Merlin, Myrddin Wyllt, & the ‘Men of the North’

Tim Clarkson, Scotland's Merlin: A Medieval Legend and Its Dark Age Origins, John Donald, 2016. Amazon US $22 PB, $8 Kindle. Tim Clarkson's new book, Scotland's Merlin, was a lovely break from my usual plague reading. Merlin is one of the few Arthurian characters who can stand alone from the Arthurian corpus as the Welsh figure...

The Bavarians from the Ground Up

Since written history doesn't spread very much light on the people who lived in sixth century Bavaria, let's literally look to the ground and examine what their cemeteries tell us about them.  Aschheim is the only place where plague aDNA has been found, but as far as I know, it is the only Late Antique...

Who were the Early Medieval Bavarians?

My reading for the last year has been all over the place as I try to catch up on the world of the Plague of Justinian. A sample of my reading for the last few months is here. Believe it or not, they all relate in some what to what was going on during the...

Holmes on Animals in Saxon & Scandinavian England

Matilda Holmes, Animals in Saxon and Scandinavian England: Backbones of Economy and Society. Sidestone Press, 2014. I didn't plan on writing another book review this soon but I do have to share the news on this book - my find of the month. I discovered that this valuable book is available from the publisher in...

Aberth’s An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: Crucible of Nature

John Aberth. An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: The Crucible of Nature. Routledge, 2013. 326 pages.Although the title of John Aberth's book An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: The Crucible of Nature is almost identical to Richard Hoffman's book recently reviewed here, they couldn't be more different. Aberth's book is a cultural history...

CFP: Medieval Landscapes of Disease

Call for Papers Medieval Landscapes of Disease 50th International Congress of Medieval Studies Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI   -- May 14-17, 2015  In recognition that diseases are manifestations of their environment, this session seeks papers that place medieval diseases within their environmental context. Just as a seed must be placed in good soil to...