Everyday Products in the Middle Ages: Crafts, Consumption and the individual in Northern Europe c. AD 800-1600

by Gitte Hansen (Editor), Steven Ashby (Editor), Irene Baug (Editor)

Overview

The medieval marketplace is a familiar setting in popular and academic accounts of the Middle Ages, but we actually know very little about the people involved in the transactions that took place there, how their lives were influenced by those transactions, or about the complex networks of individuals whose actions allowed raw materials to be extracted, hewn into objects, stored and ultimately shipped for market. Twenty diverse case studies combine leading edge techniques and novel theoretical approaches to illuminate the identities and lives of these much overlooked ordinary people, painting of a number of detailed portraits to explore the worlds of actors involved in the lives of everyday products - objects of bone, leather, stone, ceramics, and base metal - and their production and use in medieval northern Europe. In so doing, this book seeks to draw attention away from the emergent trend to return to systems and global models, and restore to centre stage what should be the archaeologists most important concern: the people of the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782978060
Publisher:	Oxbow Books
Publication date:	02/05/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	41 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Gitte Hansen is an associate professor in medieval archaeology at the University Museum of Bergen. With the point of outset in a broad specter of 11-13th century urban material culture, her research focuses on different aspects of the identities of ‘ordinary people’ in the Middle Ages. She is particularly interested in craftspeople and consumers of affordable crafts that lived their lives in the Scandinavian area with bordering regions.
Steven Ashby is a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology, University of York with specialism in the archaeology of portable material culture and the use of animal products in craft and industry in the medieval period. He is particularly interested in the relationship between the various regions of Britain and Scandinavia before, during, and after the Viking Age.
Irene Baug is a postdoctoral researcher in archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen. Her research interests deal with social, socio-political and economic aspects of the Viking Age and the Middle Ages. Her research has mainly focused upon utilization of different outfield resources – such as production of different stone products c. AD 700-1500, and distribution and trade of these products within Northern Europe. Her work is based on own archaeological fieldwork, artefacts studies and multidisciplinary cooperation.

Table of Contents

List of contributors
Preface

Chapter 1: Everyday products in the Middle Ages: Crafts, Consumption and the Individual in Northern Europe c. AD 800-1600: An Introduction
Steven P. Ashby, Gitte Hansen, and Irene Baug

Chapter 2: ‘With staff in hand, and dog at heel’? What did it mean to be an ‘Itinerant’ artisan?
Steven P. Ashby

Chapter 3: Itinerant Craftspeople in 12th Century Bergen, Norway - Aspects of Their Social Identities
Gitte Hansen

Chapter 4: Urban craftspeople at Viking-age Kaupang
Unn Pedersen

Chapter 5. Crafts in the landscape of the powerless
A combmaker’s workshop at Viborg Søndersø AD 1020-1024
Jette Linaa

Chapter 6. Bone-workers in medieval Viljandi, Estonia: comparison of finds from downtown and the Order’s castle
Heidi Luik

Chapter 7: Consumers and Artisans: Marketing Amber and Jet in the Early Medieval British Isles
Carolyn Coulter

Chapter 8. The home-made shoe, a glimpse of a hidden, but most ‘affordable’, craft.
Quita Mould

Chapter 9. Fashion and Necessity. Anglo-Norman leatherworkers and changing markets
Quita Mould and Esther Cameron


Chapter 10. Tracing the nameless actors: Leatherworking and production of leather artefacts in the town of Turku and Turku Castle, SW Finland
Janne Harjula

Chapter 11. Ambiguous Stripes: a Sign for Fashionable Wear in Medieval Tartu
Riina Rammo,

Chapter 12. Silk finds from Oseberg: Production and distribution of high status markers across ethnic boundaries
Marianne Vedeler

Chapter 13. The soapstone vessel production and trade of Agder and its actors
Torbjørn P. Schou

Chapter 14. Actors in quarrying. Production and distribution of quernstones and bakestones during the Viking Age and the Middle Ages
Irene Baug

Chapter 15. The role of Laach Abbey in the medieval quarrying and stone trade
Meinrad Pohl

Chapter 16. Iron producers in Hedmark in the medieval period - who were they?
Bernt Rundberget

Chapter 17. What did the blacksmiths do in Swedish towns? Some new results
Hans Andersson

Chapter 18. The Iron Age blacksmith, simply a craftsman?
Roger Jørgensen

Chapter 19. Bohemian Glass in the North: Producers, distributors and consumers of late medieval vessel glass
Georg Haggrén

Chapter 20. If sherds could tell: imported ceramics from the Hanseatic hinterland in Bergen, Norway. Producers, traders and consumers: who were they, and how were they connected?
Volker Demuth

Chapter 21. Marine trade and transport-related crafts and their actors: People without archaeology?
Natascha Mehler

Editorial Reviews

Occasionally in the case of edited books on feels a bit short-changed… Here, however, at a pretty affordable price, a full 21 papers are offered, nearly all linked closely to the ‘Individual’ of the volume’s title, and all adding often fascinating and informative insights into production and consumption… the whole volume will, I am sure, bring alive to all readers many of these ‘everyday’ craftspeople, products and process of the early to late medieval North European world.

, MSRG31 - Neil Christie

So much archaeological research on the medieval period purports to be about people but is actually about processes and ‘-isms’. In this volume, however, while the broad concepts and issues are never farm from the surface, real people making everyday items are at the forefront, and their decisions, practices, skills and knowledge – plus something of the hustle and bustle of daily life – emerge vividly from the detailed accounts presented in individual chapters, most of which are well supported by illustrations.

Dawn Hadley

"...the archaeological analysis takes scholars to topics that are otherwise ignored by textual sources."

The Medieval Review