Early Middle Ages

The Iron Stand from Sutton Hoo, Mound 1 was excavated in 1939. While a first tentative interpretation of its original appearance was made in 1952, this was updated in 1972 following a science-led investigation of the artefact. However, some features of the object were not included in the later representation...

At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, in the town of Turku (SW Finland), a new quarter was built near a lake that came to be known as Mätäjärvi (‘Rotten Lake’), possibly because it was polluted by the waste from leather tanners, shoemakers, and other artisans. In the excavated remains of a wooden house in this quarter, objects like leather shoes, clippings and scrapings, imported stoneware from Germany...

Bone and wood pipes are among the medieval aerophones which have been discovered during archaeological excavations in Poland. The ones that interested us are characterized by a parallel arrangement of sound holes. They are short pipes, several centimetres long, with two holes cut in different places of the pipe body, either at one end or in the middle...

Bone pipes are the most numerous instrument surviving from Early Medieval England. These instruments are usually classified as ‘flutes’ despite many of the examples missing the defining categorisations. Two examples from the archaeological record of early Medieval England will be used as case studies: one instrument from North-West Essex and the other from York...

In the early days of the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, from September 1970, there was a Saxon building on the site, which was one of only two archaeological reconstructions at the museum. This original sunken-floor Saxon building is no longer standing but, after several years in the planning, a new project saw the construction in 2015 of another Saxon building, the Saxon Hall from Steyning...

Spinning is a vital step in the production of textiles, whereby fibres are drawn out (drafted) and twisted together to make thread. In the present day, several culturally unique types of spinning are recognised, such as the thigh-rolling technique of traditional Navajo spinners who use unusually large spindles in a supported style (Wolf Creek, 2009)...

The transformation of grain into malt, malt sugars and ale is a three step process. First, the controlled germination (malting), then ‘mashing in’ and collecting a sweet liquid known as wort and finally, the fermentation by pitching the yeast which converts the sugary wort into an alcoholic beverage. Each step requires different conditions for the process to work. They cannot be combined...

Throwing sticks and boomerangs are present in the collections of many French and international museums. Collected mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries by travelers, they were mainly analyzed from a stylistic point of view, to relate them to their region of origin. Some of these objects were made by the indigenous populations especially to be exchanged with Europeans and only bear macro-traces of manufacture...

Using a credit theory of money, we propose that at least some Slavic tribal communities underwent a process of social monetization. In order to fully support this hypothesis, however, many linguistic and historiographic sources would need to be discussed – a task which exceeds the scope of a single article. Therefore, we will here focus on examining (from technical perspective) the oldest type of “money” mentioned by Slavic tribal communities, which we interpret as physical records of mutual obligations.