Course Description

Prerequisite:

Admission open to all students with an interest in medieval history and archaeology. Students are recommended, but not required, to take EUH-3323 (Medieval Eastern Europe) or EUH-3182 (Medieval Archaeology) in advance.

Enrollment:

For a summer period of six weeks, the course enrollment is no more than 10 students. Students taking this course cannot re-take it for more academic credit.

 
 

Credit

This course is offered for six (6) semester hours of coursework. The credit for these hours is to be applied entirely to History (EUH-4186). The course is offered in cooperation with the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wolin branch and will take place in Wolin. Classes will be taught , using lectures and class discussions, supplemented by on-site visits, laboratory work and fieldwork. Participation in an ongoing research excavation will be an integral part of the course. Two week-end field trips are included in the course schedule. For more details, see the handout.

Textbooks:

• Kevin Greene. Archaeology. An Introduction. The History, Principles and Methods of Modern Archaeology. 4th edition. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2002 [hereafter Greene]
• Coursepack

Assignments:

There is no attendance policy, but you are responsible for attending all lectures and reading the required texts. The basis for evaluation of performance will be class participation, two exams, and satisfactory fieldwork. The exams will consist of  two parts: an identification and/or multiple-choice part, and a short essay, in which you will be asked to synthesize your knowledge of the topic, dropping in facts to show that you understand the concrete aspects of that topic. Only the first exam will be cumulative. In other words, the second examination will cover only the material since the first examination. Make-up exam will be given for very serious reasons, in which case you will have to produce some official proof. Each exam counts for ten percent of the final grade. The fieldwork component will count for 70 percent, of which forty percent represents the journal kept during the four weeks of fieldwork. The remaining ten percent of your overall grade is for participation in class discussions.  

Course weekly schedule (lectures and discussions):

Introduction.  What is medieval archaeology?

• see also a short essay on artifacts

• Greene 8-36
• Timothy Champion, "Medieval archaeology and the tyranny of the historical record," in From the Baltic to the Black Sea. Studies in Medieval Archaeology, ed. by David Austin and Leslie Alcock (London, 1990), pp. 79-95 (Coursepack)
• see a brief presentation of Thomsen's Three-Age system, as well as the short biographies of Gustaf Kossinna and Oskar Montelius
• see Jennifer Stephens's essay on the influence of A. H. Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers on the development of modern archaeology

• Greene 159-184
• see also Dietrich Hakelberg, "Blicke in die vaterländische Vorzeit - Regional and national identities and the history of German archaeology"

Excavation and interpretation

• Greene 37-100
• see some aerial photographs and a few applications of aerial archaeology
• see also a GIS application to an archaeological project in Burgundy (France)
• visit the site of the Harris Matrix

Greene 101-129

Marek Krapiec, "Dendrochronological dating of early medieval fortified settlements in Poland," in Frühmittelalterliche Burgenbau in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Tagung, Nitra, vom 7. bis 10. Oktober 1996, ed. by Joachim Henning and Alexander T. Ruttkay (Bonn, 1998), pp. 257-67 (Coursepack)

see a brief presentation of the principles of radiocarbon dating and a short essay on luminiscence dating of pottery

visit the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona

• Lewis R. Binford, "Mortuary practices: their study and their potential,"in Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices, ed. by James A. Brown (Ann Arbor, 1971), pp. 6-29 (Coursepack)
• A. Pásztor and T. Vida, "Avar period cemetery at Budakalász. A preliminary archaeological report on the excavations of the Avar period cemetery of Budakalász-Dunapart," Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47 (1995), 215-20 (Coursepack)
• Falko Daim, "Byzantine belts and Avar birds. Diplomacy, trade, and cultural transfer in the eighth century," in The Transformation of Frontiers. From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians, ed. by Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden/Boston/Cologne, 2001), pp. 143-88 (Coursepack)
• Milan Stloukal, "The palaeodemography of medieval populations in Czechoslovakia," in From the Baltic to the Black Sea. Studies in Medieval Archaeology, ed. by David Austin and Leslie Alcock (London, 1990), pp. 209-15 (Coursepack)

• Almuth Alsleben, Ingmar Jansson, Thomas Hammar, et al. "Palaeobotanical studies on the Novgorod Land, ca. 400-1200 AD," Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 23 (1993), 527-35 (Coursepack)
• Sándor Bökönyi, "The development of stockbreeding and herding in medieval Europe," in Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice, and Representation, ed. by Del Sweeney (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 41-61 (available on-line as e-book)
• László Bartosiewicz, "Mobile pastoralism and meat consumption: an archaeozoological perspective," in Tender Meat under the Saddle: Customs of Eating, Drinking and Hospitality among Conquering Hungarians and Nomadic Peoples. Ed. by József Laszlovszky (Krems, 1998), pp. 157-178 (Coursepack)
• for a minimal bibliography on paleoethnobotany and its applications, see the Dung File; for a complete list of web sources on zooarchaeology, visit the Zooarchaeology Web Page

• Andrzej Buko, "Pottery, potsherds and the archaeologist: an approach to pottery analyses," in Theory and Practice of Archaeological Research, ed. by Stanislaw Tabaczynski (Warsaw, 1998), pp. 381-408 (Coursepack); see Buko's Vessel Shape Family criteria and measurements used for vessel shape analysis based on vessel ratios
• Paul Barford and Ewa Marczak, "Peasant households, potters, and phasing: early medieval ceramics from Podeblocie, Poland." Archaeologia Polona 30 (1992), 127-49 (Coursepack)
• Zdenek Smetánka and Bohumil Stverák, "X-ray fluorescent analysis of gold and gilded jewels from the cemetery in Lumbe gardens at Prague Castle," Archeologické rozhledy 44 (1992), 418-30 (Coursepack)
• Florin Curta, "Blacksmiths, warriors and tournaments of value: dating and interpreting early medieval hoards of iron implements in Eastern Europe," Ephemeris Napocensis 7 (1997), 211-68 (Coursepack)
• see an introduction and samples of medieval pottery
• see an earring with a star-shaped pendant found in Lazuri (Romania) and a hoard of iron implements and weapons found in Sebenje (Slovenia)

• Elvira Tóth, "Preliminary account of the Avar princely find at Kunbábony." Cumania 1 (1972), 143-60 (Coursepack)
• János Gyözö Szabó,  "The Pilismarót cemetery," in Avar Finds in the Hungarian National Museum, ed. by Ilona Kovrig (Budapest, 1975), pp. 242-81 (Coursepack)
• Samuel Szádeczky-Kardoss, "The Avars," in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. by Denis Sinor (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 206-28 (Coursepack)
• Marcin Kozub, "The chronology of the inflow of Byzantine coins into the Avar khaganate," in Origins of Central Europe, ed. by Przemyslaw Urbanczyk (Warsaw, 1997), pp. 241-46 (Coursepack)
• Walter Pohl, "The role of the steppe peoples in Eastern and Central Europe in the first millennium A.D.," in Origins of Central Europe, ed. by Przemyslaw Urbanczyk (Warsaw, 1997), pp. 65-78 (Coursepack)
• Falko Daim, "Archaeology, ethnicity and the structures of identification: the example of the Avars, Carantanians and Moravians in the eighth century," in Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (Leyden/Boston/Cologne, 1998), pp. 71-94 (Coursepack)
• see the female burial D 41 from Zillingtal (typically Early Avar female burial, late sixth to early seventh century) and some of the associated artifacts; for an example of male burial, see the warrior grave D469 from the same cemetery (with some of the associated artifacts, including a sword, seventh century)

          Program costs  (meals and land transportation)  -       $3,508
          Tuition & fees                                                   -       $1,050
          Total cost per student                                        -       $2,960 

Airfare tickets, passports, visas, adequate medical insurance (including emergency repatriation insurance), and other travel expenses are the responsibility of students. Upon request, assistance with group rates for airfare may be provided.

The excavation site is located in Wolin, on the Baltic Sea island by that same name located in northwestern Poland at the border with Germany. Housing and meals (breakfast and dinner) will be offered in a local hotel. There will be field trips in the area (in both Poland and Germany) and a mini-van will be rented at a rate included in the total cost above.
 
 

© 2006 Florin Curta