The crania from a mass grave associated to the Battle of Good Friday (1520) in Uppsala were re-examined in this study. The total skeletal material has been analysed before, but blunt force trauma was excluded and therefore a comprehensive trauma pattern could not be presented. In the current study, the perimortem cranial weapon-related trauma was examined by reconstructing the crania and conducting a trauma analysis. Standardised methods were used to identify and document blunt, sharp and puncture trauma. The results reveal that new blunt and sharp force trauma as well as one puncture trauma could be identified. Furthermore, the majority of weapon-related trauma were identified as sharp injuries, less than ten percent as blunt injuries and a few as puncture injuries. The cranial trauma pattern is interpreted to reflect the battle tactics, the situations in the battle, as well as the armour and weapons used by the soldiers. The notion of sharp force injuries forming the majority of trauma could imply that bladed weapons were used the most and blunt weapons were used less or caused less injuries visible on bone. The dominance of cranial trauma might indicate that head was a primary target. The trauma pattern implies that blunt weapons were used at least in face-to-face combat and bladed weapons were used in a variety of situations from face-to-face fight to more chaotic situations and against fleeing soldiers. Most of the new documented injuries were observable or easier to observe during or after the cranial reconstruction, indicating that reconstructing the crania is important for observing and identifying the maximal number of injuries possible. / Kranier från en massgrav kopplad till Långfredagsslaget 1520 i Uppsala har analyserats. Hela skelettmaterialet har undersökts tidigare, men trubbig våld fick uteslutas och en komplett bild av traumamönster har tidigare inte presenterats. I denna studie undersöktes spår efter perimortalt vapenrelaterad våld via rekonstruktioner av kranierna och efterföljande trauma-analyser. Standardiserade metoder användes för att identifiera och dokumentera spår av skarpt, trubbig och penetrerande våld. Resultaten visar att nya spår av trubbiga och skarpa skador samt en penetrationsskada kunde identifieras. Vidare framkom att majoriteten av vapenrelaterade skador var skarpa, mindre än en tiondedel var trubbiga och få var penetrerande. Skademönstren hos kranierna tolkas reflektera stridstekniker och situationen i slaget, samt möjlig utrustning och vapen som användes i slaget. Att majoriteten av skador är skarpa kan tyda på att blankvapen var de mest använda och att krossvapen användes mindre, eller orsakade färre skador som syns på ben. Det stora antalet kraniala skador tyder på att huvud var ett primärt mål för huggen. Skademönstren indikerar att krossvapen användes åtminstone i närstrid och att blankvapen användes i varierande situationer från närstrid till mer kaotiska stridsituationer och motflyende män. De flesta av nya vapenrelaterade skador kunde observeras eller blev lättare att observeras under eller efter rekonstruktionen av kranier. Detta tyder på att rekonstruera kranier är viktigt för att identifiera det mesta möjliga antal skador.

This diploma thesis aims to approach the royal town Litoměřice in the medieval form, then agglomeration structure and sacral architecture of this town. Litoměřice excels especially in terms of the richness of their heritage fund and by this thesis I would like to commemorate especially disappeared monuments, churches, which were located here. I would like to contain my thesis like a monography of early medieval town Litoměřice with an enumeration of churches, fortification, castle and medieval houses.

This dissertation is a cultural and social history of healing in Japan from the tenth to the thirteenth century. In particular, in this work I examine the connection between Buddhism and healing, and the interactions between Buddhist healers and other technicians involved in the treatment of illness, such as onmyōji and court physicians. This direction of research is informed by historical anthropology and microhistory, and constitutes and attempt towards an ethnography of early medieval Japan, an era in which Buddhism constituted the most pervasive cultural force. The study of Buddhism in its therapeutic dimension among the court elites thus doubles as a study of Buddhism in its everyday dimensions, and of its contributions to the understanding of the forces that shaped everyday life, with an emphasis on facets that are often overlooked in Japanese and western Buddhology, including the interpretation and treatment of illness, discourses on etiology, spirit possession and iatromancy (divination on disease).While generally treated as discrete entities, Buddhism, onmyōdō, kami cults, and court physicians and their therapeutic technologies existed side by side and intersected in complicated ways when seen in the daily life of court aristocrats. Through an analysis of the journals that these figures have left behind, I aim to complicate the boundaries separating these cultic realms by arguing that while distinct at the level of professional practitioners, Buddhism, onmyōdō and other spheres of specialized knowledge all functionally contributed to the culture of everyday life of court aristocracy. Focusing on practices and discourses that blur the boundaries between ritual and physical endeavors, and dealing with themes that range from spirit possession and its political implications to the relationship between kami and buddhas, from the ritual implications of an expanded access to the levers of power to the transformation of a foundational Buddhist ritual into a therapeutic practice, I criticize the tendency displayed by scholars to partition the activities of Buddhist monks, onmyōji and court physicians in epistemic terms, so that while court physicians would be concerned with the physical body, the others — and Buddhist monks in particular — would not. This distinction, which clearly echoes the modern differentiation between “medicine” and “religion,” is however inadequate to account for the complexity of the therapeutic arena of early medieval Japan. Through an examination of various practitioners of healing from the tenth to the thirteenth century, I will argue for the need to rethink neat taxonomies and sanitized epistemological spaces; rediscover the centrality of practice and redefine its relationship with normative texts and theorizations; and explore, on the ground, the complexity of daily life and its processes.

“Parsing Truth in Merovingian Gaul: Evidence and the Early Medieval Critic” considers how people distinguished truth from falsehood in a set of post-Roman kingdoms occupying much of modern France and western Germany from c. 450 to 751. Using Merovingian saints’ lives, legal documents, law codes, letters, and theological and philosophical texts, I consider how people and institutions navigated the possibility that information might be presented with the intent to deceive, or might just be wrong. Responses to questions about the reliability of information ranged from the practical to the abstractly epistemological, and the period produced multiple and contradictory arguments about how knowledge could, indeed, be certain. The dissertation concludes by examining some points of contact between Merovingian critical practices and Early Modern ones, looking specifically at the management of knowledge about relics at Sens.

Les études consacrées à l’enregistrement des actes privés à l’époque médiévale portent généralement sur la France méridionale. Sa partie nord n’a à l’inverse fait l’objet que de rares travaux. Le système y repose sur la juridiction gracieuse, c’est-à-dire la validation des actes par l’apposition du sceau d’une autorité ecclésiastique ou laïque.La figure du tabellion, apparue dans la « France du Nord » au dernier quart du XIIIe siècle,incarne cet exercice de la validation. L’étude se concentre sur une période où son activité est la plus florissante, de la toute fin du XIVe au milieu du XVIe siècle.Le corpus documentaire est constitué pour l’essentiel de minutes produites par les tabellions de Villepreux, de Chartres, et de Châteaudun, dont on a étudié à la fois l’aspect matériel et le contenu. On a aussi analysé et cherché à définir le statut et les fonctions du tabellion dans son office. On a enfin tenté de décrire son travail concret au quotidien, notamment dans le contact avec sa clientèle. / Studies of privately drawn-up agreements in the mediaeval period have generally coveredsouthern France. Little work has been done on the other hand regarding the north of the country.Here the system depended on non-contentious jurisdiction, in other words, authentification of actsby the apposition of the seal of an ecclesiastical or secular authority.The person whose job it was to authenticate these deeds, the tabellion, appears in the north ofFrance during the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Our study will concentrate on a periodwhen his activity was at its most flourishing, from the latter years of the fourteenth to the middle ofthe sixteenth century.The corpus of material available consists essentially of minutes written by the tabellions ofVillepreux, Chartres and Châteaudun, for which we have studied both their material aspect andtheir content. We have also analysed and sought to define the status and functions of the tabellionin the exercise of his duties. Lastly, we have attempted to describe his work on a daily basis, inparticular, his contact with clients.

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The overall purpose of this study is to try gather more understanding about the concept and term chapel in Värmland during the middle ages. According to the perspective of landscapes and the chapels surroundings this study tries to reach the overall purpuse through archaeological investigations, reported findings and sites, old map material, geology characteristics and names of places and sites compared to Mats Anglerts division of independet chapels in three groups. First, the non serviced chapels called Capelle non curare. Second, colonisation chapels, located in border areas maintained from an adjacent parish. And third, parish chapels reduced to an annex parish when two parishes merged. The conclusion of this study is that most of the investigated chapels probably at some point worked as a colonisation chapel or a parish church, often located in border areas. But also that the chronological aspect is crucial and that the chapels might have had several functions simultaniously.

Rape and its impact on medieval women, as conceived by society and the law, have yet to receive extensive treatment. By analyzing not only rape cases, but evolving laws and the impact of the Church on views of sexuality and marriage and thus its influence on attitudes towards rape, this study shows that women were much more than victims and society, or the courts, reacted accordingly. Covering the years 1200 to 1250, this thesis examines secular court cases taken from the general eyre records of Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire. Cases taken from the King's Bench and canon courts, including Canterbury, also provide an illustration of the process of rape litigation. Legal treatises, both canon and secular, serve as the foundation for the procedures required in either court system and show that rape was a punishable offense. However, society had difficulty viewing rape as a personal crime against a woman as opposed to a crime against her family and that is when it actually thought that sexual violence occurred. While still available to them, women used the rape laws to push their agendas and concerns onto the court - revenge, choice of marriage, justice. In court records, the heavy burden of proof and the high rate of dismissals support this conclusion. Women persevered through the inherent disadvantages presented by a patriarchal system and achieved a measure of control over their lives. This is evidenced by the nearly equal success and failure rates in the records examined; 33 percent ended in acquittal or dismissal, while 31 percent provided women with some closure. The passage of the Statutes of Westminster, by removing a woman's right to prosecute rape and marry the accused, also convincingly illustrated that women held a degree of power that was unacceptable to society.

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No description available.