Making Early Medieval Societies PDF Download

Author: Kate Cooper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107138809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Examines the fundamental question of what held the societies of the post-Roman world together.

Author: Kate Cooper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316483495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Making Early Medieval Societies explores a fundamental question: what held the small- and large-scale communities of the late Roman and early medieval West together, at a time when the world seemed to be falling apart? Historians and anthropologists have traditionally asked parallel questions about the rise and fall of empires and how societies create a sense of belonging and social order in the absence of strong governmental institutions. This book draws on classic and more recent anthropologists' work to consider dispute settlement and conflict management during and after the end of the Roman Empire. Contributions range across the internecine rivalries of late Roman bishops, the marital disputes of warrior kings, and the tension between religious leaders and the unruly crowds in western Europe after the first millennium - all considering the mechanisms through which conflict could be harnessed as a force for social stability or an engine for social change.

Author: Bernhard Zeller
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526139839
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
This book explores social cohesion in rural settlements in western Europe from 700–1050, asking to what extent settlements, or districts, constituted units of social organisation. It focuses on the interactions, interconnections and networks of people who lived side by side – neighbours. Drawing evidence from most of the current western European countries, the book plots and interrogates the very different practices of this wide range of regions in a systematically comparative framework. It considers the variety of local responses to the supra-local agents of landlords and rulers and the impact, such as it was, of those agents on the small-scale residential group. It also assesses the impact on local societies of the values, instructions and demands of the wider literate world of Christianity, as delivered by local priests.

Author: Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503585659
Category : Civilization, Medieval
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The goal of this book is to discuss the theoretical challenges posed by the study of social and political inequality of local societies in Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages. Traditional approaches have defined rural communities as passive bodies, poor and unstable in the framework of a self-sufficient economy. In the last few decades the crisis on social approaches both in medieval history and archaeology have missed the opportunity to re-evaluate the role of peasantry and other subaltern groups, even if new written ad material evidences have eroded the traditional assumptions. Conversely, scholars focused on elites and aristocracies have promoted very powerful agendas and projects. As a consequence of the 2007-2008 recession, Social Sciences have begun to be interested in social and economic inequality, opening new avenues for a reassessment of social history. The Early Medieval period has been identified by different scholars as a key term for the analysis of political complexity and social inequality in a long-term perspective. The study of local societies has become one of the most fruitful arenas to innovate medieval archaeology and history, using approaches related to the microhistory. This book, dedicated to Chris Wickham, is formed by fourteen papers centred on the study, from both written and material records, of early medieval local communities, which tend to propose a complex framework of social inequality in the local scale.

Author: Robert Ford Campany
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824833333
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Honorable Mention, Joseph Levenson Prize (pre-1900 category), Association for Asian Studies By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)—deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status in the centuries leading up to 350 C.E. have traditionally been portrayed as secretive and hermit-like figures. This groundbreaking study offers a very different view of xian-seekers in late classical and early medieval China. It suggests that transcendence did not involve a withdrawal from society but rather should be seen as a religious role situated among other social roles and conceived in contrast to them. Robert Campany argues that the much-discussed secrecy surrounding ascetic disciplines was actually one important way in which practitioners presented themselves to others. He contends, moreover, that many adepts were not socially isolated at all but were much sought after for their power to heal the sick, divine the future, and narrate their exotic experiences. The book moves from a description of the roles of xian and xian-seekers to an account of how individuals filled these roles, whether by their own agency or by others’—or, often, by both. Campany summarizes the repertoire of features that constituted xian roles and presents a detailed example of what analyses of those cultural repertoires look like. He charts the functions of a basic dialectic in the self-presentations of adepts and examines their narratives and relations with others, including family members and officials. Finally, he looks at hagiographies as attempts to persuade readers as to the identities and reputations of past individuals. His interpretation of these stories allows us to see how reputations were shaped and even co-opted—sometimes quite surprisingly—into the ranks of xian. Making Transcendents provides a nuanced discussion that draws on a sophisticated grasp of diverse theoretical sources while being thoroughly grounded in traditional Chinese hagiographical, historiographical, and scriptural texts. The picture it presents of the quest for transcendence as a social phenomenon in early medieval China is original and provocative, as is the paradigm it offers for understanding the roles of holy persons in other societies.

Author: David Petts
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503528229
Category : Anglo-Saxons
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This series focuses on Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages and covers work in the areas of history, language & literature, archaeology, art history and religious studies. It brings together current scholarship on early medieval Britain with scholarship on western continental Europe and Viking Scandinavia; these areas have more traditionally been studied separately or in terms of the interaction of discrete cultures and regions. As well as advocating new approaches across geographical and political divisions, this series spans the conventional distinctions between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages on the one hand, and the Early Middle Ages and the twelfth century on the other. Responding to renewed interest in the powerful early medieval kingdom of Northumbria, this volume uses evidence drawn from archaeology, documentary history, place-names, and artistic works to produce an unashamedly cross-disciplinary body of scholarship that addresses all aspects of Northumbria's past. Northumbria at its peak stretched from the River Humber to the Scottish highlands and westwards to the Irish Sea, producing saints, kings, and scholars with contacts across Europe, from Scandinavia, Ireland, and Francia to Rome itself. This volume unites papers on all aspects of this major European power of its day, from its origins in the fifth and sixth centuries from British and Anglo-Saxon chiefdoms, through its 'Golden Age' as eighth-century Europe's intellectual powerhouse, to its role as a key element of an international Viking kingdom. Where traditional scholarship has centred on the ecclesiastical high culture of the age of Bede, this work examines the kingdom's social and economic life and its origins and decline as well. There is a stress on approaching established bodies of material from new perspectives and engaging with wider debates in the field, including monumentality, the development of kingships, and the evolution of the early Church. Areas investigated include the kingdom's political history, its economy and society, and its wider place within Europe. Its unique artistic legacy, in the form of illuminated manuscripts and a rich sculptural tradition, is also explored. Book jacket.

Author: Anouk Busset
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789088909818
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The early medieval period witnessed one of the deepest and most significant transformations of European societies and cultures with the process of Christianisation. The emergence and establishment of Christianity created a new dimension of power in society with an appeal to supernatural forces combined with an access to a broader transnational authority. Carved stones did not merely reflect these changes, but enabled them within northern societies with traditions of sculpture and epigraphic representations. This book looks at three datasets of monuments from Ireland, Scotland and Sweden using an innovative comparative framework to offer new insights on these monuments and the societies that erected them.Analysed through the three major themes of place, movement, and memory, the case studies are presented from a holistic perspective comprising the monument, their landscape settings and historical and archaeological contexts (when available). The results of this research demonstrate that by means of comparisons across national boundaries, new interpretations emerge on the use and functions of early medieval carved stones. The thematic approach adopted emphasises similarities and contrasts in a more efficient manner than a geographical approach, freed from historiographical biases within scholarly traditions of 'Celtic' or 'Scandinavian' archaeologies. Furthermore, a multi-scale analysis places the monuments within their local contexts but also within a broader narrative of Christianisation.

Author: Kate Cooper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781316487792
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Making Early Medieval Societies explores a fundamental question: what held the small- and large-scale communities of the late Roman and early medieval West together, at a time when the world seemed to be falling apart? Historians and anthropologists have traditionally asked parallel questions about the rise and fall of empires and how societies create a sense of belonging and social order in the absence of strong governmental institutions. This book draws on classic and more recent anthropologists' work to consider dispute settlement and conflict management during and after the end of the Roman Empire. Contributions range across the internecine rivalries of late Roman bishops, the marital disputes of warrior kings, and the tension between religious leaders and the unruly crowds in western Europe after the first millennium - all considering the mechanisms through which conflict could be harnessed as a force for social stability or an engine for social change.

Author: Katharine Sykes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019265912X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In the early Middle Ages, the conversion of the early English kingdoms acted as a catalyst for significant social and cultural change. One of the most visible of these changes was the introduction of a new type of household: the monastic household. These reproduced through education and training, rather than biological means; their inhabitants practised celibacy as a lifelong state, rather than as a stage in the life course. Because monastic households depended on secular households to produce the next generation of recruits, previous studies have tended to view them as more mutable than their secular counterparts, which are implicitly regarded as natural and ahistorical. Katharine Sykes charts some of the significant changes to the structure of households between the seventh to eleventh centuries, as ideas of spiritual, non-biological reproduction first fostered in monastic households were adopted in royal households in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and as ideas about kinship that were generated in secular households, such as the relationship between genealogy and inheritance, were picked up and applied by their monastic counterparts. In place of binary divisions between secular and monastic, biological and spiritual, real and imagined, Sykes demonstrates that different forms of kinship and reproduction in this period were intimately linked.

Author: Wendy Swartz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231531001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 745

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Book Description
This innovative sourcebook builds a dynamic understanding of China's early medieval period (220–589) through an original selection and arrangement of literary, historical, religious, and critical texts. A tumultuous and formative era, these centuries saw the longest stretch of political fragmentation in China's imperial history, resulting in new ethnic configurations, the rise of powerful clans, and a pervasive divide between north and south. Deploying thematic categories, the editors sketch the period in a novel way for students and, by featuring many texts translated into English for the first time, recast the era for specialists. Thematic topics include regional definitions and tensions, governing mechanisms and social reality, ideas of self and other, relations with the unseen world, everyday life, and cultural concepts. Within each section, the editors and translators introduce the selected texts and provide critical commentary on their historical significance, along with suggestions for further reading and research.