanding urban open spaces is proposed. We argue that new digital and high-resolution methodologies, combined with interpretive frameworks which stress the affective capacities of the material world, call for a reappraisal of open spaces as places of disruption, creativity, and emergent urbanity. We advance an intensive approach to create a methodological basis on which to reimag…
Finding Oxford's medieval Jewry using organic residue analysis, faunal records and historical documents
Food is often one of the most distinctive expressions of social, religious, cultural or ethnic groups. However, the archaeological identification of specific religious dietary practices, including the Jewish tradition of keepingkosher, associated with ritual food practices and taboos, is very rare. This is arguably one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundament…
People, possessions and domestic space in the late medieval escheators’ records
The medieval English escheator was a royal official who seized the goods and chattels of felons, fugitives and outlaws for the crown’s benefit. This article uses escheators’ inquests and accounts to ask what information exists about the location of forfeited possessions at the point of their appraisal by the escheator, and what is revealed about the use of space in the houses and outbuildings of lower status people? We also ask more general quest…
Patrick Ottaway . Winchester
Patrick Ottaway . Winchester: Swithun's ‘City of Happiness and Good Fortune’: an archaeological assessment. 2017. Oxford & Havertown (PA): Oxbow; 978-1-78570-449-9 hardback £40. - Volume 92 Issue 361
Urban consumption
"Urban consumption: Tracing urbanity in the archaeological record of Aarhus c. AD 800–1800." Norwegian Archaeological Review, 51(1-2), pp. 190–191
Assemblage urbanism. Becoming urban in late medieval Southampton
It is proposed that assemblage theory offers the possibility of exploring archaeological evidence in innovative ways, in order to write alternative narratives of urban development. By combining historical and archaeological scholarship with work in contemporary urban geography, it is proposed that the concept of urban decline in the later Middle Ages is problematic and a more fruitful alternative approach would be to focus on the transformation o…
Ceramics and Coastal Communities in Medieval (Twelfth–Fourteenth Century) Europe
Using the example of pottery imported into the Channel ports of southern England, an approach to examining the role of pottery in the emergence and mediation of coastal communities is proposed here. Building on recent scholarship, it is argued that it is no longer tenable to see pottery as a carrier of identity, or as part of a ‘cultural package’, with meaning emerging with identity as people interact with pottery within and without port environm…
Assemblage Theory and Town Foundation in Medieval England
It is proposed that our understanding of medieval town foundation is limited by a failure to appreciate that ‘town’ is a relational category. It is argued that urban character emerges from social relations, with some sets of social relationship revealing urbanity and others not, as places develop along distinctive, but related, trajectories. This argument is developed through the application of assemblage theory to the development of towns in thi…
Assemblage urbanism. Becoming urban in late medieval Southampton
It is proposed that assemblage theory offers the possibility of exploring archaeological evidence in innovative ways, in order to write alternative narratives of urban development. By combining historical and archaeological scholarship with work in contemporary urban geography, it is proposed that the concept of urban decline in the later Middle Ages is problematic and a more fruitful alternative approach would be to focus on the transformation o…
Ceramics and Coastal Communities in Medieval (Twelfth–Fourteenth Century) Europe
Using the example of pottery imported into the Channel ports of southern England, an approach to examining the role of pottery in the emergence and mediation of coastal communities is proposed here. Building on recent scholarship, it is argued that it is no longer tenable to see pottery as a carrier of identity, or as part of a ‘cultural package’, with meaning emerging with identity as people interact with pottery within and without port environm…
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 th…
Finding Oxford's medieval Jewry using organic residue analysis, faunal records and historical documents
Food is often one of the most distinctive expressions of social, religious, cultural or ethnic groups. However, the archaeological identification of specific religious dietary practices, including the Jewish tradition of keepingkosher, associated with ritual food practices and taboos, is very rare. This is arguably one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundament…
Molecular evidence for the mixing of M eat, F ish and V egetables in A nglo‐ S axon coarseware from H amwic, UK
Absorbed lipid residues from 24 seventh‐ to ninth‐century coarseware potsherds from the major A nglo‐ S axon trading centre of H amwic (Southampton, UK ) were analysed by gas chromatography – mass spectrometry ( GC – MS ) in order to reconstruct the dietary habits of its population. The results show that the vessels were used for preparing ruminant fats and leafy vegetables. In addition, evidence was found for a minor contribution of aquatic food…
A patchwork of people, pots and places
This study investigates how engagements with objects are active in the construction of a 'social assemblage', drawing on influences from work on 'symmetrical archaeology' and Actor-Network Theory. This interpretive perspective is explored through a case study, investigating the pottery consumed in Anglo-Saxon Southampton, demonstrating how engagements through exchange, use and deposition were active in creating a patchwork of connections which ca…
Examining Temporality and Difference
A new theoretical approach to medieval rural settlement, built on the concept of intensity, is proposed. It is argued that analysing settlements as intensive spaces creates new opportunities to explore the emergence of difference in medieval lived experience. The approach is intended to overcome the challenges posed by approaches to medieval architecture framed by binary divisions ( e.g . inside/outside). Drawing on posthuman thought, it is argue…
The Archaeology of Emptiness? Understanding Open Urban Spaces in the Medieval World
Using examples from medieval Europe and Africa, an approach to understanding urban open spaces is proposed. We argue that new digital and high-resolution methodologies, combined with interpretive frameworks which stress the affective capacities of the material world, call for a reappraisal of open spaces as places of disruption, creativity, and emergent urbanity. We advance an intensive approach to create a methodological basis on which to reimag…
Decline or Transformation? Archaeology and the Late Medieval ‘Urban Decline’ in Southern England
Archaeological evidence is used to examine how urban life changed in the later medieval towns of Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire in southern England, in light of ongoing debates about the existence of a fifteenth-century urban ‘decline’. The article proposes that rather than seeking evidence of decline, we should consider how and why experiences of urban life vary. The role of towns in commercial and political networks is highlighted as a key cause…
Exploring Text and Objects
A study was undertaken to assess the potential of the integrated analysis of metalwork excavated from medieval (late 13th–16th-century) rural settlements in the midlands of England and inventories (dating from c 1370–c 1440) drawn from the royal escheators’ records for the same region. The study aimed to explore the value and meaning of objects to the non-elite members of rural communities and focussed on three classes of artefact: metal vessels,…
Assessing urban fortunes in six late medieval ports
Variations in the fortunes of six late medieval ports in Sussex are considered using data derived from archaeological excavations. Several indicators are used to assess differences in urban fortunes and to critique the concept of urban ‘decline’. The interpretive framework of assemblage theory is then used to examine why the fortunes of these ports varied. The article argues for a turn from discussions of decay and decline towards considerations …
What's So Special? A Reinterpretation of Anglo-Saxon 'Special Deposits
BUILDING ON HAMEROW'S previous study in Medieval Archaeology 50, the interpretation of Anglo-Saxon 'special deposits', primarily of animal bone and pottery, from England are discussed. By examining their composition and the variable nature of depositional practices, we question why these deposits are considered 'special'. Such deposits are often interpreted within a ritual or functional dichotomy and we propose that the adoption of a biographical…
People, possessions and domestic space in the late medieval escheators’ records
The medieval English escheator was a royal official who seized the goods and chattels of felons, fugitives and outlaws for the crown’s benefit. This article uses escheators’ inquests and accounts to ask what information exists about the location of forfeited possessions at the point of their appraisal by the escheator, and what is revealed about the use of space in the houses and outbuildings of lower status people? We also ask more general quest…
Beyond Urban Hinterlands. Political Ecology, Urban Metabolism and Extended Urbanization in Medieval England
Drawing on insights from contemporary urban theory, this contribution questions where medieval urbanization took place. It is proposed that urbanization is a process which extends beyond towns and cities, which are merely a representation of a more expansive and transformative process. Through discussion of building stone, grain production, salt extraction, woodland management and mineral exploitation, it is argued that medieval urbanization was …
Urbanity, Decline, and Regeneration in Later Medieval England
It is proposed that combining a microhistorical approach with the frameworks offered by household archaeology and posthumanism provides a way of rethinking what urbanity means in archaeological (specifically later medieval) contexts. This approach is deployed to challenge generalising approaches which obscure the complexity, vibrancy, and generative capacity of past urbanities. Focussing on the question of the fortunes of later medieval small tow…
Becoming Through Milling
The relationship between handmilling, undertaken in domestic contexts, and mechanized mills in medieval Kent is used to challenge linear approaches to economic progress in the Middle Ages. Inspired by posthuman perspectives which emphasize messiness, non-linearity and multiplicity, medieval economic development is re-imagined as a patchwork of intensive material processes. In so doing, an approach is developed which works towards dissolving probl…
Brewing difference
Kilns used for drying grain and for malting are common features of archaeological excavations in medieval towns and in the countryside. They occur in a variety of situations, including within urban tenement plots, open spaces within the urban landscape, manorial enclosures and field systems. This paper examines what the situation of drying kilns can reveal about the ways in which household and community labour were organised and the role of infra…
Confronting Commerce
Whetstones imported from Norway into England are used to explore emergent processes of commercialisation in medieval England. The study is based on a sample of 2201 whetstones (both imported and locally provenanced) from excavated contexts, and the distribution and chronology of these objects is presented. Drawing on the nomadic thought of Rosi Braidotti and the associated concept of ecologies of interdependence, these innocuous objects are under…
Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households 1300-1600. Data Paper
The data in the related digital archive was collected to examine the archaeological and historical evidence for material culture in English medieval rural households, with the aim of gaining a fuller picture than what might be attainable by looking only at objects or documents in isolation. The digital archive provides a starting point for anyone wishing to research aspects of medieval rural settlement
Consumption and the ‘Social Self’ in Medieval Southern England
Over the last 30 years we have become increasingly aware of the commercialising nature of the medieval English economy. However, these insights have had little impact on narratives of consumption, which persist in seeing it as a characteristic of modernity. Here it is argued that we must move away from seeing an early modern consumer revolution and instead think about consumption in medieval society, particularly to examine the implications of co…
Conquest, ceramics, continuity and change. Beyond representational approaches to continuity and change in early medieval E ngland
Studies of A nglo‐ N orman material culture, and pottery in particular, have struggled to see how processes of change are reflected in the material record. In this paper I propose a new approach to the analysis of this material. By reconstructing how people interacted with objects, we can see how the agency to create A nglo‐ N orman E ngland was distributed through interactions between people and their surroundings. Furthermore, rather than being…
An Archaeology of Interaction
An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society. By Carl Knappett." Archaeological Journal, 168(1), p. 456
What's So Special? A Reinterpretation of Anglo-Saxon 'Special Deposits
BUILDING ON HAMEROW'S previous study in Medieval Archaeology 50, the interpretation of Anglo-Saxon 'special deposits', primarily of animal bone and pottery, from England are discussed. By examining their composition and the variable nature of depositional practices, we question why these deposits are considered 'special'. Such deposits are often interpreted within a ritual or functional dichotomy and we propose that the adoption of a biographical…
A patchwork of people, pots and places
This study investigates how engagements with objects are active in the construction of a 'social assemblage', drawing on influences from work on 'symmetrical archaeology' and Actor-Network Theory. This interpretive perspective is explored through a case study, investigating the pottery consumed in Anglo-Saxon Southampton, demonstrating how engagements through exchange, use and deposition were active in creating a patchwork of connections which ca…
Make-do and Mend
This volume derives from a session held at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference (Bristol University). The aims of this session were to explore occurrences of compromise (or making do) and repair (mending) in the past, with a particular focus on material culture. This original scope broadened to encompass reuse – inextricably linked to the central themes, particularly when considered through a biographical approach
Cuisine and Urban Identities in Medieval England
Identity is formed and reproduced through our relationships with human and non-human others. This paper applies this perspective to conduct an archaeological investigation of how identities emerged in urban environments during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries through cuisine. This is achieved through a comparative analysis of food remains and the associated material culture from a range of medieval sites in Hampshire of different size and …
Conquest, ceramics, continuity and change. Beyond representational approaches to continuity and change in early medieval E ngland
Studies of A nglo‐ N orman material culture, and pottery in particular, have struggled to see how processes of change are reflected in the material record. In this paper I propose a new approach to the analysis of this material. By reconstructing how people interacted with objects, we can see how the agency to create A nglo‐ N orman E ngland was distributed through interactions between people and their surroundings. Furthermore, rather than being…
Molecular evidence for the mixing of M eat, F ish and V egetables in A nglo‐ S axon coarseware from H amwic, UK
Absorbed lipid residues from 24 seventh‐ to ninth‐century coarseware potsherds from the major A nglo‐ S axon trading centre of H amwic (Southampton, UK ) were analysed by gas chromatography – mass spectrometry ( GC – MS ) in order to reconstruct the dietary habits of its population. The results show that the vessels were used for preparing ruminant fats and leafy vegetables. In addition, evidence was found for a minor contribution of aquatic food…
Middens, memory and the effect of waste. Beyond symbolic meaning in archaeological deposits. An early medieval case study
Building upon the debate published in volume 19 of Archaeological dialogues , this contribution explores how, rather than seeing deposits as meaningful, we can move to explore the processes through which things and spaces become waste as well as the broader social effects of these processes in relation to elements of identity and sense of place. An extended case study of depositional practice in the early medieval settlement of Hamwic (Southampto…
Assessing urban fortunes in six late medieval ports
Variations in the fortunes of six late medieval ports in Sussex are considered using data derived from archaeological excavations. Several indicators are used to assess differences in urban fortunes and to critique the concept of urban ‘decline’. The interpretive framework of assemblage theory is then used to examine why the fortunes of these ports varied. The article argues for a turn from discussions of decay and decline towards considerations …
Exploring Text and Objects
A study was undertaken to assess the potential of the integrated analysis of metalwork excavated from medieval (late 13th–16th-century) rural settlements in the midlands of England and inventories (dating from c 1370–c 1440) drawn from the royal escheators’ records for the same region. The study aimed to explore the value and meaning of objects to the non-elite members of rural communities and focussed on three classes of artefact: metal vessels,…
Objects, Environment, and Everyday Life in Medieval Europe
This volume presents Europe-wide perspectives on urban life in medieval Europe through the study of artefacts and environmental remains. \n \nArtefacts and environmental remains are abundant from archaeological excavations across Europe, but until now they have most commonly been used to accompany broader narratives built on historical sources and studies of topography and buildings, rather than being studied as important evidence in their own ri…
Decline or Transformation? Archaeology and the Late Medieval ‘Urban Decline’ in Southern England
Archaeological evidence is used to examine how urban life changed in the later medieval towns of Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire in southern England, in light of ongoing debates about the existence of a fifteenth-century urban ‘decline’. The article proposes that rather than seeking evidence of decline, we should consider how and why experiences of urban life vary. The role of towns in commercial and political networks is highlighted as a key cause…
Assemblage Theory and Town Foundation in Medieval England
It is proposed that our understanding of medieval town foundation is limited by a failure to appreciate that ‘town’ is a relational category. It is argued that urban character emerges from social relations, with some sets of social relationship revealing urbanity and others not, as places develop along distinctive, but related, trajectories. This argument is developed through the application of assemblage theory to the development of towns in thi…
Ceramics and Coastal Communities in Medieval (Twelfth–Fourteenth Century) Europe
Using the example of pottery imported into the Channel ports of southern England, an approach to examining the role of pottery in the emergence and mediation of coastal communities is proposed here. Building on recent scholarship, it is argued that it is no longer tenable to see pottery as a carrier of identity, or as part of a ‘cultural package’, with meaning emerging with identity as people interact with pottery within and without port environm…
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Consumption and the ‘Social Self’ in Medieval Southern England
Over the last 30 years we have become increasingly aware of the commercialising nature of the medieval English economy. However, these insights have had little impact on narratives of consumption, which persist in seeing it as a characteristic of modernity. Here it is argued that we must move away from seeing an early modern consumer revolution and instead think about consumption in medieval society, particularly to examine the implications of co…
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 th…
Patrick Ottaway . Winchester
Patrick Ottaway . Winchester: Swithun's ‘City of Happiness and Good Fortune’: an archaeological assessment. 2017. Oxford & Havertown (PA): Oxbow; 978-1-78570-449-9 hardback £40. - Volume 92 Issue 361
Urban consumption
"Urban consumption: Tracing urbanity in the archaeological record of Aarhus c. AD 800–1800." Norwegian Archaeological Review, 51(1-2), pp. 190–191
Assemblage urbanism. Becoming urban in late medieval Southampton
It is proposed that assemblage theory offers the possibility of exploring archaeological evidence in innovative ways, in order to write alternative narratives of urban development. By combining historical and archaeological scholarship with work in contemporary urban geography, it is proposed that the concept of urban decline in the later Middle Ages is problematic and a more fruitful alternative approach would be to focus on the transformation o…
People, possessions and domestic space in the late medieval escheators’ records
The medieval English escheator was a royal official who seized the goods and chattels of felons, fugitives and outlaws for the crown’s benefit. This article uses escheators’ inquests and accounts to ask what information exists about the location of forfeited possessions at the point of their appraisal by the escheator, and what is revealed about the use of space in the houses and outbuildings of lower status people? We also ask more general quest…
Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households 1300-1600. Data Paper
The data in the related digital archive was collected to examine the archaeological and historical evidence for material culture in English medieval rural households, with the aim of gaining a fuller picture than what might be attainable by looking only at objects or documents in isolation. The digital archive provides a starting point for anyone wishing to research aspects of medieval rural settlement
The Archaeology of Emptiness? Understanding Open Urban Spaces in the Medieval World
Using examples from medieval Europe and Africa, an approach to understanding urban open spaces is proposed. We argue that new digital and high-resolution methodologies, combined with interpretive frameworks which stress the affective capacities of the material world, call for a reappraisal of open spaces as places of disruption, creativity, and emergent urbanity. We advance an intensive approach to create a methodological basis on which to reimag…
Finding Oxford's medieval Jewry using organic residue analysis, faunal records and historical documents
Food is often one of the most distinctive expressions of social, religious, cultural or ethnic groups. However, the archaeological identification of specific religious dietary practices, including the Jewish tradition of keepingkosher, associated with ritual food practices and taboos, is very rare. This is arguably one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundament…
Examining Temporality and Difference
A new theoretical approach to medieval rural settlement, built on the concept of intensity, is proposed. It is argued that analysing settlements as intensive spaces creates new opportunities to explore the emergence of difference in medieval lived experience. The approach is intended to overcome the challenges posed by approaches to medieval architecture framed by binary divisions ( e.g . inside/outside). Drawing on posthuman thought, it is argue…
History (29 works) · Archaeology (24 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (19 works) · History (19 works) · Medieval Literature and History (17 works) · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Art (13 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (13 works) · Geography (12 works)