Aleks Pluskowski

The zooarchaeology of medieval ‘Christendom’: ideology, the treatment of animals and the making of medieval Europe

Abstract The formation of Christendom – of Europe – was associated with a standardized worldview expressing dominion over the natural world. While some sections of medieval society, specifically monasteries and the aristocratic class, appear to have developed this paradigm, there is also evidence for heterogeneity in practice and belief. Zooarchaeologists have accumulated vast quantities of data from medieval contexts which has enabled the ecological signatures of specific social groups to be identified, and how these developed from the latter centuries of the first millennium ad. It is possible from this to consider whether trends in animal exploitation can be associated with the Christian world view of dominion, and with the very idea of what it meant to be Christian. This may enable zooarchaeologists to situate the ecological trends of the Middle Ages within the context of Europeanization, and the consolidation of a Christian society.

The Archaeology of the Military Orders: The Material Culture of Holy War

THIS PAPER reviews the current state of research into the archaeology of the military orders. It contrasts the advances made by historians and archaeologists, with the latter continuing to focus on the particularism of individual sites, with an emphasis on architectural analyses. Historians have contributed new insights by adopting a supranational approach. This paper argues that archaeologists can build on this by adopting a more problem-oriented, comparative approach. Drawing on examples from frontier and heartland territories, archaeological approaches are subdivided into material investment, material identity and cultural landscapes, to place sites of the military orders within long-term, multi-scalar contexts. This contributes to a broader social and economic understanding of the orders, who contributed significantly to urbanisation, rural development and trade, and invested in material expressions of their authority and ideology. The paper concludes that more holistic, interregional approaches will move the archaeological study of the military orders forward.

Religious Transformations in the Middle Ages: Towards a New Archaeological Agenda

UNDERSTANDING RELIGIOUS CHANGE between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Reformation forms one of the cornerstones of medieval archaeology, but has been riven by period, denominational, and geographical divisions. This paper lays the groundwork for a fundamental rethink of archaeological approaches to medieval religions, by adopting an holistic framework that places Christian, pagan, Islamic and Jewish case studies of religious transformation in a long-term, cross-cultural perspective. Focused around the analytical themes of ‘hybridity and resilience’ and ‘tempo and trajectories’, our approach shifts attention away from the singularities of national narratives of religious conversion, towards a deeper understanding of how religious beliefs, practices and identity were renegotiated by medieval people in their daily lives.

Naomi Sykes: Beastly Questions. Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues

Having been a long-time admirer of Naomi Sykes’ work, and in particular of her groundbreaking and influential The Norman Conquest: A Zooarchaeological Perspective (2007), it was no surprise to find this latest book a lucid, thoughtprovoking and challenging review of the state of the discipline. The study of archaeological bone may seem niche and unglamorous, but Sykes has created a new and, more importantly, accessible manifesto for future zooarchaeologists. The idea for the book came from Sykes’ module taught at Nottingham from 2010, and this is made clear in the preface, in which cohorts of students, some who have gone on to work as zooarchaeologists, are warmly acknowledged. The book is divided into nine thematic chapters, and Sykes connects the myriad debates and case studies – largely drawn from her own research on British sites – through an informal and highly personalised style of writing, which is both appropriate and refreshing. Indeed, the first chapter pitches Beastly Questions as a reaction against the perceived stagnation of the discipline, a symptom of the inevitably time-consuming cycle of recording, analysis and report-writing, which is then rewarded more often than not by confinement to largely ignored appendices. Sykes observes how this tendency begins with teaching undergraduates the practical skills of bone identification, leaving little time for demonstrating the value of ‘social zooarchaeology’. This, in turn, does not encourage zooarchaeologists to take the lead in major research projects, although there are notable exceptions. Beastly Questions is intended to fill the gap in the teaching of social zooarchaeology (alongside Nerissa Russell’s Social Zooarchaeology (2011), which tackles a similar range of topics), as well as provoking established researchers to reflect on their own contribution to the broader field of archaeology and, indeed, beyond, to the interdisciplinary study of human culture. The chapters consider various themes leading from one to the other, and throughout there is a consistent emphasis on diachronic change. Sykes begins by tackling taxonomy and our reliance on the Linnean paradigm, which, although resulting in methodological standardisation linked to a globally recognised system of biological classification, may lead us astray in projecting such a value system onto past societies. The situation is not as dire as Sykes describes, as many anthropologists, archaeologists and historians have recognised differential value systems in other cultures (and Sykes cites a number), but a consideration of ‘folk taxonomy’ is certainly not the staple of routine zooarchaeological reports. Sykes herself does not abandon modern taxonomy; chickens, horses, lynx and aurochs were certainly understood differently in the past, particularly in terms of their relationships with other species which today are framed by the evolutionary paradigm which underpins zooarchaeology. But it is enough to at least provoke the reader into considering alternative taxonomies. She then goes on to consider the value of the other staples of the discipline: quantification is considered as the start of analysis; skeletal representation can shed important light on disposal and depositional praxis; reconsidering ‘death’ profiles as ‘life profiles’, alongside the cultural relevance of sex, shifts the focus of analysis onto the animal as a living being, rather than simply a carcass. The suite of new analytical techniques, particularly isotopes, DNA and lipid analyses, enables the lives of individual animals to be reconstructed or at least re-contextualised. This emphasis on the living animal is a running theme throughout Beastly Questions. The following chapter on animal ‘revolutions’ considers the established topics of domestication, secondary products and agricultural innovations, with a pronounced focus on how and why these may have taken place and, most importantly, their

Andrzej Buko. Archaeologia Polski Wczesno'sredniowiecznej: Odkrycia – hipotezy – interprtacje. The Archaeology of early Medieval Poland: Discoveries – hypotheses – interpretations; summary in English). 446 pages, 164 illustrations, 41 colour plates. 2005. Warszawa: Trio; 83-7436-023-2 hardback zl-46.

The volume is rich in information, though for some sites new investigations have been undertaken and others (for example the Lombard sites of Mombello, Collegno, the perched site of Miranduolo in Tuscany, Venice and Comacchio amongst the new town foundations) have recently entered the historical debate and are fundamental for the reconstruction of the Migration period in Italy. A summing up, bringing out the relationships between the data presented in the four chapters would also have been useful: beyond the political events that were to lead to the fragmentation of the peninsula and the natural catastrophes as agents of change in a period in which the Church emerged as ‘a new focus to a Roman society undergoing transformation’ (p. 505), factors that can certainly not be neglected, it would have been opportune to propose, or at least discuss, other interpretative keys, such as those recently proposed by Chris Wickham (2005), reasserting the central role of the economy, of the aristocracy and of taxation in the transformation of the Roman world.