The archaeological excavation of the early medieval site at Towyn-Y-Capel on the island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn) in North Wales, UK, provided the opportunity to study a large population (122 skeletons) at a site that was in use over a period of up to 550 years (650 -1200 AD). Samples of skeletal materials for this study were taken directly from the site itself .The osteological condition of skeletal material was variable across the site. In general, the upper burials in particular were in the poorest condition, and were mainly fragmented and dispersed due to the ongoing site erosion and diagenetic processes. Conversely, lower “cist” burials were in far better condition. The assessment of skeletal sample condition was used to select materials chosen for genetic analysis, and 44% (54) of the skeletal population were selected for analysis of appropriate samples of tooth and bone. The gross morphology of samples was assessed and 87% of bones and teeth were considered to be in good or fair condition, according to the gross preservation index (GPI) used, while only 2% of bones and no teeth were considered to be in excellent condition. In addition to GPI, a novel technique called Qualitative Light Fluoresence (QLF), based on autofluoresence, was used to ascertain the surface condition of the teeth. Compared to the fluorescence of modern enamel, there was a net loss of 21.8% fluorescence, although the degree of fluorescence from one sample to another varied (with a standard deviation from the mean of 24.973). Histological sections taken from non-human bone finds from the site generally varied less than that indicated by the gross morphology, showing good to excellent histological preservation. Further to gross and histological morphology, ten skeletal samples were selected for detailed investigations, and were analysed for amino acid racemisation and amino acid composition. All samples tested had D/L enatomer Aspartic acid ratio less than 0.1, although 50% of the samples had D/L enatiomer Aspartic acid ratio over 0.08, which indicated that the recovery of aDNA from these skeletal samples was feasible, although the biological condition of the teeth was fairly degraded. The inorganic element profile of the same ten samples showed no discernable anomalies, either due to diet or diagenesis. To consolidate genographic research, strontium isotope analysis was performed and, from the small population subset, three anomalous ratios were found. Two of these were high (Skeletons 33 and 60), indicating that these individuals had spent their childhoods in areas with high strontium ratios, representative of precambrian rock types, possibly older than those of the Holyhead Rock group, such as in Northern Scotland or Norway. The skeletal samples yielding the lowest strontium ratio (Skeleton 52) are of compelling interest, since the ratio is indicative of upbringing in only one place in the North Atlantic, namely Iceland. In this study, DNA recovery was performed on teeth and bones from the site, after extensive decalcification of samples, and also extraction and optimisation trials. Amplification of DNA extracted from teeth samples was generally more successful than for bone samples. A random amplification based polymorphic (RAPD) DNA technique was utilised to “fingerprint” human and animal samples with limited success. Contamination and template variation are likely causes for the lack of success. Amplification using several primers specific for human HV1 & 2 mtDNA targets was also met with limited success. The results show that 14.8% of the skeletal teeth samples were amplified, and these were not commonly reproducible. DNA spiking trials demonstrated that some of the samples were affected by inhibition. Independent confirmation of 9 of 10 successful samples was attained by sequencing, and although sequences were highly degraded, an attempt was made at determining the haplogroups from the sequenced HV1 haplotypes based on likelihood. Generally, the site showed a high predominance of Haplotype K (5) followed by H (2) and U (2) haplogroup profiles.

This thesis studies the origin and role of wealth in the Viking Age (late 8th to 11th century) and Late Norse (11th to 15th century) earldoms of Orkney and Caithness, northern Scotland. It has four aims. Firstly, it attempts to elucidate the key sources of wealth in the earldoms and, more specifically, the possible economic role of fish trade. Secondly, it investigates how control of these sources of wealth may have been distributed within Viking Age and Late Norse society. Thirdly, it attempts to isolate chronological trends in the utilisation of different sources of wealth and the social relations surrounding them. Finally, it was hypothesised that a consideration of these issues might illuminate the character and causes of the transition of Orkney, Caithness and Shetland from a semi-independent and non-Christian Viking Age polity to a periphery of medieval Christian Europe. Part 1 is a geographical and protohistorical survey of Viking Age and Late Norse Orkney, Caithness and Shetland. It discusses available evidence and establishes the considerable wealth of the earldoms. Part 2 investigates the possible sources of this wealth. It concludes by highlighting circumstantial evidence for an export trade in cured fish. Zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical data receive particular attention. New methodological tools for interpreting the weight of zooarchaeological assemblages are also discussed. In Part 3, the possibility that medieval fish middens (at sites such as Robert's Haven, Caithness) represent waste from the production of cured fish for export is considered in detail.

<p>This dissertation is the first architectural history devoted to Beverley Minster, a large and ambitious Gothic church located in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Beverley is one of the most important medieval buildings in England, but it has been almost entirely ignored in the literature. The church is composed of three parts: choir and transepts (c. 1225-1260), nave (c. 1308-c. 1370), and west façade (c. 1380-1420). </p><p>The thesis begins with a description of the destroyed buildings that occupied the site during the Saxon and Romanesque periods. The remainder of the dissertation focuses on the work completed at the Minster during the fourteenth century, in the so-called Decorated style. First, the nave is analyzed and its construction is assigned to six campaigns between the years c. 1308-c. 1370. Much discussion is devoted to the "historicism" of the nave's conservative design, which is a subtly modernized version of the east end that preceded it. Contemporary documents also permit discussion of the financial contributions of the laity, canons, and municipal leaders who paid for the nave to be built. </p><p>Finally, a detailed analysis is offered for the furnishings made at Beverley between 1292 and c. 1340: the reredos (high altar screen), sedilia (seating for priests), and the destroyed shrine which once contained the relics of St. John of Beverley. Like the nave, they are all neglected masterpieces of the Decorated style.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis presents a series of case studies of early medieval narratives about the non-Roman, non-biblical distant past. After an introduction that briefly outlines the context of Christian traditions of historiography in the same period, in chapter two, I examine the Gothic histories of Jordanes and Isidore, and show how they present different methods of reconciling notions of Gothic independence with the heritage of Rome. Chapter three looks at the Trojan origin narratives of the Franks in the Fredegar chronicle and the 'Liber historiae Francorum', and argues that this origin story, based on the model of the Roman foundation myth, was a means of making the Franks separate from Rome, but nevertheless comparable in the distinction of their origins. Chapter four studies Paul the Deacon’s 'Historia Langobardorum', and argues that although Paul drew more on oral sources than did the other histories examined, his text is equally not a record of ancient oral tradition, but presents a synthesis of a Roman, Christian, and of non-Roman and pagan or Arian heritages, and shows that there was actually little differentiation between them. Chapter five is an examination of 'Waltharius', a Latin epic drawing on Christian verse traditions, but also on oral vernacular traditions about the distant past; I suggest that it is evidence of the interpenetration between secular, oral, vernacular culture and ecclesiastical, written and Latin learning. 'Beowulf', the subject of chapter six, is similar evidence for such intercourse, though in this case to some extent in the other direction: while in 'Waltharius' Christian morality appears to have little of a role to play, in 'Beowulf' the distant past is explicitly problematised because it was pagan. In the final chapter, I examine the further evidence for oral vernacular secular historical traditions in the ninth and tenth centuries, and argue that the reason so little survives is because, when the distant past had no immediate political function—as origin narratives might—it was normally seen as suspect by the Church, which largely controlled the medium of writing.

In the past the works of Isidorus Hispalensis have been regarded as nothing more than a rehashing of the works of earlier ecclesiastical authors, with no direct reference to Roman sources. He has been called at best a compiler and at worst a plagiarist. However, a greater understanding of the historical context shows that it is likely that Isidorus Hispalensis was working directly from Roman sources. In addition, by studying the historical context within which Isidorus is writing, evidence of his originality is seen in his ability to cater specific works to his specific context. By outlining Rome’s presence in Spain from the very beginning, as well as the changing understanding of the barbarian invasions, I show through a study of the astronomical chapters of Isidorus Hispalensis’ De Natura Rerum that Roman traditions in Spain persisted well into the Visigothic period, and that Isidorus Hispalensis is a perfect symbol of the survival of Roman culture after the fall of the western Empire. / Thesis (Master, Classics) -- Queen's University, 2013-04-12 17:33:29.356

The written was the world of early medieval Iberia. Literacy was limited, but textuality was extensive, in the authority conferred on text and the arrangements made to use it. Roman inheritance is manifest, in documentary and legal culture, engendering literate expectations which define the period; continuity across conquest by Visigoths and Arabs, and the weakness of states in the north of the Peninsula, must lay to rest the traditional coupling of literacy with politics which underlies the paradigm of the Middle Ages. Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, as estates expanded to surmount locality and enter communities which had made do with memory, engagement with documentation was incentivized for the laity. Organization to do so followed, at one remove: the person of the scribe, who wrote the charter and recorded all those involved in and present at it, before recycling the text back into the community by public reading. The scribe mediated the text, and as his occupation consolidated he became more fully a literate interpreter. The charter, once created, had an active afterlife of dynamic circulation, enabled by multiple and accessible archives, particularly in the hands of the clergy. Written evidence was the surest defence in case of dispute; charters were self-promoting in their mutual citation as well as practical efficacy. But they also diffused legal knowledge: as each rhetorical, pragmatic, silent, and legislative reference to written law was read aloud by the scribe, how to capitalize on its provisions became better known, so kings and counts seized the potential. For the clergy, the Bible, canon law, and monastic rules were the texts which bestowed identity, but as they interacted with the laity, they set the charter in the history of salvation, and modelled textuality to society, as their monasteries became the microcosms of its written framework.

<p>This study argues that Chaucer's poetry belongs to a far-reaching conversation about the forms of consolation (philosophical, theological, and poetic) that are available to human persons. Chaucer's entry point to this conversation was Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, a sixth-century dialogue that tried to show how the Stoic ideals of autonomy and self-possession are not simply normative for human beings but remain within the grasp of every individual. Drawing on biblical commentary, consolation literature, and political theory, this study contends that Chaucer's interrogation of the moral and intellectual ideals of the Consolation took the form of philosophical disconsolations: scenes of profound poetic rupture in which a character, sometimes even Chaucer himself, turns to philosophy for solace and yet fails to be consoled. Indeed, philosophy itself becomes a source of despair. In staging these disconsolations, I contend that Chaucer asks his readers to consider the moral dimensions of the aspirations internal to ancient philosophy and the assumptions about the self that must be true if its insights are to console and instruct. For Chaucer, the self must be seen as a gift that flowers through reciprocity (both human and divine) and not as an object to be disciplined and regulated.</p><p>Chapter one focuses on the Consolation of Philosophy. I argue that recent attempts to characterize Chaucer's relationship to this text as skeptical fail to engage the Consolation on its own terms. The allegory of Lady Philosophy's revelation to a disconsolate Boethius enables philosophy to become both an agent and an object of inquiry. I argue that Boethius's initial skepticism about the pretentions of philosophy is in part what Philosophy's therapies are meant to respond to. The pressures that Chaucer's poetry exerts on the ideals of autonomy and self-possession sharpen one of the major absences of the Consolation: viz., the unanswered question of whether Philosophy's therapies have actually consoled Boethius. Chapter two considers one of the Consolation's fascinating and paradoxical afterlives: Robert Holcot's Postilla super librum sapientiae (1340-43). I argue that Holcot's Stoic conception of wisdom, a conception he explicitly links with Boethius's Consolation, relies on a model of agency that is strikingly similar to the powers of self-knowledge that Philosophy argues Boethius to posses. Chapter three examines Chaucer's fullest exploration of the Boethian model of selfhood and his ultimate rejection of it in Troilus and Criseyde. The poem, which Chaucer called his "tragedy," belonged to a genre of classical writing he knew of only from Philosophy's brief mention of it in the Consolation. Chaucer appropriates the genre to explore and recover mourning as a meaningful act. In Chapter four, I turn to Dante and the House of Fame to consider Chaucer's self-reflections about his ambitions as a poet and the demands of truth-telling.</p> / Dissertation

Judean hagiographies are unusual. Some are unexpectedly structured: a saint’s life in the form of a history text. Others offer surprising content. Expected hagiographic stylizations, for example, often depict moments in which the saint is offered money for a miracle. In such cases the saint invariably refuses. Judean saints, however, accept gratitude willingly – often with cash amounts recorded. The peculiarities of these works have regularly been examined on literary and theological grounds. In this dissertation I propose a different approach: socio-economic context. The monasteries that produced these texts were utterly dominated by the environment of Christian Jerusalem. Although often commented upon, the unmined implications of this reality hold the key to understanding these hagiographies. It is only by examining these monasteries’ ties to – and embeddedness within – their peculiar context that we can perceive the mindset that produced such baffling texts. Lengthy historical, literary, and archaeological analysis force Judean hagiography to give up its secrets. These works were in fact not odd at all. Rather, they were hyper-specialized, a unique adaptation to a unique environment. True, we do not see their like in other eastern regions over the span of late antiquity. Yet this is to be expected. Nowhere else can we find the particular conditions that brought these works into being. Nor can we understand the Judean works absent their milieu. It is only upon the foundation of layers of context that these hagiographies stand high enough to view. They were, most accurately, Holy Land hagiographies: a label as unique as the land that produced them.

The thesis aims to answer the following question: how did the relationships people had with Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford between 1275 and 1282, shape the nature of his posthumous cult? The thesis rejects the idea that the veneration of saints in medieval England was politically neutral, or that their cults represented a stable, uncontentious means of resolving social discord. Instead, it posits that the invocation and memorialisation of Cantilupe was an intrinsically political act, and one that was available to ordinary people; these memories were formulated through their personal experiences of life in thirteenth century Hereford, and the people and institutions that populated it. These arguments are primarily based on evidence drawn from Cantilupe’s canonisation proceedings, particularly records and testimonies of his purported miracles. The first chapter discusses the historiography of saints’ cults in medieval Europe, and how their social function has typically been characterised, and outlines the principal sources for the thesis and how they will be used. The second chapter of this thesis takes the form of a brief biography of Cantilupe’s life and career, with a particular focus on how his actions might have affected the ways different people perceived him after his death. The third chapter enumerates the principal institutions and individuals that exercised power alongside Cantilupe in the diocese, and situates miracle recipients for whom we otherwise have little evidence within these contexts. Chapter four deals with the perspectives generated by Cantilupe’s interactions with the other lay and ecclesiastical authorities that constituted the structures of power in the diocese. Chapter five concerns the attitudes generated through direct experience of Cantilupe himself, or the way in which these attitudes were mediated by someone who did know him personally. Evidence that helps us to establish how ideas about Cantilupe were memorialised is discussed in chapter six.

This thesis examines the changes forced upon the Roman elite in the evolving political climate of Ostrogothic Italy. It examines what mechanisms the Roman elite employed to renegotiate their position of influence within the state. The relationship the elite had with the past provides evidence for wider changes in society. I assert that, using the language and landscape of the past, the elite formed discourses which responded to, and which attempted to facilitate a realignment in, a changing environment. The education system still provided the Roman elite with a mechanism through which they could define themselves and prepare for what they considered to be the important aspects of the world outside the classroom. Religious discussions and debate in the post-imperial Italy of Late Antiquity were increasingly directed toward attempts to reunite the fractured Roman Empire through a unified empire of Orthodox faith. Having such a close relationship with the Roman Empire and its political and philosophical culture, education and religion are particularly suitable fields to reflect the changes to the political map of the Roman Empire. Focusing on the elite’s relationship with education and religion, this thesis will uncover examples of continuity and change which are implied by the construction of, and interaction with, discourses designed to facilitate the elite’s renegotiation strategies. Reconstructing the education of prominent members of the elite from their writings provides the evidence for such discourses. The emphasis on this part of the thesis is on discovering how the discourses circulating in relation to education responded to the political and philosophical problems through the language of the past and what these responses tell us about changes in the present. The religious discussion focuses on the attempts of the opinion formers in Italy to create and direct narratives designed to establish the superiority of one religious world-view over another. An examination of the language of tradition in the construction of these narratives provides evidence for the potency of the past in the decision-making process and ideology- forming strategies of the Roman elite. It also provides evidence for the changes in society to which the strategies were responding. A final-chapter case study provides an opportunity to see evidence of the effectiveness of these discourse-forming strategies. In this chapter we see a contemporary historical source interacting with those narratives and discourses we witnessed the elite employing in the education and religion chapters. It also provides an opportunity to see how the past is used to justify the actions of the Roman elite in Ostrogothic Italy to a post-Gothic audience (as the work was composed in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Ostrogothic Italy). This final consideration provides an instructive contrast which brings into sharp focus the extent and nature of continuity and change brought about by the Ostrogothic state.