An important human trait is our inclination to develop complex relationships with numerous other species. In the great majority of cases however, these mutualistic relationships involve a pair of species, whose co-evolution has been achieved through behavioural adaptation driving positive selection pressures. Humans go a step further, opportunistically and, it sometimes seems, almost arbitrarily elaborating relationships with many other species, whether through domestication, pet-keeping, taming for menageries, deifying, pest-control, conserving iconic species, or recruiting as mascots. When we consider medieval attitudes to animals we are tackling a fundamentally human, and distinctly idiosyncratic, behavioural trait. The sixteen papers presented here investigate animals from zoological, anthropological, artistic and economic perspectives, within the context of the medieval world.

Zooarchaeology, or the study of ancient animals, is a frequently side-lined subject in archaeology. This is bizarre given that the archaeological record is composed largely of debris from human–animal relationships (be they in the form of animal bones, individual artifacts or entire landscapes) and that many disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and geography, recognise human–animal interactions as a key source of information for understanding cultural ideology. By integrating knowledge from archaeological remains with evidence from texts, iconography, social anthropology and cultural geography, Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues seeks to encourage archaeological students, researchers and those working in the commercial sector to offer more engaging interpretations of the evidence at their disposal. Going beyond the simple confines of 'what people ate', this accessible but in-depth study covers a variety of high-profile topics in European archaeology and provides novel interpretations of mainstream archaeological questions. This includes cultural responses to wild animals, the domestication of animals and its implications on human daily practice, experience and ideology, the transportation of species and the value of incorporating animals into landscape research, the importance of the study of foodways for understanding past societies and how animal studies can help us to comprehend issues of human identity and ideology: past, present and future.

Split into three sections, Teaching the Animal provides in-depth analysis of the nature of the discipline, the resources available, expectations of students and faculty, and a number of sample curricula in the fields of humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences.

An exhaustive listing of books, journals, articles, films, conferences, college programs, organizations, and websites from the new and exciting discipline of Human-Animal studies. The information was gathered by leading academics in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences--this is the only reference of its kind. This project was completed in conjunction with the book Teaching the Animal.

In medieval literature, when humans and animals meet—whether as friends or foes—issues of mastery and submission are often at stake. In the Skin of a Beast shows how the concept of sovereignty comes to the fore in such narratives, reflecting larger concerns about relations of authority and dominion at play in both human-animal and human-human interactions. Peggy McCracken discusses a range of literary texts and images from medieval France, including romances in which animal skins appear in symbolic displays of power, fictional explorations of the wolf’s desire for human domestication, and tales of women and snakes converging in a representation of territorial claims and noble status. These works reveal that the qualities traditionally used to define sovereignty—lineage and gender among them—are in fact mobile and contingent. In medieval literary texts, as McCracken demonstrates, human dominion over animals is a disputed model for sovereign relations among people: it justifies exploitation even as it mandates protection and care, and it depends on reiterations of human-animal difference that paradoxically expose the tenuous nature of human exceptionalism.

By exploring the uniquely dense urban network of the Low Countries, Janna Coomans debunks the myth of medieval cities as apathetic towards filth and disease. Based on new archival research and adopting a bio-political and spatial-material approach, Coomans traces how cities developed a broad range of practices to protect themselves and fight disease. Urban societies negotiated challenges to their collective health in the face of social, political and environmental change, transforming ideas on civic duties and the common good. Tasks were divided among different groups, including town governments, neighbours and guilds, and affected a wide range of areas, from water, fire and food, to pigs, prostitutes and plague. By studying these efforts in the round, Coomans offers new comparative insights and bolsters our understanding of the importance of population health and the physical world - infrastructures, flora and fauna - in governing medieval cities.

The aim of this book is to explore how medieval life was actually lived - how people were born and grew old, how they dressed, how they inhabited their homes, the rituals that gave meaning to their lives and how they prepared for death and the afterlife. Its fresh and original approach uses archaeological evidence to reconstruct the material practices of medieval life, death and the afterlife. Previous historical studies of the medieval "lifecycle" begin with birth and end with death. Here, in contrast, the concept of life course theory is developed for the first time in a detailed archaeological case study. The author argues that medieval Christian understanding of the "life course" commenced with conception and extended through the entirety of life, to include death and the afterlife. Five thematic case studies present the archaeology of medieval England (c.1050-1540 CE) in terms of the body, the household, the parish church and cemetery, and the relationship between the lives of people and objects. A wide range of sources is critically employed: osteology, costume, material culture, iconography and evidence excavated from houses, churches and cemeteries in the medieval English town and countryside. Medieval Life reveals the intimate and everyday relations between age groups, between the living and the dead, and between people and things.

This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

This volume celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Society for Medieval Archaeology (established in 1957), presenting reflections on the history, development and future prospects of the discipline. The papers are drawn from a series of conferences and workshops that took place in 2007-08, in addition to a number of contributions that were commissioned especially for the volume. They range from personal commentaries on the history of the Society and the growth of the subject (see papers by David Wilson and Rosemary Cramp), to historiographical, regional and thematic overviews of major trends in the evolution and current practice of medieval archaeology. All the publications are fully refereed with the aim of publishing at the highest academic level reports on sites of national and international importance, and of encouraging the widest debate. The series’ objectives are to cover the broadest chronological and geographical range and to assemble a series of volumes which reflect the changing intellectual and technical scope of the discipline.

Surveys the archaeology of food: its methods and its themes (economics, politics, status, identity, gender, ethnicity, ritual, religion).