For the first time seasonality is placed at the centre of the study of rural settlement. Using a Europe-wide approach, it provides a primer of examples, of techniques and of ideas for the identification and understanding of seasonal settlement. As such, it marks an important new step in the interpretation of the use of the countryside by historic communities linked to the annual passage of the year. The particular studies are introduced by an opening essay which draws wider conclusions about ...

The study of belief, faith and religious practices can provide a deep insight into historical societies, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or pagan. They form a constant of human behaviour. Through religion, cult and rituals, multi-layered and complex cultural norms are expressed, demonstrating group affiliation. However, popular devotion and belief in a rural environment can include practices that are out with those of the official religion.Some of these practices discussed in this book can ...

Although household goods are a well-establish topic in Medieval and Early Modern archaeology, more recent research is overcoming simple typological and technological aspects and pointing to broader approaches, which relates to the understanding of goods’ production, consumption strategies, other economic activities and structures of social organization. Thus, the understanding of past societies and cultures relies heavily in the study of their household goods to understand people, groups an...

The idea that the past was an era with long periods of little or no change is almost certainly false. Change has always affected human society. Some of the catalysts for change were exogenous and lay in natural transformations, such as climate change or plant and animal diseases. Others came from endogamous processes, such as demographic change and the resulting alterations in demographic pressure. They might be produced by economic changes in the agrarian economy such as crop- or stock-breed...