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This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.
The articles of this volume present the majority of papers presented on the First International Workshop of the research group "Monies, Markets and Finance in China and East Asia" held at Heidelberg 12-16 October 2006. Contributions explore the production and circulation of currencies in Qing China, Tokugawa Japan and the Ryukyu kingdom, the function of ad hoc administrative structures and the sale of offices in the Qing period, with research on Qing demography, links between global silver flows and local events, and European conceptions of the value of monetary metals providing comparative perspective.
This second volume, based on the excavations of the Viking town Kaupang 2000-2003, presents find types used in economic transactions - coins, hacksilver, ingots, weights and balances. Changes in type and volume of economic transactions at Kaupang and in Scandinavia are discussed, and the economic mentality of Viking crafts- and tradesmen is explored. Earlier, the study of Viking silver currency was based mainly on hoards containing coins and hacksilver. In this volume, the combined study of the find types mentioned, as well as the sophisticated chronology of settlements finds from sites like Kaupang, gives a completely new insight into economy and exchange. In the early 9th century, silver a...
The Companion to the Hanseatic League discusses the importance of the Hanseatic League for the social and economic history of pre-modern northern Europe. Established already as early as the twelfth century, the towns that formed the Hanseatic League created an important network of commerce throughout the Baltic and North Sea area. From Russia in the east, to England and France in the west, the cities of the Hanseatic League created a vast northern maritime trade network. The aim of this volume is to present a “state” of the field English-language volume by some of the most respected Hanse scholars. Contributors are Mike Burkhardt, Ulf Christian Ewert, Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, Donald J. Harreld, Carsten Jahnke, Michael North, Jürgen Sarnowsky and Stephan Selzer.
The first of four volumes, which examine non-ferrous precious and base metal mining, metallurgy and minting in the Middle Ages, encompasses the history of these activities during the years 425-1125. It describes the shift in the focus of world precious metal production from the Western Roman Empire -350), to the Sassanid and Byzantine Empires (350-650) and Central Asia (480-930). Central Asia dominated for almost half a millennium world precious and base metal production, before output collapsed and an industrial diaspora caused the foci of silver and gold production to shift to Europe and sub-Saharan Africa respectively (930-1125). Mining activity in Central Asia, 480-930 is examined in dep...
Recent research has established the continued importance of engagement with the classical tradition to the formation of scholarly, philosophical, theological, and scientific knowledge well into the eighteenth century. The Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age is the first attempt to adopt a comparative approach to this phenomenon. An international team of scholars explores the differences and similarities – across time and place – in how the study and use of ancient texts and ideas shaped a wide range of fields: nascent classics, sexuality, chronology, metrology, the study of the soul, medicine, the history of Judaeo-Christian interaction, and biblical criticism. By adopting a comparative approach, this volume brings out some of the most important factors in explaining the contours of early modern intellectual life. Contributors: Karen Hollewand, Dmitri Levitin, Jan Machielsen, Ian Maclean, C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Cesare Pastorino, Michelle Pfeffer, Jetze Touber, Timothy Twining, and Floris Verhaart.
The book Southwest China in Regional and Global Perspectives (c. 1600-1911) is dedicated to important issues in society, trade, and local policy in the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan during the late phase of the Qing period. It combines the methods of various disciplines to bring more light into the neglected history of a region that witnessed a faster population growth than any other region in China during that age. The contributions to the volume analyse conflicts and arrangements in immigrant societies, problems of environmental change, the economic significance of copper as the most important “export” product, topographical and legal obstacles in trade and transport, specific problems in inter-regional trade, and the roots of modern transnational enterprise.
This is the first comprehensive study of an ingenious number-notation from the Middle Ages that was devised by monks and mainly used in monasteries. A simple notation for representing any number up to 99 by a single cipher, somehow related to an ancient Greek shorthand, first appeared in early-13th-century England, brought from Athens by an English monk. A second, more useful version, due to Cistercian monks, is first attested in the late 13th century in what is today the border country between Belgium and France: with this any number up to 9999 can be represented by a single cipher. The ciphers were used in scriptoria - for the foliation of manuscripts, for writing year-numbers, preparing i...
The design, construction and verification of complex two- and three-dimensional shapes in architecture and ship geometry have always been a particularly demanding part of the art of engineering. Before science-based structural design and analysis were applied in the construction industries, i.e., before 1800, the task of conceiving, documenting and fabricating such shapes constituted the most significant interface between practitioner's knowledge and learned knowledge, above all in geometry. The history of shape development in these two disciplines therefore promises especially valuable insights into the knowledge history of shape creation. This volume is a collection of contributions by outstanding scholars in their fields of study, archaeology, history of architecture and ship design, in classic antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The volume presents a comparative knowledge history in these two distinct branches of construction engineering.