Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West
Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West

Author: Jamie Kreiner

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-10-27

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0300255551

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An exploration of life in the early medieval West, using pigs as a lens to investigate agriculture, ecology, economy, and philosophy From North Africa to the British Isles, pigs were a crucial part of agriculture and culture in the early medieval period. Jamie Kreiner examines how this ubiquitous species was integrated into early medieval ecologies and transformed the way that people thought about the world around them. In this world, even the smallest things could have far‑reaching consequences. Kreiner tracks the interlocking relationships between pigs and humans by drawing on textual and visual evidence, bioarchaeology and settlement archaeology, and mammal biology. She shows how early medieval communities bent their own lives in order to accommodate these tricky animals—and how in the process they reconfigured their agrarian regimes, their fiscal policies, and their very identities. In the end, even the pig’s own identity was transformed: by the close of the early Middle Ages, it had become a riveting metaphor for Christianity itself.

Bach's Feet
Bach's Feet

Author: David Yearsley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-01-19

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0521199018

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Yearsley explores the cultural significance of making music with hands and feet, a mode of performance unique to the organ.

The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages
The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages

Author: Shane Bobrycki

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-11-19

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0691189692

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The importance of collective behavior in early medieval Europe By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did not disappear in early medieval Europe. In The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages, Bobrycki shows that although demographic change may have dispersed the urban multitudes of Greco-Roman civilization, collective behavior retained its social importance even when crowds were scarce. Most historians have seen early medieval Europe as a world without crowds. In fact, Bobrycki argues, early medieval European sources are full of crowds—although perhaps not the sort historians have trained themselves to look for. Harvests, markets, festivals, religious rites, and political assemblies were among the gatherings used to regulate resources and demonstrate legitimacy. Indeed, the refusal to assemble and other forms of “slantwise” assembly became a weapon of the powerless. Bobrycki investigates what happened when demographic realities shifted, but culture, religion, and politics remained bound by the past. The history of crowds during the five hundred years between the age of circuses and the age of crusades, Bobrycki shows, tells an important story—one of systemic and scalar change in economic and social life and of reorganization in the world of ideas and norms.

Guilty Pigs
Guilty Pigs

Author: Katy Barnett

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2022-02-02

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 1743822154

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An illuminating and entertaining history of the law’s treatment of animals Trespassing bees, murderous zebras, reasonable cows ... Ever since Biblical times, animals have been clashing with human laws. What to do with animals that injure or kill people, in particular, has long troubled humans. In medieval Europe, ‘killer’ animals – horses, cattle and most often pigs, which were notorious for eating young children – were put on trial. Even in the early twentieth century, circus elephants who lashed out at their keepers in America were summarily executed for their crimes. In Guilty Pigs, animal law experts Katy Barnett and Jeremy Gans guide readers through the philosophy and practice of animal-related law, from the very earliest cases to the issues we are debating today, including the responsibilities of pet owners and the application of human rights to animals. They also cover hunting rights, using animals to solve crime, protecting animals from abuse and neglect, and the unique nature of owning a living being. Filled with lively and sometimes bizarre case studies, this is a fascinating and entertaining read – for all lovers of misbehaving creatures. Katy Barnett is a professor of law at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of the young adult novel The Earth Below and co-author of Remedies in Australian Private Law. Jeremy Gans is a professor of law at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Modern Criminal Law of Australia and The Ouija Board Jurors: Mystery, Mischief and Misery in the Jury System, a true crime book. He is a co-author of Uniform Evidence.

The Israeli Path to Neoliberalism
The Israeli Path to Neoliberalism

Author: Arie Krampf

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-01-19

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1351759590

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In recent years, Israel has deeply and quickly transformed itself from a self-perceived social-democratic regime into a privatized and liberalized "Start-Up Nation" and a highly divided society. This transition to neoliberalism has been coupled with the adoption of a hawkish and isolationist foreign policy. How can such a deep change be explained? How can a state presumably founded on the basis of socialist ideas, turn within a few decades into a country characterized by a level of inequality comparable to that of the United States? By presenting a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the evolution of the Israeli economy from the 1930s to the 1990s, The Israeli Path to Neoliberalism seeks to explain the Israeli path to neoliberalism. It debunks the ‘from-socialism-to-liberalization’ narrative, arguing that the evolution of Israeli capitalism cannot be described or explained as a simple transplantation of imported economic models from advanced liberal democracies. Rather, it asserts that the Israeli variant of capitalism is the product of the encounter between imported Western institutional models and policy ideas, on the one hand, and domestic economic, social and security policy problems on the other. This mechanism of change enables us to understand the factors that gave rise to Israel’s unique combination of liberalization and strong national sentiments. Providing an in-depth analysis of Israel’s transformation to neoliberalism, the book is a valuable resource for those studying the economic history of Israel, or the political economy of late-developing countries.

Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice, c.775-900
Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice, c.775-900

Author: Claire Burridge

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-07-15

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9004466177

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Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice explores the practicality and applicability of the medical recipes recorded in early medieval manuscripts. It takes an original, dual approach to these overlooked and understudied texts by not only analysing their practical usability, but by also re-evaluating these writings in the light of osteological evidence. Could those individuals with access to the manuscripts have used them in the context of therapy? And would they have wanted to do so? In asking these questions, this book unpacks longstanding assumptions about the intended purposes of medical texts, offering a new perspective on the relationship between medical knowledge and practice.

Captives and Corsairs
Captives and Corsairs

Author: Gillian Weiss

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2011-03-11

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 0804777845

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Captives and Corsairs uncovers a forgotten story in the history of relations between the West and Islam: three centuries of Muslim corsair raids on French ships and shores and the resulting captivity of tens of thousands of French subjects and citizens in North Africa. Through an analysis of archival materials, writings, and images produced by contemporaries, the book fundamentally revises our picture of France's emergence as a nation and a colonial power, presenting the Mediterranean as an essential vantage point for studying the rise of France. It reveals how efforts to liberate slaves from North Africa shaped France's perceptions of the Muslim world and of their own "Frenchness". From around 1550 to 1830, freeing these captives evolved from an expression of Christian charity to a method of state building and, eventually, to a rationale for imperial expansion. Captives and Corsairs thus advances new arguments about the fluid nature of slavery and firmly links captive redemption to state formation—and in turn to the still vital ideology of liberatory conquest.

The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science

Author: Seb Falk

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1324002948

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Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk. "Falk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight." —Alex Orlando, Discover Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium
Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium

Author: Levi Roach

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-08-09

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0691217866

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An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As Levi Roach illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signaled major shifts in society and political culture, shifts which would lay the foundations for the European ancien régime. Spanning documentary traditions across France, England, Germany and northern Italy, Roach examines five sets of falsified texts to demonstrate how forged records produced in this period gave voice to new collective identities within and beyond the Church. Above all, he indicates how this fad for falsification points to new attitudes toward past and present—a developing fascination with the signs of antiquity. These conclusions revise traditional master narratives about the development of antiquarianism in the modern era, showing that medieval forgers were every bit as sophisticated as their Renaissance successors. Medieval forgers were simply interested in different subjects—the history of the Church and their local realms, rather than the literary world of classical antiquity. A comparative history of falsified records at a crucial turning point in the Middle Ages, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium offers valuable insights into how institutions and individuals rewrote and reimagined the past.