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vIMC Day Four
Yesterday also had some excellent stuff. I did skip the morning sessions, since there wasn't much for me there, and it was necessary to go do some food shopping.
In the afternoon:
The Medieval Environment
Lydia Allué Andrés spoke about the effects of the Little Ice Age in the Communidad de Aldeas, and about the villages that were abandoned there during that time because the altitude limit on where settlement could be reduced considerably. Crops were lost to hail every year from 1413 to 1428 in one village (Almohaja) and there are frequent mentions of frost and snow. There was a site between two rivers, which was great during optimal climate periods, but pretty unpleasant when there were frequent floods. And there's evidence that cereal fields were converted to pasture, and vineyards just plain abandoned.
Todd Preston presented on salmon and pike in Early Medieval English literature and ecology. This included, of course, mention of the Anglo-Saxon Fish Event Horizon, which is one of my very favourite things in history. There's the interesting detail that salmon occur more in texts than pike, but pike appear more in the historical record (like cows and pigs in Ireland). Pike bones are liable to last longer, and salmon - which can be caught at sea, or at least in nets as they swim into estuaries - coincide with the greater number of documents after the FEH, so there's some calculation and guesswork involved in which was actually eaten more. Also the interesting datum that both fish were ABSOLUTELY FECKING ENORMOUS in period, growing to well over 2m in length. I do not fancy trying to convert a 2m pike from angry river monster to dinner.
New Perspectives on Daily Life and Material Culture
Jane Holmstrom presented a study of diet of elites in Saint Jean de Todon, France, via stable isotope analysis. I did not know that millet stands out in this analysis; apparently it has a different form of carbon in it than most other plants. She was trying to see if the elite burials in the graveyard there - reckoned as being closer to the church and/or having grave markers - had a different diet. There wasn't enough material for conclusions before COVID stopped stuff, but there will be soon. There was mention of one chap who apparently had a post-mortem status change, being exhumed and reburied closer to the church - indeed, right at the door. And there was also the note that while the isotope analysis can pick up animal protein very well, it can't distinguish between meat and dairy consumption.
Chris Woolgar spoke about gifts, exchange and particularly inheritance of silver plate (cups and platters) in England, 1200-1500. There are apparently about 45,000 extant medieval wills in England, which give a lot of insight into material culture. There's very little of it left, it having been mostly melted down since. Cups, it turns out, are really important in memorial culture in this era, to the degree that some cups, inherited over multiple generations and associated with specific original owners, became "secular relics", clearly recognisable to anyone in or near the family. Some of these - and other plate - were eventually donated to parish churches to become chalices and the like; turning secular relics into sacred ones.
In the afternoon:
The Medieval Environment
Lydia Allué Andrés spoke about the effects of the Little Ice Age in the Communidad de Aldeas, and about the villages that were abandoned there during that time because the altitude limit on where settlement could be reduced considerably. Crops were lost to hail every year from 1413 to 1428 in one village (Almohaja) and there are frequent mentions of frost and snow. There was a site between two rivers, which was great during optimal climate periods, but pretty unpleasant when there were frequent floods. And there's evidence that cereal fields were converted to pasture, and vineyards just plain abandoned.
Todd Preston presented on salmon and pike in Early Medieval English literature and ecology. This included, of course, mention of the Anglo-Saxon Fish Event Horizon, which is one of my very favourite things in history. There's the interesting detail that salmon occur more in texts than pike, but pike appear more in the historical record (like cows and pigs in Ireland). Pike bones are liable to last longer, and salmon - which can be caught at sea, or at least in nets as they swim into estuaries - coincide with the greater number of documents after the FEH, so there's some calculation and guesswork involved in which was actually eaten more. Also the interesting datum that both fish were ABSOLUTELY FECKING ENORMOUS in period, growing to well over 2m in length. I do not fancy trying to convert a 2m pike from angry river monster to dinner.
New Perspectives on Daily Life and Material Culture
Jane Holmstrom presented a study of diet of elites in Saint Jean de Todon, France, via stable isotope analysis. I did not know that millet stands out in this analysis; apparently it has a different form of carbon in it than most other plants. She was trying to see if the elite burials in the graveyard there - reckoned as being closer to the church and/or having grave markers - had a different diet. There wasn't enough material for conclusions before COVID stopped stuff, but there will be soon. There was mention of one chap who apparently had a post-mortem status change, being exhumed and reburied closer to the church - indeed, right at the door. And there was also the note that while the isotope analysis can pick up animal protein very well, it can't distinguish between meat and dairy consumption.
Chris Woolgar spoke about gifts, exchange and particularly inheritance of silver plate (cups and platters) in England, 1200-1500. There are apparently about 45,000 extant medieval wills in England, which give a lot of insight into material culture. There's very little of it left, it having been mostly melted down since. Cups, it turns out, are really important in memorial culture in this era, to the degree that some cups, inherited over multiple generations and associated with specific original owners, became "secular relics", clearly recognisable to anyone in or near the family. Some of these - and other plate - were eventually donated to parish churches to become chalices and the like; turning secular relics into sacred ones.
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