#YEAR OF MEDIEVAL PERIOD WINDOWS#

African Inhabitants of Medieval LondonĪ burial trench between rows of individual graves, excavated between concrete foundations, from the excavation of the Black Death cemetery in East Smithfield, London.Īnalysis of DNA from the bones and teeth of 41 adults who died during the Black Death and were buried in medieval London in the mid-1300s, found that the city was more ethnically and racially diverse than once believed. Third, all this suggests something about religious practices in Ireland before people turned Christian.” 4. This figure was found with animal remains and a dagger, thus clearly part of a ritual.

Second, it was found in a bog bogs were special sites, neither water nor land, where people dumped sacrifices and the bodies of executed victims.

Patrick, writing about a hundred years after the idol was made, in the fifth century, condemned “pagan” figures like this one. “First, it dates to just before-or possibly around the very start of-Christianization in Ireland. Bitel, a dean’s professor of religion and a professor of history at the University of Southern California, and a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. “Three things about the figure fascinate me,” explains Lisa M. Sculpted from an oak trunk, the idol has a human-like head and notches carved along its body, according to the Clare Herald. Though the Middle Ages conjures up images of Christian monks in monasteries laboring over sacred manuscripts, an eight-foot-tall wooden idol discovered in the summer of 2021 in Ireland is a reminder that paganism was still around at the beginning of the Middle Ages.Īrchaeologists working with road builders found the 1,600-year-old figure in a bog in the town of Gortnacrannagh. Additionally, the ex-king may have been visited by followers who revered him as a holy man.

#YEAR OF MEDIEVAL PERIOD WINDOWS#

The dwelling had three rooms, as well as a chapel, with doorways and windows that resemble Saxon architecture. While the ex-monarch was forced to live as a hermit, it wasn’t necessarily a harsh existence.

The discovery makes the cave “probably the oldest intact domestic interior in the UK,” Edmund Simons, the principal investigator who led a team of researchers from the Royal Agricultural University and Wessex Archaeology, told The Guardian. According to a 2021 news release, he may have spent the rest of his life living in exile in the Anchor Church Caves, which were cut from soft sandstone rock. and then overthrown for good two years later. King Eardwulf, also known as Saint Hardulph, was deposed from the throne of Northumbria in 806 A.D., briefly reinstated in 808 A.D. Caves Where a Hermit Ex-King May Have LivedĪrchaeologists believe that several man-made caves in south Derbyshire in England may once have been home to an exiled Anglo-Saxon monarch. The nearly three-foot-long weapon dated to the 5th or 6th century A.D., before the rise of the Vikings. In 2018, an eight-year-old girl wading in a lake in Sweden stepped on a sharp object and pulled a sword out of the water. It’s not the first time that someone has found a medieval sword underwater. But as University of London history professor Jonathan Phillips explained to The New York Times, one possibility is that it was lost during a battle on a beach, where invading Christian forces landed and often were counterattacked by Muslim defenders, or in fighting at sea. How the sword, which would have been prized in its day, ended up underwater isn’t clear. In October 2021, after a storm shifted the sands on the bottom of the Mediterranean along the Israeli coast and exposed a treasure trove of stone anchors, pottery and other medieval artifacts, a recreational scuba diver discovered a rare and precious 39-inch iron sword, encrusted with shells and marine organisms but otherwise in well-preserved condition.Īccording to the Israel Antiquities Authority, the weapon is 900 years old, and belonged to a knight who came to the Middle East to fight in the Crusades, in which European Christian armies fought Muslims over control of Jerusalem and other sites. An ancient sword that experts say dates back to the medieval era and is believed to have belonged to a Crusader, displayed at the beach in the Israeli seaport of Caesarea on October 19, 2021.<

Year of medieval period