This dissertation seeks to understand the relations between the Ottoman central administration and the Eastern Patriarchates. Against the current literature submitting these patriarchates to the authority of the Constantinopolitan patriarchs in the period following the Ottoman conquest, we suggest that such exclusive focus on the role of the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate prevents one from seeing the true networks of power in which the Eastern Patriarchates were engaged. To that end, in addition to the major patriarchal and missionary sources a large corpus of unpublished and unused Ottoman archival documentation has been consulted. During the first centuries of the Ottoman rule the Eastern Patriarchs benefited largely from the local Ottoman legal and administrative bodies, semi-autonomous provincial rulers, and foreign courts. In early 18th century, alongside the rise of Catholic missions among the Orthodox flock and hierarchy, and of a wealthy and powerful lay class supported by the central administration, a patriarchal elite class with close affinities to Istanbul began to interact with the Eastern Patriarchates. Getting closer to the offers of the central administration, in both administrative and economic terms, these patriarchates’ relations which were formerly dependent on local and foreign dynamics were largely replaced by the new networks supported by the central administration.

This work deals with "special" burials among the Anglo-Saxon and Slavs in the early medieval period. The individuals in these graves are frequently labelled as "deviant", "criminals", as "socially other". This dissertation aims to focus more on the possible danger which "special" individuals represented for their communities after their death and on the possibility that the “special” burials were those of potential revenants or vampires. The introduction begins with a brief sketch of the evolution of approaches to burial by archaeologists and historians writing in English. It goes on to argue that “deviant burial” is not a self-explanatory category, but can be applied to a variety of very different inhumations. It suggests it might be better termed “special’ burial or the burial of the “special’ dead and formed part of regular inhumation practice; and it argues that the best way to understand these practices is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural framework. In particular, it discusses the possible insights offered by the development of the cognitive study of religion and belief, with particular reference to death and burial practices and introduces a “theoretical alternative model” for accessing how the deceased was treated from corpse to the grave. Chapter 1 examines Anglo-Saxon "special" burials, focusing on selected cemeteries where we can observe multiple occurrences of "special" burials or the employment of several "special" practices in one locality. These will first be analyzed with regard to the location of deposition and secondly compared within the wider framework of Anglo-Saxon "special" burial practices. Comparison with "special" funerary rites recorded elsewhere in the world by anthropologists will lead to the proposal of an alternative approach to some of recent and current interpretations of these practices. Chapter 2 focuses on Slavic archaeological material represented by the "special" graves excavated in Slovakia and the Czech Republic: both burials from cemeteries and also a group of individuals deposited in a range of objects found during excavation of Slavic settlements - in grain silos, wells or pits. As with Anglo-Saxon graves, the Slavic "special" burials are analyzed from the point of view of location and then in more global context of Slavic society. The possible interpretations of these findings are discussed. Chapter 3 focuses on the primary sources and their descriptions of "pagan" funerary rituals. It charts shifts in ideas and attitudes towards "special" funeral practices ranging from descriptions of these "pagan" practices, through efforts to delimit and penalize them in the law codes, to narratives of revenant sightings and descriptions of how to recognize and destroy them. This chapter will indicate some of the theories and new approaches proposed in the thesis. The concluding chapter brings these strands together. In particular, it discusses the possible insights offered by the development of the cognitive study of religion and belief, with particular reference to death and burial practices. It examines the changing patterns of religion - from traditional or "pagan" to Christianity – and the ways in which this change influenced both "special" burial practices and perceptions of vampires and revenants, with particular reference to the Christian doctrine of Purgatory. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the theories proposed on the basis of the material collected in this work and reference to corresponding interpretative shifts in present day archaeology and history.

This work seeks to explore the progress of rural settlement and colonization in the county of Worcestershire in the period prior to the Black Death of 1349 . The study is organised into three sections, each of which is based upon particular forms of evidence. Thus, the first part utilises archaeological, place name and charter evidence to establish settlement patterns in the pre-conquest period. The second part makes a detailed study of the Domesday evidence for the county, utilising simple statistical techniques to establish relationships within the data and to identify local Domesday economies. The final part uses a wide range of manorial, Exchequer and Taxation documents to chart the post-conquest progress of colonization, settlement initiation and woodland clearance. The impact of these developments upon selected local Domesday economies, identified in part two, is achieved by the study of manorial documentation relating to the manors of the Bishop and Priory of Worcester and those of Guy de Beauchamp. Each section of the work contains three chapters in which an assessment is made of the evidence available for a study of settlement and colonization before proceeding to its analysis. Continuity between the sections is maintained by the production of a series of 'clearance' maps which chart the progress of settlement at the expense of woodland at the end of each of the main historical periods. The development of settlement patterns is framed within the evolution of territorial units of organisation, which allows an assessment to be made of the impact of seigniorial control as well as the influences stemming from the physical geography of the county.

The development of unenclosed common waste, parks, hamlets, moated sites and isolated individual settlements in Sutton Chase is traced, using archaeological, documentary and environmental evidence. The value of employing a combination of different methods and sources in the study of landscape development is shown, provided their potential and limitations are critically assessed. The largest waste areas were probably heathland by Roman times, and they were conserved through the Middle Ages as part of the hunting reserve of Sutton Chase, but following the demise of Sutton Chase in 1528, settlement and cultivation of waste areas was encouraged. Deer parks were created in parts of the study area between the 12th and 14th centuries. In the later Middle ages some of these were extended and new parks were created. Most of the hamlets and individual settlements were shown to have been in existence by the Middle Ages, but few of them were on the same sites as Roman settlements. The relative influence of the physical environment, population fluctuations and human policy in the development of the landscape is discussed, and possible future work suggested by the results of the study is outlined.

Recent studies of early Islamic Palestine have stressed the minimal impact of the Arab conquest on the Christian communities of the region. None, however, have sought to trace the trajectories of these communities beyond the eighth century. This thesis provides the first long-term study of the impact of the Arab conquest on monasticism and pilgrimage between 614 and 950. The study explores the changes to the physical landscape of monasteries and Christian cult sites, in terms of site abandonment and continuity, and situates these processes in the broader political and economic context of the Palestinian region between the seventh and tenth centuries. This thesis offers a systematic critique of current theories which view Palestinian monasticism and Christian pilgrimage as social entities dependent upon patronage from Byzantium and the early medieval west. Rather, it stresses the need for a more nuanced recognition of monastic communities and Christian cult sites as places closely interlinked with localised developments and the high degree of variation between communities in terms of patron economies and social transactions. This study demonstrates that these variances often provide the key to understanding the highly varied response of Palestinian monastic communities and Christian cult sites to early Muslim rule.

Chlemoutsi was the most important castle of the Principality established in the Peloponnese after the Fourth Crusade. The glazed pottery of the Frankish period (early 13th - early 15th c.) is almost exclusively Italian, reflecting the connections of the Principality of Achaea with Italy and illustrating the tastes of the Latin elite in ceramics. The pottery proves that the castle remained important after the end of the Frankish occupation and indicates its decline in the 18th c. The ceramic material of the Post-Byzantine period reflects the incorporation of the castle into the Ottoman Empire, the relations it developed with the rest of Greece, but, also, the continuation of its close connections with the West. Although a Turkish castle for most of the period between 1460 and the early 19th c., its imported pottery is mainly Italian, while the number of Islamic ceramics is small. The close political and economic relations with Italy developed after the Fourth Crusade, the Venetian interests in the Peloponnese, the constant Venetian occupation of the neighbouring Ionian Islands and the direct access to the Ionian Sea and Italy seem to have made the NW Peloponnese one of the most strongly Western-influenced areas of the Greek mainland.

The central proposition of this work is that a battlefield’s location sits at the intersection of three interlinked variables of terrain, tactics, and force composition, which exist in a symbiotic relationship. Furthermore, this intersection can be located through qualitative modelling within GIS against an informed digital landscape reconstruction. The hypothesis assumes that tactics and force composition are culturally relative. Moreover, they are temporally constrained aspects of a tri-poled dialectic, and state changes in the nature of these aspects will result in correlative shifts in the types of terrain that are chosen for conflict. To analyse these aspects, a theoretical framework of human agency in the selection of terrain for conflict, was developed. This theoretical position utilises a modified version of the military terrain analysis KOCOA for the purposes of visualising abstract theory, and highlighting Key Terrain aspects as a means of predicting conflict locations. To apply this theoretical framework, a phased methodology for historic landscape reconstruction within GIS was created, allowing the modelling of possible locations as a desk-based assessment approach. To model likely battlefield locations within the wider landscape, the theoretical framework posits a culturally and temporally relative habitus, experientially formed through regular experience with conflict. By analysing the digitally reconstructed battlescapes with the theoretical approach, we can model and highlight the Key Terrain an agent’s habitus would have inculcated them to choose. This Key Terrain will be distinct for each time period, reflecting culturally and temporally distinct ways of warfare, and reflexive choices of ideal terrain. The theory and method were tested through application to Scottish battlefields, with general locations known, from each major period of warfare. A study of the praxis of warfare for each period was undertaken, to fully understand the underlying structure of the habitus of conflict for each period. The historic battlescapes were reconstructed, and analysed within GIS using Culturally Relative KOCOA, projecting the agent’s habitus onto the landscape, modelling areas that were probable as focuses for conflict. This modelling process was applied to the medieval battles of Dunbar (1296), Roslin (1302), Bannockburn (1314), the Post-Medieval battles of Flodden (1513), Ancrum (1545), Pinkie (1547), and the Early Modern battles of Kilsyth (1645), Philiphaugh (1645), and Dunbar II (1650). After the modelling process was completed in GIS, selecting the most likely location of conflict within the battlescape, distributions of battle-related artefactual evidence—where available—were used to check the locations suggested by the model against artefact data. Based on these results, I argue that the theoretical and methodological approach herein can be utilized as a desk-based approach to find forgotten fields. It is a modelling process that can be performed utilizing the theoretical and methodological framework as a desk-based assessment, prior to any fieldwork, and would function to focus any investigations-on-high-priority-areas.